Timeline Analog 2 - John Buck Timeline Analog

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and bought a CMX System/600 to install at E. 51st Street. Gould, a television pioneer at CBS Inc., had established his first videotape production studio in 1957.

       We de-emphasize equipment here. When it comes time to edit you can just sit in a room with the edit, away from the machines. In fact we don't even charge by the hour, we charge a flat rate, it eliminate pressure and we still make out.

      Teletronics realized that the upkeep of the system was beyond its maintenance personnel. Robert Lund had spent five years at Bell Labs on the Picturephone project when he responded to a New York Times advertisement for a ‘video-computer engineer’.

      Lund was hired to maintain the CMX 600 and taught himself how to program its PDP-11.

       I made certain changes in the program. I added the ability to split scenes, to record over scenes, to make changes as we went along. The changes I made were mostly utilitarian modifications. It didn't radically change the things you could do but refined the process, providing access to abilities that were hidden in the computer.

      Lund remembers the CMX system in operation at Teletronics.

       The reaction of people who saw the 600 in action was (an almost eerie silence). Try to imagine a time when there were no computers around, NO digital video of any kind and you can envision the stunning effect of touching a screen with a "light pen" and immediately seeing the first frame of the selected take.

       It's still a concept that's unique. Within its limitations it's the best editing machine extant.”

      Another group viewed the CMX 600.

      Walter Murch later told Scott Kirsner about his experience alongside Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas.

       “This is the future, I thought and it'll be here in five years. Francis and I produced a paper looking at the feasibility of using that machine to edit The Godfather.”

      Executives at Paramount Studios ruled out using the CMX on The Godfather, but Coppola and Lucas returned to digital editing in the coming years. By summer of 1971 CMX 200 "Assembler" units shipped to CBS Television, EUE Screen Gems, CFI and Gould’s Teletronics.

      Software engineer Jim Adams recalls:

       I was sent to CFI to work on the 200 with Dick Hill. Dick has an excellent grasp of the video process, and proved to be an excellent teacher for me. I have always stressed that successful software development requires input from someone well versed in the target field and is willing to share their understanding.

       It rapidly became apparent to me that the film/video edit process was very similar to computer programming in that the first take needed at least some tweaking and often major rebuilding.

       This led to a cycle of CMX/600 to CMX/200 back to CMX/600 trips for the Edit Decision List (EDL), even for a single frame change of edit point much less for a replacement of camera angle from a different take.

      Adams and Hill looked to integrate a Grass Valley Group switcher.

       It turned out that each switcher model made by GVG had unique setup and command structure, thus needing different software for each installation of a 200 operating system.

       Back at CMX, Steve (Foreman) and I built conditional statements into the source code to create the necessary instructions for the target system. As CMX sold more 200s, more conditional statements were needed in the source software. The bottom line here was that each installation had a unique operating program.

       At some point in time I offered to Dick Hill that I could add program code into the 200 that would permit changes to the EDL without going back to the 600.The primary objection here was that the teletype did not provide a convenient way to view the EDL. This was a show stopper in as much as some EDL's were quite lengthy.

      Art Schneider (above) noticed the radical change in the editing schedule on long form projects like The Julie Andrews Special program.

       The producers estimated it would take more than forty editing hours using Editec to complete this fifteen-minute section. I had a rough cut of that segment in two hours and a final cut in another thirty minutes.

      Schneider had to rent 65 disk packs to store five and a half hours of camera rushes for NBC’s Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde on the 600. It was an order that consumed almost all of Memorex's disk supply. Despite the logistics Schneider was impressed:

       Selecting and choosing shots to be edited together was a pleasure. The editing system also had the ability to fast forward or rewind any shot at ten times play speed as well as to jog a single frame forwards and backwards.

      The need for more and more disk space may have been prescient for the industry in the coming decades but it also caused further problems for CMX Systems as a business.

      Jim Adams adds:

       As more and more video material was transferred to 600 disk packs, Memorex was rapidly depleting their inventory. Moreover, disk packs were not purchased by the user, but were leased on a monthly basis.Thus the cost of 600 usage was increasing as disk packs had to be held until the edited program was released to the client.

      The System/600 was more suited to commercials and on-air promotions.

      Robert Lund recalls:

       You had limited storage, so editors would use the CMX to cut the opening montage to a show.

      Metromedia Producers Corporation began editing Sandcastles, a 90 minute CBS Tuesday Night Movie on a CMX 600 system. Lon Priest went to watch.

       Squatting between Stage 3 and scoring at CBS Studio Centre, in Studio City, is a small frame building intriguingly called the CMX editing shack. Nondescript from the outside, it exudes a mystery reminiscent of similar bland buildings at Los Alamos or Cape Kennedy. One just knows something revolutionary is going on within. The shack houses the CMX 600 editing console, the editing portion of a computerized videotape editing and assembly system as far ahead of related techniques as jets are to biplanes.

       Upon entering the building, one is struck by that antiseptic, gun metal grey atmosphere that blares ‘computer technology’. How can this possibly be an editing room? Where is the Moviola, the synchronizer and the splicer? Missing, too, are canvas bins, film cans and pins. It looks more like mission control!

       Hunched intently over a long console containing two television monitors are film editor and ACE president Tom (Thomas) McCarthy, director Ted Post and associate producer Lee Miller.

       All that's missing are white smocks and they'd look like technicians watching an Atlas Agena (rocket) blastoff. Black and white images flick across the screens, while on one an overlay of numerals tick over like seconds on a countdown. However, instead of a rocket, the screen shows actress Bonnie Bedelia and the changing numerals indicate picture frames, not seconds.

      McCarthy and Post were putting final touches on Sandcastles, four days after videotaping had completed on location. Priest wrote for Cinema Editor magazine.

       The CMX 600 system is truly an amazing device, which permits an editor to instantly draw on any of the audio and visual material he needs to put a sequence together. If he so chooses, an editor can play back thousands of frames stored in the computer in any order he wants. The fact that the frames were shot one after another in time is inconsequential to the system. Thus it is a true "Random Access Video Editing" machine.

      Tom McCarthy became the first editor to use the CMX-600 under actual production conditions. He told Priest:

       This machine can

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