Grand Prix Replay

This set of photographs comes from Martin Perrett. The date is, most likely, July 1987 and the van is at the British Grand Prix at Silverstone (Nigel Mansell won). The director, Keith Mackenzie, wanted the ability to record all cameras for replay, and the setup below was a cost effective solution with 15 VHS machines, thirteen to record (one per camera), one for replay and a switchable input machine for record overlap (mouse over the picture for captions). In later years Beta SPs were used as the VHS quality was not that good!

Martin explains:
I had 15 or so VHS machines that would go straight from record to fast rewind 'in vision'. This allowed you to see the 'event' as you rewound. This was then replayed via a TBC to real VT and they did the on air replay. Meanwhile the camera was being recorded on another VHS machine via a video matrix. All this had to be done before the cars came around again as then it would be history. We had 7 replays in the first race we tried it out on, two from the same camera but via different VHS machines. The system only lasted one Grand Prix as people did not like the fact that non broadcast equipment was being used.

The communications panel

"Now, which one is it we want to replay?"

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