Video editing

In the early 1970s NEXUS showed programmes which had been made in the University AVC, which used 1" 'C' format professional VTRs which gave excellent quality but cost many tens of thousands of pounds and required skilled engineers to drive them. It's also worth noting that even these machines did not allow electronic editing - so any edits were made with a splicing block, razor blade and magnetic 'developer' which showed the lines of recording on the tape and allowed a skilled human editor to cut between the tracks, thus minimizing picture disruption. Not easy, very time consuming and of course the expensive tape could not be reused for future programmes.

When NEXUS started scripting and recording its own programmes on Sony 1/2" B&W VTRs, again no electronic editing existed so programming was very limited. It was possible to 'crash record' on the ACE-2100 VTRs which gave a nasty picture jump but at least allowed some degree of post production.

It was not until the arrival of the Philips N1520 cassette VCR with proper electronic editing arrived in the mid 1970s that editing became a practical proposition. But even then, remember this was all analogue with the associated picture degradation on every copy, so editing was till kept to a minimum.