This 1960s BBC Television training film looks at different ways of editing video tapes. It begins with a simple introduction to a video tape recorder and how the vision and sound heads are not congruent on film. This is followed by different means of overcoming the sound advance problem while editing, including cutting while there are fades, how to cut films properly when this is not the case, and electronic editing. A variety of vintage equipment is shown, including what appears to be an Ampex VR2000 Quad machine. (EMI tape stock is shown in use in the film; from the 1950s to 1981 EMI produced magnetic tape and sold them both as blank tapes and prerecorded tapes in a large number of formats.) One eerie note about this film, is that video tape was expensive back in the early era, and as a result the BBC often re-used videotapes; this resulted in the loss of a substantial portion of the BBC’s shows from 1967 and 1978.

0:08 a BBC production team working on television programming, 0:51 A BBC television Training Film “Video Tape Editing”, 1:09 a 2″ video tape recorder (probably Ampex VR2000 or VR3000), 1:42 a studio audio tape recorder (possibly a Studer master recording unit, somewhat similar looking to a Nagra portable recording unit) 1:52 a close up of the video tape recorder, 2:18 close ups of the master erase, recording, and vision recording heads, 2:41 the sound recording head, 2:53 animation of how the vision recording and replay head works, 3:13 animation of the elements of a tape, 4:06 editor cutting a tape and applying a solution to a piece of film, 4:24 summary footage of what has been covered so far, 5:23 two men editing a tape, 5:47 animation of joining two pieces of film with a fade out-fade in followed by how this looks in practice, 6:50 animation of a straight cut of two sequence where the sound head is incongruous followed by how this looks in practice, 8:16 animation of how two scenes can be joined with sound and vision changing simultaneously, 9:00 summary footage of what has just been covered in overcoming the sound advance problem, 9:46 sound and vision signals of three different shots and how to cut it properly, 11:00 director ordering a retake of a shot, 12:49 the retaken shot of a man in a historical costume, 13:15 the editor making cuts in the film and begins the editing process, 14:58 close up of a machine that simplifies edits that can be controlled by the director, 16:00 director and his team watching the recording of a scene where a recording is interrupted for a costume break, 17:45 the edited scene of a woman using magic to change her outfit quickly, 18:35 overview of the editing team’s office, 19:03 technician places a new tape onto the video tape recorder, 19:35 technician operates video tape recorder machine for electronic editing, 20:12 summary footage of what has been covered so far, 21:56 credits, produced and directed by Ian Curtis, 22:28 distributed by Time Life Films.

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