History of Editing
2. Videotape and Editing
Video editing began around 1956 when two inch videotape machines (also called Quad machines or VTR's) were developed. The Ampex VRX-1000 was the first commercial machine sold to the television industry. They were very useful in recording live programs for delayed telecast.
The method was called quadrature scanning, as opposed to the helical scan transport used by later videotape formats such as VHS. The machine used two inch wide videotape where four heads on a spinning drum (evenly spaced) would scan over the tape at 90 degrees. The two audio tracks were standard linear near the edge of the tape. Because stereo wasn't necessary for television then, we were in a mono broadcast world, the second audio track was used as a cue track for recording cue tones. Cue tones were laid on the audio track and were used for triggering devices that were indicators or cues for on air presenters to cut to commercial breaks.
CBS Television in the USA first used the Ampex VRX-1000 at its Television City studios in Hollywood in November to play a delayed telecast of Douglas Edwards in Back and White. With different time zones in America, recording programs on Quad for delayed telecast was a far for more effective process than the Kinescope process. The kinescope was used to record the image from a television display to film, synchronised to the TV scan rate. There was a loss of quality and delays in processing. Ampex introduced a colour videotape recorder in 1958.
Videotape was physically edited before the electronic method was developed. Playing the machine and stopping the tape at the head where the edit was needed wasn’t totally accurate and great skill and care was needed. The tape was then marked and placed in a splicer device with a microscope design for the process. The two pieces of tape to be joined were then coated with a solution of extremely fine iron filings suspended in carbon tetrachloride. This exposed the pulses on the magnetic video tracks, making them visible when viewed through a microscope so that they could be aligned in a splicer. This could compare with editing 16mm film with a combined magnetic audio track.
By the 1960's, VTR machine to machine editing was achieved by synchronising the playback of two machines, one to edit the new shot in and the other the source of the new shot.
There was a slight delay of less than a second when the edit button was hit and the machine cut to the new vision. Machine to machine editing improved over the next few years with more accurate systems.
Another development in the later 60’s was the video disc which could handle slow motion and freeze frames. This was used regularly in television sporting coverage’s and editing promotions and program segments.
The first computer-controlled Quad linear editing systems were released in the early seventies and could control more than two VTR’s (Videotape Recorder/Playback). Wow we were in heaven! The CMX-300 was one of the first devices and could control a simple video mixer for wipes and fades. The cue track on the tape was used for time code which is a fixed electronic number system for video that is still used today in non-linear computer editing.
The System that was developed created EDL’s (Edit Decision Lists) and by utilising timecode (cue track & newly developed matching video data), multiple tape machines could be synchronised with auxiliary devices. The most popular and widely used computer edit systems came from Sony, Ampex and CMX.
Post-Production company’s set-up edit suite rooms solely for editing purposes. Many were stylish spaces with separate VTR machine rooms nearby to cut down noise in the edit suites.
For the next 20 years, edit suites, computer controllers with all the add-on technology improved dramatically. These systems were expensive with equipment like VTRs, video switchers and character generators (CG – for generating supers and graphics) usually limited to high-end post-production facilities.
