ABSTRACT

Prior to 1956, motion picture film was the only recording medium available for capturing and storing televised images. Using a device called a kinescope, a 16mm or 35mm motion picture camera was set up to record electronic images

—Mark Dery, Author and Cultural Critic, (1993)

directly from the surface of a television monitor (see Figure 12.2). This pioneering method of video transcoding was used to generate a photographic archive of scanned television images in real-time. Transcoding is the process of converting media from one form, or format, into another. Thus, in the early days of broadcasting the only way to make a recording of a television signal was to transcode it from its native form, as a scanned projection on the surface of a cathode ray tube, to an optical reproduction of light on photographic film. While the filmed image represented aspects of the original form, transcoding resulted in the creation of something entirely different as well. For example, while a film could be shown to a local audience gathered in a theater using a mechanical

projection system, it could not be transmitted electronically to a remote television audience. In order for a motion picture to be broadcast electronically, it had to undergo reverse transcoding, using a device called a telecine. As a companion to the kinescope, the telecine used a television camera to electronically capture and encode photographic frames of a film as they were projected. The telecine also gave broadcasters a tool for retransmitting film “live” over the air.