Titlers, Switchers, Paintboxes, Paint Apps and Old Broadcast Equipment

[Dale H. Cook]

At 02:51 PM 5/3/2016, Swift Griggs wrote:

>Did that thing actually digitize video? Once you had it could you use it as a source for A/B rolls and the like that the regular Toaster functions covered?

IIRC it could be used that way, but IIRC it wouldn't store an awful lot of video.

>I didn't realize the Avid stuff was as popular and well-used as you guys are saying. ... Sounds like it was well used in professional broadcast apps, also.

Avid was initially only professional and very expensive. The fully-loaded Avid/1 Media Composer in 1989 had about 4 gigabytes of SCSI hard drive and 5 megabytes of RAM (in the Mac) and cost nearly $80,000.00. IIRC that configuration could store something like 6 hours of 30 fps video with stereo CD-quality audio.

>... but a TBC? Was that because you had to have video timings exactly matching before you could successfully show bits from both at the same time (ie.. in an A/B roll) or was it for a completely different purpose ?

A/B roll was one purpose. Another use was that some video sources (such as some sat receivers) were not genlocked to the house standard, so we used TBCs to permit smooth dissolves and switching between sat receivers and in-house sources which were genlocked. We also got some out-of-house video (some church services shot by small churches come to mind) that came in on VHS, and the VHS decks were not genlocked.

Dale H. Cook, Radio Contract Engineer, Roanoke/Lynchburg, VA
http://plymouthcolony.net/starcityeng/index.html