Can anyone explain this video?

https://youtu.be/RDZZDmEyKIM (be sure to watch it in 1080p)

It appears to have been shot on video rather than film. How is it possible for it to look so clean? The interview was in 1977, so that’s before Betacam existed, which means it was most likely shot on 3/4" U-matic tape. But it looks cleaner than any U-matic transfer I’ve ever seen. For that matter, it looks cleaner than any analog Betacam transfer I’ve ever seen, and Betacam was an improvement on U-matic.

On this site - http://www.thegreatbear.net/video-tape/copy-umatic-tape/ - there are a couple of screenshots of transfers from U-matic, one using the composite signal and the other using the superior Y/C signal (AKA: S-video). Both of them look exactly like I’d expect U-matic to look like, and not even close in quality to that Mark Hamill BBC interview video. And that is after a digital transfer and YouTube compression, both of which incur loss. Imagine how good the master tape looked.

Here’s a lossless screenshot from the “Sledge Hammer!” DVD release, which was shot on Betacam in 1986 - https://i.imgur.com/0pCbJf7.png. It’s not as good of quality as that Mark Hamill video. Note the ghosting, video noise, and lack of fine detail (compare how much fine detail there is in Mark Hamill’s hair compared to David Rasche’s, for example).

I can’t but Sledge is a lost treasure.

TV’s Frink said:

I can’t but Sledge is a lost treasure.

One of the funniest sitcoms ever. I never missed an episode back when it originally aired.

SilverWook said:

I don’t think the BBC was using U-matic for broadcast purposes.

U-matic was a common broadcast videotape standard before Betacam came along in 1982. I suppose it could have been Quad (Ampex Quadruplex), which allegedly had excellent picture quality, but those were massive reels of 2" wide tape that cost about $300 each (for 1 hour of recording time), and as such, recordings were rarely saved; they were typically recorded over and over again, as many times as they could. The tape reels were so wide and large because the recording heads didn’t use helical scan, which is what allowed high-quality, yet compact, videocassettes to be possible.

The site you linked to seems to only have information on the restoration of Dr. Who episodes which exist in oddball formats. For example:

Back in 1978, Ian Levine heard that KCET TV in Los Angeles was about to show `The Dæmons’ as a two-hour compilation. He wired an American friend the money to go out and hire one of the then brand-new Betamax VCR’s, and to buy two one-hour tapes, at that time the longest tape available. The machine was obtained, and the broadcast recorded in its entirety, except for a gap of about twenty seconds during which the tapes were changed over. The Betamax tapes were brought over to England and, as TV standards conversion equipment was not generally available to the public, the tapes were copied onto 525-line U-matic cassettes, retained by Levine ever since.

So in that case it was a recording of an over-the-air NTSC broadcast onto Betamax (which was consumer-grade junk to begin with, compared to broadcast-quality formats such as U-matic and Betacam), and then dubbed to a U-matic tape, still in NTSC format.

The Mark Hamill video seems to be significantly higher quality than U-matic or even Betacam is capable of (even allowing for the extra 20% lines of resolution of PAL vs. NTSC), so I’m guessing it was Quad (though it seems strange that they would have saved the recording considering the size and expense of those reels). I’ve never seen a Quad transfer, but I’ve read that the high-band and super high-band versions from the '60s and '70s had “excellent” picture quality. The TV broadcast of The Nutcracker (1977) was on Quad, and was preserved, and is available on DVD and Blu-ray, so that would give an idea of what Quad was capable of. I’m not even remotely interested in buying it though.

SilverWook said:

Unlike what happened with Doctor Who’s early years, Blue Peter apparently took great lengths to preserve their broadcast history. One reason several clips from lost Who episodes survived is they were used on Blue Peter.

U-Matic began life as a home video format that was too expensive for most people in the early '70’s. An early Sony U-matic home deck appears as a rich man’s toy in a Columbo episode as a plot device. It was still cheaper than most broadcast gear, and Sony refocused it’s efforts. It was firmly the format for colleges, small tv stations and other institutions by the 1980’s. Betacam was way too expensive for the college I went to. We received programming as an affiliate of National College Television on U-Matic tapes until direct satellite delivery took over in the 90’s.

I take great exception to your characterization of Betamax having used it many times over the years. U-matic was never more to me than a major pain in the ass back in college. The decks broke down so often you could set your watch by them.

Betamax was more or less the equivalent of VHS, 250 lines vs. 240 lines for VHS, and both Betamax and VHS recorded a lowly composite signal. U-matic was 280 lines (330 for the SP version) and recorded a Y/C signal (S-video), and Betacam was 300 lines (360 for the SP version) and recorded a YRyBy component signal, which is better than Y/C. When I said Betamax was junk in comparison, I was referring to picture quality, not to the quality/reliability of the hardware.

There were a few Columbo episodes featuring VCRs. Are you referring to the one where the guy has a home surveillance setup, complete with a room that looks like a TV broadcast studio? And Columbo solves the crime by magically zooming in on a speck-sized part of the video (a letter or an invitation or something) and it becomes crystal clear and readable?

What do you think that Mark Hamill video was recorded on? If not U-matic (and it does seem to be higher quality than U-matic, as far as I know, that only leaves Quad, and possibly 1" Type B or C, though that’s cutting it close for the time frame (some sources say Type B/C came out in '76 and others say '78). I’d be surprised if it was on Quad and they saved all those recordings, considering Quad reels are big (12 inches in diameter and a little over 2 inches thick, with storage boxes for them being 15 inches square and 4 inches thick), and with each one only holding an hour of video, it wouldn’t take long before you’d need an awful lot of storage space, and money too, at $300 each. If that’s what happened, then that’s impressive.

SilverWook said:

It was one where a wealthy (or at least well off) character had a deck in his home to tape football games without the express written permission of the NFL. Columbo should have arrested him for that alone. 😉

Yeah, I saw that one not too long ago. The mistake he made was resetting the guy’s watch to the correct time, not knowing that he always set his watch 5 minutes ahead. I didn’t notice his VCR was U-matic.

Based on my high school and college experiences U-matic was better than VHS but below the quality of Super VHS (400 lines) which I used extensively well into the 1990’s. Extended Definition Betamax at 500 lines might have made a splash had Sony marketed it more aggressively.

Yeah, I would expect S-VHS to exceed U-matic, though it was light on chroma resolution (30 lines), so it wasn’t considered broadcast quality (it wasn’t marketed to professionals anyway), despite its high luma resolution. ED-Beta was a “prosumer” deal, with 100 lines of chroma resolution. It was roughly equivalent to DVD. VHS was far too ensconced by that time for any other videotape format to make a dent in the consumer market though.

Not sure exactly what the BBC used in house at the time. That Dr. Who site frequently refers to the original episode masters from the 70’s being Quad. (Long since dubbed off to digital formats.) Shooting video on location away from the studios was rare and usually done on film. U-matic made some early inroads in news gathering as it was portable and didn’t have to be rushed to the lab for developing. The gear was still damn heavy well into the 80’s though. I once walked around for a while with a deck slung over one shoulder, the camera on the other and a battery belt around my waist. After taking all of that off I felt like I was on the moon for a little while. 😉

I’m going to assume Quad for that Mark Hamill video then. I can’t see any other videotape format available in '77 having that kind of quality. The quality is on par with at least Betacam SP, which didn’t come along until '86. I never realized that Quad was capable of such quality. I’d like to see a good Quad recording natively displayed on a professional CRT monitor (like a JVC Pro HV-M300VSU).

SilverWook said:

Shatner did it. 😉

Some of the U-matic decks I used in college looked similar. The studio had been built and equipped when the campus was built in 1975, but due to lack of funding the whole thing was in mothballs until 1986.
One of my instructors liked those old dinosaurs better than the front loading models, as you could "pop the hood* to do routine cleaning and maintenance.

That VCR is a beast. By the way, I just rewatched that scene and it was a baseball game that he recorded, rather than football (which I guess is apparent in your screenshot anyway). That TV brings back memories. When I was a kid we had a 25" console TV similar to that, an RCA. I loved that TV.

Super VHS was marketed to professionals. We had an editing system for it back in college, one of the first models Panasonic put out. I actually learned how to edit videotape on those behemoths. Most of my own video projects I shot on S-VHS. And a then brand new local tv station in the early '90’s here was almost exclusively S-VHS, save for a couple Betacam decks.

Well, there were professional standard VHS machines (“broadcast decks”) too (Panasonic AG-6810 for example), but VHS, like S-VHS, was still considered a consumer format in general (there were even about a dozen pre-recorded movies released for S-VHS). 30 lines of chroma resolution is well below the NTSC broadcast standard of 120 lines. From what I understand, S-VHS and ED-Beta were only used professionally as a lower-cost alternative to Betacam SP, which was the de facto standard.

Also, I’m finding conflicting information about ED-Beta’s chroma resolution. At least one source says 100 lines (which is the same as Betacam) while others say 30 lines (which is the same as VHS, S-VHS, Betamax, and SuperBeta). I’m inclined to believe it only has 30 lines, because if it had 100 lines it would be superior to Betacam SP (higher luma resolution and equal chroma resolution). A Popular Science article from June 1988 indicates 30 lines:

In the ED Beta system the color (or chroma) part of the video signal is recorded at the same frequency as earlier systems.

The earlier systems were SuperBeta and Betamax, and those both definitely had only 30 lines of chroma resolution.