1990: Inside the BBC Archive | Open Air | BBC Archive

[@hilaryepstein6013]

At last, a BBC Archive film about the BBC Archive and an amazing look at your old home where these wonderful films you send us lived for over 40 years.

[@Robert_Manners]

So has the Brentford film library closed/ moved?

[@hilaryepstein6013]

@@Robert_Manners Yes the Brentford archive closed in 2011 and moved to a new purpose built archive in Perivale, West London.

[@syedalamgir5838]

BBC archives is a gem.

[@jaymac7203]

6:22 The look he gave the camera 😭 lol

[@kaw203]

Biggest film and VT library, shame it would have been bigger if they kept their old recordings

[@ashleycox432]

I hope that now we have effectively limitless digital storage that everything is being archived.

[@petergivenbless900]

... and now, here we are; watching on KZbin, a video file on the internet, of a live broadcast, recorded on tape, being played back on a TV screen in the '90s, of a kinescope film, of an old TV screen, showing a vintage live broadcast of BBC TV! I hope the cameraman's ankle is okay; I was watching the presenter, talking to camera, looking back over his shoulder, while descending the metal stairs, thinking, "at least hold onto the hand rails", but it was the cameraman, who couldn't see the steps, out of frame, who misjudged the final step!

[@dissonantdreams]

Shout out to Bob. It’s true what they say, the cameraman never dies 😂

[@ModernManAcademy]

I was that reporter! I was just told about this clip. I'd never seen it 😂😂 in the rehearsal Bob counted the steps - then mis-counted! Such happy days doing daily live BBC broadcasts with little or no script with hardwired camera back in those days - we were limited by how long our cable was 😂😂

[@2511dhall]

I wish the Dad’s Army and Dr Who lost episodes get found one day.

[@DanielE-td2xw]

Yes good 😊❤

[@DanielE-td2xw]

Good yes 😮🎉

[@Twiglet456]

Yes good yes

[@Chris-B.]

Good yes good yes

[@NickHintonComposer]

Good, that is good. Yes.

[@JohnTaylorMusicClips53]

BBC Archive: Inside The BBC Archive We are finished here people, we have come full circle

[@Tim.Weaver]

I wish there were more archive programmes available on BBC iplayer. For example the wonderful documentary series "Geoffrey Smith's World of Flowers" from the 1980s, which has never been commercially released. It's a shame that so much of the archive is hidden away from public view.

[@scottyunitedboy2925]

in fairness, they are slowly starting to open it up. Part of the problem with some shows is the original contracts that were signed with actors union Equity which limited the number of repeats.

[@domfjbrown75]

Wish they'd reshow the 'Love bites' series from 1995 and 98...

[@richard-davies]

So much content would have been wiped over the decades, storage back then was an issue but with digital storage physical space isn't an issue anymore so there's no reason not to keep everything that ever gets broadcast these days. The BBC and other stations really need to start digitising all the old reels in full for backup purposes and it would be amazing to be able to stream any of those recordings in full online at anytime.

[@VideotapeFTW]

The absolute _nerve_ of Adam Lee to be talking about preservation - and even citing Bill and Ben - when within two or three years of this interview he unilaterally junked the master recordings of so many childhood favourites. Swap Shop, Play School, Play Away, Chock-a-Block... _he_ was the one who ordered the majority of them to be wiped in the early 90s, and all because he'd decided the value of the physical tape was indeed higher than the actual contents it held. Cultural vandalism.

[@Harry-fk5of]

You should bring back a repeat of Paddington Green, that obscure reality show from the late 90's

[@UXXV]

Props to the cameraman for not swearing as he fell over 😂

[@orangejjay]

To be fair, the cameraman is usually not mic'ed so for all we know, he did and it just wasn't picked up. 😂

[@worldVHS]

I have an archive of over 10,000 Ex Rental VHS tapes, Blockbuster video shop signs that still light up and original plastic racking that was from the video shops.

[@HaydnGuite-c4s]

The BBC archive is one of the best I've ever seen. A treasure trove of recordings and VT material that we should carry on keeping alive. It's a shame it wasn't big like some because if it were bigger, the BBC would've still kept some of their old recordings. Very interesting if you ask me ❤ 😊

[@davewarwicker2512]

Life-long BBC journalist Dan Aitkin wrote a book about how he watched this BBC undone, and replaced with the embarrassment that is the modern Beeb. It is called 'Can We Still Trust the BBC?' - it is wonderfully well written and gives a first-hand account.

[@MichaelBosley]

Spot the random Dot Cotton poster at 11:08

[@ModeMan101]

Looks like there's paper coming out of the top, perhaps it was a Dot matrix printer...

[@Buff_Cupcake]

I'm so upset with myself that I genuinely laughed at this 😂

[@ModeMan101]

@@Buff_CupcakeWhat cracked me up was how Roy Sheppard pauses for a second as if he's going to comment on it, then thinks better of it 😂

[@simmadpaul2880]

At least now with digitisation they can keep Mrs Brown's Boys....... FOREVER!!!!!!!!!!! 😮😮😮😮😢😢😢😢😢

[@ryanohara476]

When the enter BBC television archive, BBC radio archive, BBC written archive, music etc will be all completely digitised in its entirety You should allow us all of us who pay our television licence fee unlimited access to view the archive online!

[@dawnyWestScotland]

Loved Bobs thumbs up! 😆☀️

[@jaymac7203]

All that analogue film storage 😭 I'm guessing it still exists even after going digital and storing on hard drives? It has a lot of historic value.

[@ModeMan101]

The BBC did a big purge of its archives just a few years after this programme was made, some of it would have gone to the BFI archives but quite a lot of things (such as many episodes of classic children's TV) were deemed to be of negligible value and thus destroyed.

[@MichaelBennett1]

“In the early days, technology didn’t exist to record output ” - proceeds to show a recording of the very first BBC TV transmission.

[@nir0bateman]

Not directly, they used a film camera (Kinescope).

[@geoffhaggett3080]

My understanding is they did the show live for transmission. Then after they went off air they re did the show for the film camera, which I presume is what we saw on the VT machine.

[@nir0bateman]

@@geoffhaggett3080 You can't really see it because the camera is filming a monitor, but the way to preserve live tv back then was to literally put a film camera in front of a screen. That's why live TV until the 1960s has rounded corners, because that was the shape of the screen.

[@dbfilmaudioconversions-vid660]

Excellent, thankyou for sharing.

[@Tim.Weaver]

I grew up watching the brilliant TV series made by Pete & Dud and Marty Feldman in the 60s, it's so sad that their shows were deliberately wiped - and don't get me started on Doctor Who!

[@Tomalak]

Kind of amazing that they backed up all the 2 inch tape to D3 in the nineties, but then had to scramble to digitise everything to LTO before the last remaining D3 tape heads ran out. kzbin.info/www/bejne/rKTZc4KqfbeIaMUsi=7gJMGwk_Xa1bBgAW

[@CableWrestler]

...and here we are. Watching footage from the archive today

[@NoosaHeads]

I'm hoping that some more episodes of Out of the Unknown (I think it was 1966) get found one day.

[@ebridgewater]

I wonder how much of this has now been digitised?

[@bardo0007]

Not a lot, maybe half of it

[@davidlister370]

1:30 Amazing to think that now you could keep everything the BBC ever made on a load of SSD's and keep it all in a broom cupboard!

[@dawnyWestScotland]

Very interesting!

[@dean6816]

I wonder how gigabytes/terabytes worth of video is in the vault??

[@CableWrestler]

It all depends on what bitrate and what codec you encode it on to. Technically, analog technology has no easily quantifiable bitrate. Lines are not the same as pixels. You could encode the whole archive at rubbish quality and it could take up, say, 3PB, but you could also encode it at a high quality and it could take up say 6XB! But then again you could encode it in h.265 instead of h.261 and it could take up considerably less space and still have the same quality. Your question is akin to "How fast is a blue car?" You can't possibly give an accurate answer.

[@Dench999or911]

This might be of some help to the archives dissertation I am working on, thank you!

[@ajs41]

Sounds interesting.

[@GreatGizmo74]

I need to know if the BBC currently still has these VT machines. As someone born in the digital age this old VT equipment is really interesting to me and I would love to know more about the different tapes used for broadcasting, and how the machines operate / work.

[@ModeMan101]

I trained as a VT operator in the late 90s (my first proper job out of university), not at the BBC but one of the many post-production houses in London. The company I work for now in the USA still has quite a few of the older machines, although nothing that's pre-1980s. Even that first place I worked at only had a couple of 2" quad machines that were rarely used - the only time I can remember seeing them in action was to get footage for an episode of "This Is Your Life".

[@GreatGizmo74]

@@ModeMan101 Thank you for sharing! I'd love to know more about being a VT operator!

[@ModeMan101]

@@GreatGizmo74 I've changed roles a few times since those days, all my work is file-based now. It's always handy to have knowledge of that legacy technology though.

[@Aeonterbor]

Kaleidoscope TV Archive still has some of these machines.

[@heinkle1]

This should all be digitised (if it hasn’t already) and be made available online for everyone to watch

[@coolhandluke-123]

Who is going to pay the copyright holders? You?

[@ajs41]

I've seen some of the digital archive and a lot of it is in poor quality compared to the original archive.

[@bradjones1977]

Did a university work placement there in 1998. Don't recognise any of the staff from that clip, but those are certainly the offices I worked in!

[@Chuby123]

More films about the archive 😊

[@Da1Dez]

The BBC Archive should have contacted Sierra Leone at the time this video was shot since they had most of William Hartnell's Season 3 episodes from Doctor Who, which were later destroyed during the civil war there! This was the last opportunity to do so!

[@TTVEaGMXde]

0h0921: D2 M (SONY 3/4" digital CVBS), D1 L (3/4" digital Componend), D1 M, U-matic (3/4" Colorunder), U-matic HB?, Betacam SP (1/2" Componend), Betacam SP L (SONY), C-Format (Scotch 1" CVBS), Quadruplex (Scotch 2" CVBS)

[@bardo0007]

Wow you know your stuff!

[@MacStoker]

RUN VT ;-)

[@dean6816]

"is everything logged on computer" Now it's "is everything in the computer"

[@handsoffmycactus2958]

Incorrect

[@chrishainstock330]

i worked there from 1985-6

[@maccagrabme]

Not a lot looked like it had changed much from the 70s in this video.

[@chrishainstock330]

its all gone now however @@maccagrabme

[@ajs41]

@@chrishainstock330 What's happened to it? Is it all digitised now?

[@BOZ_11]

6:23 🤣🤣😁😁🤷‍♀🤷‍♀

[@scottandrewbrass1931]

They'll never find those BBC Derek and Clive tapes as it never happened.

[@MediaArchive2-z9f]

kzbin.info/www/bejne/bp-kaoRje79_i6csi=0NmeHE9YCivhSfup More information on the BBC Archive.

[@mbvideoselection]

Adam Lee... A trojan horse who spent years there working out how much of this treasure trove to trash 5 years later.

[@steveosshenanigans]

What on earth ……is Miss Stripes wearing ?

[@pvkoinch]

Only dress up looks quite out of time and video quality just kills mordern cameras.

[@hopebgood]

This is a bit dull 😵‍💫

[@davepage1151]

Was this uploaded for irony?

[@WordsInVain]

What's the irony? That people existed thirty years ago?

[@davepage1151]

@@WordsInVain the fact that you replied with that, which I fully expected someone would greatly saddens me. Here’s what’s ironic - this is the ‘BBC Archive’ channel putting archive footage up from 34 years ago about the ‘BBC Archive’. Is that clear enough for you?