Part 1

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Part 2

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Here is a recording of Richard Lyons and myself on the first Thanksgiving I celebrated after my parents and grandparents passed away. It features the sounds of kitchen appliances, pots, pans, and it takes place at my parents home in Martinez, California. Richard’s wit and my obsessive compulsiveness show throughout. I used my Superscope C-104 cassette recorder and a RadioShack condenser microphone capsule for recording. You may have noticed I categorized this as a “Family Tape” as Richard was pretty much like a brother and a member of Negativland, as well.

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Here is a recording of my family on Christmas 1981 at my home in Martinez, California. I can’t remember how this was recorded, but most likely I used my Superscope C-104 monaural cassette recorder. For this presentation, the cassette tape was played on my Sony TC-D5M stereo  recorder, with Dolby noise reduction switched off, producing left and right monaural sound. The audio was captured into my computer with VSTHost. Normally, I will choose either left or right (not both channels) and create a mono .wav file, if I know the tape is monaural. This tape has quite good audio on both left and right with no audible phasing effects from the TC-D5M (maybe I have a tin ear) so I left the recording in stereo. If you prefer, you can fade down one side for true monaural sound. I did a little editing and level adjustment  with Adobe Audition, and then created an Mp3 at  320 Kbps with RazorLame.

As I mentioned previously in the post “Guess What, I’m Still Here!” this recording has my mother trying out a new popcorn popper, specifically a Wear-Ever Popcorn Pumper. Pictured below is the same unit from 1981. It does still work quite well! If you’re lucky, I will try to make a video of the Popcorn Pumper in action.

Popcorn Pumper Off/On

Wear-Ever Popcorn Pumper

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This is a video I made today on February 20th. 2018, showing the Wear-Ever Popcorn Pumper my mother used in 1981. It still works perfectly today. This post was originally from December 17, 2013.

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Here is home video from Thanksgiving 1988 featuring my mother, grandmother, and my grandmother’s cat, Gretchen. This was at my grandmother’s home in Santa Rosa, California and recorded using my second 8-millimeter camcorder, a Sony CCD-V220.

Direct mp4 download or play: Teasing Big butt and Buddy 1988

Here is some leftover footage from the 8 millimeter videotape labelled “Easter 1987, April 19, Santa Rosa.”  This happened February 1988. The “teasing” was not successful as Buddy the cat just rolled her eyes and yawned repeatedly.

Direct Mp4 download or play: Easter 1987

Here is another happy, lazy afternoon at my grandmother’s home in Santa Rosa, California. It’s Easter Sunday, April 19th which ironically is also Richard Lyons’ birthday. I can’t quite remember, but I think he may have actually been married to a woman at this time. I could be wrong, can’t remember. As I mentioned in my post “Birthday 1988,” there would be more from “The Egg People” in another post and this is it! “The Egg People” were created by my mother, a day or so earlier and they represent my mother, my father, my grandmother, and myself. They show up at the beginning and then later on at about 20:28, as I knock each “egg person” off the back of a chair. It seems to me this could have been the order that each member of my family including myself ceases to exist. It didn’t work out that way, but all “egg persons” were knocked off the chair so my time must be near. I do understand, this is ridiculous, however.

I used my Sony CCD-V110 camcorder for the video. At two points in the video an external inexpensive electret condenser microphone (same as the ones I’ve experimented with more recently) was used and powered by plugin phantom power supplied by the camcorder.The sound quality is slightly different and the two places where this happens are at 22:15 to 25:31 and 38:42 to the end. The sound is monophonic for the entire video and recorded on a single AFM (Audio Frequency Modulation) track on 8-millimeter video tape. The video quality is similar to VHS with less than 300 lines of horizontal resolution.

Direct mp4 download or play:  Birthday 1988 – Part 1

Direct mp4 download or play:  Birthday 1988 – Part 2

Here is the home video of my 34th birthday, April 3rd, 1988. It was recorded at my grandmother’s home in Santa Rosa, California on my Sony CCD-V220 8 millimeter video camcorder. Near the end of Part 2 one of “The Egg People” is shown. My mother made these likenesses sometime in the early to mid 1980s. Three of them exist today. They are my mother, myself, and my father. The “egg person” of my grandmother shown in the video was broken and lost years ago. Just for fun I’m showing Egg Mother and Egg “Bear” Weatherman. There will be more about “The Egg People” in another post.

A couple of The Egg People

Egg Mother

Egg “Bear” Weatherman

The video on the Flashplayer

The video on the WordPress player.

Let me know if this works in place of the Flashplayer.

Direct mp4 download or play: Home Video November 22nd, 1988

This is the first video recorded on my Sony-CCD-V220 8 millimeter camcorder with stereo sound.

Direct mp4 download or play: Testing Stereo Separation & New Hand Blender

Here is some video from spring or summer of 1991. This is from one of the recordings I made after my mother died, while my grandmother was still living. Things were much more subdued after my mother passed away, so I tried to “liven things up” with these and other ridiculous, dumb videos. Eventually, I’ll post the entire video, but I must worn you, there are long stretches of the camera aimed at flowers in my grandmother’s backyard. Hopefully, the first part demonstrates the camcorder (Sony CCD-V220) actually records stereo sound.

Direct mp4 download or play:  Thanksgiving 1987 – Part 1

Direct mp4 download or play: Thanksgiving 1987 – Part 2

Here is home video from Thanksgiving 1987 featuring my grandmother, mother, father and my grandmother’s cat, Gretchen. The location was my grandmother’s home in Santa Rosa, California. It was recorded using my first 8-millimeter camcorder, a Sony CCD-V110.

Direct mp4 download or play: My First Home Video

I’m quite sure this is the first video recording of my family. There is no date stamp on the tape, but this would have been 1986 or ’87. The Styrofoam packaging from the box of my new Sony CCD-V110 8 millimeter camcorder is visible on the sofa next to my mother. Also, the box appears briefly as I’m panning. My mother, father and two cats Big Butt (fluffy white long fur), and Baby Doll which I refer to as Tabatha Stinkaton or Stinkington.

This camcorder recorded in regular 8 millimeter video and mono AFM (audio frequency modulation) also known as Hi-Fi. The built-in microphone was very sensitive, especially to higher frequencies and had a slightly “tinny” quality. It picked up a lot of noise from the camcorder, as well. There’s an external microphone jack and using an external microphone improved the sound quality quite a bit. Also, I figured out how to connect the output of an audio mixer to the microphone jack without causing overloaded distorted sound. If I’m  remembering right, the microphone jack had plug-in-power present (a low voltage, usually a couple of volts to power electret condenser microphones), which needed to be blocked with a capacitor.

The last part of this video features briefly using an external microphone, the display of my police scanner and the tuning indicator of my RadioShack shortwave receiver. The sound was of the scanner and several other radio tuners and possibly TV audio, plus some digital delay echo. This audio was mixed to mono and connected to the camcorder.

Sony CCD-V110 8 mllimeter camcorder

Bearcat 300 police scanner

Realistic DX-302  receiver

Hre’s a link explaining how “Hi-Fi” sound works in video recorders:

Sencore Tech Tips – How VCR Hi-Fi Stereo Works