Popular Science
How to Make a YouTube Video in 1987
Decades before software like Premiere and iMovie made video editing cheap, easy, and accessible for everyone, the only option was chaining a conglomerate of vintage 80s technology – multiple camcorders or VCRs and a TV – to craft custom analog video. Then the Videonics system changed tech history forever. With professional-grade setups costing up to…
Popular Science
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@Capturing-Memories
November 8, 2024 at 3:16 pm
The fact that 8 random VCRs were all set to low speeds this tells you how much people cared about video quality back in the day.
@SlyPearTree
November 8, 2024 at 4:27 pm
And they’d make copies of copies of copies at those speed…
@jrmcferren
November 8, 2024 at 6:29 pm
The quality loss was not noticeable by most people, especially when recording off of TV, the recording time was considered more valuable.
@U.S.A.
November 8, 2024 at 6:29 pm
I didn’t even know and didn’t noticed back then that it’s gonna be worse quality, all I cared about is that I could record 6 hours of movies onto a 2 hours cassette.
@xaulted1
November 8, 2024 at 3:18 pm
I haven’t heard the word “yuppies” in a very long time. Doubtful most of YouTube even knows what that means.
@Honir4
November 8, 2024 at 3:26 pm
cool
@stevendembo2389
November 8, 2024 at 3:28 pm
Thank you for your channel!
@xliquidflames
November 8, 2024 at 4:29 pm
1987? Wow. I was born in 1982. This tech feels more recent. I remember renting videos and using full VHS camcorders, not the VHS-C or others, in the late 90s. In fact, I still have a bunch of VHS-C tapes I filmed. I’m a lifelong Florida native and I was a pizza delivery driver the year we had the most hurricane landfalls in one season. So, I borrowed my mom’s VHS-C camcorder to film all the destruction I was seeing while I was out delivering pizzas. That was 2004! 1987 feels like too long ago for this tech. What a great video, though. It really brought back a bunch of memories for me. My family got a Packard Bell computer in the 90s. It had Windows 3.11. It came with a game demo CD. It had a game on it called VidGrid. It was this slider puzzle game. But the puzzles were music videos. So you had to solve the slider puzzle while the video was playing. One of those videos was Peter Gabriel’e Sledgehammer. I haven’t thought about VidGrid in decades.
@xliquidflames
November 8, 2024 at 4:35 pm
Yeah, I’m old. Get over it. Lol
@katsemo
November 8, 2024 at 4:31 pm
Kevin out there sacrificing his own sanity for us ❤ everyone, after me: THANK YOU, KEVIN!
@pootca
November 8, 2024 at 4:51 pm
Did Kevin lose the password to Vsauce 2?
@RolandHazoto
November 8, 2024 at 5:31 pm
The best universal remote I ever used was an original phat PSP (the one with the IR blaster) and homebrew that let you make your own remote GUI.
@RisingRevengeance
November 8, 2024 at 5:49 pm
PSP with custom firmware was such a beast, it did practically everything you could want.
@bensmith5262
November 8, 2024 at 6:21 pm
Why on earth did the PSP have an IR blaster? It’s a handheld!
@RisingRevengeance
November 8, 2024 at 6:39 pm
@@bensmith5262 It was probably intended for some basic data transfer. For some reason it was very common on phones at the time too.
@RolandHazoto
November 8, 2024 at 6:49 pm
@@bensmith5262 probably because Gameboy Color had it first
@bensmith5262
November 8, 2024 at 7:51 pm
@@RisingRevengeance oh yeah! I totally forgot ir was an actual data transfer method for a few years.
@jabaro2
November 8, 2024 at 5:34 pm
If the early videos weren’t for uploading to YouTube, what were people doing with all those analog videos on VHS?
@Viscount
November 8, 2024 at 5:54 pm
Awesome. Reminds me of trying to do stop motion animation on a handheld… the times i had…
@ScottGrammer
November 8, 2024 at 5:56 pm
Dude, I had one of those Videonics rigs back in the day! I think I paid $400 for it brand new? I got it to work – sort of – and control the VCR’s – sort of – but was never able to use it for anything worthwhile. They were a royal pain in the butt.
@spinjector
November 8, 2024 at 6:05 pm
Ok you made it, now how does anyone view it..??? 😆
@gummyroach
November 8, 2024 at 6:17 pm
Very nicely done!
@SDRIFTERAbdlmounaim
November 9, 2024 at 11:48 am
what are the chances of meeting about gummy roach besides you ?
@fungo6631
November 9, 2024 at 1:32 pm
You must be blind, the video is in 30 FPS.
For something talking about analog video that’s an unacceptable oversight.
@tarstarkusz
November 9, 2024 at 2:28 pm
No, he’s a big dummy who never heard of Amiga.
@Zer0InfinityLIVE
November 10, 2024 at 5:31 am
Thank You for helping out with this project!!!😺💖👍
@tarstarkusz
November 10, 2024 at 10:47 am
No, it’s wrong. He apparently has never heard of the Commodore Amiga. Unlike other low cost computers of the time, the Amiga could use a genlock to overlay graphics and fonts and other special effects right out of the box (plus a genlock).
Of course, all this is ignoring the fact that most big youtubers are using professional grade equipment. He’s using consumer grade stuff in this video. He is massively overstating the difficulties.
@MossCoveredBonez
November 8, 2024 at 6:20 pm
Kind of love the design of the JVC GR-C7
@chaquator
November 8, 2024 at 6:31 pm
instead of ordering more remotes you might want to look into flipper zero to emit any ir pattern you program
@ddturnerphd
November 8, 2024 at 6:40 pm
Another awesome insight into how far we’ve come.
@domramsey
November 8, 2024 at 6:50 pm
The reason you couldn’t find these things is because nobody used them. I made an edited VHS videos at this time. Firstly, it’s pretty easy to do basic editing by using the record & pause functions on the recording player. And you can use the camcorder itself as the source player. For titles & graphics, there were a myriad of video titlers out there, but many people like me used an Amiga. It was ideal because it could be used as a genlock to overlay the Amiga’s picture on the video and record the output. This is why the Amiga was used as the basis for the Video Toaster later.
The whole process was pretty easy and pretty cheap. You definitely didn’t need any fancy control units and you could do some pretty accurate editing with judicious use of the pause button on the VCR.
I know you can only make videos on things that have appeared in Popular Science, and this device is quite interesting, but your narrative is a bit off, suggesting people were spending many thousands on these devices. I actually did my own version of The Terminator (starring my cat) using my Panasonic camcorder, a basic VHS recorder and my Amiga. It was terrible, but I did it!
@joewilson5452
November 8, 2024 at 6:59 pm
There was a little square cutout on the recording side of a commercially recorded VHS tape that would prevent the consumer from recording over the tape. We used to put a piece of electrical tape over the hole and then we could rerecord over the tape.
@michaelhenrici
November 8, 2024 at 8:10 pm
For some reason my copy of Superman: The Movie didn’t have the tab removed and I accidentally recorded over part of the opening as a kid.
@pootcargo
November 8, 2024 at 7:02 pm
This man is speaking some sort of alien language, I don’t understand a thing.
@elainebenes7971
November 8, 2024 at 7:06 pm
I used to have an Android phone with an IR blaster. With software you can send any command you want. Im sure you could use some homebrew hardware for this too.
@marsilies
November 8, 2024 at 8:20 pm
The Logitech Harmony Remote Controls also have a vast library of remote control commands
@elainebenes7971
November 8, 2024 at 7:17 pm
Old VCRs couldnt stop on an exact frame. You might get within a second or two. This device cant edit at the quick pace of a youtube video. Still that was impressive.
@blurglide
November 8, 2024 at 7:40 pm
People bought camcorders thinking it’d be like watching a movie. I’d wager 95% of camcorder recordings were never watched more than once. What’s interesting though is AI. Perhaps soon we can upload all this old video and AI can “enhance” it and edit it into something interesting.
@aL3891_
November 8, 2024 at 7:47 pm
What a marvelous hack, using the ir sensor to control the vcrs and discovering the codes using a vhs tape, i love it 😄
Amazing video as always Kevin, popular science got the deal of the century
@thej3799
November 8, 2024 at 8:04 pm
I am really loving this channel more and more with each video.
I think the first one I saw was the digital butler, and most recently was the polovision, which was an amazing video. This one is great, too. I hope you keep going.
@marsilies
November 8, 2024 at 8:27 pm
You didn’t necessarily need two VCRs to create an edited tape, if you used the camcorder to playback the source. My family had a camcorder that used a full-size VHS tape back in the mid 80s, and our VCR had a front panel that flipped down to show a myriad of controls. My parents edited some Christmas footage together and dubbed over a Christmas song to make a custom music video, back in the 80s. My older sister also edited together a video presentation for a class project, and even made a few short films. Doing video overlays wasn’t possible though. Another bonus of having a full-size VHS tape camcorder was that we paired it with a 5″ B&W portable TV, plugged both into the cigarette lighter in the car, and us kids could watch movies in the backseat on long car trips, about a decade before portable DVD players came along.
@dan2800
November 9, 2024 at 12:51 pm
weird paul time traveler confirmed
@weirdpaulp
November 9, 2024 at 2:16 pm
I’m simply only a man
@sirflimflam
November 9, 2024 at 12:53 pm
Funny. I have owned 3, maybe 4 separate VCRs over the course of my life. All of them had a speed control somewhere on the unit itself.
@captainsemicolon
November 9, 2024 at 12:56 pm
There is no such CPU as the Intel 80166. Do you mean the 80186? Edit: According to some sources it uses the NEC V40 which is a 80186 clone
@thumbtak123
November 9, 2024 at 1:01 pm
You need a Flipper Zero, or a M5 CardComputer. The flipper would most likely work with any device, you have the codes for, on an IR, and the m5 card computer, might do this. You can find databases for the remotes online and if it has it, you can usually find all of the buttons someone recorded. You can also ask the community to submit a capture of a remote, if they do not. This will help with future projects, when you run into this issue.
@aronrouzaut
November 9, 2024 at 1:04 pm
the watermark at the end
@fungo6631
November 9, 2024 at 1:31 pm
Why didn’t you even bother to upload the video at 60 FPS?
For a popular science channel, that was a very dumb mistake, and anyone with minimal science literacy would know that video was not 30 FPS back then but 60 FPS. You should had hired VWestlife to do this video, he knows much better how analog video is supposed to be digitized than your dumb a55 does.
@nevadaxelizabeth
November 9, 2024 at 1:41 pm
now, you should try making a video with the videotoaster.
@weirdpaulp
November 9, 2024 at 2:33 pm
Thanks for the shoutout! Music videos were one of my biggest influences. Even back then, I never heard of DirectED Plus!
@Tom_Oliver_89
November 9, 2024 at 2:55 pm
yay weird paul 27:48
@misterskippy2u
November 9, 2024 at 3:10 pm
“The Nondescript Magic Brick” would have been a great tag line for a DirectED advertising campaign!
@pierdeer
November 9, 2024 at 3:38 pm
So happy to see one of these units in action after so many years. I collect some old AV gear myself and over the years saw the DirectED a lot on eBay. But the fact that you needed a video tape to feed the software to it, to make it usable in the first place, always scared me off. I always understood it being solely a device that does cleaner editing cuts … and that’s it, so I never considered getting one myself. But seeing how you struggled with it, probably for the best haha. Great video!
@AnonymousFreakYT
November 9, 2024 at 3:44 pm
16:03 – OMG, that RCA remote! That is the *EXACT* remote I had for my VCR in college! (Goodwill purchased VCR with no remote, because college student, so I bought that remote at Walgreens or something.)
@cocusar
November 9, 2024 at 4:23 pm
it probably requests to rewind the tape to its beginning every time it lays a new segment into the “record only” VCR is because it can’t determine in which position of the tape it is, but it surely can count frames (or time them). It’s true that it could technically record sequential segments without asking you to rewind. I think it is a good tradeoff. What I can’t think of a better explanation is the UI/UX, and the probable lack of a TBC (see the shaky image when fast forwarding or rewinding). And I think it’s an 80186, not 80166, but I might be wrong.
@lochinvar00465
November 9, 2024 at 5:03 pm
The problem of dubbing macrovision tapes hit me, but in a different way.Mine was trying to go from DVD player through a VCR to the TV. My setup is used so the ether DVD or VCR is source without switching source on the TV. The solution is simple, with a video stabilizer between the DVD output and VCR video input. Tho it could be used to copy DVD to tape, it is not used for that. It could also be used for VCR to VCR recording as it “strips off” macrovision from the video stream. Popular Electronics even had an article describing how to build one yourself, and you could also buy them(mail order) from ads in electronics magazines.
@DarkHorseSki
November 9, 2024 at 5:03 pm
I had a Commodore Amiga, so the video toaster was an obvious add.
@somepoliticalgamer6459
November 9, 2024 at 5:17 pm
May I give you a lead on a possible video for your channel? The first battery operated “tool” was made by black and decker in 1963. It was a battery operated lawnmower. I only know about this because I gave the man that designed it, 96 year old Steve Unger, a Lyft ride from the bar last night.
@Scrumpetsheep
November 9, 2024 at 5:27 pm
I found a vidionix at a goodwill. It is a shitshow trying to get it to do ANYTHING
@olsonspeed
November 9, 2024 at 5:52 pm
I suffered through this technology back in the day, recreating the misery is too much like refining your own gasoline.
@warrior3456_
November 9, 2024 at 6:53 pm
Now days kids dont know what a vcr is I had to explain what one was to my cousin shes 16
@JDWatkins
November 9, 2024 at 6:56 pm
Nope….. We used Sony HI-8 and Kodak Video Toaster. All editing was done on the Sony HI-8 editing system. Basically looked like a computer with 2 HI-8 systems in it. Master on left edit on the right side.
@theultimatebionicfly
November 9, 2024 at 6:59 pm
I was a teenager in 80’s Australia and I love seeing your videos of tech from that decade because it was pretty much unattainable for most of us down here because of price and rarity. Keep up your great work.
@CapablePimento
November 9, 2024 at 7:25 pm
Kevin, were you worried about being surrounded by tens of thousands of dollars in video equipment? What if there’s a break in?
@KK4CNM
November 9, 2024 at 7:31 pm
Oh wow we had one of these, it was SO HARD TO USE!
@Deltawhiskeymike
November 9, 2024 at 8:28 pm
(*every VCR clock was blinking 12:00/except for the “Zenith and it’s remote LoL)
@Joseph_Tackett
November 10, 2024 at 8:27 am
Uh. I was born in the 90s…
@Joseph_Tackett
November 10, 2024 at 8:30 am
Shoot, video editing is almost fun today. A great video takes unrealized amounts of editing.
@lehpares
November 10, 2024 at 8:50 am
Hahahaha! I kept laughing as you go stacking more and more vintage electronics through the entire video. Nice piece. Reminded me of my childhood when record TV shows on VHS tape was an integral part of an 80’s kid duties.
@typerightseesight
November 10, 2024 at 8:54 am
In like 2003 we used to make skate videos like they did in the early 90s with 2 vhs cassette tapes and I honestly cant remember how we did it. Like we would plug one into the other and hit play while we recorded. edit: and in the 90s i used to make stop motion movies with action figures. lol play stop play stop ect
@chickenduckhappy
November 10, 2024 at 11:07 am
You’re not selling your new setup very well. It all seems unwieldy and cumbersome, and I do not particularly like the video quality, or that of the “kamcoder” or wossname’s built-in internal mike. 3 out of 10!
@bulletproofblouse
November 10, 2024 at 11:52 am
The Videonics logo and the Homestar Runner Videlectrix logos look similar…
@TimmyM
November 10, 2024 at 12:33 pm
If you can’t make it in Davinci Resolve or anything other than Premiere, it’s not worth the watch. Traitor.
@benjaminniemczyk
November 10, 2024 at 1:51 pm
Nice video, but I don’t think there is any connection between nonlinear editing, youtube and this device. I worked in television in the 80s, when Avid was emerging, and a more accurate timeline is: analogue editing with console and two decks, Edit Droid, nonlinear editing via Avid or similar software, Adobe/Final Cut. But even those did not lead directly to youtube. Rather, digitizing and phones did. Professional-type setups were not common in the early days of youtube, but as they crept in, they became the norm.
@TSBII
November 10, 2024 at 2:06 pm
WOW, the actual edit at the end did need some NLE love as you said in the beginning!!
A Logitech programmable remote may have done the trick on those VCR’s missing their remote though.
@guaposneeze
November 10, 2024 at 2:13 pm
1987 was a bit of a weird moment. The Video Toaster had been announced so people had seen it, but it wasn’t out yet. Like two years after the setting of this video, you could use an Avid and a Video Toaster to do all sorts of wacky video stuff with a Mac and an Amiga. You still needed to deal with tapes by the start of the 90’s, but just the last few years of the 80’s was a real shift from “I think this new tech may make some stuff theoretically possible” to basically the first version of totally modern tooling. Just insane how much stuff changed from year to year. At the start of 1987, Apple hadn’t released a Macintosh that could display color yet. By the end of 89, Avid on Mac doing real time video was a thing. Everything was obsolete in ten minutes.
@memofromessex
November 10, 2024 at 2:27 pm
Another great video. Thanks!
@angieandretti
November 10, 2024 at 2:51 pm
3:14 Intel 80186 CPU, not 166. Sorry but I cannot help it, I have to be “that guy.” Intel made the 8086, the 80286, 386, 486, Pentium (cuz they couldn’t trademark 586) … and the lesser-known 80186 which didn’t find its way into many computer systems like the others… but the rare “Mindset” computer was a notable exception. But they all end in 86, hence the term “x86 architecture.”
@FuchsDanin
November 10, 2024 at 3:35 pm
Every time I watch videos like this I die a little inside. I have SO MUCH EXPERIENCE in consumer electronics between the 80s and now — I worked most of my life on consumer electronics repair. I could have provided options and insights for so many of these problems.
Most VCRs default to the slowest speed; consumers liked the record times more than the quality. Unconfigured, they would be set to SLP. Most VCRs have button combos to change the speed during playback, which use buttons marked for other functions. Several of the ones you had will change speed without the remote. Similarly, on many VCRs you can adjust the tracking using the Channel + / – buttons while it’s playing.
When looking for a remote, purchase a single Logitech Harmony 880 or similar. There’s an internet database which stores the names of every button learned, and programs your remote to control it. If the remote doesn’t have a physical button, there’s a screen with buttons to assign every single function to a written tag with a button next to it. There are tons of models of Harmony remote, but the 880 was the most reliable, is still readily available, and does the whole job. (I have ~6 of them, I’ll -donate- one to this channel if you contact me.)
I can repair nearly any VCR; integrated-circuit level failures on those things are very rare, almost everything which fails is a generic component except for some mechanical items, but even those can be worked around with modern tools and enough experience. When it comes to VCRs, every single one you showed is “too new” — trust me when I say, the older VCRs are better, but you’ll likely need some minor repairs (belts, clutch pads, tape path cleaning, solder connections, capacitors in the power supply) to have them run in perfect shape.
The “Library” tape is the editor device dumping its configuration data visually, which you didn’t mention and I thought was incredibly cool. Those frames are encoded binary data, reflecting the remote codes and learned behaviors the machine has acquired during setup — that’s why you don’t have to do the setup each time, and why you can resume a previous configuration with it. Further, with a digital recording of that data, it could IN THEORY be reverse engineered to allow one to self-program remote code sets for newer devices — likely the IR pulse patterns are encoded directly. With a digital recording of the important tapes, one could copy/clone them, or simply use an analog output on a computing device (Raspberry Pi 3 has a Composite output) to “bootload” the ED instead of relying on the tapes. I’d actually really love the opportunity to document that device, dump its ROMs and digitize the tapes, for posterity.
I’m writing this the day after having watched the video, so I’m sure I’ve forgotten a few things I wished to mention, but I really want little more than to be a resource for videos like this. My knowledge doesn’t help anyone if it dies with me. I offer it freely. Please get in touch with me if you can. (I’m less interested in “general public” contact, but if I have time I’ll give it to a worthy ask.)
@b6983832
November 10, 2024 at 3:38 pm
The obvious choice for a quality footage using 1987 technology would be 16 mm film. Of course, if you are speaking all the time, a camera with crystal sync would be needed. But for most videos shown in Youtube, this is not necessary. You could shoot a short documentary with a camera meant for newsreels. Theywere not with capability of making lip sync. Using 1980´a home video systems, such as VHS is just plain stupid. These were never used in any serious work those times. Television cameras were huge installations costing zillions those times.
@Y0n3z
November 10, 2024 at 4:10 pm
i feel like id have better luck then with the 90 apps that only do half of a function i wasnt even looking for. analog is at least tangible.
@Y0n3z
November 10, 2024 at 4:13 pm
lol 256kb you know there was baybatch bounce buffer overflow on that atleast enough to buy 4 more.
@EricDarrell
November 10, 2024 at 4:18 pm
We had a DirectED in 1988 and even back then it was confusing and clunky. We have a few videos on our channel of us as kid actually using it. It’s cool to see a video about it as NOBODY remembers this thing.
@Y0n3z
November 10, 2024 at 4:23 pm
ir codes are basic you could actully reverse brute force all the cmds with a cpl lines of script. you only usually need one master then its just order output in succession of measured voltage. pretty sure any phone what has a IR blastrr on it( which is a lot of them) could fix this with a button grid app that just out puts the desired frequency. fun fact sp and lp are the first considetred file extensions for video containing audio. even though it described its memory write speed not quality or anything just how its written onto magnetic surfaces.
@TonyP9279
November 10, 2024 at 5:11 pm
I never understood why remotes would have an EJECT button on them. I mean, you’d have to go to the machine to physically remove the tape or DVD. I have one where the EJECT is the largest button on it, and right up there next to the power. Guess which button got pressed accidentally more often than others!
@zackerychambers4638
November 10, 2024 at 5:27 pm
Nah, the remotes weren’t thrown away, they just disappeared into the black hole that is the couch cushions.
@Jimyjames73
November 10, 2024 at 5:37 pm
Looks complicated – I’ll just use my Computer thanks in 2024 Thanks 😄🚂🚂🚂
@bcataiji
November 10, 2024 at 6:05 pm
My VCR predates macrovision chips, so it is a non-issue.
@CaelThunderwing
November 10, 2024 at 6:45 pm
The Remote problem is why i advocate for Preservation of these for second hand Resale of the various Period correct VCR’s/DVD players/Sound systems via a FlipperZero its not perfect but better than nothing.
@doz3r943
November 10, 2024 at 7:03 pm
when you hear the vcr eat your tape 🤬
@0326Hambone
November 10, 2024 at 9:42 pm
RCA, built in Indianapolis! I’m a native and thankfully got to see the old factory before it was demolished.
@ChrisAguilera-q3l
November 10, 2024 at 11:27 pm
OMG That was my Zenith growing up. I loved that VCR. My dad bought a Betamax in the 80’s that was so big with a pop top. I loved that Zenith and I went through a lot of VCR’s but the quality with the exception of a JVC was second to none.
@SpaciousGreen
November 11, 2024 at 1:04 am
You’ve sidestepped a significant era of video editing in the early 90s. Thanks to the debut of Quicktime came some add-on devices such as SuperMac VideoSpigot (1991) and Radius VideoVision Studio. Also in 1993, Apple (Steve Jobs absentee years) rolled out the Macintosh Centris 660AV capable of AV digitizing, albeit at a crudely downscaled size, of 240×180 if I remember it right. Barely even MPEG size. Later came a more robust Quadra 840AV, capable of S-video capture of 640×480. For indie filmmakers, of course the right choice was VideoVision Studio, which worked pretty well with Adobe Premiere. The only problem at that time was the limited codecs we had: either Apple Video, which was dog vomit, or Cinepak, slightly less so. The latter was the codec used for early trailers hosted on Apple’s own movie preview site.
@lostinthemasses
November 11, 2024 at 2:02 am
Literally everything had a hotline in the 80’s and 90’s dude. Every single appliance would have a sticker on it with an 800 number.
@lastnamefirstname8655
November 11, 2024 at 2:32 am
very interesting older tech! thanks kevin!
@BrandonToy
November 11, 2024 at 4:34 am
I don’t think younger people appreciate how absolutely awesome YouTube is (it was even more awesome in some ways before Google bought it).
@ClaudioMalagrino
November 11, 2024 at 6:24 am
I had a personal project of a “video magazine” in 1993. I used a VHS camcorder, a VHS-editing suite and paper-printed titles inserted via lumakey. I recorded myself with a lapel microphone in my room, and even interviewed people in the streets. I tried to distribute the program in video rental shops. It was totally rejected as a kind of heresy: “How dare you doing a TV program yourself?” Funny how people today accept more a home-made content than at the time. The problem wasn’t the program itself, but the lack of a distribution medium, something we would have only in the 2010s.
@HappyQuailsLC
November 11, 2024 at 6:39 am
YouTube was launched to the public in 2005.
@brandongovreau9218
November 11, 2024 at 7:09 am
is your company ever going to make a complete anniversary collection of popular science magazine The thing is I don’t know if that’s a good idea or not?
@JacknVictor
November 11, 2024 at 7:54 am
Gummyroach looks exactly like the actor, Lane Smith.
@AttilaSVK
November 11, 2024 at 8:54 am
I’m wondering if the initial dub is required so the DirectED can lay down some form of timecode to be able to find the source material… btw, the Panasonic NV-FS200 (known as the AG-1980 in the US) has a physical button for switching recording speed directly on the deck itself.
@waynekinney3358
November 11, 2024 at 10:24 am
Hehe, I had one of these back in the 90’s. Bloody thing, all that tape rewinding each edit and edit is ‘out of sequence’. I also had a lot of the add on graphic tape libraries.
@tlhIngan
November 11, 2024 at 10:37 am
Back in those ugly days, there were three ways of editing video – On-line, Near-Line and Off-Line (aka Non-Linear). Online video editing you edited live – the video comes in, you make your modifications to it and it goes out – think live events. Near-Line is what this is – you have a recording of your content and it needs to be spliced in the right spots, so you create a “cutlist” (or Edit Decision List) and the video is spliced from the playback units to the recorder. This method closely resembles the traditional film editing techniques. Today, computers are powerful enough that offline or non-linear video editing is how it’s done, where you take a list of video assets plop them on a timeline, and edit away. You’ve dumped all your video content on a machine and the machine plays it back with digital perfection, and navigating around is instantaneous. Near-Line systems the units would have to fast-forward or rewind based on timecodes to sync everything. This would be a home consumer near-line system which is highly advanced given there’s no way to timecode sync a VCR, there’s no genlock to synchronize frame generation (the Amiga was popular because its video output supported genlock, making it possible to do online editing).
@Ron2600_
November 11, 2024 at 12:31 pm
We have a JVC form either the late 90s or early 2000s, and it has an SP/EP button right on the front of the deck. I didn’t know this was an uncommon feature.
@Ron2600_
November 11, 2024 at 12:39 pm
I might be related to the co-founder. We have the same last name.
@althejazzman
November 11, 2024 at 2:13 pm
Woah the pain of the final retro edited video shows just how hard it was to use. Seems truly impossible to get good edits.
@35mmMovieTrailersScans
November 11, 2024 at 2:23 pm
Very deceiving product, I fail to see how it was better than “manual” editing which was taking notes of timings of clips on paper and pausing and unpausing the recording on your second VHS, I don’t see any advantages. When I started to watch your video I was expecting to see a technology that somehow helped getting over the very nasty picture distortion that a home vcr’s
pause/unpause recording did to the picture but this machine was simply using the same pause/unpause of the recording vcr. When I was 14 years old in 1980 I had the chance, at school, to learn how to edit video with a professional 3/4″ U-Matic VCR with a tilted erasing head, you had to run both the source and the recording in advance of your cut in, wait a few seconds that the about-to-record VCR synced the video signal with the source then you press the cut-in just 1s (or was it 2s? that was a long time ago) before the actual cut as the tilted erasing head started to blank the space for flying heads to write on…. In the case you were doing an insert you also had to press the cut-out exactly 1s (or was it 2s?) before the actual end of your insert. I don’t think these features were ever present in home appliances. After doing this in school I never had any pleasure trying to edit videos on home vcrs, the school spoiled me.
Only In 1998 did I found a very satisfying editing tool for your miniDV camera, it first captured your clips in low-resolution low-bandwith, let you do the edit and then when you wanted to render only then it would re-capture in full resolution by using the firewire protocols to control your miniDV camera. You then could save your end result on your MiniDV camera without any quality loss….
But I can’t remember if this was the Pinnacle or the Dazzle, one of the two….
@senilyDeluxe
November 11, 2024 at 2:42 pm
And then there’s James Rolfe who did all of that manually (he even knew how many frames of delay his VCRs had).
Up until like 10 years ago, I could pull pretty much any make, model or vintage (even 70s if I dug deep enough) of VCR out of the e-waste pile. Now, all I see are modern ones that aren’t even from the last millennium. Luckily I have stacked them to my ceiling and have almost all of them in (more or less) working condition. Hey. I love analog video (and audio)! I sometimes even videotape YouTube.
Most of my VCRs only record in SP (since I live in Europe, 50Hz means 4 hours per tape in SP and 8 hours in LP and we never got an SLP/EP mode) and most of the ones that do LP have the button ON THE MACHINE!
Just one question, as a software engineer who been there done that –
– WHY doesn’t the Videonics just ask you to press the buttons on the remote control of your VCR to learn them?
Minor nitpick – the reason why the text is blurry at the top half of the screen is probably because your video grabber card was not set to VCR timebase. Some don’t have that feature, but most do.
@ghostrider2664
November 11, 2024 at 4:11 pm
It’s interesting that you pick 1987. That year I was attending 7th grade at a magnet middle school that focused on media and communications. It had a full TV production studio. I mean the real stuff. The pro camera the big board and everything. We spliced tape by hand with razor blades. Yes a load of 7th graders with razor blades in their hands. I still have the VHS tape from those days. Somewhere in my parents house. So I do know of what you speak. You took me down memory lane man. And Mr Dills, if you’re out there, you are remembered.
@AllanAdamson
November 11, 2024 at 4:47 pm
let’s go
@pskoen
November 11, 2024 at 9:06 pm
flipper zero! i keep yelling it at the screen. i’m at 18:16.. maybe you’ll mention it later.
@pskoen
November 11, 2024 at 9:08 pm
..or an ir blaster & an arduino.. that’d do ya!
@NJRoadfan
November 11, 2024 at 10:41 pm
Even with actual professional VCRs…ehh VTRs, this was painful. Linear editing a masterpiece with two decks and a dedicated editing controller takes forever. I even had access to a really fancy setup with two playback decks to allow for A-B roll effects via a Panasonic WJ-MX50. Endless scrubbing thru footage and marking edit points…… I really don’t miss it at all. At least they had time code so you didn’t have to rewind tapes back to the beginning again! Yikes.
By the way. There was a modern take on this concept made in the late 90s, called the Pinnacle Studio 400. It relied on VCRs and Camcorders with control jacks like LANC and Control-S. It was just as janky and I lost several hours trying to get one of them working. Seriously, I setup a Video Toaster with minimal knowledge of both analog video and Amigas in less time! One thing in common with all this analog video stuff. WIRES…. lots and lots of wires.
@derekeyler2634
November 11, 2024 at 11:24 pm
I don’t know what it is about these retro tech videos but I find them strangely relaxing and therapeutic
@icythe1st
November 12, 2024 at 1:09 am
yeah bro the 9 thousand dollar setup is for yuppies cope and seethe
@alisharifian535
November 12, 2024 at 2:19 am
Who else loves magnetic tape hiss sound?🙂
@mystica-subs
November 12, 2024 at 2:45 am
8:55 I get it that you want “crisp on 4k” but, eh, macos of that era was MEANT to be PIXELATED! The AI upscale makes Adobe Premiere 1991 look…terrible 🙁
@joshuabrazile
November 12, 2024 at 4:44 am
The slow tape transports and lack of flying erase heads in low end consumer VHS decks, plus lack of direct wired control of the playback and record decks means that this device didn’t stand a chance of producing quality video. Prosumer VHS and Betamax editing decks had much better edit assembly tools that would let you do tight edits and everything. It still took a long time to do, but the results were clean. Add in a video mixer and you’d be able to do similar graphics that this thing does and more.
@jeffc2190
November 12, 2024 at 9:43 am
It used to be a painstaking process editing videos. I remember many long nights with 4 VCR’s bouncing tape back and forth to get time-lag edits from getting cropped short of their starts (as seen in your final edit). This box was a dream that I had, and now I’m glad to see I could never afford it. My favorite tool was a fade/wipe machine made by Videonics. Many wedding videos were created with this, along with audio insert dub on hi-fi machines with SAP analog stereo. The 4.2 second lag-time is still ingrained in my reflexes for the pause button on my Panasonic VCR remote. Ah the good old days… BTW, there were little Macrovision removal boxes that you could toss inline of the outputting vcr signal to remove the copyright protection. These especially came in handy for dropping in your Rambo edits. Cheers to your frustration on this adventure. Just think, we didn’t have the internet as a resource for help back then, so those 800 numbers for support were key. Also, someone actually answered when you called, and spoke English. Bonus!
@PKZEL
November 12, 2024 at 9:50 am
11:10 And good on him for that!
@RareNogginStuff
November 12, 2024 at 12:58 pm
15:38 What you need is a Logitech Harmony 650 universal remote. It’s a wonderful investment for anyone who has an arsenal of TVs and VCRs but a shortage of appropriate remotes for them. It programs via the computer with a MicroUSB cable and the MyHarmony software, and you just search the model name in MyHarmony to program it. The MyHarmony database has pretty much every model ever made, and in the rare case it doesn’t, there’s an infrared receiver on it to learn codes from the original remote. The Harmony remote itself has an LCD display with a UI and universal buttons for all the unique functions of that particular device (Like changing the recording speed on a VCR).
@Aeduo
November 12, 2024 at 2:58 pm
It seems like a lot of the issue especially considering the reviewers’ approach to reviewing it is that it’s a device that enables a skill which must be learned, but it may’ve been being sold dishonestly as something that just works without needing to learn anything. Even modern video editing tools are complex and not just require learning the tools, but just learning to make a video that’s worth watching. Where it looks like the reviewers were more reviewing it based on it being just some other AV _consumption_ gear.
What a nightmare this would’ve been if you wanted to cut edits between tapes. It looks like each time switching back and forth between tapes would require creating a whole separate project.
The graphics capabilities of this are neat though. Very reminiscent of like, atari 8 bit computer kind of complexity/resolution.
@spiderobert
November 12, 2024 at 3:08 pm
on that first universal remote, did you try all of the buttons? sometimes buttons that nowadays are labeled to do modern things will actually output the signal for speed control.
@oscartango2348
November 12, 2024 at 3:08 pm
Me and my friends edited our VHS videos using the camcorder and one or two VCRs. It seemed much easier than trying to use that contraption.
@lastnamefirstname8655
November 12, 2024 at 3:51 pm
great work, kevin! thanks for showing us this technology!
@evanrhildreth
November 12, 2024 at 6:44 pm
You did not need that device to make videos in 1987, nor did it solve the biggest problem: VCRs took a second or so get spin up to speed, so every time you made a cut or spliced a video, the video would blip.
They made VCRs for editing, including some consumer models. They had two features: 1. a shuttle wheel, that allowed you to quickly skip forward or backwards to find and pause on any frame, and 2. synchronized dubbing. Once you had both VCRs paused where you wanted, you pressed one button. Both VCRs rewinded a few second, spun up to speed and synchronized their time bases, so both got to the previously paused frame at the exact same time, at which time the second VCR instantly switched from playback to record. The result: a perfect slice.
@qchemp420
November 12, 2024 at 11:04 pm
My dad had one of these and it took forever. I made my first public access tv videos in 1994. using an edit control device that would trigger the vcr’s. Still took forever.
@spookisghostly4619
November 13, 2024 at 2:20 am
I was lucky enough to snatch a Toshiba vcr off eBay with its original remote and manual which was nice cuz I have a Toshiba crt/vcr that I can now access the pause feature on
@themeantuber
November 13, 2024 at 3:09 am
Why did everyone have their VCRs set to low speed? The LP and EP were only meant to be used occasionally.
@Its-Fryday
November 13, 2024 at 3:34 am
You overcomplicated the process so bad, I think you must have been part of Screenwave Media, making videos for the Angry Video Game Nerd. Comment if you see some injected virus-like hyperlinks.
@AidanDrotzur-uz5sz
November 13, 2024 at 11:28 am
How’s it goin Bros my name is todd and today we gonna be reacting to this brand new band U2, honestly they don’t sound that good and I don’t think they’re gonna be going anywhere, music way way better when I was a kid in the 70s
@jonathanreedpike
November 13, 2024 at 12:44 pm
I started making video in 1987, you gave a good modeling of the frustration of editing at that time.
@Great-Documentaries
November 13, 2024 at 5:00 pm
No one did this sort of thing in 1987 without an Amiga with a genlock. What a giant missed opportunity to show how we ACTUALLY made such videos back then.
“It took 8 VCRs, 2 camcorders, 3 Videonics units and 4 remotes to create a 1987-era YouTube masterpiece.” Try two VCRs, one camcorder and one Amiga with genlock. Far cheaper, far better.
@Nooticus
November 13, 2024 at 7:24 pm
These videos are incredible and in my opinion should still be on the Vsauce2 channel so more people would watch it. But I appreciate that Popular Science is giving you the money to make videos such as this, so overall this is amazing!
@daishi5571
November 13, 2024 at 7:45 pm
When it comes to old remote controls you were completely wrong. You just need to keep an eye out for a yellow or red (at least that was the colour they use to be) crushed velvet couch left on the side of the road. Then gather all the food and drink you can into a backpack Say goodbye to your friends and family and then throwing caution to the wind take a running jump into the couch diving head 1st. If done correctly there will be disorientation from the head trauma of hitting your head on a pile of change buried deep in the underbelly of couchland! Breath deeply and absorb the smells of the last century, food/drinks/uncles damp belly button fuzz/fooling around and finally the conception of a child. Open your eyes and see unspoken horrors that you may now want to remove those eyes. And finally if the sun is shining and you wasn’t arrested for being insane, in the back next to the dark oozing…….stuff, covered in crust and fuzz is a remote.
True story!