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Laughably OT: Can you ID an old graphics system?
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In NY City in the 1990’s Flame Artists rate was $800 – $1200 a day – just for the freelancer. Those days are over.
I have no idea of who actually uses Quantel Rio’s and Clipsters today. I certainly never see them. And back in the day, almost no one ever saw a Davinci Resolve, unless you were in a handful of color correction houses. Today, everyone and his mother has Davinci Resolve.
Bob Zelin
Bob Zelin
Rescue 1, Inc.
bobzelin@icloud.com -
I will let you know that my mother DOES NOT have Davinci Resolve. You are SO WRONG!
☺
I don’t think she even uses the Resolve carpet cleaner…
Shane
Little Frog Post
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def -
Whilst we’re travelling down memory lane…..
Did anyone else use a Paltex Esprit Edit controller in their linear suites? I joined a broadcaster in the early nineties that had bought one for some obscure reason. Coming from Sony 9000’s it was an absolute ball ache to use.
I think we had to export EDL’s in CMX via a floppy disk to a PC to edit every time we needed to ripple the record time!
(Or maybe I’ve made that up, it been a while!) I can still hear the sound of that solid metal shuttle controller grinding away whilst editing….. -
you see, Neil and Shane –
if you would JUST STOP THINKING, and just use Apple FCP X, Apple Compressor, Apple Motion, and an iMac Pro – you would NEVER need anything else for the rest of your life (until Apple releases “the next thing”) – and everything would just work, you would never complain about things not working, and you could move on with your life (like using RESOLVE carpet cleaner, and the other important things in life)☺
What I find funny about this forum is that “we” have been using Apple products, and have been Apple “loyal” before these “kids” were even born. And they are trying to tell us about “oh, you should use Apple only”. I doubt they even know who Steve Jobs is !
Bob Zelin
Bob Zelin
Rescue 1, Inc.
bobzelin@icloud.com -
[Neil Sinclair] “Did anyone else use a Paltex Esprit Edit controller in their linear suites?”
My mom.
😉
Shane
Little Frog Post
Read my blog, Little Frog in High Def -
Paltex not Playtex !!! ……… I thank you, I’m here all week!!’
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I used the Paltex controlling a 3-machine U-Matic suite for quite a few years.
The edl system meant you didn’t have to hand write the Time Code numbers. -
In 1980, I worked as a tech for National Video Center on 42nd St. in NY City. They had Paltex editor controllers with their huge GVG300 switchers and 1″ VTR’s. As the industry moved forward, I would see their “senior editors” say all kinds of bad things about CMX, Sony, GVG, etc. because they KNEW Paltex, and everything else “sucked”. I was amazed by this attitude back then.
As time went on, I observed the same behavior of editors (to this day). GVG and Sony suck, because “real editors” use CMX. Then AVID sucked because real editors used linear video to “on line” with. (and during the linear days, every new VTR format sucked because nothing was as good as whatever they owned at the time). The linear editors refused to learn AVID, because the AVID editors were not REAL editors. Then AVID took over, and FCP sucked. Because the AVID editors did not want to learn FCP. And then Premiere, and now Resolve and FCP X.
It is a common behavior that I have seen throughout my career, after a certain age. “I know how to use XYZ, and everything else thats new SUCKS and I am not going to learn how to use it – why – because it sucks”.
To me, that is the real laughable behavior I have seen over the decades. Refusal to learn because “what I know is the best” – because they can’t be bothered to learn anything new. This certainly applies to the IT directors I meet to this day.
Bob Zelin
Bob Zelin
Rescue 1, Inc.
bobzelin@icloud.com -
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=031vKBPk5eA
I cut my teeth editing reel-to-reel EIAJ half-inch black and white RTR in junior high and high school.
Started at this current job shooting on Sony M3’s with portable decks, and editing 3/4-inch to one-inch Sony with a Grass 100 switcher and an EECO EMME edit controller… a beautiful machine in appearance as well as performance. The 3/4 source decks gave way to betacam then beta SP, about ten tears behind everybody else… and then came the Grass 200 switcher and a bit later, my best friend in the world, the Pinnacle Alladin. Oh, the fun times spent with that box, I’m not kidding. I made that thing dance, sing and do the dishes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=koP0OiVZq68
The betacam Sp decks were slowly replaced by DVCPro, then DVC Pro HD. It’s only in the last handful of years our shop went essentially tapeless with P2 cameras and AJA disk-based recording/playback units.
To the question; I believe strongly that learning linear editing first is the best grounding for learning NLE editing, even if you just do that for one day. Most of the skeuomorphics and interface metaphors of our current editing interfaces come from that world.
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Ah! DF/X Composium…
I saw one at Post Effects in Chicago around 1989 or 90. Mike Fayette was a very kind host to my older brother and I.
My boss in Orlando had used one, and wanted us to buy the used one from Century III in late 1997. I admired them, but I tried to explain that you could do everything it did with After Effects, for a lot less money. The boss wasn’t happy with my reasoning. Thankfully, I think that person is out of the business now.
Other weird systems:
Colorgraphics ArtStar 3D Plus
Colorgraphics DP 4:2:2 and DP-Max
Dubner CBG (Huge at ABC Network, (See 20/20) and Video Post and Transfer I believe)Ampex had the first commercial paint system called AVA. (Ampex Video Art) There is a tangential link to Pixar there.
Never used, but saw Aurora paint systems at CNN Center in Atlanta in the late 1990s(?)
Aurora became Chyron Liberty Paint on SGI, and that became something else…
There was III or Triple I , first on Symbolics, and later on SGI. There’s a Disney Tron link there.
Perhaps the Computer History Museum could do a wing of video graphics systems?
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