Post Description

Professionally filmed in the studios of KQED in 1970, this is an hour VHS video with multiple cameras capturing this classic-era Floyd close-up and personal. 
Entitled "An Hour With Pink Floyd", this video is outstanding! Particularly touching is the part where we see Dave and Roger sitting inches apart, both strumming acoustic guitars during Grantchester Meadows and seemingly enjoying the music they're making together! Imagine that. For the diehard 70s-era Floyd fan, this performance is a tear-jerker... to relive what the band once was, and witness them together as friends and performers. 
Not something to miss, that's for sure!

Pink Floyd
KQED (HRV DVD 001 RevA)
KQED TV Studios
San Francisco, CA
April 30, 1970


Video Lineage: 1982 KQED Rebroadcast > VHS > AVI > MPEG-2 (CBR 8Mbps)
Audio Lineage: 1" or 2" station master > 3/4" U-Matic sub-master > DVCAM > WAVE (48kHz/24 Bit)
Format: NTSC/PCM Mono
Running Time: Approx. 60 mins

ATOM HEART MOTHER
CYMBALINE
GRANTCHESTER MEADOWS
GREEN IS THE COLOR
CAREFUL WITH THAT AXE, EUGENE
SET THE CONTROLS FOR THE HEART OF THE SUN


We decided to do a RevA of our 1st DVD release because we felt that, after much research, an audio upgrade was warranted. The video is exactly the same as our initial release. No re-encoding was applied. The video from the 3/4" U-Matic tape became unstable over time, resulting in a slightly jittery image while the audio was still solid. The audio from our initial DVD also came from this source but this was in the early days of HRV and while Mr Phloyd did a great job with the video, the compressed AC3 audio didn't really live up to its potential. 

Some notes from MOB: 
We had 2 sources to choose from: one source from a U-Matic TV station master, the other source from a mysterious FM broadcast. The FM source was said to be in stereo, but a quick analysis clearly shows there is absolutely no stereo separation on the instruments. Further analysis of the FM source reveals that the fake stereo effect is mainly due to multiple analog generations and fluctuations in the tape channels stretching. The fact is that the original recording was done in mono, and that there's no evidence of any true stereo mix of that performance. The FM source has also the typical alterations from FM processing (levelling and limiting), and is riddled with pops and ***les, not even mentioning a 1.7% deviation from the real speed.


On the other hand, the U-Matic source has the original mono recording with a very stable and correct speed, along with excellent spectral characteristics (as you could expect from a station master). A close comparison between the 2 sources shows some evidence of the "pureness" (in terms of sound fidelity) of the U-Matic tape compared with the multiple analog gens of the other source. It is not easy to describe it with words, let's just say that if you listen to the cymbals sound during some quiet parts, you hear "dziing" on the U-Matic source, while it's "tching" on the FM source?  ;-)

Therefore, the remastering work was performed on the U-Matic source. It consisted in the following main activities: adjust the levels and EQ in order to bring clarity to the raw recording, get rid of the annoying low frequency hum that is present most of the time, and manually clean all the little imperfections of the raw transfer (mainly pops and drop-outs).