[sdiy] A Frequency Standard for Poor People?

[Colin Hinz]

On Wed, 17 Dec 2003, Magnus Danielson replied to Grant Richter:

> > The studio I worked at had an oven stabilized crystal master synch box just
> > chock full of TTL chips (which Dale built). Boy did it get warm too. The
> > off-site cameras were line locked. Then the tapes were played on 3/4"
> > U-matics which had a phase lock input that would servo the head motors to
> > the master synch box. This only gave vertical lock but not horizontal, so
> > you could crossfade between cameras but not tape decks.
>
> Indeed how classic analog setup works. TV-production is seriously
> synchronous production. Everything is locked, and when it isn't
> there is a big hazzel until you "got it". Going digital, compressed
> and all that solves exactly nothing of those problems, just helps
> you to forget to do the "right stuff" and you end up with a bigger
> mess than ever... (sigh!).

I take it you're not a big fan of frame add/drop then? :=)

One nice thing about digital -- the format conversions are much saner.
(And yes, it's easier to do stupid things, too, but that's getting
farther off-topic to be sure...)

- Colin Hinz
  Toronto, Canada