
A Woman Who Preserved over 30 Years of TV History - sohkamyung
https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/marion-stokes-television-news-archive
======
ahoka
There are people who recover teletext from VHS tapes, for example:
[http://www.uniquecodeanddata.co.uk/teletext76/bbc1_1983-06-2...](http://www.uniquecodeanddata.co.uk/teletext76/bbc1_1983-06-23/)

~~~
dylan604
Is there an FFMPEG type of filter that can translate information recorded in
the vertical interval space like CCs or even VITC? All of the equipment I ever
used expected an incoming video signal for processing. For archival
processing, it would be an interesting approach when finding the proper video
based equipment would/could be difficult.

~~~
mzs
$ ffmpeg -f lavfi -i "movie=test.ts[out0+subcc]" -map s output.srt

[https://stackoverflow.com/a/27780366/7106583](https://stackoverflow.com/a/27780366/7106583)

~~~
dylan604
Finally had a chance to look into this further. The filter you found requires
an MPEG2 Transport Stream. That tells me that this filter is just extracting
the CC data within the MPEG stream. We've had tools to do that since MPEG2 was
a thing.

I'm specifically talking about a full raster SD video capture at 720x486 NTSC
with the VBI information visible. Is there a filter that will read the white
dashes in the VBI and do some sort of optical translation of the dashes into
something like an SCC file. A long time ago in a galaxy far far away, I used
to actually be able to decode the VITC in my head by reading the dashes. It
started out as a joke while bored working 3rd shift where we'd offset the H/V
delay on a monitor. It actually became a useful skill when we started
digitizing the full raster video image but the time code was not
captured/saved in the resulting digital media. Reading the white dashes
allowed me to then reset the time code of the digital file.

For those wondering, there were 2 types of time code in video tapes. LTC
(linear time code) was an encoded audio signal that would sound like a series
of tones that would be decoded into time. VITC (vertical interval time code)
was visibly encoded into part of the video signal that consumer televisions
would not display. Normally, the player would "listen" to the LTC while
playing and fast scan/rewind. While a player was paused onto a video frame, it
could no longer "hear" the LTC. It would instead then switch to decoding the
VITC. The VITC was also not able to be decoded at fast speeds since it went by
too quickly. When the VITC and LTC did not match, all sorts of interesting
things would happen in an edit bay.

~~~
mzs
Oh sorry, this lib should handle it:
[http://zapping.sourceforge.net/Zapping/Zapzilla.html](http://zapping.sourceforge.net/Zapping/Zapzilla.html)

~~~
dylan604
You my friend, are a steely eyed missile man.

------
aepiepaey
IA collections:

[https://archive.org/details/marionstokes](https://archive.org/details/marionstokes)

[https://archive.org/details/stokestvarchiveexperiment](https://archive.org/details/stokestvarchiveexperiment)

------
mimixco
This sounds really cool but won't the original broadcasters be all over the
archive for publishing these files? How could anyone get permission to release
all that copyrighted material?

~~~
binarycrusader
archive.org is also an officially recognized library for the state of
California, which gives them some leeway:

[https://archive.org/post/121377/internet-archive-
officially-...](https://archive.org/post/121377/internet-archive-officially-a-
library)

~~~
ghaff
Very little incremental leeway for digital content. It's much more that
relatively few copyright owners are much interested in chasing after old TV
show and news postings even if they're aware of them.

------
apo
> While many people assumed that television networks held on to everything
> they aired, that wasn’t the case. Studios were constantly erasing and
> recycling broadcast tapes in order to save money and free up storage space.

I've heard about this happening during the early days of TV. For example,
there was a lost episode of Dr. Who that finally turned up and part of the
story was that most studios just re-recorded over the old stuff.

I didn't realize the practice continued into the 80s.

Are there any estimates for how much TV footage was never preserved by the
networks?

~~~
wmf
I would expect scripted TV to be shot and mastered on film until ~2000 and
you'd hope the negative would be stored somewhere but maybe not.

It's a lot easier to imagine live TV such as news or sports not being recorded
or saved. Broadcast-grade tapes probably weren't cheap.

~~~
rabidrat
TV was not recorded on film. Older TV looks different than older film, for
this reason.

~~~
opencl
Some stuff was shot on film, some stuff was shot on videotape. _Really_ early
TV was either recorded on film or not recorded at all since video tape
recorders didn't exist until the mid-50s.

~~~
elsonrodriguez
To add another wrinkle, some stuff was broadcast live via video and recorded
to film by basically pointing a film camera at a TV. This was then used to
broadcast the content in another timezone.

------
paulpauper
That's crazy. Like the architect scene from The Matrix Reloaded

------
iheartpotatoes
Calling Quantified Self!
([https://quantifiedself.com/](https://quantifiedself.com/))

Damn, that's astonishing. I hope it ends up on youtube: I still watch grainy
recordings of HBO from ~1980 for laughs, would love to see what "real" TV with
commercials and programming was like over 40+ years.

~~~
LeoPanthera
It's on archive.org, though there are so many tapes that they are still
digitizing them. If you live in the SF bay area, go volunteer.

[https://archive.org/details/stokestvarchiveexperiment](https://archive.org/details/stokestvarchiveexperiment)

~~~
jxramos
Someone needs to populate the about page. I was hoping for a gist summary to
be found.
[https://archive.org/details/stokestvarchiveexperiment&tab=ab...](https://archive.org/details/stokestvarchiveexperiment&tab=about)

------
js2
This is a ridiculous question: would any of these transmissions, via VHF or
satellite uplink, have been capable of escaping our solar system and be
receivable by some distant intelligent life in some distant solar system? Or
would the signal be completely lost to background solar radiation or otherwise
simply not be capable of transmitting that far?

How much of what's transmitted around the Earth escapes?

~~~
tim333
Well, the signal escapes but would be very hard to pick out and very weak.
You'd probably have to have something like a better version of the radio
telescope they used to get a black hole image. It's hard to say it would be
impossible though.

------
larrik
This sounds really expensive! No mention in the article of how she managed it.

~~~
paulpauper
her husband had money

 _rom 1968 to 1971, she had co-produced Input, a Sunday-morning talk show
airing on the local Philadelphia CBS affiliate, with John S. Stokes Jr., who
would later become her husband. Input brought together academics, community
and religious leaders, activists, scientists, and artists to openly discuss
social justice issues and other topics of the day._

~~~
CydeWeys
The article has a better explanation later on:

"She eschewed Tivo, and although she was an early and evangelical investor in
Apple Inc., she never sent an email in her life. She even managed to convince
the rest of the already-wealthy Stokes clan to buy Apple stock, which paid off
in spades. She funneled these funds into her recording project and the massive
storage space she required as the sole force behind it."

It comes down to savvy investments on her part and family money, not just "she
spent her husband's money".

~~~
agumonkey
And interesting dedication to a large venture.

