I’m very pleased to be able to say that the Video Archive Blog has returned. I took early retirement in January of 2011 but have recently been asked to restart and update my entries. So, we can look forward to more videos that are currently held in the video collection. I’ll also be trying to sort out and access the 15 year archive collection from STOIC the Student TV of Imperial College. That collection dates from about 1970 to 1985, or there abouts.
Working from home (and sometimes from Imperial) I can now devote as much time as I wish to this Blog. There are so many videos just waiting to be seen again. In fact I already have a few Blog entries awaiting the click of a button to make them live. The most time-consuming thing is the transfer of videotape into a digital format. What I’m currently doing is to make a DVD in maximum resolution of the video, before creating an on-line video held on the server. The DVD is stored along with the original videotape to make access easier. But the problem is that a 30 minute video takes 30 minutes to copy into a new format. That can take a lot of time!
Anyway, keep looking to see what’s changed or been added and let me know if you have any special requests or material that would be of interest to Imperial College.
Colin Grimshaw October 2012
For entirely selfish reasons, I’d love to see something from STOIC in the time period 1985-88, particularly our version of the then new TV show Countdown. The biggest problem with the show was finding contestants, so we often had to resort to bribing regulars at the Union Bar with alcohol, with interesting on-air results.
Hi Alistair,
Sadly we don’t have that part of the STOIC archive, it’s only up to approx 1985 when the college TV Studio ceased to be used by you all (the Union Building studio came into use by STOIC). The main problem anyway is going to be transferring the content into a useable format from the original tapes (1 inch Ampex and then Sony U-matic) it’s a time consuming job!!
Colin Grimshaw