U-matics at Trinity College

Dominic Gallagher

E-mail: dom@multiactivist.com

Machines: VC lo-band top loaders, a Panasonic Edit Controller and a Hi band portable to dock into our Sony DXC1800 tube camera I also learned my editing skills on UMatics. I was at Trinity, Dublin. Our Video Society had purchased Umatics from RTE in the early 80's. The story goes that RTE upgraded to Umatic just before everyone else bought Beta so they sold off all their Umatics to colleges shortly thereafter. We had a few of the JVC lo-band top loaders, a Panasonic Edit Controller and a Hi band portable to dock into our Sony DXC1800 tube camera. Hi-tech stuff. Everything was fine until the portable recorder broke.

We then made the mistake of buying "pro-sumer" Hi8. The camera was great but for editing the format was a nightmare; the controller looked like a ZX81 and the deck kept breaking down. We couldn't overdub sound on the Hi8 without unacceptable loss of quality and so on one production we ended up jamming in a recording studio to get the soundtrack down. We had an editor with Hi8 editing suite at one end with two engineers on live desk/fx/ sampler and myself on turntables at the other doing sixteen hours of continuous passes to mixdown live to Hi8.

After that I started a college TV station and we shot on everything on Hi8 and did composite transfers to the Umatics to edit. They were big and ugly but you could spill a pint on them and they would still make an ok edit. Heady days.

If anyone knows of resources dedicated to Tube cameras I would be intrigued.

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Submitted Thr, 04 Dec 2001 14:31:18 GMT