color recording before videotape?

[ceebee23]

Do we know if the networks ever made color kinescope recordings of there color programs??? I know that there were early color videotape experiments ...but kinescope was common for a long time....???

[orthophonic]

Yes they did as late as 1968 or 1969 maybe even later.
I am a telecine colorist
(transfer and color correct
negative and positive film to video tape), and a few
years ago I was working for a company that was transferring the NBC kinescope archives for the museum of broadcasting.
Most of the color Kinescopes
were of live specials, The
1968 Tony awards and An Evening with Julie Andrews
and Harry Belafonte are a couple that come to mind.
The quality was pretty good
considering.

[Sandy G]

Seems like I remember seeing a special on TV about TV back in the '70s, when I was in college. One thing they had was Marlene Dietrich singing that WW2 song, "Lili Marlene", & they made a big deal about it being one of the 1st color recordings, & I'm pretty sure it was a kinescope, as it had that "look" to it. Don't remember the name of the show, what network it was on, or much else, but I DO remember that. Seems like they said it was made in '49, but that's a couple years earlier than what we know to be true. Maybe it was some sort of experimental broadcast. Coulda been that funky CBS system that never really got off the ground-the one w/the big wheels & all. Any of you guys remember this? -Sandy G.

[Steve D.]

Begs the question, why would NBC bother to record by kinescope in 1969? Videotape had been the industry standard recording process for at least ten years at that time. And prior to videotape, the quality of color kinescope recordings of live shows was marginal at best. It was for this very reason that early NBC live prime time color telecasts in the east were kinescoped in b&w for delayed west coast prime time airing. The alternative was to broadcast live color (or b&w) shows to the west coast in the late afternoon to a vastly smaller viewing audience.

[ceebee23]

One reason I asked this question is I know the BBC used to kinescope most programming for sale internationally until the late 60s when they moved to 625 line PAL. Bascially whilst I am sure they could and probably did have videotape for the 405 line system it was not much use outside the UK, whereas kinescope was useable anywhere.

I assume US kinescopes were run at 30 frame ???

Maybe NBC wanted the kinescopes for non-domestic use and of course by the late 60s color film was substantially faster and cheaper than in 1953.

And o f course film does have much better archival properties than early videotape...


chris

PS: I note that the BBC only had B/W kinescopes of some of the "Dr Who" series ...they sourced color beta and VHS copies from viewers who had recorded these episodes when they were show in in the US in the late 70s. They then used the chroma info from the tapes and married it to a luminence signal generated from the kinescope and voila ...color versions of the lost episodes.

[Cory]

I think you guys will absolutely love this!

Just watching this clip, you can feel the quality, planning and gain an appreciation for everyone involved behind the scenes to pull off such a feat. Wish television were like this today-

http://www.kingoftheroad.net/colorTV...tape-high.html

Cory

[Eric H]

Why oh why isn't this on DVD yet??

Originally posted by Cory
I think you guys will absolutely love this!

Just watching this clip, you can feel the quality, planning and gain an appreciation for everyone involved behind the scenes to pull off such a feat. Wish television were like this today-

http://www.kingoftheroad.net/colorTV...tape-high.html

Cory

[Eric H]

In the box set of "Dark Shadows" the cheesy 66-71 Soap Opera, some of the episodes are in color.

They look like videotape but are actually quite nice looking, better than some of the late 70's early 80's shows with their shiny, glaring look. (Newhart comes to mind)

Anyone know exactly how they were recorded?

Eric

[Big Dave]

DS was done on videotape. The only reason almost all of it survives was a court battle between Dan Curtis Productions and ABC. ABC wanted to erase the tapes and Curtis raised hell. The question , if I remember, was, did the media or the content prevail? ABC owned the tape, but Curtis owned the content on the tapes.

Most surviving color daytime soap episodes from that era were black and white kinescope copies of the color aired episode. Show me an original black and white and BW copy of an AS THE WORLD TURNS episode (both using organ music) and I can tell you which is the BW copy of the original color episode. The clue is in the opening.

Speaking of kinescopes.....it's funny the movies I've seen which are in actuality kines....Zappa's 2000 Motels, Redd Foxx's Norman, is that you? And all the "TV" scenes of Kentucky Fried Movie

Just watched a very poor generation brand new tape of the latter and the Kine scenes are horrible looking.....very obvious what the source was as there is that typical video fuzz along the edges of lines.

The irony is that many first run movies nowadays are actually video made to look like film! And a lot of them end up being shown by video projection as well. Go figger.

Anthony

[Joel Cairo]

There were, in fact, color kinescopes made in the 1950s by NBC, using a lenticular film process, in which the chroma info was preserved (and decoded on playback) as follows:

***********

From http://www.showcaseproductions.com/tech.htm

"Once the technical problem of making a Technicolor kinescope negative was solved, a new problem arose -- it took too long for the laboratory to make Technicolor prints. However, in theory, there was a way to shorten the time considerably, through use of another color process, "Lenticular Color." The process, developed in France around the turn of the century, involved embossing tiny lenses on the back of the negative stock; on projection, the image could be separated by the lenses into the three primary colors, which in turn would be projected onto a screen to yield a full-color picture. The advantage was that considerable time was saved in the printing process, making it theoretically possible to move color prints to the other time zones quickly enough to have each program seen in the same general time slot.

NBC worked with Eastman Kodak; the French process was successfully adopted for the U.S. Although with the passage of time much technical knowledge regarding the lenticular process has been lost, we believe that there is sufficient expertise available to make it possible to reproduce color materials if it
turns out that some of the "black and white" materials held by NBC, Showcase, and archives, are actually lenticular.

***************

Evidently, lenticular color prints look a lot like B&W prints, at first glance. The few people I know who have actually seen them projected say the color is wonderful, but the process is a real light hog. For the record, Jerry Lewis evidently had a lot of his 1950s NBC show preserved on lenticular prints.

Late-60s color kinnies, using the more standard processes, are generally awful, though, owing to the difficulties of photographing an image projected with a shadow mask. When viewed, image moire is a common occurence. As to why these would be made, there was still some small demand at the affiliate level, and AFRTV also used them for the troops overseas.

-Kevin

[Steve D.]

Kevin,
Thanks for the great imformation. Also, according to Ed Reitan's color tv site:

http://www.novia.net/~ereitan/

The first use of the lenticular film color kinescope process was the Sept. 29, 1956 NBC broadcast of "The Esther Williams Aqua Spectacle." This from NBC's Brooklyn studios. The program was time-zone delayed and broadcast in color to the West Coast. As it happens, less then a month later in Oct.'56, the first network use of color videotape was used for a pre-recorded song sequence on "The Jonathan Winters Show." Also on NBC. Technology never stands still.

Originally posted by Joel Cairo
For the record, Jerry Lewis evidently had a lot of his 1950s NBC show preserved on lenticular prints.

-Kevin

That bit about Jerry Lewis makes a lot of sense as he was quite a photography buff and very savvy technically.

He made the most elaborate home movies which he not only directed, edited, starred in but also was the primary cinematographer.

Anthony