Homebrew standard video test charts?

Really? Compare the setup for a RCA TK-46 four Plumbicon camera with a single chip CCD. The TK-46 was full of analog circuits in the sync and deflection sections. Install a new set of Plumbicons, and spend a full day, or more setting up the optics, mechanical focus, and a full calibration. Compare that to the time to set up a single chip CCD all digital camera. The TK-46 had multiple supply voltages, filter and regulator boards in the CCU and camera, and multiple fans that could only be run when in standby. That meant that you had to calibrate it, then shut off the cooling and make sure it stayed in calibration.

Even the old TK-16 B&W camera could take three or four hours for a full setup. I worked through the night several times on the pair, along with the camera on our TP-66 Film Chain. At least you could use the standard indian head 35 mm slide for the film chain camera.

--
You can\'t have a sense of humor, if you have no sense!

=A0 London SW

I used to set up cameras for Sony Broadcast in Burbank at the end of the tube days. Back then I set up gamma with the test ramp and used the chip chart as confirmation. The fun part was setting up the masking which really improved the look. It usually took just shy of 2 hours to check the encoder (rarely needed adjustment), set up the proc amp, auto beam, masking and registration. It took 1-2 extra hours if the optics needed to be cleaned as that was a big PITA. You could tell that by how far the black chip was from black.

G=B2

IIRC, standard line up time in the UK for 4 4xtube cameras was 1.5 hours first thing of the day, then a further 1.5 hours before recording. Two engineers involved. That's without doing any actual maintenance or repairs.

--
*What do little birdies see when they get knocked unconscious? *

    Dave Plowman        dave@davenoise.co.uk           London SW
                  To e-mail, change noise into sound.

Why bother? I've seen cheapos for $20 and pro versions for $50.

"In many ways" was the out there, guys. Of course tubes and analog circuits and registration took longer. If you let the computer set up the camera it takes very little time at all. If you do it yourself, it can take a little longer, but the goals you are trying to achieve are the same.

I do remotes and have since the mid 70s. I understand how long some of the older cameras took to calibrate, but if we took that long on each camera when we had a game to air that night, we would not have made air. PC100s, TK 45 and 47, 357s all were tube cameras that we had to have ready to go only a few hours after arrival.

Try surviving a 12 day telethon, 24 hours a day live with three TK-46 studio cameras. Two were on pedestals, & one mounted on a small crane that had failure after failure from running with the fans off, over 90 percent of the time. Luckily, we had a couple TK-44 for parts, and a lot of the high failure items were interchangeable. I had at least 100 electrolytics die during that event along with a handful of transistors, diodes and a few connectors. The 22 * 2 .156" spaced edge connectors had a bad habit of splitting lengthwise, from the floating mounts.

--
You can\'t have a sense of humor, if you have no sense!

As long as we're sharing stories of cameras back in the tube era...

I was once hauling the camera head of a Phillips/Norelco PC-

701 (3-plumbicon film-chain system) across campus in the back of a golf cart. Alas, I was starting up a ramp and those electric cars had quite a jerk when they started, so the camera head dumped right out onto the concrete driveway.

I was mortified and sheepishly went and told my boss what I did. He was much more even tempered and simply said: Well, strip it down and see what damage was done.

I was more than relieved to find that none of the tubes or the prism optics were damaged. (I had removed the lens for transport.) Turns out only the external sheet metal was damaged, so I stripped out all the electronics, and sent the frame and covers to the auto shop for restoration. They did a beautiful job although they couldn't quite match the hammertone silver paint.

I proceeded to replace all the electronics inside the shell including re-connecting all 81 wires from the TV-81 cable. Alas, I didn't thread the cable throught the connector shell before reconnecting everything, so I had to do it twice. I've never made that mistake again. :-)

Better than the engineer working on the similar model in the channel 5 (KTLA Los Angeles) helicopter (one of the first in the market at the time.) He was replacing a plumbicon tube and as he screwed down the big plastic "nut" at the base end of the tube (which secures the tube inside the yoke), he heard that horrible sound of glass cracking and air rushing into the vacuum tube. So he removed the now-cracked tube and got another one and very carefully tightened the nut, only to have the second tube crack! At that point he reputedly went home and probably had a stiff drink.

Bottom line was that there was a burr (manufacturing defect) in the metal ring at the face end of the assembly and it was cracking the tubes. So Norelco fixed the camera and also replaced both of the ruined tubes (since they were also the sole source of the tubes).

I should put some of these stories online. Along with, of course, the famous "blue bananna" story and the "Ready when you are, C.B." story. Is there someplace online that collects these?

This PDF document contains some interesting (horror) stories submitted by video assist operators working on feature film sets:

Why not post more stories in these newsgroups? Usenet is at least publicly archived and likely more permanent than private sites and web fora (forums).

Michael