Timeline Analog 3. John Buck

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СКАЧАТЬ Ruxto-Cue.

      BARKER

      While engineers and scientists formed the initial teams to build the next generation editing systems, a new group rose to sell the systems to an often sceptical marketplace. A future editing 'evangelist' graduated from business school and moved into post-production. Bob Slutske became director of marketing at the Hollywood based post-production company, Compact Video.

      Compact had every piece of equipment you could imagine. It had a 16mm lab, offline and video editing for audio and video, satellites and videotape. It was a great place to learn about what clients wanted in videotape and in electronic editing.

      The recently unemployed Ron Barker decided to tour Compact Video and other West Coast facilities to see where the market was headed and what opportunities were present.

       I was unable to get access to Adrian Ettlinger’s system and then Clark Higgins organized a meeting for me with Coppola in his San Francisco office the following week, where I found Francis to be uninterested in the details but committed to using technology in film making. Clark then took me over to Lucasfilm, where he had worked but they weren’t saying a word about what they were doing.

       It was obvious to me after the fact finding mission, that the creative people wanted nothing to do with the strict regimes of linear editing defined by timecode and conversely, the engineers and online editors were primarily focused on developing the conventional 'linear systems'. It was then that I realized I was onto something. That I had something to contribute to editing.

      On his return east, Barker evolved his editing system concept further, using experiences from his wide and varied engineering career. However it was a different activity that provided the catalyst. The tactile nature of film editing reminded him of the intuitive control of the remote control model helicopters he had flown. Barker imagined a machine that was the polar opposite of a CMX linear system.

      It was to be a system that provided an editor with visual cues and yet was driven by highly specialised hand controls. After his ‘eureka’ moment Barker worked from a spare office at equipment maker Adams-Smith.

       They lent me a room next to their conference area for six weeks and my secretary Beverley and a few others who I had convinced to come across from BTX worked away. All I had in those days was a Betamax machine and some tiny televisions that I bought from the Sears department store.

       You see I chose those decks because the Betamax machines had a remarkable feature that VHS decks and most professional systems didn’t have, they had a still frame ability. I thought if you could use that still frame as a method of identifying a clip whether that was the in and out frames or a method of sorting clips. I wasn’t exactly sure.

      HESTER AND IVES

      Despite the growing advances in video hardware, most editing was still carried out in the analog domain on turn key systems. Jerry Hester had completed EECO's new timecode based editing system, the Intelligent Video Editing System (IVES).

      Having been built from scratch to exploit three microprocessors, the IVES (above) differed from many of its competitors because it was 'absolutely frame accurate' and used a new generation user interface.

       IVES integrated into the edit controller the timecode reader/generators and all of the common timecode functions that needed to be performed prior to editing. It had special "macro keys" which, after being hit three times, initiated processes like making a B roll copy of rushes on an available VTR, with or without the same timecode.

       I attempted to simplify all of the separate operations that drove people mad in edit bays when preparing tapes for an editing session using timecode. Operations like setting up the timecode generator and connecting everything correctly, selecting the channel to record timecode on, rewinding the tapes, placing the deck into record mode and starting the generator, etc.

       "Striping" blank tapes with black and timecode and adding timecode to source tapes were the two most common timecode functions performed prior to editing using timecode. With IVES, you could simply push one button and it would take over to rewind a blank tape, play it from the head, back-time the timecode generator and then go into record mode and begin striping it with black and timecode. While this was happening, you could then add a different timecode to a source tape.

       Other "Macro" timecode functions included adding timecode to a source tape while also making a copy with the same timecode and adding different timecodes to two tapes at the same time. No use wasting time. All of these timecode functions were possible because IVES contained two independent timecode reader/generators and built in A/V routing systems.

       But they were hidden away from the editor. After all, the people editing just wanted to edit, not get caught up with the technical aspect of preparing the tapes for editing, or dealing with color framing, timecode and syncing issues.

      For actual editing tasks. the IVES had a rotary knob with a centre detent like that found on a Sony VO-5850. The knob was mounted on a horizontal slide which allowed it to move it left or right and in turn select the Source or Record deck for control. In addition, the knob could be pushed down to initiate an Edit Preview. Other features included a built in black burst generator, programmable A/V facer and mic/line mixer.

      But most importantly what IVES didn't have was or need any adjustments to tweak in order to repeatedly perform frame accurate editing. It just worked time after time after time.

      Hester had only just returned to California after the launch of IVES at NAB when he took a call from a headhunter acting for Convergence Corporation.

       I was flattered that Convergence wanted to hire me and I ended up at Convergence's corporate offices getting a big sales pitch from Julian Hanson and George Bates. But I think what Convergence was really up to was to simply get me to leave EECO, because if I left EECO, so too would have most of the ideas and enthusiasm for the IVES and that could have ended or stalled its continued development.

      FRIENDLY’S DINER

      Ron Barker quit his temporary office at Adams-Smith and moved home to research editing. He needed to raise money to go any further with the project and arranged to meet Chet Schuler who he knew had managed to get the Masscomp Computer project bankrolled.

      The two met at Friendly's Diner in Sudbury, Massachusetts. Barker recalls:

       Chet seemed like a very competent engineer and he had raised money. He convinced me he could help, so I asked him to put a financial plan together and manage the engineering team as well.

      Schuler remembers the first discussions.

       Ron had become an expert at his hobby of building and flying model helicopters and he had recognised that video editing was terribly cumbersome and counter intuitive and that if one tried to fly a helicopter by keyboard (for instance) it would be a complete disaster. He surmised that this created a unique opportunity for us to revolutionize the video editing process by inventing a more user-friendly product.

       I came from an aerospace and computer technical/engineering background and had very little СКАЧАТЬ