Im going to edit an AMV on VHS with a setup that cost over $25,000 in the 90's

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DJ_Izumi
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Re: Im going to edit an AMV on VHS with a setup that cost over $25,000 in the 90's

Post by DJ_Izumi » Fri Jun 08, 2018 11:44 pm

How accurately can you edit with VHS which lacks the luxury of embedded time code? I only ever worked with digital tape VTR decks, mainly DVCAM, which have all kinds of nice things, including frame accurate inserts and such. (I mean, not that I'd ever want to go back to any kind of tape again in my life.)
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justin_
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Re: Im going to edit an AMV on VHS with a setup that cost over $25,000 in the 90's

Post by justin_ » Sat Jun 09, 2018 1:24 am

Im still learning the gear, but it seems that I cannot just record the audio track to tape and then just throw clips on top of it. I can record the audio off a CD (or a tablet for that matter) to tape, and then put video clips without the audio track on top of it, but it seems like it is impossible to record just video, or just audio to VHS. If I want to record audio I need to supply some sort of video whether that be another tape, or just a single color generated by the edit controller, and if I record video with no audio (not just muted audio, no audio) it still records a blank audio track to the tape.

That said it is still better than just using 2 consumer VCRs audio wise as when I am done editing together the video I can take the recorded tape and put it into the playback deck, use the edit controller to take video from the playback deck and audio from 'AUX 2', and record it to a new tape without rewiring anything.

Im still waiting on some tapes before I start, but I am still learning the edit controller and trying to see if I can get my hands on a second playback deck so I can do A/B editing in one take. At this point I have the basics of editing down and I am learning the more intermediate to advanced parts. The manual shows you how to do the basics, but doesn't mention too much about anything beyond that so at this point it is just trial and error on practice tape. It's nice how you can record onto VHS a theoretically infinite amount of times.

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Re: Im going to edit an AMV on VHS with a setup that cost over $25,000 in the 90's

Post by justin_ » Sat Jun 09, 2018 1:35 am

DJ_Izumi wrote:How accurately can you edit with VHS which lacks the luxury of embedded time code? I only ever worked with digital tape VTR decks, mainly DVCAM, which have all kinds of nice things, including frame accurate inserts and such. (I mean, not that I'd ever want to go back to any kind of tape again in my life.)
Woops didnt see I was upto 2 pages!

The edit deck itself keeps time. When you turn it on it sets the timecode clocks to 00:00:00:00 (hours:minutes:seconds:frames) and you can rewind the tapes to the beginning and reset the clock so that you can always have the timecodes align. It is quite good and with everything synchronized together (the edit deck creates a sync pulse that goes thru an amplifier and out to the VTRs, PVMs, and the character generator) it is very accurate. I haven't tested it, but it seems that if you rewind the tapes and reset the clocks when you start any frame will always be at the same timecode time.

As far as the actual editing gose, you set the Mark In and Mark Out points on the playback VTR, and the Mark In point on the record VTR, then you have the deck make the edit and the Mark In point seems to be frame perfect, but (and I haven't done too much testing with this) the actual end of the clip seems to be just a bit after the mark out point. When the deck makes the actual edit it gets both tapes to the right point and then rewinds them about 10 seconds, starts playback, and then when it reaches the mark in point it starts the recording.

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Re: Im going to edit an AMV on VHS with a setup that cost over $25,000 in the 90's

Post by justin_ » Mon Jul 09, 2018 6:26 am

So bit of an update. It's currently about 4: 30 a.m. And I've spent the last 4 plus hours trying to learn the edit deck as the manual is near useless for anything but the most basic features and the internet doesn't seem to know anything about it. I have figured out that it is possible to lay down only audio or only video tracks so theoretically I can lay down the audio track and then stack videos on top of it like you would do with modern-day digital editing and that should help me out quite a bit as you can Time the video perfectly but there's no way for the edit deck to trigger the CD player so you have to start that manually and you can never start at the same time twice. All of this is in the, this deck seems to have some features that I can't seem to find anywhere in the manual or online and they are confusing me and turning the deck off and back on again doesn't actually reset it it will keep settings and I'm confused on what I've set and just need to call it a night and try again later. So I haven't made any progress on the actual AMV but I've made a bit of progress on learning the deck. Hopefully next time I sit down and try this out I can at least get an audio track laid down. Part of the issues I'm having is that the VHS decks weren't actually physically configured properly, the playback deck was playing back HiFi and the recording that was playing back Hi-Fi but it wasn't recording in Hi-Fi and that seem to be causing some issues. If that was set correctly at the beginning of the night I think I would have the audio done by now in a bit of video but this whole setup is confusing.

Anyway I'm sure that's not the update anyone wants to hear but hey at least I can put out a 'I'm still working on it this isn't dead' update. Like I said this isn't going to be overnight, and the learning curve on this edit deck is a bit more than I thought it would be so I'm glad I didn't say would be fast.

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CrackTheSky
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Re: Im going to edit an AMV on VHS with a setup that cost over $25,000 in the 90's

Post by CrackTheSky » Mon Jul 09, 2018 9:29 am

Props to you, I would have given up after that :P

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Re: Im going to edit an AMV on VHS with a setup that cost over $25,000 in the 90's

Post by justin_ » Tue Jul 10, 2018 1:05 am

IT WORKS!!! I finally figured out everything. I found that the issue I was having at the end of last night was because I was trying to get audio from the AUX2 source like the manual said, but the CD player was plugged into AUX1. The quick flip of a switch lator I could record from the CD player onto tape again, BUT when I tried to lay video clips on top of the audio it was replacing the audio along with the video. It took me some time to figure out this one, but when the VCRs are running in HiFi mode you can record audio and video at the same time, but not only one of them, BUT if they are NOT in HiFi mode you can record just audio, just video, or bolth. So again with the flip of a few switches that was fixed. The song won't sound /quite/ as good, but as long as you are not listening to it side by side it is kinda hard to hear the difference between HiFi on and HiFi off anyway.

So after getting all of that worked out I spent way too long making a 10 second clip that does technically work, but it seems that it doesn't always record starting on the same field. Back in the days of analog every frame was made up of 2 fields, and each field was made up of 1/2 of the lines of video. The first field would show the odd lines (1,3,5,7,9,etc) and the second field would show the even lines (2,4,6,8,etc). Because it seems to be occasionally starting on the wrong field there is a bit of a jump at the start of some of the cuts. It could be another problem entirely (this deck was made for making mostly large multi minute cuts, not .5-3 second cuts) but that is my best guess.

Anyway here is a quick 10 second clip that will likely never make its way into anything finished.



Looking back at it afterwards I think that it is made up of 6 clips. It took way too long to do, but I was getting a lot better at it, and beside there is NO undo button, so you want to make sure you are doing the right thing before you do it.

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Re: Im going to edit an AMV on VHS with a setup that cost over $25,000 in the 90's

Post by justin_ » Tue Jul 10, 2018 1:11 am

MaboroshiStudio wrote:...Someday we will have equipment for a Iron Editor duel using SVHS decks...
Somehow I only just read that now. That would be the most psychoticly amazing sight ever. It needs to happen somewhere at some point.

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Re: Im going to edit an AMV on VHS with a setup that cost over $25,000 in the 90's

Post by DJ_Izumi » Thu Jul 12, 2018 11:11 pm

justin_ wrote:Back in the days of analog every frame was made up of 2 fields, and each field was made up of 1/2 of the lines of video.

Not to be picky but this isn't quite accurate. 60i video, when not derived from progressive content like 24p film being telecined to 60i, truely shot at 60i. As on each 60th of a second, a distinct image was captured, no two fields could ever be combined to make a single progressive frame, each field was an image of a distinct moment of time. This is why 60i cameras, like camcorders and ENG type camera and the like get that 'Cops Effect' that you only see again now with 60p filming, cause there was new information 60 times second.
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Re: Im going to edit an AMV on VHS with a setup that cost over $25,000 in the 90's

Post by justin_ » Fri Jul 13, 2018 8:46 am

So now just as I start getting somewhere my landlord is kicking me out for using too much electricity. At first they were going to just have me pay extra each month, but now they are just saying get out.

Soooooooooo there probably won't be any progress for at least 6-8 weeks as I look for a new place and move.

Renting sucks. This is the second place i've been kicked out of for no reason.

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Re: Im going to edit an AMV on VHS with a setup that cost over $25,000 in the 90's

Post by justin_ » Fri Jul 13, 2018 8:49 am

DJ_Izumi wrote:Not to be picky but this isn't quite accurate. 60i video, when not derived from progressive content like 24p film being telecined to 60i, truely shot at 60i. As on each 60th of a second, a distinct image was captured, no two fields could ever be combined to make a single progressive frame, each field was an image of a distinct moment of time. This is why 60i cameras, like camcorders and ENG type camera and the like get that 'Cops Effect' that you only see again now with 60p filming, cause there was new information 60 times second.

That is correct, I worded that poorly. There really was not any frames in broadcast TV, just fields. Its just (I would think) it is easier to explain it to people as 2 halves of a frame, rather than 2 half frames.

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