As I write, just before 17.00 GMT / 12.00 EST, 24th January 2025, Anamorph.com are about to go live with the 24hour global streaming premiere of creative film maker Gary Hustwit’s unique documentary feature ‘Eno’. Echoing Brian Eno’s long-running explorations of generative technology in composition, Hustwit and digital artist Brendan Hawes have created Brain One… Continue reading Brian Eno Archive Video
Category: video tape
Open reel video tape and video cassette formats restored and digitised in the Greatbear studio
Philips VCR – the first home video cassette recorder
For thegreatbear.co.uk, I get to photograph and document racks and racks of beautiful ‘obsolete’ tape machines in the Greatbear studio. From time to time pictures of our machines pop up elsewhere online (I’m convinced our machines are the best-looking on the internet), and this month one of our Philips N1500 VCRs is featured in Australian… Continue reading Philips VCR – the first home video cassette recorder
Video Art & Machine Obsolescence
At Greatbear we have many, many machines. A small selection of our analogue video players, CRT monitors, cameras, cables and tapes recently found work as props (both functional and decorative) in the BBC documentary “Kill Your TV: Jim Moir’s Weird World of Video Art”, on BBC iPlayer here. From the BBC website: “Jim Moir, aka Vic… Continue reading Video Art & Machine Obsolescence
Mouldy Tape
Mould infestation can present a significant problem for the digitisation of magnetic tape. Any evidence of mould growth should be taken seriously and affected tapes isolated.
Binder Problems and ‘Sticky-Shed Syndrome’
Sticky-shed syndrome is a common condition created by the deterioration of the binders in magnetic tape.
Gregory Sams’s VegeBurger – Food Revolution
‘Watch out: the vegetarians are on the attack’ warned an article published in the April 1984 edition of the Meat Trades Journal. The threat? A new product that would revolutionise the UK’s eating habits forever. Gregory Sams’s VegeBurger invented a vernacular that is so ubiquitous now, you probably thought it’s always been here. While vegetarianism can… Continue reading Gregory Sams’s VegeBurger – Food Revolution
Developments in Digital Video Preservation – CELLAR
We are living in interesting times for digital video preservation (we are living in interesting times for other reasons too, of course). For many years digital video preservation has been a confusing area of audiovisual archiving. To date there is no settled standard that organisations, institutions and individuals can unilaterally adopt. As Peter Bubestinger-Steindl argues,… Continue reading Developments in Digital Video Preservation – CELLAR
Guest post: The Upright Electric Guitar
We recently helped in the digitising of 8mm & Hi8 for the creation of an online video about the following project by Nelson Johnson:
Happy World Day for Audiovisual Heritage!
World Day for Audiovisual Heritage, which is sponsored by UNESCO and takes place every year on 27 October, is an occasion to celebrate how audio, video and film contribute to the ‘memory of the world.’ The theme for 2016 – ‘It’s your story, don’t lose it!’ – conveys the urgency of audio visual preservation and… Continue reading Happy World Day for Audiovisual Heritage!
Digital Video in Mixed-Content Archives
On a recent trip to one of Britain’s most significant community archives, I was lucky enough to watch a rare piece of digitised video footage from the late 1970s. As the footage played it raised many questions in my mind: who shot it originally? What format was it originally created on? How was it edited?… Continue reading Digital Video in Mixed-Content Archives
VHS – more obsolescence threats
We couldn’t let the news that ‘Japan’s Funai Electric has announced it will end production of home videocassette recorders in July’ go by unnoticed.
VHS – Re-appraising Obsolescence
VHS was a hugely successful video format from the late 1970s to early 2000s. It was adopted widely in domestic and professional contexts. Due to its familiarity and apparent ubiquity you might imagine it is easy to preserve VHS. Well, think again. VHS is generally considered to be a low preservation risk because playback equipment… Continue reading VHS – Re-appraising Obsolescence
SONY’s U-matic video cassette
U-matic made video cassette a core part of many industries. Flexible and functional, its popularity endured until the 1990s.
At Greatbear, we have a significant suite of working NTSC/ PAL/ SECAM U-matic machines and spare parts.
Motobirds U-matic NTSC transfer
Motobirds, a 1970s all-girl motorbike stunt team from Leicester, have recently re-captured the public imagination. The group re-united for an appearance on BBC One’s The One Show which aired on 1 April 2016. They hadn’t seen each other for forty years. The Motobirds travelled all over the UK and Europe, did shows with the Original… Continue reading Motobirds U-matic NTSC transfer
Philips N-1502 TV Recorder
The front page of the Philips N-1502 TV Recorder catalogue presents a man peering mournfully into a dark living room. A woman, most probably his wife, drags him reluctantly out for the evening. She wants to be social, distracted in human company. The N-1502 tape machine is superimposed on this unfamiliar scene, an image of… Continue reading Philips N-1502 TV Recorder
Greatbear 2016 Infomercial
Greatbear have just produced our 2016 ‘infomercial’. The 4-page document includes details of our work and all the formats we digitise. We are in the process of sending printed copies to relevant organisations. Please contact us to request a copy and we will pop one in the post for you. You can also download a… Continue reading Greatbear 2016 Infomercial
Deaf School ½” open reel video tape transfer
At the end of 2015 Steve Lindsey, founding member of Liverpool art rock trailblazers Deaf School, stumbled upon two 1/2″ open reel video tape recordings of the band, tucked away in a previously unknown nook of his Dublin home. 2016 is the 40th anniversary of Deaf School’s first album 2nd Honeymoon. With the landmark approaching, Steve felt it… Continue reading Deaf School ½” open reel video tape transfer
Digitised Found Video Clips
Check out this selection of analogue video clips from problem tape sources such as VHS, Betamax, CV2100, Low Band U-matic, PCM audio. The video was compiled by Joe Johnson, who works in the Greatbear Studio. digitised-analogue-found-video-clips from Adrian Finn on Vimeo.
Video Tape Preservation – The Final Frontier
The UK’s audio collections have Save Our Sounds. The BFI recently launched Film is Fragile to support film preservation in the UK. Yet something is missing from these impassioned calls to preserve audiovisual heritage. As 2015 draws to a close, there is no comparable public campaign focused on the preservation of videotape. For James Patterson, from… Continue reading Video Tape Preservation – The Final Frontier
Video and Technologies of Consciousness: An Interview with Peter Sachs Collopy
We first encountered the work of Media Historian Peter Sachs Collopy during research for a previous blog article about video synthesizers. His work was so interesting we invited Peter to do a short interview for the blog. Thanks Peter for taking time to respond, you can read the answers below! We were really struck by your description… Continue reading Video and Technologies of Consciousness: An Interview with Peter Sachs Collopy
Red Beat: U-matic Low Band Transfer and Video Synthesizers
The latest eclectic piece of music history to be processed in the Greatbear Studio is a U-matic Low Band video of ‘Dream/Dream Dub’ by Red Beat, a post-punk band that was active in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Despite emitting a strong wax crayon-like odour that is often a sure sign of a degraded… Continue reading Red Beat: U-matic Low Band Transfer and Video Synthesizers
British Stand Up Comedy Archive’s audiovisual collections
Greatbear have recently worked with the British Stand Up Comedy Archive (BSUCA) to reformat a number of Digital Audio Tapes (DATs) and U-Matic video tapes from their collection. Established in 2013 and based at the University of Kent’s Special Collections, the BSUCA aims ‘to celebrate, preserve, and provide access to the archives and records of… Continue reading British Stand Up Comedy Archive’s audiovisual collections
Phil Johnson’s the Wild Bunch VHS video
As a business situated in the heart of Bristol, Greatbear is often called upon by Bristol’s artists to re-format their magnetic tape collections. Previously we have transferred documentaries about the St. Paul’s Carnival and films from the Bristol-based Women in Moving Pictures archive. We also regularly digitise tapes for Bristol Archive Records. We were recently approached by author… Continue reading Phil Johnson’s the Wild Bunch VHS video
Re-animating archives: Action Space’s V30H / V60H EIAJ 1/2″ video tapes
One of the most interesting aspects of digitising magnetic tapes is what happens to them after they leave the Greatbear studio. Often transfers are done for private or personal interest, such as listening to the recording of loved ones, or for straightforward archival reasons. Yet in some cases material is re-used in a new creative project, thereby translating… Continue reading Re-animating archives: Action Space’s V30H / V60H EIAJ 1/2″ video tapes
Videokunstarkivet’s Mouldy U-matic Video Tapes
Last year we featured the pioneering Norwegian Videokunstarkivet (Video Art Archive) on the Greatbear tape blog. In one of our most popular posts, we discussed how Videokunstarkivet has created a state of the video art archive using open source software to preserve, manage and disseminate Norway’s video art histories for contemporary audiences and beyond. In… Continue reading Videokunstarkivet’s Mouldy U-matic Video Tapes
Codecs and Wrappers for Digital Video
In the last Greatbear article we quoted sage advice from the International Association of Audiovisual Archivists: ‘Optimal preservation measures are always a compromise between many, often conflicting parameters.’ [1] While this statement is true in general for many different multi-format collections, the issue of compromise and conflicting parameters becomes especially apparent with the preservation of… Continue reading Codecs and Wrappers for Digital Video
IASA – Resources and Research
There are an astonishing amount of online resources relating to the preservation and re-formatting of magnetic tape collections. Whether you need help identifying and assessing your collection, getting to grips with the latest video codec saga or trying to uncover esoteric technical information relating to particular formats, the internet turns up trumps 95% of the time.… Continue reading IASA – Resources and Research
1″ Type A Video Tape – The Old Grey Whistle Test
Sometimes genuine rarities turn up at the Greatbear studio. Our recent acquisition of four reels of ‘missing, believed wiped’ test recordings of cult BBC TV show The Old Grey Whistle Test is one such example. It is not only the content of these recordings that are interesting, but their form too, because they were made… Continue reading 1″ Type A Video Tape – The Old Grey Whistle Test
Digitising small audiovisual collections: making decisions and taking action
Deciding when to digitise your magnetic tape collections can be daunting. The Presto Centre, an advocacy organisation working to help ‘keep audiovisual content alive,’ have a graphic on their website which asks: ‘how digital are our members?’ They chart the different stages of ‘uncertainty,’ ‘awakening’, ‘enlightenment’, ‘wisdom’ and ‘certainty’ that organisations move through as they… Continue reading Digitising small audiovisual collections: making decisions and taking action
Save our Sounds – 2030 and the threat of audiovisual extinction
At the beginning of 2015, the British Library launched the landmark Save Our Sounds project. The press release explained: ‘The nation’s sound collections are under threat, both from physical degradation and as the means of playing them disappear from production. Archival consensus internationally is that we have approximately 15 years in which to save our sound collections… Continue reading Save our Sounds – 2030 and the threat of audiovisual extinction
1/2″ EIAJ video tape – aesthetic glitches
The screening of Julien Temple‘s new film The Clash: New Year’s Day 1977 at New Year put the spotlight on a video format dear to our hearts. Parts of the film were taken from footage shot on EIAJ 1/2″ video tape while Temple was at film school. EIAJ, whose hey day was the late 1960s to late 1970s, was the… Continue reading 1/2″ EIAJ video tape – aesthetic glitches
DVCAM transfers, error correction coding & misaligned machines
This article is inspired by a collection of DVCAM tapes sent in by London-based cultural heritage organisation Sweet Patootee. Below we will explore several issues that arise from the transfer of DVCAM tapes, one of the many Digital Video formats that emerged in the mid-1990s. A second article will follow soon which focuses on the content of… Continue reading DVCAM transfers, error correction coding & misaligned machines
World Day for Audiovisual Heritage – digitisation and digital preservation policy and research
Today, October 27, has been declared World Day for Audiovisual Heritage by UNESCO. We also blogged about it last year. Since 2005, UNESCO have used the landmark to highlight the importance of audiovisual archives to ‘our common heritage’ which contain ‘the primary records of the 20th and 21st centuries.’ Increasingly, however, the day is used to highlight how audio… Continue reading World Day for Audiovisual Heritage – digitisation and digital preservation policy and research
Reports from the ‘bleeding edge’ – The PrestoCentre’s AV Digitisation TechWatch Report #02
The PrestoCentre’s* AV Digitisation and Digital Preservation TechWatch Report #02, published July 2014, introduces readers to what they describe as the ‘bleeding edge’ of AV Digitisation and Archive technology. Written in an engaging style, the report is well worth a read. If you don’t have time, however, here are some choice selections from the report… Continue reading Reports from the ‘bleeding edge’ – The PrestoCentre’s AV Digitisation TechWatch Report #02
Digital preservations, aesthetics and approaches
Digital Preservation 2014, the annual meeting of the National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program and the National Digital Stewardship Alliance is currently taking place in Washington, DC in the US. The Library of Congress’s digital preservation blog The Signal is a regular reading stop for us, largely because it contains articles and interviews that… Continue reading Digital preservations, aesthetics and approaches
D-1, D-2 & D-3: histories of digital video tape
At Greatbear we carefully restore and transfer D-1, D-2, D-3, D-5, D-9 and Digital-S tapes to digital file at archival quality. Early digital video tape development Behind every tape (and every tape format) lie interesting stories, and the technological wizardry and international diplomacy that helped shape the roots of our digital audio visual world are… Continue reading D-1, D-2 & D-3: histories of digital video tape