EEVblog #969 - Vintage $80k NLE Video Editor Teardown

[EEVblog]

How did you do video editing in the 1990's?
With an $80k Panasonic WJ-MX1200 NLE video editing box, that's how. Dave takes a look inside.

[AF6LJ]

Very cool...
I am thinking they used Windows NT as the operating system instead of the consumer Win95 /98X OSs.
That was during the time NT3.51 was out as I remember.

[meeko]

Brings back memories from high school...

Back in 94, I was a member of my school's Canada FIRST Robotics Competition team, on the video crew.  We shot on S-VHS, and edited with an early version of Adobe Premiere on a 486, probably running Windows NT.  Similar to this system, there was a video capture card, I think made by Truevision, with its own SCSI controller.

One of the other guys on the crew had a Pentium at home, so he did all our 3D rendering in 3D Studio for DOS, but the rendered footage was too big for floppies, and neither he nor the school had a Zip drive.  He did have a video card with an S-Video out and an S-VHS VCR, though, so once again, he output everything to S-VHS, then re-digitized it at school.

[xrunner]

Oh nice, very "boatanchory". 






"boatanchory" phrase courtesy of member TiN

[Zom-B]

These four resistors are present only on the SCSI board and not on the JPEG baord, so they probably (help) determine that this circuit does SCSI whereas on the other board the same chips do JPEG (apart from the grid array contents).

[Kleinstein]

The CPU of the PC part is not a Pentium 5 - more like the original Pentium 1 or even a 486 only. It could even be one with the famous FDIV bug.

The Motorola 68020 is even slower, even with the extra FPU. It is more like a local CPU for local things or real times needs off windows.

I don't think there is local regulation right below the TI340xx - it looked more like the clock and maybe local regulation for the clock.

[PA0PBZ]

Dave, you see too much gold, I only see copper there 

[twice11]

The CPU of the PC part is not a Pentium 5 - more like the original Pentium 1 or even a 486 only. It could even be one with the famous FDIV bug.

It is a Pentium Classic, yes. (The Pentium before the Pentium MMX). The Intel model name for it is "P54C". IIRC "P5" was used for the early 5V Pentium processors clocked at 60 or 66 MHz. The Pentium MMX is "P55C".

The model number on the back side ends in 166 (Dave also pulled some data for that chip). There was no Pentium 166 with the FDIV bug.

[rrinker]

68020's were common on SCSI disk controllers boards back in the day, those or the Intel i820.

[dexters_lab]

really interesting to see this and compare to the quantel editbox which was available at the same time but was more than double the cost.

[Zbig]

Brings back memories from high school...

Back in 94, I was a member of my school's Canada FIRST Robotics Competition team, on the video crew.  We shot on S-VHS, and edited with an early version of Adobe Premiere on a 486, probably running Windows NT.  Similar to this system, there was a video capture card, I think made by Truevision, with its own SCSI controller.

One of the other guys on the crew had a Pentium at home, so he did all our 3D rendering in 3D Studio for DOS, but the rendered footage was too big for floppies, and neither he nor the school had a Zip drive.  He did have a video card with an S-Video out and an S-VHS VCR, though, so once again, he output everything to S-VHS, then re-digitized it at school.

Amateurs Where I live,  in my teenage years, you just yanked your HDD out of your PC's enclosure and off you went to a friend for those weekly exchanges of the latest game and software "backups", XXX-rated JPEGs, etc. Some folks wouldn't even bother ever putting their PC's case back on - too much hassle. Somewhat surprisingly, most guys actually put their HDDs in antistatic bags for transport. But then again, we were going to tech high school so there was at least some awareness of the static damage issues (but on the downside, two girls total). If you felt extra careful that day, you even wrapped your HDD in some towel before tossing it in your backpack. At the friend's place, you usually built some book tower (finally, some use for those!) to place your HDD on near your friend's open PC case, IDE and power cable length allowing. Few minutes lated, after resolving some IDE Master/Slave jumper issues, BIOS autodetect failures, etc., you were both ready to go and copy all that new stuff in excitement. If I recall correctly, around '94-'96, cheap, removable HDD bays of terrible- to poor quality showed up and became all the rage these sides. Everyone and their dog was rocking their HDDs in one of these removable HDD enclosures. Of course, if (as a host) your only HDD was in the bay and you didn't have another bay then, well, back to point 1.

It turns out, folks from regular high schools were missing out on much of this fun and instead were involved in some strange activities like dating actual girls (whose names weren't ending in ".jpg")

[timb]

Brings back memories from high school...

Back in 94, I was a member of my school's Canada FIRST Robotics Competition team, on the video crew.  We shot on S-VHS, and edited with an early version of Adobe Premiere on a 486, probably running Windows NT.  Similar to this system, there was a video capture card, I think made by Truevision, with its own SCSI controller.

One of the other guys on the crew had a Pentium at home, so he did all our 3D rendering in 3D Studio for DOS, but the rendered footage was too big for floppies, and neither he nor the school had a Zip drive.  He did have a video card with an S-Video out and an S-VHS VCR, though, so once again, he output everything to S-VHS, then re-digitized it at school.

Amateurs Where I live,  in my teenage years, you just yanked your HDD out of your PC's enclosure and off you went to a friend for those weekly exchanges of the latest game and software "backups", XXX-rated JPEGs, etc. Some folks wouldn't even bother ever putting their PC's case back on - too much hassle. Somewhat surprisingly, most guys actually put their HDDs in antistatic bags for transport. But then again, we were going to tech high school so there was at least some awareness of the static damage issues (but on the downside, two girls total). If you felt extra careful that day, you even wrapped your HDD in some towel before tossing it in your backpack. At the friend's place, you usually built some book tower (finally, some use for those!) to place your HDD on near your friend's open PC case, IDE and power cable length allowing. Few minutes lated, after resolving some IDE Master/Slave jumper issues, BIOS autodetect failures, etc., you were both ready to go and copy all that new stuff in excitement. If I recall correctly, around '94-'96, cheap, removable HDD bays of terrible- to poor quality showed up and became all the rage these sides. Everyone and their dog was rocking their HDDs in one of these removable HDD enclosures. Of course, if (as a host) your only HDD was in the bay and you didn't have another bay then, well, back to point 1.

It turns out, folks from regular high schools were missing out on much of this fun and instead were involved in some strange activities like dating actual girls (whose names weren't ending in ".jpg")

Ah, the days when internet porn only came in still images. I can still remember watching as a JPEG loaded over my 14.4kBPS modem. The pictures would load line by line, so you'd see a head, then a neck, then the start of a tit and... GOD DAMNIT MOM, I'M ON THE INTERNET DON'T PICK UP THE PHONE!!

Broadband Internet and Fleshlights: The best inventions of the 21st Century.

[GreggD]

Where are the ADC & DACs ? What a layout job, I would liked to see how they did this. And all the pcb markings in English must have made this even harder.

[SeanB]

ADC and DAC will be on the video card under the shielding cover. Not audio under those shields, but video. you have all those pots to do things like balance the gain, zero and other adjustments on the video in and out, as small offset differences and gain differences here in converting will be visible colour shifts and posterisation along with unwanted solarisation. Probably 5 8 bit ( 257 comparators and encoder logic on chip along with a resistor divider with trim points for 3 corrections along the divider ) flash converters there for the video, along with a very powerful video buffer driving them as well. With Panasonic it will be a Mitsubishi hybrid part though as a driver, and probably another few as video output drivers as well.

[Zom-B]

Brings back memories from high school...

Back in 94, I was a member of my school's Canada FIRST Robotics Competition team, on the video crew.  We shot on S-VHS, and edited with an early version of Adobe Premiere on a 486, probably running Windows NT.  Similar to this system, there was a video capture card, I think made by Truevision, with its own SCSI controller.

One of the other guys on the crew had a Pentium at home, so he did all our 3D rendering in 3D Studio for DOS, but the rendered footage was too big for floppies, and neither he nor the school had a Zip drive.  He did have a video card with an S-Video out and an S-VHS VCR, though, so once again, he output everything to S-VHS, then re-digitized it at school.

Amateurs Where I live,  in my teenage years, you just yanked your HDD out of your PC's enclosure and off you went to a friend for those weekly exchanges of the latest game and software "backups", XXX-rated JPEGs, etc. Some folks wouldn't even bother ever putting their PC's case back on - too much hassle. Somewhat surprisingly, most guys actually put their HDDs in antistatic bags for transport. But then again, we were going to tech high school so there was at least some awareness of the static damage issues (but on the downside, two girls total). If you felt extra careful that day, you even wrapped your HDD in some towel before tossing it in your backpack. At the friend's place, you usually built some book tower (finally, some use for those!) to place your HDD on near your friend's open PC case, IDE and power cable length allowing. Few minutes lated, after resolving some IDE Master/Slave jumper issues, BIOS autodetect failures, etc., you were both ready to go and copy all that new stuff in excitement. If I recall correctly, around '94-'96, cheap, removable HDD bays of terrible- to poor quality showed up and became all the rage these sides. Everyone and their dog was rocking their HDDs in one of these removable HDD enclosures. Of course, if (as a host) your only HDD was in the bay and you didn't have another bay then, well, back to point 1.

It turns out, folks from regular high schools were missing out on much of this fun and instead were involved in some strange activities like dating actual girls (whose names weren't ending in ".jpg")

Amateurs In my days, you just lugged your entire high-tower PC with CRT monitor to the local computer club, weekly, and did all the things you described.

[Towger]

We has BBSes back than. No lugging anything.  V22bis and you were rocking.

[rrinker]

 In my final 2 years at college they installed a digital phone system across campus, so every dorm room finally had a phone without having to pay a huge fee to the local phone company for installation. Along with this, each phone had a DB25 RS-232 port on it which gave 9600 bps access to the computer center AND to any other extension on campus - ie room to room. This is when if you were rich you had a 2400 bps modem, most of us made do with 1200 or even 300. A few of us looked up information from the system vendor and found out the serial ports were actually capable of 19.2kbps. And another wrote a little utility that could work as a RI signal from a regular modem which allowed us to start setting up various BBSes. The one I ran was based off a Bloom County theme and my more artistically gifted friend created this elaborate ANSI graphics animated logon and log off sequence. At 19.2k it was quite impressive, as he was able to create very credible representations with just the various character graphic blocks, and the redraw speeds for screens was pretty quick. I wish I had saved that stuff. Login, you started in a field with a sign labeling it as Milo's Meadow, and then you beamed up Star Trek style to the bridge of the Starchair Enterpoop. WHen logging off, the view switched to the outside rear of a space ship the bore a strong resemblance to the USS Enterprise, and then the shuttle bay doors would open and out would come the Basselope shuttlecraft.
 If the names mean nothing - you need to check out vintage Bloom County comics by Berkeley Breathed.  After a long absence he's revived it, but true to form the characters have all advanced in apparent age an not all of the old ones have returned.

[Zom-B]

Nowadays remote controlled lab equipment still use crappy RS232 connections, e.g. a brand new GW Instek power supply (looks the same as that infamously difficult BK Precision but with different buttons) has a fixed and crappily slow 2400 baud. I can't even smoothly ramp the supply. Do they still live in the 80s (just like part MFRs)?

[edit] why can't I link to youtube without embedding it?