Apollo 16 footage played on Ampex VR-2000B

[apollo16uvc]

On my request, Zdenek digitized his 2 inch Ampex Quadruplex reel labled Apollo 16.

Thank you very much Zdenek for making this possible.



More might come from an other, much bigger +10inch reel that may contain Apollo 17 footage.

2 inch Ampex Quadruplex reel, labled Apollo 16 being played on restored Ampex VR-2000B. Contains AS 16 Launch, live footage and splashdown.

Raw unedited footage of the tape from 3:01

Source:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q3ExkfhdI7Y


Uploads to internet made by me in case YT source goes down:

This video file has been downloaded from YT with 4kvideodownloader set to original resolution, MP4.

As long as the YT link is still up, it is preferred as it naturally has less compression than this download. That is the nature of YT video and lossy codexes, it is out of my hands.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BxS3Nsrmk63eMnJpdndualJPNGM/view?usp=sharing
https://archive.org/details/AS16AMPEX1

Discuss!

[KarMa]

Really cool tape machine and tape content. It seems to have mostly good horizontal stability during the intro with the NASA logo and picture of Earth, without having a TBC I assume. Might be because it does not use a Helical scan head like VHS, but instead a stationary head similar to a cassette deck.

[JVRaines]

The quadruplex format does not use a stationary video head. There are four heads mounted on a drum spinning perpendicular to the direction of tape travel. The tape is not wrapped around the drum, like helical, but sucked into a concave shape by a vacuum hose as it passes the drum, ensuring head contact from top edge to bottom edge.

[KarMa]

The quadruplex format does not use a stationary video head. There are four heads mounted on a drum spinning perpendicular to the direction of tape travel. The tape is not wrapped around the drum, like helical, but sucked into a concave shape by a vacuum hose as it passes the drum, ensuring head contact from top edge to bottom edge.

The tape in the youtube video was moving pretty fast by my standards so I just assumed it was linear. Never really thought about the quadruplex scanning. Pretty interesting.