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"You can't say flatly that tape will save so much money. It depends on the commercial."
Unger is concentrating now on experimenting with his equipment. He regards it as a new medium and said it can't be used to best advantage until techniques are explored.
Switchover
West Coast commercial producers are playing it cagey on tape. Jack M. Warner, vice president of Warner Bros., disagrees with a prediction made by one SAG official that all of the major studios will have tape in use by a year.
"Warners," he said, "will adjust to meet a changing situation but will not plunge right now into the purchase of equipment for which it doesn't see an immediate need." He added he considered the Ampex recorder too expensive for the big producer as well as the little guy. Significantly, Warner also made the point that the studio would not make plans for tape production until union jurisdictional problems are ironed out, especially among the technical unions.
A similar viewpoint came out of MGM. Both Sam Marx, executive producer at MGM-TV, and Bill Gibbs, director of industrial and commercial films at MGM, took the position that it is premature to use tape for production.
It is clear, however, that once the majors feel the time is ripe they will jump into tape with both feet. It is also clear that once the labor tangle is unsnarled so will everybody. ^
You get Sunday off, too!
KNXT, CBS o&o in Los Angeles, is now producing a weekly taped news analysis program, reportedly the first station to do so.
The show, Clete Roberts Special Report, is seen Sundays at 4:30 p.m. and is sponsored by Salem.
Roberts said the picture is not only of high quality but that even film inserts on tape look better than the original.
Another advantage is that Roberts and agency men from Esty don't have to work on Sunday.
As for the station, it reports that the Roberts show and other taped programing is making it possible to get more work from the same manpower.
IS VIDEOTAPE PRACTICAL NOW? AMPEX GIVES SOME ANSWERS
A. The new horizons of flexibility afforded in videotaping have dictated the establishment of a new concept of effects production to replace the limited flexibility of film editing. The industry is already using the term "reviding" to denote the techniques of electronic effects generation.
Q. They say the biggest problem is the inter changeability of tapes, that tapes made on one machine won't play back on any other. A. Nonsense. All production -model VR-1000's properly aligned per Ampex standards will play each other's tapes interchangeably. We have a machine now in Milan, Italy, in the U. S. Exhibit of the Milan Samples Fair. Tapes are being made on that machine for playing back over American television networks. We are continually receiving recorded tape samples from television stations and networks which we review on any VR-1000.
Q. What about the problem of maintaining an adequate supply of tapes. A. Yes, this has been a problem since the networks went to such large programing operations with videotape. That is why suppliers of videotape are struggling with (and improving) their ability to produce more tapes faster. It is certain that videotape manufacturers will shortly be geared to supply the new demands of television quite adequately.
Q. We have no way of knowing whether videotape will last for years. How do we know the high frequencies wont slowly fade out? A. Simply because magnetic tape stays permanently magnetized until deliberately or accidentally erased. Prop, er storage with protection from magnetic field will not damage information previously recorded, even after a period of years.
Q. Does it cost as much to install videotape equipment as the price of the machine?
A. Ridiculous. Interconnect the cables, supply proper power, check out the machine — and your VR-1000 is ready to record and play back. If this costs $45,000 — someone is paying their help too much. Average installation time has been four to six hours with two men. ^
Because of the wide lack of knowledge concerning the use of videotape and the cost of its installation, SPONSOR asked C. R. Paulson (picture above), national sales manager, Professional Products Division, Ampex Corp., to give his answer to certain statements commonly made about Ampex equipment. The statements and his answers are shown in this question-and-answer form.
Q. Will the cost of conversion to videotape operations for a tv film company exceed $200,000? A. A tv film studio wishing merely to substitute tape for film as the recording medium, continuing to shoot with one camera and one mike, need invest no more than $70,000. But this is not the way for a progressive film company to plan its move into its future bread-and-butter operation. A basic black-and-white videotape production center, consisting of two cameras, a video effects generator and switcher, and an Ampex VR-1000 Recorder, will cost about $100,000. A more elaborate production system, or color recording capabilities, will still not put the system price over $200,000. Further, any business manager realizes that his cost of operation consists both of original system amortization and running operating costs. In the latter area, the differential between film and tape costs becomes most startling.
Q. Is it true that there will be no real break-through for videotape until editing becomes practical?
26 afril 1958