tape blog

Philips VCR – the first home video cassette recorder

DAT restoration: The High – Martin Hannett Sessions

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… →

Museum of Magnetic Sound Recording – interview with Martin Theophilus

We recently spoke to Martin Theophilus, Executive Director of the Museum of Magnetic Sound Recording based in Austin, Texas.

While the Greatbear studio is a kind of museum – it is full of old machines that we maintain and preserve – we wanted to know more about this ‘proper’ Magnetic Sound Recording Museum… →

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.. →

Pre-Figurative Digital Preservation

How do you start preserving digital objects if your institution or organisation has little or no capacity to do so?

Digital preservation can at first be bit-part and modular. You can build your capacity one step at a time. Once you’ve taken a few steps you can then put them together,.. →

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.. →

Revealing Histories: North Staffordshire

Digitising a unique collection of ¼ inch reel-to-reel audio tape recordings, made in the 1970s and ’80s for BBC Radio Stoke… →

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.. →

Spoking – Treating and Assessing Magnetic Tape

Assessment and treatment is an important part of Greatbear’s audiovisual preservation work. Even before a tape is played back we need to ensure it is in optimum condition. Sometimes it is possible to make a diagnosis through visual assessment alone. A tape we received recently, for example,.. →

The Containers – late ’70s new wave lives again

It might be a familiar story to some people. At one point, say the late 1970s, you were in your early 20s and the main songwriter in a post-punk/ new wave band. You tried really hard to get it off the ground: moved to London, met the right people, played several memorable gigs.

You worked with.. →

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?.. →

Monstrous Regiment – Audio Cassette Digitisation

Monstrous Regiment were one of many trailblazing feminist theatre companies active in the 1970s-1990s. They were established as a collective very much built around performers, both (professional) actors such as Mary McCusker and (professional) musicians such as Helen Glavin.

Between 1975-1993.. →

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… →

Deacon Blue Live – Betamax PCM recordings

Greatbear exist to make obsolete tape recordings accessible in the digital age. We often work with artists and record labels who use our services to digitise back catalogues and previously unreleased material… →

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.. →

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… →

The Genesis Archive – ¼” reel-to-reel tapes transferred

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.. →

Going CD-R-less – digital file-based delivery

Often customers ask us to deliver their transferred sound files on CD, in effect an audio CD-R of the transfer.

Although these recordings can still be high resolution there remains a world of difference—in an archival sense—between a CD-R, burnt on a computer drive (however high the quality.. →

Brian Eno Archive Video