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Dumont Test Reel (1956)
🕑 Added 2022-07-26 15:27:20 +0000 UTCAn odd 16mm reel from my collection which is a kinescope made by the Dumont Television Network in September of 1956, which depicts a test for their innovative video/film camera system, though this particular reel is not the 35mm reflex sync video that they advertised but the standard 16mm film synchronized with a CRT known as a kinescope. The video switching in this reel show that this video feed is from the master video console, rather than the autonomous system depicted in the advert. Anyway, an interesting piece of history none the less. Enjoy!
Comments
Matt Wietlispach
Wow! What a hassle they had to go through back in the days analog electronics. Film ran at 24 fps and NTSC TV ran at 30 fps. They figured out how to play 24 fps commercials on 16mm film and not flicker, but it seems that they had to film along side of the camera electronics to avoid timing differences and resolution loss. I guess in the 60s they finally came out with 2" reel to reel videotape recorders that weighed a ton and cost a fortune. They still had a few in the college I attended and in the late 80s they were converting all the 2" quadraplex tapes to Betacam tapes, which were expensive and now just as outdated as all the other old analog stuff. What was interesting was that when I was watching a 1971 tape of Hawaii Five O with all the commercials included there were upsets at the commercial breaks. When the station switched from the network feed, or the video recorder, to the station's 16mm film chains, the sync signal would change which would be invisible for receivers since TVs could take the change gracefully, but another VTR recording off the air saw these abrupt sync changes as serious timing upsets. Not until time base correctors came along, that cost a fortune, that the sync was always stable regardless of the source and everything was "gen locked" to a master sync source. By the time VHS and Betamax VCRs came along, the TV transmissions, at least in a big market like Chicago, were super stable. If they still abruptly changed the sync signals, the VHS and Betamax recordings would choke on those commercial breaks as well. But seeing that monster video and film camera was really amazing! Choices were so limited back then. I wonder if they successfully markets those monsters? I have to give them respect for doing everything they could in the 50s. If they could have seen HDTV and a smart phone recording video back then they would think they were dreaming.
Brian Arbenz
Hmmm, I just don’t seem to remember this Ozzie and Harriet episode.
