U-Matic anyone? (working machines/personal expericences)
 

Does any one owns working U-Matic machines or had any personal expericene with the format?
That problem with red colour was specific to N.T.S.C. machines or it was to all machines?

I got an army of them here .Its been a few years since I used them.I got a portable Sony with camera I picked up from a church years ago and it works great.Try to walk around town to a event with that setup these days.People think I was sent from a time warp machine from the early 1980's.

Red problem ? I have owned several u-matic machines over the years and still have a portable (VO 6800) with dead battery packs around somewhere. I don’t remember seeing a problem with the red on these machines, could you explain what the symptoms were?

jr

I've got a mostly working ( tuner is dead, and I've not tried to record, but it plays good) Sony VO-1600 (the first U-matic model).

I have a JVC CP-5200U (playback only) that I need to get new rubber for and finally get it going. I'm curious about what's on the tape I got with it. Fortunately I found out the dimensions of an idler tire that melted down completely. The other tire, pinch roller and most of the belts need to be measured.

Read about this on wikipedia and some one mentioned that it seen it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yGNXwZooiPc

Interesting... from Wikipeda:
"The format also had difficulty reproducing the colour red, and red images would be noisier than other colours in the spectrum. For this reason, on-camera talent was discouraged from wearing red clothing that would call attention to the technical shortcoming."

I see loss of resolution on the over saturated red flower near the end of the clip, not sure if it is noise. The "red wall" special effect looks odd, but who knows what effect they were trying to produce. :scratch2:
I thought the model's lipstick looked quite good.

Note, this is a Sony UK production, so likely it was not NTSC.
Wrinkled tape was a fairly common problem, however.

jr

I have a BVU-800, still working so far. The main problem with U-matic is, well, that it's U-matic. The video improvements in the upgraded offerings in the later years came from bypassing original circuitry, according to one repair tech I know. Less crap in the signal chain resulted in better picture. Who knew?

Chip

Holly smoke, what a complex machine! :yikes: And I thought a V.H.S. V.C.R. was a complex machine.
It's a low band or high band machine?

When moving these boat anchors around make sure you wear safety shoes and a lifting belt. Maybe thats the reason my back is shot lifting these machines along with TV sets plus warehouse work all of these years.

see:
http://www.av-iq.com/avcat/images/do...20-%204611.pdf

All these formats used "color-under." The chroma signal was simply translated to a low frequency, and the FM modulated luma signal acted as the high-frequency bias for the QAM chroma signal.

The terms low band and high band do not really apply in the same way as for 2 inch and 1 inch formats, which recorded the color on the FM carrier as part of the composite signal, although Sony applied those terms when it raised the FM frequency in U-Matic SP.

Regarding red problems, there was really a problem with all saturated colors in all color-under systems, it was just more visible in red, especially in NTSC countries where TV sets were being built with increased R-Y gain to compensate for the contemporary yellowish green phosphors. PAL did the compensation in the cameras, so that excessive gain was not needed in receivers.

The different color-under systems differed somewhat in the noise and beat patterns that could occur in chroma due to the particular carrier frequencies chosen. All of them suffered from low chroma bandwidth compared to direct broadcast or tape formats that recorded the full composite signal on the FM carrier. The resulting chroma smear was most visible in reds, as you can see in the demo tape.

Another factor is that color-under systems used automatic video gain control on the luma and chroma to try to maximize the signal to noise ratio on low contrast and/or low chroma scenes, without overloading on high contrast and/or high chroma scenes. The noise level at the output could vary depending on what AGC characteristics were in the recording machine, and how much of the scene had high chroma levels.

EDIT: The playback circuit had to detect the video level coming off the tape and compensate it back to normal. The automatic RECORDING gain control was taken advantage of by CopyGuard, which put video pulses in the vertical blanking that varied from zero (black) to super-white, thus causing the record circuits to turn the video gain down and making the picture fade out periodically when you tried to make a copy. (The machine playing back the original CopyGuard protected tape ignored the vertical pulses.)

Oh my goodness, I severely underestimated the weight of my JVC. I thought "Hey, it must be about the weight of an old top-loading VHS, right?" I went almost as far as the bus system would reach to get the thing, and had to carry it down quite a long path back to the main road before I could even get a bus. Of course I had to set it down many times. Then I had to carry it uphill from the transfer point to get my next bus, and the nearest stop was closed due to construction. It must have taken me about 20 minutes to get from where one route ended and the other began. Then I had to stop at the grocery store on my way home so I carried the thing a couple hundred yards over there and plopped it on top of a small shopping cart. I went to a nearby store as well with said cart, leaving it outside for a couple of minutes. These carts have an automatic locking mechanism on one wheel to prevent theft; they're triggered by cables buried under the asphalt. No trouble on my way to the other store. On my way back to the grocery store, the lock was triggered and the cart tipped forward, almost falling over. One of the cart wranglers released it with what I'll call a magic wand. Once I finished up there I carried the deck back to the bus stop and finally home. Re-gaining full use of my arms took a couple of days. Whenever I moved the thing after that I wondered how the heck I mustered the strength to get it home. I emailed the guy who gave it to me about my adventure and he said "Yeah I warned you about how juicy that one was". Had I known I would have taken my relatively small convertible trolley.

As for the U-Matic's flaws, or those of color-under systems in general, now it makes sense why U-Matic was so widely used in broadcasting. Early on I heard it is superior in many ways to VHS and Beta, not to mention the lesser-known consumer decks.

I have what I consider the ultimate Umatic deck...the end-of-the-line Sony BVU-950SP. I got it a few years ago out of an Ohio tv station. Well maintained and with the optional TBC board. It worked out of the box but got cranky a year ago. I sent it to a local Umatic expert who replaced a few tires and gave it a cleaning and a RF and signal path setup. PM me if you want his info. Joe advises that most of the decks he sees lately have massive cap failures eating the traces. None in my deck. He is the best. Its back to its 330 line glory and I am going through my Umatic tapes to digital.

I took some pix tonight from a Panasonic 9" monitor. The shots are from various tapes at my station in the 70's and most suffer from multi-generation copies. All of the on-camera shots are from a RCA TK-43 to 2" and then Umatic so they are a mess to start with. The bars are new bars on a new tape. Some fringing but not much. Reds have minimal noise. All pix have some camera moire and some camera sync errors. They are better in person so stop by. The worst problem of the day was ringing trailing most any sharp edged object on the early to mid decks. And that piled up with each copy. The 950 is quite good at not having the ringing problem.

And Wayne, I remember looking at Copyguard on a scope and saw that when the AGC saw the super white it corrected the video level to 100 IRE but also collapsed the sync to 20 units or so rendering the signal unusable by the next VCR. Sync was to low for a good recording thus garbage. I also remember that Betamax decks inserted new sync so that problem was solved. Buy Betamax for copying.

Maybe I should post a classified for Umatic copying at a good price. Let me know.

Jon...more on the use of Umatic in the day on air. Stations ran to it like dogs to a steak. Cheaper than color 16mm film. The problem was on air with a deck that was just above VHS quality running through a TBC of the day. The H scan timing was suspect at best and you would broadcast news stories with black timing stripe errors on either the left or right or both depending on the manufacturer. JVC was junk for air. That resulted in a FCC pink ticket fining you for broadcasting "non program" material. A little black gap was not part of the program.

So that's why I don't see nearly as many JVC broadcast decks on eBay than Sony. Mine's just a consumer-grade deck. I think it's neat though, and I prefer their appearance over that of other consumer decks. A few people asked me what it is on my way home with it. It comes apart unlike any other VCR I've had; figuring out how to take it apart took a few minutes. I can see just about everything, no leaking caps spotted yet. I just took a photo of it as it sits now.

A U-Matic copying service, interesting! :scratch2: Maybe I should offer such a service locally when my machine is up and running, just as a lark. It would be interesting to see if I get any bites. If so, I would finally have a use for the record function on my Panasonic DMR-E20.

@ Jon A : you shodda have had pick-up a trolley for carrying that thing.
Man, I don't think I could have had carry that thing in my hands...
In Romania is extremly hard to find U-Matic cassettes. And rubber wheels for U-Matic machines... I think impossible. But they wheren't spread around here. In Bucharest only the state owned television and 1 or 2 private stations had such machines (remember that private television cammed only in the '90's, after the fall of the communism).

Indeed, but I was blindsided by the weight and the distance I needed to carry it. I finally realized, no wonder that street on Google Maps was unmarked, it's actually a path. I spent about 20 minutes walking up and down the main road trying to find the street, and perhaps another 10 on the wrong street before continuing up the path. In this case it was a good thing this deck isn't one with a tuner and timer.

I guess it was just sheer determination. Stuff like that isn't seen often around here.

The idler tires aren't impossible to find. They'll cross to other VCRs and tape systems. Here's the data I found on my melted tire:

OD = 18.03 mm.
ID = 8.94 mm.
THK = 4.83 mm.

OD = 0.710".
ID = 0.352".
THK = 0.190".

Replaces PRB part number: ST.707.

Used in JVC models: CP-5000U/CP-5500U/CP-5200U/CP-6000/
CR-6000U/CR-6060U/CR-6100U/CR-6300U.

Used in Bell & Howell Tape Recorder model: 456A.*

*Turns out the Bell & Howell 456A is actually an 8mm/Super 8 film projector.

But there where more machines in U.S.A. then in Romania. Heck, I can't find U-Matic cassettes for sale :(

3/4 was not only cheaper than 16mm, it was faster/instant, too. No more running back to the darkroom to process, then edit the film. Push rewind, push play. Plus they had portable recorders that you could carry around (because they included handles). Initial record times were 20/30 minutes. Real editing took a little longer, and was not inherently non-linear like film is, but it was still fast, and therefore a huge competitive advantage for the early-adopter news operation.

And yeah, 950 is a good one. BVU-800s use an external TBC.

Chip

The format that killed the phrase "film @ 11".

... and brought us "This just in..."

Chip

Let see, I have a BVU-950sp, a JVC 800cr (JVC's only front loader I think), and a Sony 9800. They're more or less working, although I think the JVC needs a recap. Overall it was an ok format. Certainly ended up with a lot of stuff on it. The tapes can get a bit sticky after 40 years or so. Otherwise pretty good shelf life.

David

Ce avem noi aici?/What do we here?

Sony VO-5850 from the mid-80's. Industrial grade machine with frame editing. It's little brother the 5800 did not have the editor. Very visible head switch at the bottom of the frame. I forget if they could input advanced sync from a TBC of the day to make it useable for air. The 9800/9850 series replaced this one and added the SP designation. Still not real broadcast. BVU series was meant for broadcast.

And if they where not intended for broadcast, then for what they where used?
I don't know how to use the editig. Anyway, I've bought it as a player.
Does the equyvalent 46-48 U.S. Dollars was a good price for such machine (in Romania the minimal wage (sallary) is about 285 U.S. Dollars)
Mid '80's? That's old. But still in working condition.
Umatic S.P. offfered a better image then low-band and high band?
Oh, the sound recording/playback is very good!

I don't have a 5850 any more, but I don't think it would do machine-to-machine editing using its own controller. I think it required an external editor, either an RM-440 or the lower-numbered one. RM-440s would work on serial RS422 machines as well as the parallel control machines.

The non-broadcast decks were used for educational/school use, desktop screening of 3/4" footage for logging, transcribing, off-line video edits using Visible Time Code (VTC) burn-ins, chase tapes for audio-for-video production, etc. There was also a later, smaller 7000 series, too.

BVU machines had internal edit controllers, and could be controlled by either external RM-440 type edit controllers, or higher-end CMX-style editors.

The internal editor was pretty capable, and would allow you to assemble or insert edit using the controller in the machine, as well as allow you to do 2-machine cuts-only assemble or insert edits with another 422-controlled machine as the source. Even would control 1", probably D2, BetaSP, and DigiBeta also, as the basic machine control protocol was pretty standard.

Watch the movie Broadcast News for in-use examples. Pretty funny movie, too. "I say it here, and it comes out there."

Chip

Chip is right. The RM-440 was needed in between...and I still have mine. You could do "flying" edits on the 5850 from the faceplate controls to that deck only. Say a graphic card to be inserted over a scene saving the audio. See the editing buttons on the faceplate. They were toggle on-toggle off. Real machine to machine editing needed the 440.

And do you know what CMX stands for?

Telecolor...if you got it for USD $48 and it is working...you did well and have fun learning this system. PM me so I can send you a NOS 60min tape to play with...if it is still good. I always wanted to send something to Romania and you are good to have around here.

I don't know what CMX stands for.
I hope will get a manual for this machine.
I will p.m. you.

By the way, 3/4" rewind is slow. s. l... o..... w......

Chip

...still rewinding. Slow. :boring:


Chip

Slow. It isn't so slow...

Found an RM-440. But I ain't going to buy it soon, 'cause I don't need it. It's in neibeghourighn Hungary. About 35 bucks without transporation.

Dave A , I've sent you a p.m. :)

For what at an "Sony" VO-5850 is using the Edit button. And the Assamble one?

Maybe someone who is familiar with this particular machine can supply details (such as how to establish cue points, etc.), but the general meaning is

Insert Edit: overwrites some existing part of a recording.
Assemble edit: adds more material on the end of recorded material

Adds more material without seeing the cuting? :scratch2:

If you mean adds material cleanly, like a scene change, yes. These edit modes require the capability to write a diagonal track on the tape with the rotating head, without using a stationary erase head that wipes the whole width of the tape.

Assemble vs. Insert editing boils down to control track.

When you edit machine-to-machine in a linear edit fashion, step one is to black your master tape. This means recording black video and timecode for the duration of the edit. Then, all your audio and video edits are known as insert edits, where the content is recorded in sync with, and over, existing audio and video -- but control track is not recorded over. (You generally leave timecode alone, as that tells you where you are, and is the reference for your Edit Decision List.) Insert edits allow you to record audio without disturbing video, and vise versa, or both at once. Or skip over some blacked tape to leave room for commercials to pay the bills. A handy thing.

Assemble editing can begin with an unblacked tape, straight out of the box. It's basically the same as a 'hard record', where video, audio, timecode, and control track are all laid down simultaneously. The thing that makes assemble special is that it syncs to, and continues (hopefully seamlessly) the control and (usually) timecode tracks. So if all you're doing is fade up from black, then cut, cut, cut with audio and video cutting simultaneously, then assemble is good. Think simple cutting together of a news story. If you go back and replace some audio with an assemble edit, you're replacing video as well -- whether or not you planned to do so.

The occasional danger of assemble editing is that, if things don't sync up correctly on pre-roll, you can be hosed. There would be a visible glitch in your video, and the only way to get rid of it is to back up into previously edited program material and re-edit. This can mean just a bit, or quite a bit of work.

In either case, the edit controller (either separate box or within the record machine) causes both tape machines to slew to the correct timecode offset, and then releases control to (usually) a house reference signal, which gives timing marching orders to all machines involved so they're spitting out frames exactly together, usually facility-wide. The benefit of that is that you can cut between sources at any frame boundary, and things will be glitch-free. (Except for that pesky color framing thing, which I'm not going into...)

There, now you're an editor.

Chip

I will try. My machine have T.B.C. incorporated.
But can I use an non-Umatic source, like a LaserDisc player or a D.V.D. player?
I've recorded 2-3 minutes from D.V.D. With a good signal source, U-Matic knocks out a lot of V.H.S. V.C.R.'s.