OT:Re: [FCP-L] OT: How did they do "digital effects" in the analouge era?

Small world I inherited some of those Sony 910 bays when I was an editor/post supervisor on the Dom Deluise version of Candid Camera in the early 90's. First thing I did was get Calloway edit controlers to replace the 910's. The LA Unitel facility took care of the maintenance. Nothing like a good hicon reel for wacky wipes my favorite was the school of fish. Create the body with an oval, tail with a wedge wipe, modulate the wedge to get tail swimming motion. Add an eye if you dare. A-53 multipix with warp for wavey motion and slide the school in source space to move them accross the screen. Damn I think I'm breaking out in tears. Where's a good fish wipe when you need one today?

--- In FinalCutPro-L@yahoogroups.com, "mhollis55" <mhollis55@...> wrote:
>
> John, we must be the old foagies here.
>
> The first real 3D page turn I used was the Abekas A53D, which I used at Inside Edition. We also used it to do box turns and other transitions, as well as key effects and certain posterize, polarize effects. But I blew away the other editors at Inside when I used a 3/4" machine, rolling in tandem (on a Sony 910 editor) to generate really fancy wipes (that I had a friend lay off for me, white to black, then reverse from a GVG 200 switcher) using the keyer on a Grass 110 switcher. These additional wipes really impressed my co-workers, as they thought I was using the Abekas to do that.
>
> One of my favorite moves was to do a stretch transition, stretching a frame longitudinally or vertically as I pushed the video to the incoming picture. I invented that move (for the workgroup I was in) on the Abekas. I saw my transition ideas repeated there for years after I left.
>
> I then learned the ADO which did need some really odd numbers in order to do a page turn. Happily, those who developed the page turn didn't think that they needed anyone to actually pay for their work and the disk with the effect tended to come with the ADO. The next digital effect box I used was the Grass Valley Kaleidoscope which was horrendously expensive. It would do a 3D page peel with a front and a back and a shadow if there were enough channels. Each channel of Kaleidoscope cost a quarter million dollars, so to make a cube in one pass (desirable in the day of the analog 1" machine with no pre-read) one had to drop at least $1.25 million (an additional quarter million for a "combiner").
>
> Edit rooms were "á la carte." Generally you'd get 3 VTRs at the room rate, and then an extra $100 per hour was charged for each channel of digital effects, each machine added and, perhaps an additional $75 per hour for character generation. The highest hourly rate I billed was $1275.00, which I did for three weeks of eight-hour days. My employer was very, very happy, as that client literally paid for another digital effect device.
>
> Today, we look at render time. And we grumble when effects take a long time to render. Back in the linear world, everything was real time, so when you laid it down to tape, it was done. Rendered. And you could look at the full effect as you were building layers (I suppose that kind of workflow is available in Motion these days, as you can add effects while you are rolling through your timeline, but VTRs never dropped frames).
>
> But, when you think about it, everything done to video is a "digital effect" nowadays. A dissolve is a digitally-produced transition on a pixel-by-pixel level. Switchers did that by using a key ramp from one source to another, controlled by a timed transition button or a fader bar.
>
> --- In FinalCutPro-L@yahoogroups.com, John Heiser <jpheiser@> wrote:
> >
> > There was a number hack in ADO for creating a page turn which appeared to
> > twist the page as it moved off the screen, but the original ADO didn't
> > actually do curved surfaces. Quantel was nice but out of reach financially
> > for a lot of operations. Abekas A53D had a nice page roll and, with a
> > combiner for multiple channels, you could do it in one pass. Otherwise, you
> > would lay off your backside pass over superblack to tape machine, and key
> > that along with the frontside.
> >
> > ----
> > John Heiser
> > o2ideas
> > birmingham, alabama, USA
> >
> >
> > On Thu, Dec 10, 2009 at 11:29 AM, Marilyn Heiss <mdivah@> wrote:
> >
> > >
> > >
> > > As far as I know--and I am one of the editors of "mature" vintage on
> > > this list -- it was a Quantel product that had the first page turns
> > > for tape post. It might have been the Quantel 5000, or maybe page
> > > turns came in with the Mirage, which is the box that brought in the
> > > shattering glass effect, among others. I know the first Quantel boxes
> > > that came into our edit suites at NBC NY were 2D, then one suite got
> > > the multi-channel Quantel and another got the Mirage. When ADO came
> > > into the picture in all suites, page turns became the transition of
> > > choice among many producers--they wanted to use them for everything....
> > >
> > > I cut a lot of news pieces on economic issues--lots of words with
> > > little video and a lot of graphic representations--in a linear room
> > > using a Grass Valley 1600 switcher and a one-channel 2D Quantel. So
> > > many passes, so many hours to put together something that, as you say,
> > > is now much simpler.
> > >
> > > Marilyn
> > >
> > >
> > > On Dec 10, 2009, at 8:50 AM, Sune Alexandersen wrote:
> > >
> > > > Hi group!
> > > > I'm watching an old Norwegian tv-serie made in 1979 and the opening
> > > > title made me think: how on earth did they achieve the page-turn
> > > > transition before.. Eh... Fcp/Avid.. Everything!!
> > > > They used a lot of effects in the good old days that is a simple drag
> > > > and drop operation these days..
> > > >
> > > > Hope some of you with the proper mileage could shed some light on the
> > > > issue!
> > > >
> > > > Regards from rainy Norway,
> > > > Sune Alexandersen
> > > > Sent whilst on the go!
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > > > ------------------------------------
> > >
> > > >
> > > > To learn more about the FinalCutPro-L group, please visit
> > > > http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FinalCutPro-LYahoo! Groups Links
> > > >
> > > >
> > > >
> > >
> > >
> > >
> >
> >
> > [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
> >
>

------------------------------------

To learn more about the FinalCutPro-L group, please visit
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FinalCutPro-LYahoo! Groups Links

<*> To visit your group on the web, go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FinalCutPro-L/

<*> Your email settings:
Individual Email | Traditional

<*> To change settings online go to:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/FinalCutPro-L/join
(Yahoo! ID required)

<*> To change settings via email:
FinalCutPro-L-digest@yahoogroups.com
FinalCutPro-L-fullfeatured@yahoogroups.com

<*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to:
FinalCutPro-L-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com

<*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to:
http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/