Watching this video on YouTube and the following parts raises a few questions about what equipment they used to produce the news broadcasts back in the 1980’s.
Obviously tape was used to playout the VT’s (1” tape decks I’m assuming?).
There are frequent calls of “animate Quantel” during the programme which produces digital video affects. How does this work as it’s able to move the input that is currently live on air across the screen and then display the next item beneath it? How does it tie into the Preview and Program bus on the vision mixer?
They also refer to “Scanners” which I’m assuming are still stores? It looks like the graphics for the maps etc are also stored on these.
They also use Astons which are presumably typed out in advance and stored in the correct order so the next one is brought on the screen at the appropriate time?
Watching this video on YouTube and the following parts raises a few questions about what equipment they used to produce the news broadcasts back in the 1980’s.
Obviously tape was used to playout the VT’s (1” tape decks I’m assuming?).
There are frequent calls of “animate Quantel” during the programme which produces digital video affects. How does this work as it’s able to move the input that is currently live on air across the screen and then display the next item beneath it? How does it tie into the Preview and Program bus on the vision mixer?
They also refer to “Scanners” which I’m assuming are still stores? It looks like the graphics for the maps etc are also stored on these.
They also use Astons which are presumably typed out in advance and stored in the correct order so the next one is brought on the screen at the appropriate time?
A pink flimsy was an early (non final, approved) version of a script.
You’re right with your assumptions re:
Scanner = slide scanner
Astons = yes, caption generators, with name captions typed out in advance, the PA counts
up
to the in time for each caption.
Quantel - yes this refers to an off-board DVE (digital video effects) unit as most vision mixers didn’t have these effects built in to them until relatively recently. Usually DVEs are fed from the vision mixer via aux outputs and come back into the vision mixer on a separate source input. Sometimes on archive recordings of news and things like Top of the Pops, you can see the cut from a direct source to one routed via a DVE because the edge of the picture jumps in slightly (due to differences in the over scan). So the person operating the vision mixer can take sources directly, or if a DVE effect is required cue up the effect on the quantel, cut to the quantel on the vision mixer, animate on the call of the director then cut or mix away from the quantel to the next source clean before calling up the next DVE required. Working with off board DVEs like this continued well into the 2000s (I certainly remember using an Abekas DVE like this in Bristol in 2003).
Were those slide scanners Quantel Paintboxes or similar, or something more basic? They often used slides for graphics with maps and text on ect. which would have had to be produced on something. It's also interesting to hear them say "Scanner 3". I would imagine these things were very expensive in those days?
Quantel - yes this refers to an off-board DVE (digital video effects) unit as most vision mixers didn’t have these effects built in to them until relatively recently. Usually DVEs are fed from the vision mixer via aux outputs and come back into the vision mixer on a separate source input. Sometimes on archive recordings of news and things like Top of the Pops, you can see the cut from a direct source to one routed via a DVE because the edge of the picture jumps in slightly (due to differences in the over scan). So the person operating the vision mixer can take sources directly, or if a DVE effect is required cue up the effect on the quantel, cut to the quantel on the vision mixer, animate on the call of the director then cut or mix away from the quantel to the next source clean before calling up the next DVE required. Working with off board DVEs like this continued well into the 2000s (I certainly remember using an Abekas DVE like this in Bristol in 2003).
I had no idea it was that complex. It must have taken a lot of concentration for the person operating the vision mixer to get it right, especially if there were a number of DVE effects in quick succession as there were on the news clips above. Presumably there was someone operating the DVE separately to the person operation the vision mixer?
Was the DVE input on a keyer to allow the next source to be seen?
Sometimes on archive recordings of news and things like Top of the Pops, you can see the cut from a direct source to one routed via a DVE because the edge of the picture jumps in slightly (due to differences in the over scan).
Or that glitch with a repeated frame or two just before the credit squeeze on every single programme on BBC One that didn't get fixed for far too long.
Vision mixing was, and remains, an extremely complex job and they are highly skilled in what they do. In formatted programmes you can save commonly used effects into the desks memory and recall them on the fly. For example, most news programmes often have a weather forecast in them and they’re often (but not always) chroma key (green screen or CSO in BBC Speak). The vision mixer (person) will call up the weather memory when they can, so it’s preset and ready to go on one of the vision mixer desks ME outputs. That ME is routed into the camera’s autocue feed so the presenter can see themselves Keyed over the graphics, and the technical manager can adjust the lighting beforehand. The memory will call up the effect and all the routing in one go.
It depends on how many ME banks you have at your disposal, but on a 3 or 4 ME vision mixer you can have several effects set up ready to go well in advance. However in Bristol when I worked there we had just one ME bank and a program/preset bank. That means you could only have one effect set up in advance. I really enjoyed vision mixing, it was an excellent challenge, especially when things went out of sequence for whatever reason.
Mosart has, to some extent, taken a lot of this work away from general news output. That’s a great shame in some respects, but it has made the job massively simpler. I have directed and vision mixed simultaneously in other regions and that’s a very complex job indeed! Mosart makes that a doddle. While there are still physical vision mixing desks in the galleries, they’re generally only touched for programming and testing, mosart does all the work on a day to day basis.
Sometimes on archive recordings of news and things like Top of the Pops, you can see the cut from a direct source to one routed via a DVE because the edge of the picture jumps in slightly (due to differences in the over scan).
Or that glitch with a repeated frame or two just before the credit squeeze on every single programme on BBC One that didn't get fixed for far too long.
Despite me almost daily pointing it out to the BBC and Red Bee...
ThenBBc were very very concerned about glitches on audio or video over IP
Saw tests ti prove that e.g audio did not glitch more than once every 48 hours etc ....
While BBC one was dropping or repeating frames 4 times an hour !
On vision mixing ... could not agree more ... it is very skilled craft .
the fact that the current shot was almost forgotten as you were setting up the next one ...
I always thought they played in the voiceover with the presenters name over the titles but according to the countdown clock looks like each presenter had a personal version of the titles?
Easier to have it pre-recorded, rather than waiting on someone in sound to fire off the cart with the correct presenters intro.
Notice how the zoom down to the desk is cued in the gap between "the one o'clock news from the BBC" and "with Phillip Hayton", and the v/o annouce end hits the riser instrumentation in the outro to the theme tune, perfectly.
Firing that off on cart live (or early hard disk storage, if they had it) each programme to hit those two points with different name lengths, and with the live gallery background noise enviorment, would make it a magic mystery tour every day.
Looking at the rest of that programme from 1986, it looks as though the DVE had to be fed with two feeds as it was able to rotate one image into another as can be seen here:
So each time they did a transition, they would have to select two feeds to send to the DVE, cut from the clean input to the DVE, perform the effect and then cut to the new on air input?
Was a separate person responsible for the DVE in those days or did the person vision mixing control it?
Looking at the rest of that programme from 1986, it looks as though the DVE had to be fed with two feeds as it was able to rotate one image into another as can be seen here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JIUXDnWlkR8 So each time they did a transition, they would have to select two feeds to send to the DVE, cut from the clean input to the DVE, perform the effect and then cut to the new on air input?
Yes, that’s exactly how they did it. Two or more aux outputs selected as required from the desk into the DVE.
Was a separate person responsible for the DVE in those days or did the person vision mixing control it?
That I’m not sure on that be honest. It depends where the DVE control was situated. In Bristol it was above the vision mixer, so it was possible for the same person vision mixing to also operate the DVE.
Easier to have it pre-recorded, rather than waiting on someone in sound to fire off the cart with the correct presenters intro.
Notice how the zoom down to the desk is cued in the gap between "the one o'clock news from the BBC" and "with Phillip Hayton", and the v/o annouce end hits the riser instrumentation in the outro to the theme tune, perfectly.
Firing that off on cart live (or early hard disk storage, if they had it) each programme to hit those two points with different name lengths, and with the live gallery background noise enviorment, would make it a magic mystery tour every day.
Over at ITN, which has used v/o's a lot more than BBC News, theirs were, as far as I know, pre-mixed with the title music until 1995. Once they debuted the new ITV branding for the non-News at Ten bulletins, they started inserting the v/o's live from floppy disks using the Sonifex Discart system. News at Ten continued to have them pre-mixed with the titles as far as I know. Discart was eventually replaced by 360 Systems' Instant Replay in 1999 and the 1999-2004 v/o's were played in live from the companion Short/cut Editor. After that, SpotOn was brought in during 2004 and once v/o's were re-introduced in 2009, they were played in live by that system and remain so to this day.
