ABSTRACT
Commercial television is often accused of a lack of originality. Critics complain that almost everything is a copy of something else.
That’s certainly how most shows used to be edited: by copying. You’d put a blank piece of videotape into a recorder. This would become the master. You’d put the original footage into a player. Then, scene by scene, you’d find the desired takes on the original and copy them to the master. If you were going to add music or sound effects, you’d copy the assembled master’s dialog onto a multitrack tape. You’d copy the other elements to other tracks and then mix them. Then you’d copy the completed mix back to the master. This was the only way to edit video for decades, and many shows are still done this way.
