What was your favorite regional ITV station growing up?

TVS's first ident is electronically generated and 50i, but a lot simpler than Channel 4's. There's at least some CGI (and 50i animation) in the TSW one too, but that looks like it was a mixture of several different techniques. And the second Central ident looks electronically generated too, but again a lot simpler than Channel 4's. And of course there's the =2= ident from 1979 if we're going beyond ITV.

Lot of interest in Southern’s idents for some reason. Never saw one on 16mm film always supplied on 35mm. Usually, but not exclusively, transmitted to air direct off another telecine. However. Was not always practical due to commitments (and common sense) and so it was also transferred to tape (ACR) for use on air when the schedule dictated it was sensible and more convenient to do so. The ident was never put through any sort of keyer* and the 35mm idents were always top quality. If you were doing a sequence of a few adverts, a trail and then a local Southern ident into some programme or other it made complete sense to play the ident in after the comms (after having faded to black in between and ‘Nexted’ the ACR.

You should never Genlock under any sort of VTR machine as it will get upset, but I did know it to happen with the ACR and it would try its best to keep it as stable as possible. I’ve seen an example of exactly that on YouTube as the issue was quite apparent, I’m not going to search for it again but it quite obvious on the clip that the ACR is being ‘undermined’ pulse wise and making a good go of it!

Stuff like The ‘Famous Five’ (16mm) never had an ident as part of the print and was ‘put on’ live both locally and to the network at the same time. Cannot speak for other Southern 16mm material but would be surprised if it was done any other way.



*In fact it was discovered that by pulling out a certain video board on the telecine machine the output of the Blue channel gave a ‘sat up’ black level that looked like a keyed Blue. Whites on the output of the machine had a slightly yellow tinge to them as a result and the clipper for the Blue channel had to be wound down too - but they still had a slight tinge to them. Even today, on Youtube etc, you can still tell one of these transferred idents as they have ‘that’ look, and they do look as though the ident has been put through a keyer even though they weren’t.

Yes. 'As live' rendered. I've never thought of that (and the BBC 1 COW) as CGI, but technically I concede they are.
The Mk 1 TVS idents look like they are DVE produced, using wipes at the same time as zooms and spins ?

Interesting. So at 0:40 secs in this clip....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i560HsDxOVA

The ident is off ACR, leaving just 5 seconds to genlock to ITN ? You can just see the clock vertically twitch which may well be the genlock starting ?

The first one looks like a mono caption put through a Cox Keyer, going to an ident off ACR followed by a mix through to the station clock which is another mono source through another Cox Keyer. Second one is Dover Production, they had a camera telecine, but looks like a camera pointing at an ident card on a caption stand. Third one, I think DBD titles came complete off VTR or ACR with ‘holes’ in it for topical telecine inserts on the day.

In the first one it looks like someone was a bit late switching ITN to line somewhere hence the hesitation in going to ITN. Those with keen ears and an obsession for such things could work out whose duotone can be heard at low level and therefore whose had a bit of finger trouble.

Yes, now there's a skill to decode aurally ! I met an C4 Engineer in the 90s, who could look at a line 23 ident, and tell you which aspect ratio it referred to !

The clock is the obvious place to genlock or indeed the football holding caption as cameras were generally not upset by genlocking. You never genlocked under a telecine either as you would most likely get ‘serene’ gentle wafting of the picture bouncing up and down slowly vertically, or if you were really unlucky on a twin lens machine it would cause the EHT generator to get upset and switch off the EHT to the scanning crt - with obvious results!

Fast Genlock (was there ever a Slow Genlock?) only took a second, two at the most.

Has it ever been confirmed how TTTV’s 1979 ident was created? I’ve heard it had elements of CGI in it but it might just be clever animation techniques instead, it’s clearly shot on film as I think its (obviously CGI) replacement was in ‘88.

Central’s second ident (the colour globe) is clearly VT but I never saw it as CGI, just vision mixing between static slides - although some help may have been needed for the white halo around the globe.

Pretty sure the TTTV one was just slit-scan. Andrew Bowden noted that there was an aberration in the logo design from the original 1971 art card (the two inner edges of the V where they meet the top-right T don't match up exactly) which was copied to the 1979 ident, whereas this error was not copied to the 1976 one. From that you'd have to deduce that they just took a card and animated the logo and legend on-screen using two different but similar slit-scan techniques.

Actually I believe the 1988 ident also is not fully computer generated, certainly the end frame isn't (and there is an obvious rough join between the animation and the end frame as well). It was all VT though.

The 1982 TVS one was on VT but I always thought it was a hybrid, not really CG as such. It looks to me like they initial animation is done using wipes between black and three static slides containing the three parts of the logo, then some Quantel stuff to move the logo and TVS legend to their correct places, with two variants (wasn't one used for weekends or something)?

TSW's 1982 one I always found to be a bit of a mess, like they'd thrown a number of half-ideas at the problem, and the end-frame had a very obvious "bump" as these pieces came together. The 1985 one was very nicely done though.

A while back I saw a great video showing examples of a film animation technique that produced effects like those used in the Tyne Tees ident. There was at least one British example in it too.

Can I remember what it was called or find the video, or the Wikipedia that listed everything made that way?......no

Tyne Tees were still fans of the technique well into the late 1980s... As seen in this edition of Northern Eye from 1989 that uses a mixture of slit scan, Quantel and CG. I think this intro dated to about 1986.

https://youtu.be/A0vPjeT2a34

Interesting! I’ve not seen a HQ copy of it so assumed it was a film recording. So many old idents were first seen by me as postage-stamp sized RealPlayer files are minuscule bitrates in 2000-01 - it’s still odd for me to actually be able to watch many of them in good resolution and full framerate. Twenty years ago I never thought I’d see Harlech’s 1968 ident especially in anything other than a slideshow of pixelated squares!