Vintage Video
A reader recently wrote to ask me about buying
videotapes of old television shows. I thought some good questions were raised, and decided
to answer them here, rather than on the letters page (which will be updated shortly),
because I can take some space to cover a few points that may be unclear to lots of video
users.
My father is a huge fan of a 1940s TV series. As a birthday
surprise, I did a search on the Web and found videotapes of most of the episodes. The only
catch is that most of the 120 episodes are recorded in EP mode. My father is old-fashioned
and does not want a DVD player, so DVD versions are out of the question.
It appears many vintage tapes are recorded in EP mode. I
know tapes recorded in EP mode will play slowly and the quality is poor. And I realize
some issues may depend on the quality of tape used.
But, in your opinion, in general terms:
- How slow is slow? Will the mouths on the screen noticeably
not match the audio?
- How poor is poor? It will be in black and white, and knowing
it is old one wouldn't expect superior quality, and I imagine as long as it is not
horrible, slightly degraded clarity can almost add to the vintage feel. If there is
"snow," is it typically pretty bad, making the video too hard to see? Typically
how would it appear in comparison to, say, the early The Honeymooners episodes on
TV?
- Will he have to worry about constant tracking issues or tape
jams?
- Do you recommend I get them anyway (I have seen them as low
as $4.00 a tape so they are not expensive), or do you recommend I stay miles away from
them because the quality may render them unenjoyable?
In general, the quality of the tapes may well be
limited to the original recording method. In the 1940s, there were only two ways to
preserve television shows. If the programs were live, as many were, the absence of
videotape meant that a "kinescope" recording had to be made by pointing a movie
camera at a TV screen and filming the show. That resulted in a poor-quality image, and any
tapes that come from such a source will undoubtedly be very blurry, even if digital
enhancement techniques have been used.
The other method was to shoot programs on film from
the start, like miniature movies (the main 39 episodes of The Honeymooners were
shot that way). As long as someone has preserved a pristine copy of the film, an excellent
transfer can be made.
As far as video quality is concerned, EP mode can
be satisfactory. The linear speed of the tape is slower than with SP, but the tape-to-head
speed ("writing speed") is the same, so in theory the quality shouldn't suffer.
Noise might be worse, because the tracks are packed so closely together, and some older
VCRs compensate for this by intentionally making the picture a bit blurrier, but most new
machines don't. A VCR with a 19-micron head, specifically intended to optimize EP tapes,
should yield excellent results.
If the VCR is operating properly, and the tapes are
handled carefully, there's no reason that there should be undue tracking or tangling
problems.
What may suffer is the audio. Unless these tapes
are recorded with hi-fi soundtracks, the sound is likely to be pretty lousy. But then, the
original was probably not too great anyway.
Incidentally, the slowness of the tapes in EP mode
applies to the audio and video equally, so there is little likelihood of the audio
sounding off-pitch, or the picture and sound being out of synch.
In any event, for four bucks a crack, how can you
lose? I'd order a couple and see how they perform. It might be a good idea, however, to
check them out on your father's machine before you buy the whole series. They may look
fine on yours but not on his, especially if he has an older machine.
...Ian G. Masters
ian@mastersonaudio.com
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