It has to be said, we were feeling pretty chuffed with ourselves by the time we'd packed up all the gear and were on our way back from the wine bar where we did the shoot. We had filled up a good two hours of tape with footage of 'the group'. Surely there was plenty there for a three minute clip. That was our first misconception — others were to follow!

We spent the next day rounding up all the equipment needed to take our footage and trim it down to a manageable length. To achieve this you need at least two video recorders, at least one of which needs to be S-VHS compatible (assuming you shot in S-VHS originally, of course). The source machine has to be the correct format for you to be able to play back the footage although the VCR to which you record can be any format you desire. We used Paul's FS90 and a V8000 which Panasonic graciously lent us for this exercise (thanks Amanda).

Exercise is probably the operative word here, as the V8000 weighs a ton and looks rather like a large brieze block. However you soon warm to its harsh exterior when the front panel lowers drawbridge fashion to reveal a myriad of little buttons to push. The best function of all was the facility to load and play both full size and the newer compact 'C' format VHS and S-VHS cassettes without the aid of any cassette adaptor. You just hit the right button and the cassette loading slot and mechanism magically transform from one format to the other in a way that would leave even James Bond gobsmacked.

The price of this particular VCR does, on the face of it seem rather high (just over two grand). However it does do the job of a top quality recorder plus a one shot editor allowing you to program up to four single edit in and out point plus fades in and out from either black or white. Although these functions would be useful to a serious hobbyist we found most of the additional features this video recorder had to offer were of no use when doing anything music-related.

The biggest single problem was that the edit points are only accurate to the nearest second. Most of you will have noticed that in good music videos all the visual cuts happen on the beat. It reinforces the rhythm of the music and helps define the sections of the song.

But you don't need us to tell you that accuracy to the nearest second is nowhere near good enough to achieve cuts on the beat. Our amateur investigation techniques soon revealed that to achieve the degree of precision required you need some form of external 'edit controller'.

Darrin got back on the phone to Amanda to see if she could help out. It turns out that Panasonic produce two such devices: the EC310, and the more expensive VWEC10E. The EC310 duplicates the functions of the VCR front panels, and allows eight single edits to be stored and rearranged. The 5-pin editing terminal for connection to the VCRs does give the necessary single frame accuracy which allows for the on-the-beat cutting we wanted. At around £400 it seemed just the sort of thing an impoverished musician might just be able to stretch to.

However, when Amanda told us about the VW EC10E, and mentioned the magic word "VITC" (Vertical Interval Time Code) we were sold. Let's face it, everyone knows that LTC (Longitudinal Time Code, like SMPTE or EBU) is not as good as VITC because the code can still be read when the tape is stationary. At least, that is what we were told, and being credulous individuals, we took their word as gospel.

VITC: THE GOOD NEWS AND THE BAD NEWS

So VITC it was. We assembled our growing system: we hooked the two video recorders, the FS90 and the V8000B, into the EC10E edit controller (which was surprisingly easy) and then we set about finding out how to stripe our footage with VITC. Amanda had thoughtfully sent us a VG1E VITC generator, so we thought it must be a doddle. However, there didn't seem to be anywhere to plug this generator into either the video recorders or the edit controller. As a last resort (like all musicians) we finally got around to looking at the 4-page manual that came with VG1E. It was simplicity itself: simply plug the VG1E into the slot on your Panasonic camera and you are ready to shoot VITC-encoded footage. Well, that was fine, except we didn't have a Panasonic camera and we had already shot our footage. A few phone calls later we discovered that VITC is encoded into the picture as it is recorded and the only way to add it later is to copy the footage, thereby losing a generation.

Being resilient souls, after we had vented our feelings with a few well-chosen words, we soon bounced back with enthusiasm. We had already seen that the S-VHS footage was plenty good enough at second generation, as we had already had to copy it into short play format to get better quality in jog/shuttle mode after we had unwittingly recorded in long play (an error explained in last month's exciting episode). So we would simply recopy from the original footage but this time adding VITC as we went. Except...

We still didn't have anywhere to plug the VITC generator in. The VG1E is only designed to add VITC whilst recording on a Panasonic camera, and a call to Amanda established that Panasonic don't make any other VITC generator.

Was this where our odyssey was to end? Stranded, VITC-less, with just a tape of un-editable footage for company? No, there had to be another way. An hour of frantic phone calling led us to Lion Audio, a chain of hi-fi and Video stores based in London's Tottenham Court Road. They had just the gadget we needed, an Alpermann VITC generator which could be connected between two VCRs. We could therefore copy our footage with the little Alpermann box plugged between the VCRs, and add the VITC. Sounds simple? That's what we thought, but then came the next snag — to achieve top quality visuals we would have to use the S-Video ports, but the Alpermann sports a pair of phono sockets for the S-Video input — not the same connections as on the VCRs.

So near and yet so far; Lion Audio knew of the existence of an S-Video cable with phono cables splitting off from it, but didn't have any in stock. Another series of frantic phone calls revealed the only store in the country that appeared to have one of these leads was situated in Harrow. So, a quick jaunt North West at Warp Factor seven took us from the centre of the capital to the centre of Harrow to collect the lead that would solve all our problems. It's not a cheap way to obtain VITC, but it does do the job. The Alpermann VITC Generator costs around £250 and the lead to insert it in the S-Video chain a mere £38!

At long last, there was light at the end of the tunnel. We had copied our footage from long play to second generation standard play with VITC inserted, which meant we could finally begin editing.

The EC10 consists of two units that interlock. The left hand section has all the transport controls and the editing facilities. The right hand section has the additional functions and memory for another 98 edit points which can reside in memory or be dumped down onto the linear audio track of the video tape. Once in memory they can be rearranged in a different order, or scenes can be re-tweaked, and then a new master can be made.

"We got quite good at predicting and avoiding continuity errors, spurred on by the fact that a mistake meant starting each edit over from scratch."

THE NEED FOR PREVIEW

That side of the edit controller worked and performed beautifully. However, we were a tad disappointed by the little button marked 'Preview'. Using the U-matic equipment back at the college, the preview button set both the source player and the master recorder into play mode. The recorder played the previously recorded scene and then dropped out of play to show what the next scene would look like when the edit was done for real. This is particularly useful for spotting small continuity errors like parts of the performers' bodies being in totally different positions from one scene to the next. Bear in mind that sometimes its very difficult to spot continuity errors, so previewing more than once is time well spent. (For promotional pop videos some continuity errors are not only tolerated but actively encouraged. After all how many Whitney Houston or Kylie Minogue videos have you seen on the Chart Show where their outfits change every other beat?)

The sort of continuity problems that you will need to look out for are things like someone's head being at totally the opposite angle to that in the previous shot. It's the kind of thing that doesn't immediately show up as being wrong but does make the viewer do a double take.

Here came our next major snag — the preview function on the EC10 didn't do what we expected. In effect, it only did half the job. It rewinds the source machine to a few seconds before your 'In' point, plays up to that point, pauses for four seconds, plays the scene up to your 'Out' point, pauses again and then stops. The recorder is left to its own devices so you never get to see how it will look in the finished product before you make that destructive button push. However, necessity is the mother of invention, and without a true preview mode we got quite good at predicting and avoiding continuity errors, spurred on by the fact that a mistake meant starting each edit over from scratch. In fact before long (and with a few lucky breaks) things were starting to look quite pro.

Everything we had attempted up till now had involved straight cuts, which was fine up to a point but we felt things were getting a bit boring, especially once the song's slow intro was over and the main groove kicked in. What we needed was another unit that could add some variety to the editing process. Placing our highly sensitive ears to the ground, it didn't take long for word to reach us that what we were looking for was a vision mixer.

ENTER THE MX12

Indeed this vision mixer had a name (or as with so much hi-tech gear these days, a number). We kept hearing about this Panasonic MX12 vision mixer, so in a fit of curiosity we managed to borrow one from Sound Systems of Bromley (thanks, chaps!). If, like us, you drool over toys with lots of buttons and flashing lights, then we strongly advise you take a bib with you if you ever go for an MX12 demo. And to prove it's not all just for show, the MX12 seems to be pretty much the industry standard in small and not-so-small video editing suites. Every ad for such facilities we saw in the various video mags seemed to make a big feature out of it. We soon found out why.

The MX12 works in a similar way to an audio mixer. On the back panel are sockets for two S-Video inputs (or standard video connections) and two outputs (similarly configured) which go to your recorder and/or a monitor. With this unit installed in the chain you can now mix or wipe between two video inputs and record the result onto your master recorder. If that weren't enough, it also has a digital visual effects processor on-board which allows you to incorporate half a dozen different effects either separately or together. So you can set up an effect mix or wipe from the clean, untreated image to the effected version or to a different chunk of footage on a second recorder. You can also have four memory button which can store a sequence of up to 88 effects each.

It's this unit that really separates the men from the boys. At present the MX12 is the only professional vision mixer for less than £2,000. As we already noted, it appears to be the industry standard as far as the small to medium sized video production suites go. We found the difference it made to our footage was staggering. Friends and colleagues to whom we had shown our efforts so far still said that our footage looked really good, but now their condescending tone was replaced by something close to awe. We suddenly started to feel very good about the whole thing (even though principle credit should of course go to the MX12). We found the most useful effect to be the ability to separate the main point of interest — the singer's face, the guitarist's hands etc. — from the rest of the shot with a circle or square, leave that section unaffected, but then apply some groovy aliasing or strobing technique to the rest of the screen. This worked particularly well interacting with the light patterns from Darrin's disco lighting which we had used in the shoot.

AUDIO CONSIDERATIONS

So from the video point of view things were starting to look pretty swanky. However, we were not out of the woods yet. We had been using Insert Edit on our master recorder, taking an fairly straight shot of the performers as the basis for the video, and 'dropping in' the additional pictures and effects without altering the audio at all. Or so we thought. Oh yes, the standard mono audio (which we had been using as a guide) was untouched, but when we listened to the stereo tracks we found that we still had the sound of the backing track to which Paul and vocalist Marcia mimed, as picked up by the video camera mic. Of course, the stereo hi-fi tracks are actually encoded with the picture, so the insert editing replaces both picture and stereo audio — with a generation loss! Clearly this wasn't going to work. We didn't want to end up with a great video which had lousy sound quality (or good sound quality in mono!). We looked at all the permutations and the only answer seemed to be to carry on working with the mono track, unless...

SMPTE AUDIO SYNC

We should have thought of it earlier really. I mean here we were, a couple of music journalists who have been preaching the gospel of SMPTE to our readers for the last five years, and now suddenly we were in exactly the situation where it is indispensable. We replaced the mono audio track with SMPTE using a MIDIman Syncman, which on playback converted this to MIDI Time Code which was in turn used to trigger the ADAS-ST stereo hard disk recorder into which we had digitally transferred our original stereo audio from DAT. It was simply a question of fine tuning the SMPTE offset that triggered the playback in the right place, and we were away. Suddenly we had audio and video of equal quality once more.

Of course an even neater way around would have been to convert the VITC directly to MTC (something which can be achieved with MOTU's Video Timepiece, for example), but the MIDIman was right there and it did the job.

Once we had our visual edits right (now audio quality was no longer an issue), it was simply a question of recording the audio back onto the stereo hi-fi tracks when duplicating our meisterwerk. This is of course possible not only on S-VHS on which we recorded a master with audio, but also on Hi-Fi VHS. This is quite important as most people still only have VHS players and you don't want to have to take your own video recorder around with you to play your video to people. (If a tape which has been duplicated like this is played on a mono VHS machine then the two tracks are summed into a perfectly acceptable mono version).

The reception to our finished work surprised even us — people even started complimenting the song (an unprecedented development for a Wiffen-penned tune!). Music Video is such a standard for 'properly released' music, that I guess if there is a video to go with a song, people assume it has had the recognition of a recording deal. Or, to be less cynical, perhaps it involves an additional sense in the listening process. Whichever it is, I'm going to shoot a video for all my songs now I've seen how much more seriously people take it.

As for the video, it ended up on the Plasmec stand at the AES in New York as a demo of ADAS-ST, syncing to video via MTC — we must have got something right. Indeed, if we could achieve such results with a set-up like this, we started to wonder what we could do with a serious pro edit suite. No sooner had that thought occurred to us than Darrin was back on the phone to Amanda, who passed us on to Panasonic Broadcast. Suddenly we found ourselves with an invite to come and use their demonstration facilities in Slough for a whole week. Was there no end to the generosity of these people? But that is another story and it will have to wait for another time.