Hello from Paris France

[BALLIER]

Hello,
I am new member and i think it is time to present myself.
Today I am retired but I spent all my life in audiovisual business and since 1980 in video and broadcasting.
Our company was importer for France of different video product from these early years of video grow-up.
I remember the FLEXYKEY which was an esoteric special keyer effect...
My main souvenir was CDL.
I work at least 10 years with CDL and I keep memorable and numerous souvenirs.
I have scan some CDL documentation and brochure I shall be glad to share these documents with other fans of CDL production switcher.
And I have also all the technical brochure for the CDL 680 including all the details of the "fantastic" SFX module.
If any body is interested in the CDL 680 Documentation, I can scan and put in on line.
Apart selling equipment we also run a post production facility un Paris.
I am glad to share video souvenir with all VideoKarma members.
Cheers

[old_tv_nut]

Welcome!

[ronl]

Welcome to the site. RonL

[kf4rca]

Never worked with any Central Dynamics Lab equipment. Grass Valley and Ampex were big here in the States. Older switcher equipment was RCA, Cohu, Visual, Sarkes Tarzian. RCA was the inventor of the vertical interval switcher with the TS40. That was important if you were going to record on videotape. Otherwise the switch would cause a break up!
Welcome to VK!

[electronjohn]

Welcome to VK!

[jhalphen]

Hi to all,
Hi Ballier,

i'm also ex A/V Broadcast, retired, Paris area.
Ampex & other companies.

We had the AVC switcher series competing with CDL + the Vista smaller models.

What is the Paris production house ?

Do you know the retrotechnique vintage electronics forum:

https://forum.retrotechnique.org/

Best Regards
jhalphen
Paris/France

[kf4rca]

I remember changing a switch on an AVC. It had caused the whole bus to lock up. It was 20 minutes to airtime and they really needed that bus. I changed the switch in 15 minutes with 5 minutes to spare.
Have you ever heard of Duca-Richardson? I think they morphed into the Ampex switcher division.
Maybe the worst switcher I ever saw was a Cohu. It was an integrated switcher in which the MC switcher and the production switcher used the SAME electronics. Yikes! So if your electronics went down, you were SCREWED! I never saw that happen. It did use redundant power supplies though.

[jhalphen]

Hi to all,
Hi kf4rca,

Thanks! for the personal history anecdote.

Here's a site where you can download a very complete library of Ampex sales brochures of Broadcast video products, covers from the 1970s to 1992 (the end).

https://r2rtx.org/node/57

Here's a general brochure on the AVC Series switchers :

https://ppivideo.info/momsr/AmpexDoc...AVC%201989.pdf

Nothing on CDL on this site, sorry,...

Best Regards
jhalphen
Paris/France

[kf4rca]

Thanks for the links!
I think those COHU switchers were marketed to stations who didn't have much to lose if they were off the air- like PBS. I heard NASA had a big COHU system.
Have you ever heard of Utah Scientific? They started out in router switchers and later got into production switchers.
I remember seeing the box that our AVC came in. It said "Made in Korea" on it. We also had an ADO, ESS, AVA, and ACE and 6 VPR80's.

[TV-collector]

Bonhour Ballier!
Nice to see here one more person from Europe!
J'adore les téléviseurs francaise avec de tube ronde!

Bon weekend,
TV-collector