Interview with the Institut National de l'Audiovisuel (INA) (part 1/2)

I. Transfer and Cleaning of Tapes


PACKED: What types of tape do you deal with at the INA?

Gérard Mathiot: We deal with 2” tapes³, with 1” type B⁴, 1” type C⁵, U-matic 3/4"⁶ and BVU⁷, with Betacam⁸ and Betacam SP⁹, and we also have film and transfers coming from telecine¹⁰. We possess no amateur formats such as Betamax¹¹ or VHS¹² as the INA’s collections are made up of French television archives and professional formats have always been used. Our shops with all the cassettes are situated in several different places; the main site is about 60 kilometres from here. Videotapes are stored at 18°C, and film at 12°C.


PACKED: What is the first stage of the transfer and safeguarding of these tapes?

Gérard Mathiot: As soon as we receive a tape, the first step is to clean it. We have a room dedicated to cleaning in which we have several RTI¹³ cleaning machines for 1” types B and C, ¾” (Umatic) and Betacam (1/2”).


A RTI-cleaningmachine for ¾” U-matic cassettes. (Photo: clubic.com)

In these machines, the tape runs in front of metallic parts we call knives, which remove from the tape particles that have a tendency to be unstable¹⁴. Then the tape runs over pieces of paper that wipe away dust so that it does not impede with reading the tape. This is done at least once before each transfer, because if tape doesn’t go through the cleaner it is even less likely to be readable. In this way we know if a tape has to go to the “clinic”, or even straight to the oven.


The cleaningpaper and the knives of the RTI-cleaningmachine. (Photo: clubic.com)


The cleaningpaper and the knives of the RTI-cleaningmachine. (Photo: clubic.com)

PACKED: What is “the clinic”?

Gérard Mathiot: "The clinic” is the name we give to the room where we restore the most heavily damaged tapes. It is equipped in the same way as the other transfer rooms but the operator is also a maintenance technician, because at any moment he must be able to adjust the machine. These technicians transfer damaged tapes and they are also responsible for the maintenance of the machines used in the clinic.

Before working for the SNC, I was a maintenance technician myself and I chose two people from the INA’s general maintenance service who repaired this type of equipment to join my service. The advantage of having technicians from the central service is that they are able to react very swiftly as soon as a problem occurs, and what’s more they are working on machines they know very well through using them every day for transfer operations. This proximity is essential, because it allows us to act immediately on any problems with the equipment. Indeed, repairing and maintaining equipment is a day-to-day activity. At “the clinic” we have daily problems with machines becoming clogged, with components and mechanisms needing to be adjusted. This is to be expected because the cassettes we transfer here are damaged, and may in turn damage the equipment. That is why it is essential for us to have at least two people who are capable of cleaning the machines and above all of repairing them and doing the necessary maintenance and adjustments.

When a cassette arrives at “the clinic”, it usually means that its characteristics have evolved over time and no longer correspond to those recommended by the manufacturer when the recording was initially made. The only way we have of playing the cassette is to adapt the characteristics of the machine to those of the tape. The technician can intervene through electronic and mechanical adjustments, that is to say of the guide flanges and the different systems that allow us to adjust the tape’s track. All these adjustments are made almost real-time, and they may differ slightly with each cassette. This is why all the players here are open, and the mechanisms and electronics are laid bare. A transfer might take place normally for a few minutes, before the tape clogs the player once more and we have to intervene before the transfer can continue. Because our vocation is to safeguard material in its entirety, we then edit a montage of all the sequences. The duration of the transfer is much greater than the real duration of the material: for an hour-long programme, an entire day of different types of work and processing may be necessary to transfer the tape.


A ¾” U-matic-player that is used in 'the clinic'. (Photo: clubic.com)


PACKED: At which moment is the oven used?

Gérard Mathiot: The main problem with a tape is running it. If a tape can be run through the player, even if it clogs after a while, it can be saved. It might take a very long time, but it will be possible. However, with certain tapes, it is not even possible to get them to run, and this is when we use the baking technique.

We chose a type of oven that is manufactured by a German company, and also used by the CNRS¹⁵. We noticed that it is a very efficient technique for processing tapes that stick and clog. We established a protocol from research accomplished in collaboration with the CNRS with which we heat the tapes for 15 hours to 50° at a humidity of 30%. A water tank that is part of the oven controls this. The temperature rises from 20 degrees to 50 degrees in two hours after which the temperature remains constant for 15 hours. Then the tapes are cooled from 50 degrees to 20 degrees over two hours to avoid any thermal shock. The humidity is maintained at 30% during the whole process. Finally, we clean the tapes with the machine and take them to the clinic very quickly because the benefits produced by the oven never last very long.


The oven that is used to 'bake' the 'difficult' videotapes.(Photo: clubic.com)


PACKED: Does this procedure damage the tapes?

Gérard Mathiot: No. However, it must be said that no real research has been done to find out if this process has an effect on the tapes in the long term. But as our priority is to save the content of the tapes and the cassettes and not the objects themselves, then this is not of great importance to us. In any case, it is a technique that offers major advantages for the most difficult tapes. It improves RF;¹⁶ it reduces the clogging effect and the Sticky Shed Syndrome even more¹⁷. It helps us to clean cassettes that stick in the cleaning machine. For a large collection like that of the INA, it is an investment that has paid off, as we have been able to transfer cassettes that otherwise would have been lost. Thanks to this technique, the failure rate with Umatic ¾”, the most difficult tapes we have to process, is less than one per thousand cassettes.


PACKED: Do you sometimes get tapes than cannot be played, even after being processed in the oven?

Gérard Mathiot: Yes. We will have to use particular methods for certain highly damaged tapes. For example, we sometimes process tapes from the French overseas territories¹⁸. Because these regions are in the tropics, these tapes have often been stored in very hot and humid climates, which are the worst possible conditions for videotape storage. They can be very mouldy, which not only prevents them from being played but also obliges us to use different cleaning procedures due to the potential dangers of this mould for our technicians. At present, we have stopped safeguarding these cassettes while we prepare a safeguard plan that is specially adapted to them. At present, we think that the cleaning room will probably have to be modified for these tapes by installing a ventilation system and procedures that will avoid our technicians having to breathe the particles and dust that could cause health problems¹⁹. What’s more, we are not yet able to estimate the quantity of tapes that we will have to process in this state. A strategy will be chosen taking into account the number of tapes to process. At the moment, tapes and film arrive without us being able to evaluate the total number that is in this state. For the time being they are kept in a quarantine of sorts, where they await their fate. At no point do we throw a tape away, and when we obtain a failure, we keep the tape until future tools or techniques that may allow us to process it and transfer the material appear.


PACKED: How does the transfer then take place?

Gérard Mathiot: When the tapes are in good condition, when the cleaning process is successful and they didn’t need to go through “the clinic", then they can be transferred directly to digital Betacam tape, which is the standard archive format used by the INA. A transfer operator, who is there to watch for any problems real-time by checking the picture levels with an oscilloscope²⁰ and monitoring the sound level, is responsible for the transfer. If a problem occurs the operator reports it by means of a note in the document database. Once the tape has been saved, it is added to the database where the entire INA back-up catalogue is indexed. After the transfer, the operator will verify, by playing some short samples, that the transfer was trouble-free. If the tape is troublesome, then the transfer operator will add a note to the database regarding these problems for the attention of “the clinic’s” technicians.

However, experience usually allows us to spot the tapes that will cause problems even before the transfer stage, simply because we know that certain models, certain brands of cassette or certain types of case are more susceptible to damage than others. Certain types of case that worked properly when they were introduced on the market cause problems today when we have to transfer a cassette.


A 1”C-tape and a digital Betacam-cassette. (Photo: clubic.com)


PACKED: How is this type of risk managed?

Gérard Mathiot: We have a unit at the SNC where we are currently testing a number of digital Betacam cassettes to try and observe the way they age, and to anticipate as of now when we will have to start their migration. Thanks to this, we know more precisely at what speed a given format deteriorates, and if it is urgent to safeguard it or not. This is what we did two or three years ago for analog Betacam.

This type of test allowed us to determine which brands and cases of Betacam were the most at risk. This is why part of the Betacam tapes were transferred to digital Betacam rather than being digitised directly, as we initially planned.


II. The Equipment

PACKED: In “the clinic”, which modifications are made to the equipment?

Gérard Mathiot: Certain simple procedures are already carried out in standard transfer rooms. For example, on one player we might have to change the CD²¹ card that allows using the appliance in PAL with another card that will allow playing of material recorded in SECAM. In the same way, we might need to change a YD²² card to switch from a standard Umatic player to a Umatic BVU player.

On the other hand, in “the clinic”, transferring each tape or cassette might need a different set-up to the previous one. The technician cannot get away with just changing a card, but will have to make certain specific adjustments to them. For example, when using an Umatic VCR, we know that 90% of the problems we will have can be resolved by adjusting one potentiometer²³ or another, or one of the mechanical settings of the appliance. There are problems that are linked to the type of setting that was used to record the tapes at the time. We sometimes have to adjust the electronics of an appliance to boost the weak signal of a tape or to try and gat as close as possible to the settings of the appliance that was used to record at the time.

What’s more, we only use the Umatic VCRs to play back tapes. If we also had to use them to record, there would be even more adjustments to make, such as switching the MD card, between PAL and SECAM.


PACKED: Does your service have a stock of spare appliances, and/or spare parts?

Gérard Mathiot: Yes, we have a room where we store both new and old equipment, and many spare parts stored in cupboards. You will also find several incomplete appliances that are “belly up” and are salvaged for spare parts for the other appliances that we use. The crucial thing is that this depot is in the same building and on the same floor as the transfer rooms. This proximity is essential for us to be able to work quickly and efficiently. If the power supply of an appliance we are using breaks down – even if this is not the part that breaks down most often -, then we can go and find a spare from an appliance that is no use to us in itself, but only for its parts. It’s very similar to a transplant. Having this storeroom so close to the transfer room allows us to repair quickly by sorting through the old equipment to find a replacement for the faulty part.


PACKED: Are the more or less recent appliances such as Umatic or Betacam VCRs stored in their original packaging?

Gérard Mathiot: If they have never been used, yes. Otherwise, they are in service in the bays, or simply stored in the depot.


PACKED: Do you maintain any specific climatic conditions in this depot?

Gérard Mathiot: The storage conditions for the appliances are not regulated in the same way as for the tapes. However, the depot is protected from dust and has an acceptable level of humidity. It is kept at a temperature that is similar to that of the rooms in which the appliances are in operation, about 20C. This is important, because keeping appliances in a shop where the parts will rust would be completely useless.
PACKED: Can you still find spare parts for all the appliances?

Gérard Mathiot: No. This is why we have equipment that is used to salvage spare parts. For the BOSCH 1” tape players, we can no longer find the heads; only BOSCH could supply these. We therefore draw from the stock of heads we have left, hoping that it will be sufficient to transfer all of the 1” tapes. But this is the case for more recent appliances too. We learnt a few months ago that Sony has stopped making heads and for digital Betacam VCRs. This is the INAs archiving format and consequently, it means we already have to think about building a stock of spare parts.


PACKED: Alexandre Khuy, you are the manager of the clinic and in charge of the tapes that are said to be “difficult”, but you are also responsible for maintenance of the equipment that is used. What type of problems do you come across with the appliances in “the clinic”?

Alexandre Khuy: First of all, there is the ordinary wear of parts. All of the parts, whether these are parts that rotate, such as guide flanges or fixed parts, or even motors; all wear out due to the intensive use of the appliances here in the INA. What’s more, here in “the clinic”, we deal with the particularly difficult tapes and their poor condition causes the parts to wear out more quickly. The teeth of the plastic cogs break and even metal parts that may appear to be strong, such as the drum that houses the heads, wears out due to the playing of the tape. All guide pins, capstans²⁴ and the capstan’s motor will have to be replaced at some point.


PACKED: What are the most fragile elements of a video player?

Alexandre Khuy: The most fragile elements are the smallest ones, in this case the video heads. Each manufacturer gives an estimation of when the heads will have to be changed. This duration is always more or less equal to 1,500 hours, but we try to make them last longer. We made a calculation according to the manufacturer’s recommendations regarding the lifecycle of each head and we then came up with a coefficient by evaluating the number of hours of video that we have to transfer. According to this, we have built up a stock of parts.

Gérard Mathiot: Be that as it may, the manufacturers recommendations date back to when the equipment was made and are applicable to use of the equipment with new tapes. Yet our tapes are far from new and wear out the heads much more quickly. However, even if we take this into account we must try to make the heads play for longer than the recommended period of time if we want to transfer our whole collection with the parts we have available. In all cases, for us, this is twice as long. When spare parts are difficult to find, each appliance and part is used to the maximum of its potential.

Appliances often work with elements made both from plastic and from metal, and these do not always go together well. On our machines, it is not rare to see two plastic parts such as cogs that are of a different shade of white, because one of them has been salvaged from another appliance.


PACKED: What are the cleaning operations practiced on your equipment?

Gérard Mathiot: Cleaning operations are done mainly on the tape track and the playback heads using Isonet²⁵ magnetic cleaner and a rag that does not leave residues. We also sometimes use cotton buds.


PACKED: Is your equipment stored under power? Is it important for the appliances to be powered up regularly?

Gérard Mathiot: For the 2” players and 1” appliances this is what we try to do, they are under power most of the time. For more recent appliances, we are less inclined to take this precautionary measure, mainly for energy saving reasons. The aging of the capacitors²⁶ in particular, should bring us switch on the appliances regularly.

Alexandre Khuy: However, there are definitely heat exchanges under way inside the machine and components such as capacitors will not wear out as quickly, perhaps less quickly even, if they are always under power. Generally speaking, when equipment is switched on the flow of current is stronger before becoming stable.


A device for 1”C-tapes. (Foto: clubic.com)


PACKED: Are capacitors frequently a cause of breakdowns?

Alexandre Khuy: The tendency is for today’s equipment to have capacitors of poorer quality, and after so many hours of use they all need to be changed. This is a new phenomenon, which all technicians have noticed: appliances are no longer built to last. The capacitors have an average life of about 5 years; this is approximately equal to the depreciation time that is calculated for the equipment by the manufacturer. On older appliances however, electronic problems are rare and even potentiometers that were not designed to be adjusted every day as we do here, hold out well.

Today, appliances are much more complex and because everything is miniaturized, the components are much more fragile and electronic problems much more frequent. Certain VCRs read four different formats, and this makes for a much more complicated appliance, because it will do the job of four different appliances. Now, to do this, heads will have been added to the drum, but also a great number of components to process the data. A technician can no longer act upon them because a capacitor in an old appliance that could be as wide as a pen is now as small as a pinhead. In terms of the reliability of electronics, there has clearly been a regression, and above all the components are of poorer quality.

Gérard Mathiot: A big part of Sony’s industry is now video games such as Playstation. Sony’s major sales no longer come from broadcasting equipment. Because this was developed beforehand on a wider scale for the mass market, today they can sell a card that can be found in the multi-format players we have here (Betacam, Betacam SP, digital Betacam, IMX, SX) without increasing the cost of the appliance. Research expenses have long since been paid off when they sell this Betacam player. The logic of today is the opposite of before: we develop things for the general public that are easily profitable because they are aimed at a mass market and this is then used in professional equipment.


PACKED: Is the knowledge and technical experience acquired through the repairing and maintenance of equipment handed down internally?

Gérard Mathiot: No, not really. The INA’s objective is to have ended the transfer and digitisation of all tapes in 2015, and to put an end to old formats and the specific technical know-how that goes with them. What’s more, it’s currently difficult to find young technicians who wish to learn and specialize in the use of old technologies such as 1” or Umatic players. The few technicians who came here for training quickly changed tack towards more modern technologies. This is of course linked to a personal motivation on their behalf to be familiar with leading edge technologies, but also from a more practical point of view, from knowing that it will be much easier for them to find a job with knowledge of modern technologies than obsolete ones such as VCRs and magnetic tapes. The switch to digital has made the handing down of this know-how much more difficult, but this was also the case for the people who worked with film when video appeared.

In the INA, there are no longer any maintenance trainees, and the manufacturers no longer train technicians either. In addition, except for a few “old-hands” that are still able to do the necessary maintenance and repairs on old equipment, the technicians of the INA’s central maintenance service are mostly involved with equipment that is more modern than 1” or Umatic players. It is clear that without a policy for establishing the conditions for the apprenticeship of new technicians, a lot of this knowledge will be lost.

Click here to read Part 2 of this interview.


Footnotes:

¹The INA is in charge of the legal deposit of 88 television channels and 17 radio channels in France (www.ina-entreprise.com/entreprise/activites/depot-legal-radio-tele/index.html). The INA is an EPIC (an Industrial and Commercial Public Establishment). Its funding is neither entirely public, nor entirely commercial. The activity of the establishment is limited to the public broadcasting that it administers. It therefore cannot use its assets and capital for other activities unless these contribute, be it indirectly, to the public service with which it is entrusted.
²The SNC is the department of Safeguarding, Digitisation and Communication within the INA.
³2-inch quadruplex (also called 2″ quad, or just quad, for short) was the first practical and commercially successful videotape format. It was developed and released for the broadcast television industry in 1956 by the American Company Ampex.
⁴1-inch type B is a videotape format developed by the Bosch Fernseh division of Bosch in Germany in 1976. Its 1”tape was stored on a reel. It was not as successful as its direct competitor, the 1 inch type C.
⁵1 inch Type C is an open-reel professional videotape format co-developed and introduced by Ampex and Sony in 1976. It became the replacement for the then-dominant Quadruplex (2 inch Quad for short) open-reel format, due to the smaller size and slightly higher video quality.
⁶U-matic ¾ inch is an analog video format that was developed by Sony in the late 1960s and consisted of a ¾ inch tape inside a cassette. Its successor was the Betacam analog format.
⁷U-matic spawned two variants: BVU (Broadcast Video Umatic), introduced in 1978, and BVU SP (Broadcast Video Umatic Superior Performance), introduced in 1988. These two variants were both designed to improve picture quality.
⁸Betacam is a professional videotape format developed by Sony from 1982 and launched in 1983. Like with VHS, the cassettes, with a ½ inch tape, come in two sizes: S and L, which are of two different colours. It was the first professional analog format that allowed separate recording of luminance and chrominance signals.
⁹Betacam SP (for 'Superior Performance') increases the horizontal resolution to 400 lines or even 700 lines for the most recent versions, bandwidth and sound quality are improved with the number of audio tracks increasing from 2 to 4. Beta SP became the industry standard for most television channels until the end of the 1990s.
¹⁰Telecine is the name given to various optical and electronic techniques for converting motion picture film to video, which allows the broadcasting, recording or editing of video media (videocassette, DVD, Blu-ray, etc…). This consists in transferring the contents of each frame and converting the framerate from film framerate (24 frames/second) to television framerates. The technique used will depend on the television standards that the images are being made for; there are two main techniques: 3:2 pulldown (also called 2:3 pulldown) used in NTSC and 2:2 pulldown (or PAL speed up) used in PAL or in SECAM.
¹¹Betamax is a type of videocassette with a ½ inch tape. The format was created by Sony in 1975 and was intended for the domestic recording of television.
¹²VHS designates a recording standard of video signal onto ½ inch tape developed by JVC in the late 1970s. Its mass distribution was launched in 1976. During the 1980s and 1990s, VHS became the standard format of general public video ahead of its competitors: Sony Betamax and Philips V2000.
¹³RTI is an American company that sells, amongst other things, machines that clean and evaluate videotapes of different formats such as 1 inch or Umatic.
¹⁴Certain magnetic particles of iron oxide can sometimes peel off the videotape.
¹⁵The CNRS (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique or National Scientific Research Centre) is the largest French public research centre.
¹⁶RF is an acronym for Radio Frequency. This corresponds to an oscillation rate of an electric signal of between 30 kHz and 300GHz. Gerard Mathiot is referring here to the electric level output of the video heads.
¹⁷A great number of videotapes are victim of the Sticky Shed Syndrome, which is the result of hydrolysis of the binder that attaches the particles of iron oxide to the plastic carrier.
¹⁸DOM-TOM: an acronym that signifies Departement d'outre-mer - Territoire d'outre-mer, which regroups all of the lands under French sovereignty outside of Metropolitan France, such as Guadeloupe, Reunion or Tahiti.
¹⁹Certain moulds present on the tapes can cause various health problems such as lung or sinus infections or asthma.
²⁰An oscilloscope is an instrument that allows the visualisation of an electrical signal, most often plotted as a function of time. It is used by many scientists to observe electrical currents, and other physical scales that have been transformed into current by an appropriate converter.
²¹The CD card is the colour-decoding card. CD14 for PAL and CD15 for SECAM.
²²The YD card is the Luminance Demodulating card. Luminance (written Y) is the part of the video signal that corresponds to the intensity of the signal that is produced, or the level between black and white.
²³Also called “variable resistor” or “rheostat”, the potentiometer can be considered to be a resistor, the value (in ohms) of which can be adjusted between two points, by simple mechanical action on a rotary or rectilinear axis. Potentiometers have many common uses in electronics: each time we turn a button to raise or lower the volume of a radio, or the luminosity of a lamp, we adjust a potentiometer.
²⁴In a video recorder, the capstan is a device that reels the tape at a standard regular speed. The pinch roller that tightens the magnetic tape supports this.
²⁵Isonet is a dry cleaning product for magnetic tapes and optics sold by Jelt.
²⁶A capacitor is an electronic component that acts like a battery capable of storing electric charge. It consists of two conductive plates separated by a thin amount of insulating material (dielectric). It is characterized by its capacitance in Farads (F). There are several types of capacitor (polarized, non polarized, electrolytic etc…).