The camera did a fantastic job, and continues to do so to this day.
However, when we dubbed from one consumer VCR to another consumer VCR, it was
immediately apparent that the resultant picture quality was not good
enough for our customers (and the prices we felt we had to get for
our product), so we swallowed hard and went into debt for what was
then, and what remains today, one of the finest VHS decks made,
the Panasonic Industrial AG-6300 (with most VCR's, the best
picture quality is obtained when you play back the video on the very same
machine that it was recorded on—the AG-6300 makes any video
look better than when played on the
But, since we were still camera-mastering on a deck without "flying
erase" heads, that irritating moiré pattern (rainbow "glitches") that
always appears between cuts (scenes), quickly became inconsistent
with our ideas of the quality that we wanted to be known for. So,
we swallowed hard again and went into debt again—this time for
a pair of Panasonic Industrial editing decks, the NV-8500's,
and their A500 edit controller. This allowed us to produce dub masters
which were of
But, time (and video technology) marches on. Soon there was a proliferation
of new formats, promising even better quality for the "pro-am"
producer, but we were confused, and unwilling to make any radical
changes until the state-of-the-art had settled down to where we could
make an economic decision as to where to put our upgrade money (it
had taken us three years to pay off the editing system!)
Our older Panasonic NV-8500's have what is known variously as "head-to-head"
dub, or "FM" dub, or "Y/C" dub. This means that the black and white (picture) information (Y), and the color (C) information are handled separately, reducing interference between them, within and between the machines,
yielding nearly loss-less generations. As it happens, the S-VHS format
handles Y and C information in essentially the same way, but with
the added benefit of putting the video information
Super VHS (S-VHS) became the best
(cost vs. benefit) choice for us (many TV stations are even using
S-VHS as a news acquisition format), so we took another plunge and
bought the newest, top-of-the-line, state-of-the-art S-VHS deck, the
Panasonic AG-7750, which has excellent color correction and
noise reduction circuitry, as well as a time-base corrector (designed
to further reduce color purity problems as well as picture jitter),
and promising even higher quality multi generation dubs.
At the 1993 NAB—National Association of Broadcasters convention (where we go as often as possible, looking for ways to improve our products) we were treated to a demonstration of the world's Absolute Best —it's also the most expensive—I've never paid as much for an automobile! S-VHS player (it doesn't even record)—the JVC BR-S525. It has unrivaled picture quality, astounding noise-redution circuitry, a time-base corrector, a processing amp for color and other video attribute correction, and—totally noise-free slow-motion! (Without the inter-frame band, that annoying black horizontal band that moves vertically through the picture). You'll appreciate this on "Petticoat Juction", and in some of the ejaculation scenes. We had already switched to S-VHS Cameras early in the decade, and we're now on our third—a new, state-of-the-art 3-Chip Y/C camera, with a high-speed shutter. All our newer productions are "shot-on-S".
I was chatting with a neighbor around my age whom I didn't know very well, about the gunfire in the neighborhood at midnight, which is how they 'ring in the new year' around here, commenting on how it was so intense it was almost like a war zone.
"Oh, were you in Viet-Nam?" he asked.
"Yeah, July to July, 67 - 68, there for Tet 68", I replied.
"Well, welcome back!" he said enthusiastically.
"Yeah...
well...
sure...
ok...
thanks...
but—it's been almost thirty years."
"Well, maybe no one ever said it before."
He was right.
I cried.
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