The Secret Society of Lathe Trolls

Steve E. · Posted: Thu May 08, 2008 11:35 am Post subject: Vinyl Video

I can't remember if I have ever presented links on this. The recent posting about the cylinder machine that records video:

http://lathetrolls.phpbbweb.com/viewtopic.php?t=680

reminded me of the "Vinyl Video" art project:

http://www.vinylvideo.com/

This site appears to have been last updated in February of 2003.

If I were filthy rich you know I'd buy this crazy thing.

This is not the first time grooves have recorded video! oh, no! In fact, the oldest surviving video-recorded data we have (that is, scanned line electronic motion picture images, in their scanned format) was put onto 78 records in 1928 by John Baird.

http://www.tvdawn.com/tvimage.htm

©DFMcLean
Here's a 1933 broadcast of dancing girls:
http://www.tvdawn.com/silvaton.HTM

©DFMcLean

These two topics and more are explored here, on the beloved Kempa site:
(which is also the source of the phrase "Lathe Trolls," thanks to an interview with our man Harper.)

http://www.kempa.com/blog/archives/000951.html

studiorp · Joined: 01 Nov 2007 Posts: 30

Hello, recently I have opened a post about phonovid system.
It is the same concept of the Edison video cutting, but apply to a disc .
You know in which mode is possible record the television images into a vinyl disc ?
Thanks.

Steve E. · Posted: Thu May 08, 2008 1:49 pm Post subject:

Excuse my ignorance.....what ARE the Edison and Westinghouse video systems? The post in the "Handcranker" section made mention of this but now I realize there's more of a story here.

studiorp · Joined: 01 Nov 2007 Posts: 30

You can check this website about Edikow machine : http://www.christerhamp.se/phono/noble.html

About Phonovid, it is a very interesting system to record the television images in a normal 12" vinyl disc.
This is the comment from the Labguy's world :

A new system, called "Phonovid" plays still TV pictures as well as sound from a phonograph record. Up to 400 pictures and 40 minutes of sound can be recorded on both sides of a 12 inch long playing record. Heart of the system is a slow to fast scan converter which takes the signals from the phono pickup and converts them into a TV display. An electronic storage tube stores the picture line by line and, when the picture is complete, reads it out to the receiver. Two such storage tubes are used. One is repeatedly reading out a picture while the other tube is constructing the next one from the video information in the grooves of the recording. The storage tubes alternately read out a picture every six seconds. Both the turntable and the television set are entirely standard. The equipment, in a laboratory prototype form, was demonstrated recently by Westinghouse. The company foresees the system for classroom instruction, industrial and military training, vocational education and sales presentations. Text and photo: Electronics World Magazine, August, 1965.

... and this the photo of the system :
http://www.labguysworld.com/PhonoVid_004.jpg

The thing that I am thinking from a year or two, is to build or search an encoder electronic, so it is possible to record too tv images on the vinyl.
Cheers.

Steve E. · Posted: Thu May 08, 2008 3:02 pm Post subject:

You should definitely look more closely at the "vinyl video" site, because it looks like they were able to get much quicker picture images than the 1960's system.

Check out this page: the Real Player versions don't seem to work, but the Flash ones do:

http://www.vinylvideo.com/press/05_video/

Their infomercial is clearly ironic, fairly creepy, sorta post-neo-now or retro-communist-futurist, and rather hilarious. The picture quality is..."unique," just as they claim.

http://video.google.de/videoplay?docid=-2062149984651871591

Notice that the system includes "DJ Scratching with film"!!!!

Steve E. · Posted: Thu May 08, 2008 3:14 pm Post subject:

Same propaganda on Youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iur5WmP3UMI

Some of the samples from the video discs:

http://video.google.de/videoplay?docid=-9177459368186283673

Glacial video showing live use of vinyl video, w/ DJ's:

http://video.google.de/videoplay?docid=-5538492591128103907

Too much of the DJ's, not enough of the pix!

studiorp · Joined: 01 Nov 2007 Posts: 30

A similar system of Phonovid was the CED RCA of 70-80 years...

JayDC · Posted: Thu May 08, 2008 5:18 pm Post subject:

you can do this with any lathe, or recording system for that matter. check this out:

http://www.bastwood.com/aphex.php

Steve E. · Posted: Thu May 08, 2008 6:32 pm Post subject:

My mind is blown.

studiorp · Joined: 01 Nov 2007 Posts: 30

Ok, about lathe, but the electronic ?
What can I use to obtain the same results or better perhaps too ?

cuttercollector · Joined: 11 Jun 2006 Posts: 258 Location: San Jose, CA

I finally figured out that this whole thing was done as art.
The infomercial is a spoof of sorts.
If you go to the pdf catalog and start reading the reviews, (I could only read the ones in english) you will see that they made it as a traveling art installation and I think would like to promote artists to maks discs for it.
As to how it works, I am not sure they are not using some form of digital technology at least as far as sequencing the picture and sound on and off the disc. I believe it is actual analog AM modulated video signals and analog audio being stored within the audio bandwidth of a normal record.
If you dig in the reviews for technical hints it is 8 video frames per second of some very low resolution - perhaps 150 lines at best - amplitude modulated according to brightness that are stored. Somehow I think they have sped up a block of sound and sandwiched it in between video frames.
In the infomercial when they are showing the art possibilities of slowing the disc down and listening to the video sounds, at 1/4 of the normal 45 speed you can hear a greatly speeded up burst of audio every so often between stuff that sounds like "video". (Have you ever accidently plugged in the composite video source to one of the sound jacks on your TV and heard the result?) So that means they stored the audio at WAY faster than real time in little chunks and are somehow stitching it back together and slowing it down to normal speed.
In short, given the bandwidth of our beloved vinyl. I don't think there is a practical way to do it. You could always try recording composite video with your lathe but although you will get the horizontal and vertical sync frequencues (15.75KHz H. & 60Hz V. in US NTSC) all video and color information will be lost.

cuttercollector · Joined: 11 Jun 2006 Posts: 258 Location: San Jose, CA

My friend did try recording composite video information as audio on his computer. It was probably limited to 20Khz bandwidth which is the best one could hope for without extrodinary measures from a professional lathe and playback system. He reports he got sync and some shadowy high contrast features of his picture but virtually no recognizable detail.
The old experiments from the 30s were of a much lower resolution TV than modern standards as is Vinylvideo and some of the ham radio TV stuff. And those 30s experiments were apparently only recently discovered to be playable with digital restoration techniques.
Movement and picture detail and especially color require lots and lots of bandwidth.
Just look at all the people who tried experiments with analog tape running at really high speeds to get anything before they invented rotating head video recording. Even the Fisher Price Pixelvision used cassette tape running at 15 inches per second and a custom ASIC to get it's barely viewable, slow frame rate, black and white video. That required response on tape according to what I have seen on the web of up to 160KHz !

Jccc · Joined: 20 Nov 2007 Posts: 25 Location: California

This stuff is sooo fresh!!