Just dropped off two one-inch master reels of a video feature at a downtown Boston media center to have them converted to DV for re-mastering. When I placed the reels on the desk in the reception area, the manager smiled and said, “I don’t see these much anymore.” And when I emailed my old editor to tell him, he replied his heart was “going pitter-pat pitter-pat… I think I can still thread an old Sony 2000 1″ deck in my sleep!”
One-inch used to be the standard for broadcast at local and network affiliate TV stations. I remember working at WCVB, Channel 5 in the early 1990s when the station was just converting its edit suites from 3/4″ Umatic to BetaSP, but one-inch reel-to-reel was still the standard in the news room and in the studios. At close to 600 lines of horizontal resolution, one-inch was hard to beat, but that’s what BetaSP did?and now, of course, we have Beta in digital format, as well as Digital-S, which I work with now in my day job.
Couldn’t help feeling a little nostalgic as I dropped off those masters for their transfer to DV.