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The Big Freeze 1963

Vintage Documentary (January 2013)

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DV
DVB Cornwall
Some might have missed the reshowing of the 45minute BBC 1963 Documentary summarising the Whiteout winter. It was the bulk of the special Winterwatch on saturday.

Well worth watching for vintage presentation by headed by Cliff Michelmore

see it on the iPlayer here ……..

PROGRAMMES on BBC.CO.UK
20-Jan-2013 @ 21:18
GE
thegeek Founding member
The one part of DQF which I like is getting to see more things from the archive. Well worth a watch.

Two familiar names in the credits, too: design by Ridley Scott, and produced by Antony Jay (of Yes [Prime] Minister fame)
BU
buster
3m viewers too - apparently higher than whatever BBC1 was showing at that point!
I presume it was aired due to the 50th anniversary and to tie in with Winterwatch itself, but the timing couldn't have been better in the end.
My favourite quote was the bit about a snowman built on Boxing Day would still have been there two months later. Puts the current snow into perspective...
AS
Asa Admin
It’s nice to see something not generally repeated (probably not since it was first aired?) getting shown again. Unsurprisingly, the picture quality was quite juddery - is there no technology out there than can reduce it by maybe detecting the elements of a scene that shouldn’t be moving and therefore compensate by moving the frame up/down?

The fact it pulled in more viewers than Hammond on BBC One shows there’s an appetite for showing archived material which is great to see.
BH
BillyH Founding member
Asa posted:
Unsurprisingly, the picture quality was quite juddery - is there no technology out there than can reduce it by maybe detecting the elements of a scene that shouldn’t be moving and therefore compensate by moving the frame up/down?


Yep, Doctor Who DVDs have been using it for years, along with painting out scratches, restoring 50fps 'video' look etc. This though would have been a straight, unremastered transfer from a knackered film print probably copied to digital some years back, with no work done.

You'd be surprised the amount of people (and one of them used to be me) who think 60s TV has always been blurry, jittery, full of scratches etc - in fact it was comparatively high quality, we're just used to watching old worn-out film prints!
DV
DVB Cornwall
I presume that what we saw was

a digitised version of
a 625 line video of
a telecine film of
a 405 line original programme consisting of
mainly filmed inserts.

so in all not a bad transcription adterall.
NG
noggin Founding member
Asa posted:
Unsurprisingly, the picture quality was quite juddery - is there no technology out there than can reduce it by maybe detecting the elements of a scene that shouldn’t be moving and therefore compensate by moving the frame up/down?


Yep, Doctor Who DVDs have been using it for years, along with painting out scratches, restoring 50fps 'video' look etc. This though would have been a straight, unremastered transfer from a knackered film print probably copied to digital some years back, with no work done.

You'd be surprised the amount of people (and one of them used to be me) who think 60s TV has always been blurry, jittery, full of scratches etc - in fact it was comparatively high quality, we're just used to watching old worn-out film prints!


Indeed. If you talk to broadcast professionals who worked in the 60s onwards they often say that the sharpest pictures they saw until HDTV were those generated by the the best B&W 625 cameras. No subcarrier and luminance filtering, and much larger sensors compared to the three and four tube colour cameras that replaced them.

It's sad how many people think that TV in the 50s and 60s was like watching a telerecording. In reality it was a LOT better.
RJ
RJG
Some of the best 625 line black-and-white pictures are almost "three-dimensional;". And, as someone who lived through the 60s, even 405 line material was much better than the telerecordings which have been preserved, as Noggin says.
FB
Fluffy Bunny Feet
I presume that what we saw was

a digitised version of
a 625 line video of
a telecine film of
a 405 line original programme consisting of
mainly filmed inserts.

so in all not a bad transcription adterall.


In fact the early telerecordings were 16mm films of either the studio or taped recordings as film in those days was cheaper and considered better as an archive medium. You can this from the studio links which have negative sparkle on them. The scratches may have occurred later before telecine.
Please to see they kept it 4:3 too.
Bit heavy on the original post sync'd sound though.

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