Sony uMatic v DVD recorders

[John10b]

I’m not sure if this is the right place for this topic, so Mods please move as you see fit, thanks.
Long story very short version. Many years ago, when I was working, some times in a harsh industrial environment, we had to start thinking about replacing above tape decks. DVD was being talked about as the future, but some uncertainty began to creep in.
I never did see the outcome, so what I’m wondering now, as I reminisce, what took over from the Sony uMatic tape decks?
John

[Vintage Engr]

I worked in the video industry for many years, so I saw reel-to-reel video recorders, including an EIAJ 'cassette', actually a reel but with a stiff plastic leader, which was grabbed by the mechanism & fed onto a fixed reel inside the machine. They were very good, but prone to jamming. Then U-Matic/ U-Matic Hi-band, Industrial Video 8, Betacam, M2, DVCPro, various Ampex machines. All used in industrial applications.

All seems very redundant now!. all used in industrial applications.

One of our customers wanted to archive X-ray video material, x-rays of bomb fin castings.
The solution for him, was the Sony LaserDisc. Not to be confused with the Philips domestic offering! The Sony was an incredible machine for its' time.

This was an industrial recorder/player. The large discs were housed in what could be described as a giant version of a 3.5" floppy disc outer casing, so it offered very good protection.
We also used hard drive recorders where these were applicable. some with large Winchester drives, that didn't hold much material, compared to todays kit.
David.

[Welsh Anorak]

U-Matic decks were used until well after the technology had moved on due to their robust construction more than their performance which was not up to broadcast quality, though for industrial use that wasn't the issue.

DVD recording would have been a non-starter in your situation I'd imagine. The discs are easily damaged and totally unsuited to a harsh environment. The format has always been a problem, and even in a domestic environment were complicated to use and their longevity was (is) suspect. When customers wanted a precious tape transferred to DVD we always advised them to keep the original in a dry place as it would probably outlast the copy.

Betacam SP could have been used in your situation if funds allowed, or possibly a hard drive, depending on the capacity available at the time.

[John10b]

Thank you both for your informative replies.
Do you know what actually replaced the uMatics in most work places, I believe the bbc used uMatic, I could be wrong. Scrutiny and Editing and storage of data was of prime importance. Regarding long term storage, several years in some cases, this was of great importance, and the cost of the environmental storage became an issue.
John

[dglcomp]

I understand the BBC used digibeta for archive storage if I'm not mistaken.

[John10b]

Thanks, would I be right in assuming tapes are still used for master recording and archiving?
John

[Vintage Engr]

Several companies used DVCPro format for archive, including Pathe. However this format didn't last long, - I've still got a brand-new boxed Panasonic machine in my loft!

The thing about U-matic was that it held its' place in industry for a very long time. It & it's many derivatives were almost indestructible. So much so, that when the series 5 was launched - (I still have a U-matic tie from the Jersey launch) Sony were offering a very good discount via their dealers on the Series 5 This however was dependent on the customers series 1 or 2 being put in a crusher! (I took a couple of 2630 working units down to Gerry Well's wireless museum).

The early mechanical button VO1810's were very bulky, soon giving way to the 2630 series, (plagued with SY board faults due to rivets being used as vias on the PCB). then the very long-lived series 5 & its' later derivatives, the series 7's. The Portables were o.k. but not as reliable as the clunky desk-top/rack-mount units.

NEC also produced their own version of the Umatic, the loading system of which had to be seen to be believed! No where near the quality of the Sony machines.

I've already mentioned the industrial video 8, they were surprisingly robust & we sold many of them into industry. In some areas they were replacing
U-matics. One however was put into a teaching system, in a factory where there was a high powdered sugar content in the general atmosphere... I still have the machine, now fully restored after many hours of removing a sugary syrup from the very small & delicate deck mechanism!

Prior to Digibeta, Sony introduced the UVW series of Betacam. These were taken up by many industrial users as they were cheaper than say, the ubiquitous BVW75 & also its' Ampex versions.

So back to the original question, there is no one answer. Indeed, not just U-matic Lo-band/hi-band, there were a good many Industrial SVHS machines out in the field, used in fairly demanding industrial applications. Both JVC & Panasonic produced some fairly robust versions. I used to fit some industrial portables into fairly demanding avionics systems.

To round off, I have in front of me, the second industrial version of Panasonic's VHS built-like-a- battleship AG6200 which is still working perfectly after more years than I can remember! The production run on this model was around 20 years.
They were so popular, that Bryant, one of the best known rack/cabinet producers, was still showing a rack-slide mount for the AG6200 long after production ceased.
I use mine for the odd transfer of VHS to digital, & I've enough spares to keep it running to see me out.

They don't make machines like that or U-matic anymore. Completely unnecessary in this age of non-mechanical digital storage.

I still find I get a buzz from working on them though!

David.

[Simondm]

Originally Posted by John10b

Thank you both for your informative replies.
Do you know what actually replaced the uMatics in most work places, I believe the bbc used uMatic, I could be wrong. Scrutiny and Editing and storage of data was of prime importance. Regarding long term storage, several years in some cases, this was of great importance, and the cost of the environmental storage became an issue.
John

In my time in the late 1970s & 1980s, basic U-Matic was always a secondary format in the BBC - not used for broadcast material. The BBC had both Sony and JVC machines.

Hi-Band U-Matic WAS used for broadcast: Electronic News Gathering (ENG) in the regions. I _think_ that was only Sony kit, certilny that was all I ever saw in our regional news edit suites.

After that came Betacam (Sony, analog, but "news" broadcast standard), then Beta SP (general purpose), then, finally, Digibeta. All of these were based on the Betamax form factor originally (and the smaller cartridge used in portable Beta camcorders), although the actual tape formats were significantly different.

There were studio recorders and players that used much larger cartridges (could also accept small ones), and Sony had a range of huge near-line tape libraries, "Betacart", that could contain hundreds of tapes and multiple players and recorders, operated under computer control.

I'm not sure if BBC News used Betacart, but CNN was an early adopter, having several floors of its Atlanta building filled with Betacart libraries. The CNN building had a glass-walled atrium, and seeing several robotic picker arms whizzing to and fro as you passed on the escalator was an impressive sight.

Slightly later came DV and its HD variants - I believe the BBC used Sony camcorders almost exclusively.

I think that was the end of tape as a broadcast video medium.

By that time I'd moved across to the computer mass storage industry, where a couple of the physical formats resurfaced. They used one of the common digital interfaces (SCSI mostly, for various reasons), and were almost exclusively used in backup applications:

4mm (1/8") audio DAT became DDS in the computer industry (the first computer drives from Seagate could also play audio DAT tapes), 8mm (DV) produced slightly faster backup drives from Exabyte. DDS lasted through five or so generations.

Later computer tape technology (Ultrium/LTO and derivatives) used linear heads, both for bandwidth (ironically) and more importantly faster seek times (the formats were "serpentine", writing groups of tracks interleaved, in both directions on the tape. These have the advantage of data robustness in long-term storage, so have been used in large libraries for broadcast applications ("near-line" storage), but that's a complex area.

[ben]

As far as I recall at our uni AVS department, it was some form of Betacam. Judging by the amount of industrial and broadcast tapes still around and cropping up, I'd say it was probably the most popular tape format to take over from U-matic.

[John10b]

Some very detailed and interesting posts. What I’m surprised at is, if I’ve got it right, is how the dvd format did not become the dominant format. As I said in my first post, we were looking to replace our uMatics and the optical path, away from tape, seemed the logical path. When I visited exhibitions there was a lot of talk about the future format, and dvd was certainly a hot topic of conversation.
John

[Welsh Anorak]

I think it's a case of 'if it ain't broke'.

Tape was the medium for decades, though the format changed many times as detailed in post #2. However optical was a new and, at the time, unproven technology. I've never seen a Sony Laserdisc, but it sounds impressive. However I assume it would be for the deep of pocket.

The studio I used in the 'Nineties was typical in having racks of Beta and Digi-Beta alongside the 2" machines. The only optical I saw was CD (of course) and maybe DVD for running off a customer copy, though even then that was more often done on S-VHS or plain VHS.

With hindsight it was lucky that DVD wasn't widely adopted, certainly in the pro and semi-pro sector. Delamination, fragility and random glitches, together with conflicts of systems meant an archived customer recorded DVD might not work some years down the line. Well stored tapes have stood the test of time.

I suspect your firm would have gone down the Betacam route, though upgrading their U-Matic kit might still have been an option.

[Amtec123]

Panasonic's D3 composite digital format has not been mentioned. the BBC went fully over to it replacing their 1" 'C' format VTR's. It proved to be a very unstable format with very poor interchange. Something no broadcaster wants especially with the number of machines in use around the various sites. In the early days of D3 Panasonic set up a workshop at TV centre to repair and align the machines on site. Head life was counted in hundreds of hours rather than thousands.

Things did improve but by then Sony's Digital Betacam had arrived and became almost a world standard. IMHO Digital Betacam was the best format I ever worked with, it was easy to access components. Video head changes took just a couple of hours, and if aligned correctly would give 100% interchange where ever recordings were sent.

Low Band U-Matic's would only have been used for viewing copies or as part of sound dubbing process. Hi Band machines were only permitted by the IBA code of practice for ENG use.

Burnt DVD's were never going to be a long term storage medium due to changes which made some of them unreadable after a few years.

[John10b]

Well I think that pretty much answers my query regarding DVD replacing Tape, so thank you all.
So just one more question, what is the most common professional machine in use today, I presume it’s Tape? Thanks.
John

[Simondm]

Sorry - I forgot D3!

You're right about Low-band U-Matic for audio - in Bristol's dubbing theatre we had a system that would chase-lock a JVC U-Matic to timecode from 16mm sepmag, gloriously christened SEDUCT i.e. "Synchronising Equipment for Dubbing to U-matic Cassette Tapes" (there was indeed a naming competition and an ex-Audio Supervisor won it).

You could, theoretically, track-lay properly for a 1" taped programme (we had no Sypher suite in Bristol) - there was a Pic-Sync which output timecode off the sepmag (which the U-Matic chased), but it was horrid to use because of the lag of the U-matic.

So VT would simply lay off the edit sound to a telecine sound follower, simultaneously making a timecoded U-Matic cassette. Dubbing would be given one cassette and one roll of (edge-track) timecoded sepmag with the edited soundtrack on the centre track.

It worked, but took an age to lock up and occasionally the U-matic would chase off on its own and have to be manually interrupted. That said, the JVC player chosen was built like a tank, as the process really hammered the mechanics, yet it kept going.

@John, who asked about current machines: I think in the BBC at least it's "cloud based" i.e. a server farm. Fully digital and fully solid-state, and audio recorders have been that way for years. Tape both for audio and video applications has gone.

[Amtec123]

Your dubbing system sounds very much like ours was, named MEDway (Music /Effects /dialog)
The edited 2" master tape would replay video and mono audio to a 1" Sony open reel semi pro VTR. The 2" master audio was also recorded onto track 1 of a Telefunken 1" 6 track audio recorder. All 3 machines recorded MEDway pulses (an early form of Timecode) The 2" VTR recorded the pulses onto its cue track, the 1" Sony onto its audio 2, and the Telefunken to track 6.

The 1" Sony video and Telefunken tapes were then given to the sound supervisor to perform their magic.

Once dubbing was completed the Telefunken audio tape was locked to the 2" VTR via their MEDway pulses. The 2" edited master tapes main audio track was then over recorded with the mixed down Telefunken audio. Resulting in a TX master tape, well most of the time.

On layback I was always a little nervous hiting the audio only record on the quad VTR knowing I was erasing the original main audio track.

[Amtec123]

It was a long time ago, but MEDway could have stood for Music /Effects / Dubbing, rather than Dialogue.

I also possibly didn't make it clear that the Telefunken 6 track audio tracks used were.
Tk 1 original edited master 2" audio
Tk's 2 &3 music / effects added by sound dept.
Tk 4 final mixed down audio from Tk's 1,2,and 3, which would be recorded back to the 2" edited master tape for transmission.
Tk 5 left clean to reduce possible crosstalk / fringing from locking pulses on Tk6

Later the Sony 1" semi pro VTR was replaced with a JVC Low band U-Matic.

[lightning]

l serviced two U-Matic machines last year for a company in Manchester who still use them
as they get clients wanting the tapes transferred to another format.