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Do you remember when....??
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Scott Pollak
The Gates of Troy


Joined: 01 Jun 2010
Posts: 1903
Location: Looking out at the San Juan mountains

PostPosted: Wed Sep 25, 2013 5:49 am    Post subject: Do you remember when....?? Reply with quote

Okay, so a lot of reminiscing hitting this forum lately.

As I was just entering another very long file name as I was saving an audio file, I remembered quite clearly in the early '90s when I actually purchased a program that would allow you to save a file with a name longer than 8 characters.

Remember when....
You could ONLY save a file with an 8-character name??

I do.

Share your "Do you remember when...."
Could be fun.
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Mandy Nelson
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PostPosted: Wed Sep 25, 2013 6:17 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Remember when editing involved a razor and grease pencil? I picked up my first ever edit from the floor and brought it home. I proceeded to frame it and date it. It is a part of my studio and I always smile when I look at it. That was the semester I decided I didn't want to be a sportscaster because audio was where it was at in my heart.
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Jason Huggins
The Gates of Troy


Joined: 12 Aug 2011
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PostPosted: Wed Sep 25, 2013 7:02 am    Post subject: Re: Do you remember when....?? Reply with quote

Scott Pollak wrote:

Remember when....
[i]You could ONLY save a file with an 8-character name??


I have a client that still asks me to do that Smile
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todd ellis
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PostPosted: Wed Sep 25, 2013 7:08 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

mandy - the tape in a frame is AWESOME! i wish i'd done that! up until 8 years ago (when we moved the last time) i had a stack of 10" reels almost 4 feet high - all full of commercials, promos, wacky bits, airchecks - you name it. due to improper storage, it's (mostly) gone now.

remember when it cost THOUSANDS of dollars to set up a home studio? 4-track reel to reel, preamp, amp, board, patch panel to plug everything in ...

gawd - it was exhausting!
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Scott Pollak
The Gates of Troy


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Location: Looking out at the San Juan mountains

PostPosted: Wed Sep 25, 2013 7:18 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

AND.... (Mandy and Todd).... remember when you ALWAYS stored those open reel tapes 'tails out' to prevent 'print-through'?
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cyclometh
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Joined: 06 Aug 2010
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PostPosted: Wed Sep 25, 2013 7:25 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I remember when paste-up artists used wax and x-acto knives. Wink
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Mike Harrison
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PostPosted: Wed Sep 25, 2013 7:38 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

todd ellis wrote:
i had a stack of 10" reels almost 4 feet high - all full of commercials, promos, wacky bits, airchecks - you name it. due to improper storage, it's (mostly) gone now.

Todd, if you still have some or all of those tapes, I have – 40 minutes away – a friend who specializes in bringing even decomposing (aka "sticky shed syndrome") and moldy water-damaged tapes back to life long enough to bring them into the digital domain. And he's done it for hundreds of clients, including several major record labels.

Contact Steve at the Sonicraft A2DX Lab: http://www.sonicraft.com. Read first about Tape Baking and Restoration, then go from there. Steve has sought out, purchased and completely rebuilt (using the newest parts available) audiotape machines of every format ever used: from quarter-inch full-track mono to quarter-inch three-track, half-inch four- and eight-track, one-inch 12-track, all the way to two-inch 24-track, and also has every type of noise reduction system: Dolby, dbx, etc. and every variant thereof.

The results he achieves are many times breathtaking.
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todd ellis
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PostPosted: Wed Sep 25, 2013 7:56 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

hi mike - thanks - i actually used the "bake" method (which is why it's MOSTLY gone) and pulled ALMOST everything i wanted from the tapes - a few were just too far gone & i also used a q-tip dipped in alcohol, wetting the tape in front of the play head, cleaning the head OFTEN - but i got a lot. took FOREVER - but it was worth it.

ps - THAT is an impressive bank of gear!
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Ed Fisher
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Joined: 05 Sep 2012
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Location: East Coast, U.S.A.

PostPosted: Wed Sep 25, 2013 8:10 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Mandy Nelson wrote:
Remember when editing involved a razor and grease pencil? .


Funny thing about that.

I used a razor blade for MANY years, but never touched a grease pencil. I was taught by one of the best. He taught me how to press the tape against the body of the machine to put a slight "crease" in the tape with your finger and it lined up perfectly with the block, so as I said...I never touched a grease pencil. As I recall this worked with both the old Scullys and later I also used this technique on the Otari 5050B.

As for remembering. My first business computer was an XT. It had a monitor that only showed Green. It cost me $1600.00 and it came with a 20 MEG (yes....that is MEG) hard drive. I could have gotten a 30 MEG hard drive...for a few dollars more. But, I couldn't imagine what I would possibly need with all of that hard drive SPACE. Laugh
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Mandy Nelson
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PostPosted: Wed Sep 25, 2013 8:11 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

When we bought our first house (the one before this one) there was a reel-to-reel in the attic. It had a tape on it already. We asked if the owner would leave it. He did! We haven't played it yet -11 years later - but I'm sure we'll try some day. I also have some old tape in storage and have no idea what would be on it. I just remember how it bled me dry to pay for it and the seedy shop I had to go to in Boston to get it.

I can't remember how to post pics here but if I could I would post one of me with my first portable 8 track player. That thing is pretty.
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Manfillappsoc: The Mandy and Philip mutual appreciation Society. Who's in your network?

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Mike Harrison
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PostPosted: Wed Sep 25, 2013 8:30 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

cyclometh wrote:
I remember when paste-up artists used wax and x-acto knives. Wink

Me too! And that reminds me of my days as a typesetter. I was working for a corporate multimedia production house in the late 80s when we retired our (non-WYSIWYG) Mergenthaler Linotype computer-composer and printer and brought in several Macintosh computers. I networked them with a Linotype Linotronic imagesetter (capable of resolution as high as 2540 dpi), using Adobe's Raster Image Processor and their PostScript page description language. This was the beginning of Adobe's dominance in graphics applications. In the beginning, we used the first releases of Adobe Illustrator and Aldus FreeHand (later owned by Macromedia and now by Adobe) to compose the black and white art, from which film negatives would be made and color-gelled before being photographed on 35mm film for slides by the Forox animation camera.

While an exciting time, technologically, it also allowed clients to begin making their own slides and other printed material, without the use of talented and experienced people, under the "that's good enough" banner, a mindset which drives a stake into the heart of creativity everywhere and with which many of us are all too familiar.
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Mike Harrison
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PostPosted: Wed Sep 25, 2013 8:34 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Mandy Nelson wrote:
When we bought our first house (the one before this one) there was a reel-to-reel in the attic.

Hey Mandy... Ask Deirdre (or Bruce or Jeffrey) about posting photos here (if you don't have a server you can upload them and link to). I'd sure love to see that reel-to-reel! Wink
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Scott Pollak
The Gates of Troy


Joined: 01 Jun 2010
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PostPosted: Wed Sep 25, 2013 9:01 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Mandy Nelson wrote:
...there was a reel-to-reel in the attic. It had a tape on it already. We asked if the owner would leave it. He did! We haven't played it yet -11 years later - but I'm sure we'll try some day.


Wouldn't it be something if it was the 18 missing minutes from the Watergate tapes?!! Wink
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Lee Gordon
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PostPosted: Wed Sep 25, 2013 9:20 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

cyclometh wrote:
paste-up artists used wax and x-acto knives. Wink


And dropout blue pencils and ruby lith.

I remember designing my logo (such as it is) and having it done by a typesetter using a VGC Typositor.

Clutter Ash wrote:
how to press the tape against the body of the machine to put a slight "crease" in the tape with your finger and it lined up perfectly with the block, so as I said...I never touched a grease pencil. As I recall this worked with both the old Scullys and later I also used this technique on the Otari 5050B.


It also worked with Ampex 350s and 440s. However, I rarely used the "press and crease" technique because it, well, put a crease in the tape. However, all you had to do was line up the tape as if you were going to crease it, and grab it with your thumb and forefinger tight to the spot on the head cover where your would press to crease it, swing the tape up to the Edit-All block, keeping your thumb and forefinger tight to the end of the block, and the spot on the tape that was on the playback head would land directly on the diagonal slot on the block, ready for you to slice with your blade.
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Scott Pollak
The Gates of Troy


Joined: 01 Jun 2010
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Location: Looking out at the San Juan mountains

PostPosted: Wed Sep 25, 2013 9:59 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

So..... some more 'remember when' that ISN'T v/o related.

I've mentioned that I worked for the phone company (specifically AT&T and then BellSouth) from about 1980-1990 as a video producer. But we ALSO did these multi-projector slide show extravaganzas called 'multi-image'. We programmed multiple slide projectors (anywhere from 3 to 15 Ektagraphic projectors) on an AVL (Audio Visual Laboratories; now defunct) programming system, and drove the show off of a reel-to-reel soundtrack upon which the cues were recorded.


But Lee's comments about rubylith reminded me that we ALSO created a lot of our own 'special effects' slides and 'word slides'.

The way we did it was by printing out the words via a Kroytype machine, then sticking the tape onto white paste-up board,

...THEN shooting it under a camera, like a Marron-Carrel or Forox camera, onto Kodalith film. Then we'd process it ourselves and - get this - HAND PAINT the lines/words with some sort of water-based paint!


I actually was the first one in our dept to think "Hey, maybe we can use COLOR film and do multiple exposures, and passes and filters" and I created starfields and 'glowing grid backgrounds' etc.


TERRIBLY time-intensive and highly inexact. You never knew if what you were attempting was going to work out or not until after you got the Ektachrome back several hours later.

Ahh, the good old days! (not!) (Oh, and we used Wess #2 glass slide mounts if anyone here remembers those!)
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