Umatic variants

[DVtyro]

Googling around, I am still not sure I got it right:

• First there was the Umatic, which in retrospect became low-band
• Then Sony created High-band, but for 625/50 only. Did Sony give all these machines "BVU" prefix? Or only some of these machines? High band 625/50 means BVU?
• Then Sony created SP, both for 525/60 and 625/50. Were any SP machines ever called BVU? Or BVU was used strictly for pre-SP 625/50 high-band machines? No BVU in the US? If there were BVU machines for the US, then they were SP?

[DVtyro]

Here is the BVU-950 Editing U-matic incorporates Sony's Superior Performance (SP) technology. According to the specs, it is a PAL deck.

So for PAL, BVU can mean pre-SP high band, or SP ?

[djski]

I have worked on BVU's. BVU was Sony's high end broadcast line (3/4) where VO was the step down commercial version recorders. VP were the player only units. There were NTSC versions in the BVU line.There were SP versions in the VO line such as VO9850. In Sony's BVU UMatic product line, the "900" series such as BVU950 were SP units. In the commercial line, the "9000" series were SP units.

[DVtyro]

@djski, I was wondering whether BVU has any relation to the machine being high band or SP, and it seems it does not. It seems that BVU means pro features like ability to connect to a TBC or timecode generator, but in terms of sheer quality it can be the same low band machine.

Please correct me if I am wrong, in the U.S. it was like low band -> BVU low band -> SP, that is, BVU label was dropped after SP came out.

while in PAL regions it was low band -> high band -> SP. So, I am unsure whether PAL regions had both low band BVU and high band BVU?

[DVtyro]

Another question: how common was Umatic usage in broadcast? I guess smaller stations used it, but what larger stations used? I found out that a Dallas station, for example, used Umatic for ENG all the way until 1987, when it switched to Betacam. What about editing? I suppose, local news were edited on Umatic and probably played live on Umatic, while something more important was bumped to 1-inch?

[djski]

UMatic back then was commonly used for commercial insertion and corporate productions.. The broadcast units also had built in time base correction. The term "broadcast" was mostly just a name to designate the higher end product line with added features..
The field guys sure earned there money back then toting big cameras, heavy 3/4 portable recorders and large heavy batteries to make it all work.

[Dave A]

Early 3/4" decks were used on air but the station usually got a fine for broadcasting "non-program" material. The translation. The decks had horrible blanking timing errors resulting in a black stripe on the leading left edge. The stripe was the non-program material. The picture did not fill the screen. Early TBC's only fixed the mechanical jitter in any helical format. The BVU series was pretty good on blanking and the onboard TBC helped a lot. My BVU950 retired from an Ohio station is in great shape. And I still have an old school tech that can fix it.

[DVtyro]

So, BVU means just more connectors and broadcast-friendly features, it does not mean they were necessarily high-band? When SP were released, they were just called SP, not BVU SP or something?

Did stations edit Umatic on Umatic decks, or bumped to 1-inch for editing?

[Dave A]

Everything you need to know or answer is here;

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U-matic

[DVtyro]

Originally Posted by Dave A

Everything you need to know or answer is here;

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U-matic

I appreciate the link, but If I could clearly infer it from wikipedia, I would not be asking here.

[KentTeffeteller]

Originally Posted by DVtyro

So, BVU means just more connectors and broadcast-friendly features, it does not mean they were necessarily high-band? When SP were released, they were just called SP, not BVU SP or something?

Did stations edit Umatic on Umatic decks, or bumped to 1-inch for editing?

Usually stations edited UMatic on UMatic decks, with editing controllers. BVU usually is high band in original UMatic terms.

[ARC Tech-109]

Having worked with the U-Matic format for the better part of 35 years I will try to answer your questions however despite my experience I'm not an expert.
1st generation VO series, 2600 was the base recorder VP the playback only, both are what's considered lowband, carrier deviation was 1.6 MHz with the chroma downshift to 688 khz resulting in a luma resolution of 250 horizontal lines and about about 30 lines of color resolution. There was an earlier"home" deck with a tuner however I'm leaving this one out. This was replaced in the early 80's with the second generation VO and BVU series of front loading machines. The luma carrier was bumped up slightly but the deviation remained the same resulting in less crosstalk and 3db bump in S/N. The BVU series also has a rear panel DUB connection that allows editing without the up and down conversions of the baseband video signal, the highband was still good for 250 lines and was far more stable. My BVU-870 is an SP with the onboard VITC TCG, this was an option for the BVU and I believe the VO-9800 series. SP pushed the luma carrier to some 6.6 MHz with a 1.5 MHz deviation making it backwards compatible with the previous generation however I have not tried an SP tape on a gen-1 deck. The SP retained the same 688 khz color downshift and the somewhat blotchy color resolution of about 30 lines, luma resolution was about 330 lines and had a better S/N. The BVU and higher level VO editors have flying erase heads for frame accurate editing, lower end editors used brute force overwriting.

3/4 was used for ENG by the big -3 networks through the 1980's, by the end of the 70's many stations had the better TBC's from the likes of For-A, Microtime and CVS so they could use the 3/4 format on air until Betacam became the defacto standard. One of the local stations ran Sony M3a cameras on Sony VO-8800 U-Matic S decks until the early 90's then went to the BVW-25 before becoming a FOX affiliate. In 1994 I was involved with the production of Midwest Country and that was all done on JVC 8250's with JVC KY-2700 cameras. Not the HiDef of today but it's still good overall broadcast quality.

I don't know how much was edited on the 1" type-c, that was more of a prime format used for tape delay and time shifting, my first experience with the format was January 28, 1986 and I still have the original tape. Raw NASA of the shuttle disaster, no narrator or commentary. I know type -c is good enough to feed a broadcast xmitter raw with only the accy TBC, 3/4 needs a bit more correction before it's air legal.

The SP decks started with the BVU-870 for the editor and BVU-150 for the portables, the 950 was the final word of the format and they're still commanding the dollars. I have the 870 and it looks just as good as Betacam SP however I can see the chroma limits on the finer details, saturated colors will bleed over the luma contour borders.

[ppppenguin]

FIrst generation Umatic was 1800 series, before the 2600 series. Here in PAL land we had the VO-1810. https://archive.org/details/VO18101

[ARC Tech-109]

Thanks for the info, I lumped the 1800 series in the same top loading lowband generation as the 2600/2800 series. IIRC the 1800 was all discreet and electromechanical control while the 2000 series was more integrated circuit and logic based, both are well built and in my opinion the 2600 has better audio than the later decks. A 2 lbs belt driven flywheel runs smoother than the direct drive capstan of the front loading machines

[DVtyro]

@ARC Tech-109, thanks for the info!

• So, in the US, BVU meant just pro connectors and maybe a slight bump in luma carrier, but otherwise not much different from the original low-band. Then when SP came out, it was "SP" without "BVU", for example VO-9800 is just Umatic-SP.
• But in Europe the introduction of BVU coincided with high-band? If not, did high-band machines have a special label? Googling... Ah, it seems that high band machines were labeled "Umatic H". So, in Europe BVUs could be either a regular low-band, or "H" or "SP".

I want to make a timeline to make it clearer.

Regarding its usage by stations, here is a Texas KXAS-NBC 5 News Collection. Incredibly, they do not allow to search by media type or by camera type or other technical stuff, but they display the media type per clip. So, starting from late 1976 through 1986 all of their news clips were Umatic. The link above shows the last 16mm clip about a robbery, and the next one, with the Carter and Ford debate, is the first Umatic clip, at least the first in this collection.

Here is the direct link to the Carter and Ford debate. It is soft, and really no better than standard VHS. it seems that they did not use a TBC when they were digitizing it, considering the skewing on the top. Also, I thought that on Umatic, head-switching noise is not visible. But color-wise it looks ok.

This one has horrible green cast on the edges of objects, and of course other colors spill over too, like red.

For comparison, one of the last 16mm clips. "You like to be an object?" - Huh.