Kinescope

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A General Precision Laboratories (GPL) PA-302 kinescope from about 1950-1955. His film camera , which was attached to the top of the case, used Kodak optical components .

Kinescope , also abbreviated as kine and called telerecording in Great Britain , is the recording of a television program on photographic film through a lens that is focused on the screen of a video monitor .

The term can be used for the recording process itself (one mounted in front of a video monitor and in which the equipment used therefor refresh rate adjusted with 16 mm film , or 35 mm film -working film camera ), or used a film prepared by the method. Before videotape was introduced in 1956, kinescopes were the only viable way to archive live televised broadcasts .

Originally the term referred to the cathode ray tube used in the television set , which was so named in 1929 by the inventor Vladimir K. Zworykin . Hence the full name for the recordings was kinescope films or kinescope recordings . The RCA was granted trademark rights for the term in 1932 before voluntarily releasing the term for the public domain in 1950 .

history

Single image from a kinescope image from 1949.

In 1931 experiments were carried out in General Electric laboratories in Schenectady to capture still and moving images from television programs.

Before the BBC temporarily stopped its television service because of the outbreak of World War II from 1939, it appears to have experimented with filming content displayed on a television screen. BBC director Cecil Madden later recalled having filmed a production of The Scarlet Pimpernel in this way, the film negatives being burned at the request of director Alexander Korda , who owned the film rights to the book and apparently considered it infringed should be. However, there are no written records for a BBC television production of The Scarlet Pimpernel from 1936 to 1939. In the 1930s, some live broadcasts of Paul Nipkow television from Nazi Germany were recorded by pointing a 35mm camera at a television screen, most of the surviving recordings of live television programs from the Third Reich , such as the 1936 Summer Olympics (not to be confused with the film material that was recorded by Leni Riefenstahl for her film Olympia from the same event), some Nazi party rallies , or official state visits (such as by Benito Mussolini ), however, the interim film process , in which the event only started directly 35mm film and then broadcast as a television signal from an outside broadcast vehicle located at the venue with a delay of only two minutes .

According to a film produced by the RCA in 1949, silent films were made from early experimental television broadcasts in the early 1930s. The films were filmed on television monitors at eight frames per second, making movements less fluid. By the mid-1940s, the RCA and NBC refined the filming process, including the inclusion of sound. Movements were reproduced more fluidly, but the images were still quite blurry.

By early 1946, television cameras were mounted on American radio guided missiles to aid in remote control of them. Films were made from the transmitted images, which were used to evaluate the target and the performance of the rocket.

The first known telerecording from the United Kingdom , which still exists today, shows an appearance by the singer Adelaide Hall at the RadiOlympia in October 1947. There are still recordings of the wedding of Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip from the following month and numerous productions from the early 1950s, such as It is Midnight, Dr Schweitzer , The Lady from the Sea and the first two episodes of The Quatermass Experiment , have outlasted time in varying degrees of quality.

Worldwide program distribution

Before satellite communications , kinescopes were used to broadcast live events, such as a royal wedding, as quickly as possible to other Commonwealth countries where television channels already existed. A Royal Air Force plane brought telerecording from the UK to Canada, where it was broadcast over the entire North American network. A second kinescope was made in San Francisco for Australia and flown to Sydney for broadcast there . After it was originally transmitted with 405 lines , copied to Kinescope, scanned with 525 lines, copied again to Kinescope, and then scanned with 625 lines for local broadcasting, the quality of the image material that arrived in Australia had dropped significantly, but it could but only broadcast 18 hours after the event.

Even after the introduction of videotape , the BBC and ITV produced black and white kinescopes of selected programs for international sale until they were recorded in color on videotapes in the early 1970s. Most, if not all, of the 405-line videotapes have long since been erased, as have many from the advent of 625-line video to the dawn of color television . Accordingly, most of the pre-color television programs that still exist today are in the form of telerecordings. Some episodes from Doctor Who and most of the first series from Adam Adamant Lives! were deliberately recorded as a kinescope and not on videotape for easier editing.

"Kinephoto" camera

In September 1947, Eastman Kodak, in collaboration with DuMont Laboratories, Inc. and NBC, introduced the "Eastman Television Recording Camera" for recording images on a television screen under the brand name "Kinephoto". Before videotape was introduced in 1956, kinescopes were the only viable option of archiving television programs broadcast on television , broadcasting live broadcasts from one television network to transmitters on another network, or broadcasting a live broadcast on another television channel with a time delay. Although the method involved a noticeable loss of quality, it was used for all types of television programs, from fictional dramas to news programs.

NBC , CBS , and DuMont recorded their kinescopes mainly in New York City , while ABC made them in Chicago . Until 1951 NBC and CBS sent each week about 1,000 kinescope copies to her in the United States distributed Affiliates , and by 1955 this number increased for CBS to 2,500 per week. In 1954, the television industry's film consumption eventually exceeded the aggregate consumption of all Hollywood studios .

"Hot Kinescope"

After the network of coaxial cables and microwave radio systems , the programs on the West Coast had been transferred, completed in September 1951 put CBS and NBC in 1952, the "Hot kinescope" method, in which programs of New York transferred to the West, there in Los Angeles from two kinescope apparatuses to a 35mm - negative and a 16-mm - reversal film copies (the latter served as a backup), quickly developed , and three hours late from Los Angeles in the Pacific Time zone aired.

In September 1956, NBC began producing "hot kines" of some of its color programs using the lenticular process . In contrast to color negative film , the process enabled rapid development to be carried out using established methods through the use of conventional black and white film .

Machining with two systems

Even after the introduction of the quadruplex video recorder system in 1956, kinescopes continued to be used by television broadcasters in the "double system" method of processing video tapes. At that time, no slowed-down sequences or individual images could be obtained directly from a video tape , so the unedited video tapes were copied onto kinescopes and processed in the conventional way. The edited kinescope then served as a template for the master video tape. More than 300 series produced by television networks , such as Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In , have used this technique for over twelve years.

Alternatives to kinescope

Broadcasting of 35mm film

In the early years of television, television programs recorded directly with film cameras (without kinescopes) were also used, although these were generally viewed as inferior to live broadcasts because of their comparatively low budget and lack of immediacy .

In 1951, the lead actors and producers of the television series I Love Lucy , Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball decided to record the series directly on 35mm film with the three-camera system in Hollywood instead of broadcasting it live. Live broadcasts from Los Angeles were usually performed live in the late afternoon for the Eastern Time Zone and played three hours later for the Pacific Time Zone by a kinescope, but Desilu Productions wanted to forego the use of kinescopes for I Love Lucy because of the associated loss of quality.

Electronicam

The DuMont Television Network program director James L. Caddigan developed Electronicam as an alternative . Another 35 mm film camera was built into the live TV camera, with both cameras sharing a lens and thus taking their pictures from the same angle. Settings requested by the director were electronically marked by an Electronicam technician via a switch during the live broadcast . The film segments from different cameras marked in this way could later be reassembled in post-production in order to restore the live program. The "Classic 39" episodes of The Honeymooners were recorded with Electronicams (as was the daily 1954-55 series Les Paul & Mary Ford At Home ), but since a VCR system was usable just a year later, the Electronicam system could do it never spread widely.

Videotape

In 1951, singer Bing Crosby's company , Bing Crosby Enterprises , produced the first experimental video recordings on magnetic tape . However, poor image quality and very high tape speeds made them unusable for practical use. In 1956, Ampex introduced the first commercial quadruplex video recorder system , which was followed by a color-supported model in 1958. With high quality and instant playback at much lower prices, the magnetic tapes used in quadruplex systems are quickly replacing kinescopes as the preferred method of recording television programs.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ James zu Hüningen: Kinescope . Lexicon of film terms. November 10, 2013. Retrieved May 30, 2016.
  2. ^ Albert Abramson: Zworykin, Pioneer of Television ( English ). University of Illinois Press, 1995, ISBN 0-252-02104-5 , p. 84 (Accessed June 6, 2016).
  3. ^ TV Recording Systems . In: Popular Mechanics . tape 99 , no. 4 , April 1953, p. 227 .
  4. ↑ David Morgan: 1960 Series Game Found in Bing Crosby's Wine Cellar ( English ) CBS Interactive Inc. September 24, 2010. Archived from the original on May 24, 2016. Retrieved June 6, 2016.
  5. ^ AES Historical Committee Success Story - Ampex Corporation ( English ) Audio Engineering Society. Archived from the original on September 8, 2015. Retrieved June 6, 2016.
  6. ^ RCA Surrenders Rights to Four Trade Marks . In: Radio Age . tape 10 , no. 1 , October 1950, p. 21 .
  7. ↑ Schenectady-to-Leipzig Television a Success; Movie Also Made of Images Sent by Radio . In: The New York Times . February 13, 1931, p. 15 .
  8. ↑ How a kinescope is Created ( English ) NBC . 1949. Retrieved June 22, 2016.
  9. ↑ Todd Fuller: Sitcoms Online - Mister Peepers - Season Two DVD Review ( English ) Sitcoms Online. December 1, 2008. Retrieved June 22, 2016.
  10. ↑ (1/3) RARE 1949 NBC TV 10th ANNIVERSARY SPECIAL - WNBT Channel 4 New York (WNBC) ( English ) 1949.
  11. ↑ James LH Peck: Doom on the Wing . In: Popular Science . 148, No. 2, February 1946, pp. 84-86. Retrieved June 6, 2016.
  12. ↑ Transatlantic Roller Coaster Designed to Bomb USA In: Popular Science . tape 151 , no. 4 , October 1947, p. 111 .
  13. ^ Albert Abramson: The History of Television, 1942 to 2000 ( English ). McFarland, 2003, ISBN 978-0-7864-1220-4 , p. 9 (accessed June 6, 2016).
  14. ↑ Robert Shagawat: Television recording - The origins and earliest surviving live TV broadcast recordings . In: Early Electronic Television . Early Television Museum. Retrieved June 6, 2016.
  15. ^ Wesley S. Griswold: Why TV Is Going Movie-Mad . In: Popular Science . 166, No. 2, February 1955, p. 118. Retrieved June 6, 2016.
  16. ↑ Tape Recording Technology ( English ) tvhandbook.com. Archived from the original on June 3, 2004. Retrieved June 6, 2016.
  17. ↑ a b c Stewart Wolpin: The Race to Video ( English ) American Heritage. 1994. Archived from the original on April 4, 2011. Retrieved June 6, 2016.
  18. ^ Radio & TV: Coast to Coast . In: Time . August 13, 1951.
  19. ↑ Arthur Schneider: Jump Cut !: Memoirs of a Pioneer Television Editor ( English ). McFarland, 1997, ISBN 0-7864-0345-4 , pp. 23-32 (accessed June 6, 2016).
  20. ^ Albert Abramson: The History of Television, 1942 to 2000 ( English ). McFarland, 2003, ISBN 0-7864-1220-8 , p. 48 (accessed June 6, 2016).
  21. ↑ Technical Considerations ( English ) Showcase Productions, Inc .. Archived from the original on May 15, 2008. Retrieved June 6, 2016.
  22. ^ Albert Abramson: The History of Television, 1942 to 2000 ( English ). McFarland, 2003, ISBN 0-7864-1220-8 , p. 67 (accessed June 6, 2016).
  23. ↑ Arthur Schneider: Jump Cut !: Memoirs of a Pioneer Television Editor ( English ). McFarland, 1997, ISBN 0-7864-0345-4 , pp. 105-106, 134-135 (accessed June 6, 2016).
  24. ↑ Leigh Allen: Filming the 'I Love Lucy' Show . In: American Cinematographer . January 1952. Retrieved June 6, 2016.
  25. ^ A b Albert Abramson: The History of Television, 1942 to 2000 ( English ). McFarland, 2003, ISBN 978-0-7864-1220-4 , p. 66 (accessed June 6, 2016).
  26. ^ Albert Abramson: The History of Television, 1942 to 2000 ( English ). McFarland, 2003, ISBN 978-0-7864-1220-4 , p. 23 (Retrieved June 6, 2016).