[opendtv] Re: France bids farewell to SECAM

  • From: "Peter Wilson" <peter.wilson@xxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: <opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
  • Date: Sat, 3 Dec 2011 22:28:56 -0000

Most Wideband Monochrome Tape machines such as RCA, Ampex Quads, IVC9000,
IVC 700/800 and C/B format will happily record SECAM as it is insensitive to
Jitter.

Editing is another matter.

I visited an East Block country in the 1980's and the Channels Chief
engineer told me a funny story about having to evaluate a Russian Ampex Quad
rip off. The Timebase corrector was so bad that jitter increased when it was
switched on. The machine was locked in a cupboard and the report in a locked
filing cabined in a basement on Alpha Centauri.

BR,
Peter

-----Original Message-----
From: opendtv-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:opendtv-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On
Behalf Of Cliff Benham
Sent: 03 December 2011 21:03
To: opendtv@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [opendtv] Re: France bids farewell to SECAM

I found an Ampex brochure for the VR-3000 portable recorder which states 
NTSC/PAL/SECAM capability.

I think there must have been full sized studio SECAM recorders as well.

I asked this question on the Ampex Recordist List and got the following 
answer:

"SECAM can be directly recorded on tape... but it's a major pain to edit
because you can't edit on frame lines.  Pretty much all production work
in SECAM countries is done in PAL and conversion is done for broadcast
since it's only a minor change to the chroma encoding and the luminance
stays the same."

I'd always heard SECAM discussed as a transmission standard only and not 
for production.

Cliff

On 12/3/2011 8:17 AM, Mark Schubin wrote:
> A VHS recorder does not record NTSC, PAL, OR SECAM. Color processing is
> used before the recording. The same is true of V2000.
>
> Perhaps I should have been clearer: Has anyone ever used a
> DIRECT-recording SECAM recorder? That's what broadcasters had to use --
> and COULD, in NTSC and PAL.
>
> TTFN,
> Mark
>
>
> On 12/3/2011 8:14 AM, Olivier Houot wrote:
>> Mark shubin wrote:
>>> Not the ONLY problem, I'm afraid.
>>> Has anyone ever used a SECAM recorder?
>> Hi Mark,
>>
>> I've used some sparingly, i never owned one personally, but my parents
>> do (i personnaly only started to record video after the advent of the
>> digital area).
>>
>> There were hot discussions on some french forums regarding the way SECAM
>> was (mis) treated in the VHS format (with a simple division by 4 of the
>> FM chroma frequency). As an alternative recording format, MESECAM can be
>> used.
>>
>> I never set my expectations very high for VHS, so with that
>> preconception, i would say it does the job even in SECAM, especially
>> when starting from a good source (analog satellite SECAM broadcasts),
>> and viewed on a relatively small screen (55 cm). My parents never rented
>> films so i cannot judge how SECAM fared in the area of recorded movies.
>> I must admit i never had a critical look on this as i was not very
>> interested in this format.
>>
>>
>> I once (1986) recorded a film (from a terrestrial TV broadcast) onto a
>> V2000 VCR (i remember it was Polanski's "Dance of the vampires") and was
>> pleasantly surprised by the result, even though V2000 is supposed to
>> have a smaller bandwidth than VHS. But then again, it was not on a very
>> big screen.
>>
>>
>> It is not clear VHS problems can really be tied to the video standard in
>> itself. I am also thinking that, in formats like SVHS, it would have
>> been possible to do better with SECAM: S video separates luma and
>> chroma, but still transmits two chroma components simutaneously, which
>> means you need to modulate them somehow on a carrier. With SECAM, you
>> only need to transmit one component at any given moment, so you could do
>> away with some modulation/demodulation steps and gain in quality . I
>> doubt this was ever done, though. Also, there should be ways to take
>> advantage of the fact that SECAM chroma is already in FM format, which
>> is better suited to tape.
>>
>> This is unlikely to happen now, anyway :-)
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
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