This website and mailing list is focused on 2" Quadruplex Videotape:
The Recorders, Recording, Playback, Maintenance, Equipment Design and Tape Preservation,
and the Preservation of Knowledge about these subjects so that knowledge can
be used by new people today or years from now to preserve the content contained on Quad tapes.

Sharing your experiences working with Quad tapes, recorders, their quirks and foibles can be very helpful in migrating the thousands of aging Quad videotapes now just sitting on shelves at archives world-wide.

Members of this group are working with the Library of Congress National Audio Visual Conservation Center in Culpeper, Virginia at the request of Steven Nease, the Chief Technology Officer for the NAVCC.

Historical stories or personal recollections are welcome. We all need a laugh, an "Ah-Ha!" or to
remember when "that happened to me."

The uad Videotape Group

2011 Events:
Fourth Annual Quad/Editor/Telecine Lunch At NAB

Tuesday, April 12, 2011, 12:30pm to ??
Lower South Hall's Rear Concession Seating Area.

Here's a map that shows the location
as of Friday, April 8.
expo.nabshow.com/mynabshow2011/public/fp.aspx?MapID=44&Booth=SL11224

Landmark is the Extron Electronics booth on the aisle.

Turn south and walk toward the south wall of the hall, and you'll find the seating area.

Look for the REEL on the table.

Folks with experience or interest in
Transferring or Archiving Quad Videotape,
Maintenance and Design of Quad Machines,
Linear Editing and Telecine

are encouraged attend and tell their friends and colleagues

You can RSVP by clicking here: QVTG NAB Lunch 2011-RSVP- if you haven't already done so.

There's actually something new for Quad to be announced at NAB. Visit booth SL9910 for details.

If you get lost, call (530) 301-2931

Please RSVP to ted@quadvideotapegroup.com so we have a clue as to how many seats to hold

Last year's gathering was quite well attended by some of the top people in Quad, editing and telecine.

We'll post pictures and a link here soon.

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Quad Videotape Group NAB Sunday Dinner, April 10?

If you're in Las Vegas on Sunday night, 4/10/2011, several of us are planning to dine somewhere.

E-mail if you'd like to join us.

Ted Langdell
flashscan8.us
Cell: (530) 301-2931

Secretary for the QuadVideotapeGroup.com:
Preserving Tape, Equipment and the Knowledge to use them, in conjunction with the Library of Congress
ted@quadvideotapegroup.com

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Third Annual Quad/Editor/Telecine Dinner At AMIA

Tuesday, Nov. 15, Austin Texas

We'll post more details when we know specifics about the AMIA Conference locations.

Join the list and contribute your suggestions on where we should eat in Austin!

Watch this space for location,
or check the QuadList, AMIA-L or TIG for announcements.

Please RSVP to ted@quadvideotapegroup.com so we have a clue as to how many seats to hold

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Picture from Ken Chambiss—VTA (Video Tape Associates)
Johnny Carson smokes a cigarette on the back of a boat
while an Ampex VR-2000 Quad used in taping his 1968 color special "Johnny Carson at Cypress Gardens"
sits protected from the sun by cardboard and sheets of plywood.

More photos here.

The Videotape Editor was Jack Shultis, according to a booklet produced about the show,
which aired on NBC at 9p.m. Eastern on Saturday, Sept. 7, 1968 just after the Miss America Pagent.

Quad Videotape Group
Second Annual Informal Quad-Telecine-Editor lunch at NAB 2009
Click here to see pictures of this event and others

Quad History Replay:

51 years ago—1960:
Ampex introduces the VR-1001A Upright VTR, a VR-1000 with vertical transport and controls. Ampex also introdced Intersync and AMTEC.

41 years ago—1970:
Field testing of RCA's TCR-100 Quad Cart Machine began at then-new independent UHF WDCA-TV, Washington, DC using the pre-production model shown at NAB, 1970.

First shown as a prototype at the 1969 NAB, the TCR-100 cart recorder/player was used for short-length elements like commercials, promos and news stories.

Ampex made three significant product introductions during 1970:

The first was in late January, when it announced the ADR-150 high-speed Quad Videotape Duplicating System, recently discussed on the QuadList. The equipment could crank out five copies of a one-hour program in about ten minutes. The system used a "mirror image" tape made with high coercivity tape on
a specially modified AVR-1 Quad recorder.

The AVR-1 was formally introduced at NAB 1970. This machine could go from stop to clean picture in five frames, used vacuum columns to smooth tape handling and increase responsiveness, automatically selected the tape format and television standard, and could play a tape that didn't have a control track. Among other things.

The AVR-1 It is widely regarded as the pinnacle of Quad recorder evolution.

Product three was the ACR-25 Quad cartridge recorder, which used much technology from the AVR-1. It could handle longer program elements than its RCA competitor, and could run separate 10-second carts back to back.

It was a mainstay of CBS operations, seen here in photos on the CBS Retirees website courtesy of
QuadList member Dennis Degan.

MTV used a pair of "modified for stereo" ACR-25's to play its music videos and other short program elements.

QuadPEOPLE 1970

Ampex Engineer (and later VP) Charles Anderson received the first Annual Alexander M. Poniatoff Award (cash and a gold medal) for proposing in late 1954 and creating in January, 1955, the original FM video recording system used in development of the Quad video recorder.

The FM method is still widely used today for recording analog and digital signals to magnetic media of many kinds.

Anderson also designed the console and internal electronics for the Ampex Mark IV Quad machine that first demonstrated Videotape® recording to a stunned group of CBS affiliate brass.
Anderson worked for Ampex for many years and retired from the company.
HIs connection to video recording continued at KNPB, Reno.
Anderson lives in the central California foothills east of Stockton.

Another Ampex engineer named Charles received the 1970 Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Vladimir Zworykin Television Prize, named for the famous RCA engineer.
Ampex Senior Engineer Charles Coleman was awarded the honor "for technical achevements in Video Recording."

Coleman also recieved another award in 1970 with an RCA "name": The David Sarnoff Medal
from the Society of Motion Picture and Televison Engineers (SMPTE).

This honor was "For many original inventions, in particular for time domain electronic signal correction and for the conception and development of high band color videotape recording."

While at CBS-owned WBBM-TV, Chicago, Coleman invented the ColTec, which corrected geometric distortions in
VR-1000 Quad recordings. Ampex bought the rights and hired Coleman, renaming the device the AMTEC.
Coleman, assisted by Pete Jensen developed Colortec, a color timing error corrector that hit the market in 1961.

Coleman later helped develop High-Band FM recording for videotape as implemented in the Ampex VR-2000, and according to "Magnetic Recording: The First 100 Years" invented the Velocity Compensator (Velcomp) that
allowed 11 generations of recording by 1966.

Read about user's experiences with the ACR-25, TCR-100 and the Ampex digital ACR-225
on the QuadList

Click here to check out those topics and more in the archives.

Inside the Quad Videotape Group website
we have information the RCA installations at NBC Burbank, NBC, New York City and
at WBTV, Charlotte, North Carolina.

Click here or on the Quad History index to look back at RCA's first installed test models, and the production units that came after.

If you use or used to use or maintain an RCA TRT-1, 1A, 1B or 1C
click here to join the QuadList and tell us about it.

Check out the Restoration of the oldest known surviving color Quad recording on the Eisenhower Tape Restoration page

Share your Quad stories, ask questions or offer solutions via the QuadList.