Originally posted by ziggystar60
Thanks a lot, Mr. Wingo.

That's not fair. It's well within Mr. Wingo's rights to demand that his image and actions not be posted to public venues.

It would be different if Mr. Wingo had signed some sort of release permitting the publication of his image and words. Obviously, that was not obtained and he exercised his rights as a citizen.

As a self-described Video Expert (i.e. SAIT CTSR Grad) with 15 years of
high-end digital video experience, I am VERY INTERESTED in contributing to
the effort of converting these NASA tapes! - I have some expertise with
both 1 inch Sony and 2 inch AMPEX/Quad tape formats and am quite
familiar with methods such as BAKING older tape so that it can be played
back on such machines so the tape oxide doesn't flake off the polyester
substrate.

BUT......FOR YOUR INFORMATION ........

I NOW have a much better method to capture the archived NASA tapes and
am willing to do so for FREE. I have designed custom multi-processing
imaging software that OPTICALLY SCANS (using a microscope &
digital HDTV camera) the scanline imprints of each frame that has been
recorded on magnetic tape and by using my custom DSP (Digital Signal
Processing) algorithms I can recreate the waveforms of the analog
broadcast signal by converting the BITMAP SCANS of each analog video
frame into either 8-bit greyscale or 24 bit RGB colour image frames which
I can then convert into 4:4:4:4 Serial Digital video or 4:2:2 DV format or
MPEG2/MPEG4/DVD video at 720 by 480 pixels OR full 1920 by 1080p HDTV.

I just HAPPEN to know the recording head configuration and
scanline formatting of BOTH Sony 1" and AMPEX 2"/Quad tape formats
so I already have the conversion capability built-into my software.

IN ADDITION, I HAVE MANY, MANY TERABYTES OF DISK SPACE
so storage is NOT A PROBLEM!

So if any of you have the contact information for the people involved
or the contact information of the photographer, send them this message
and MY contact information so they can forward it to the right people
and get the ball rolling. I welcome phone calls because I CAN HELP !!!!!

I am willing to convert the tapes GRATIS, AT NO CHARGE,
AND THAT MEANS FREE!!!! using my NEW OPTICAL SCANNING METHOD
which DOES NOT physically use a playback head to touch the tape...
I do it by taking high resolution photos of the tape surface and using
software to scan the orientation and patterning of the tape particles
so as to find the frame boundaries on a frame-by-frame basis
which is then processed to interpret the video scan lines so I
then convert to a modern digital video file format.

I can also process out tape-based noise and magnetic particle
anomalies to get the CLEANEST possible image!

We can transfer older 35mm slide, Super-8/Regular-8 mm film
and 16mm FILM to Video transfers so that I can do too ... although
we DO CHARGE for THAT Service!

Send email to or phone me at to discus how I can get the NASA tapes
to me for conversion to various digital formats FOR FREE !!!!!!!!:

Henry A. Eckstein
aka ATS User: StargateSG7
Email: henry@comwave.com
Website: www.comwave.com
Phone: 604-253-3990
(If phoning call Monday to Friday, 9 to 5 Pacific Time - i.e. Vancouver, Canada)

Just a note:

The quality of an image on film has been and continues to be higher quality than is possible with a digital recording or still.

I still shoot on film for poster sized images and I have the best digital cameras available to me. I do that because the detail captured is far beyond what can be done with digital. There is no such thing as film quality images on the Internet and it is not physically possible to even scan at the resolution possible with film. In fact, I scan negatives at 4180 dpi optical and that is still not even close to capturing the details on the negative.

All we ever see on the net is digital or digitized images which are VERY low quality. To even get into the ballpark of film you have to go image sizes not yet used in consumer products.

The government has had film emulsions far beyond what I can buy for many decades, going back to late 60's. The ISO 25 film I've used is not even in the ballpark of what the government has had for a long, long time.

Digital, although new, is no where near an improvement in quality. I can pull out my old Sony High8 Camcorder or one of my old Nikon film cameras and get WAY better quality than anything that can be done with a digital camera. My digital DSLR's don't even approach what I can get on film.

Originally posted by rocksarerocks
You'll just end up posting the same old picture of the guys on the floor looking at pictures of the moon, cause they probably airbrushed these out too.

Can you please provide evidense to back up your claim that they had 'air brush' capability back then?



I have always maintained that they did it the 'old fashioned way'

Kinda like THIS

Originally posted by ZeroGhost
Get this guy the tapes for crying out loud!

Just sent him all the info for Dennis and Steve... and I will forward the request to Steve as well. Hopefully Dr X is still 'lurking'

It appears however that this Dennis Wingo has no interest or intention of making any of the data available to the public, and even seems more interested in just making it work that any archiving of the material...

Since this imagery SHOULD be in the public domain as it was paid for by taxpayers this seems almost criminal to me... HE does not own those tapes. Perhaps a letter writing campaign to NASA to complain about these actions might go somewhere.

I wonder if any mainstream media would touch this one?

Well I have all the material that was presented archived... for 'posterity' but I expect I might get mail soon too. Though since Dennis' image is no where on the site since they pulled the video...

But I am sure the skeptics around here would be only to happy to see this material get buried again

Originally posted by StargateSG7
If you are referring to sending info to me...I haven't received any email yet

Look in your U2U box.... you should have it If not I will copy to your email

Originally posted by ZeroGhost
They where using airbrushes in the 20's. Just look at Art Deco works to see proof.

Yes but on photos? In Photoshop?




In other news....

Posted from email.... next step in the process..

Thank You for the contact information....I will give him a ring tomorrow when I'm back in the office and send him a comprehensive report on what I envisage with my optical scanning and software image processing technique.

Basically what I do is put the magnetic tape reels onto a slow-moving spindle that moves at a few millimetres per second so as to give enough time for a 1024 by 1024 pixel RGB 60 fps digital camera attached to a high-quality optical magnifier to scan the tape by STITCHING multiple photos into a large bitmap that constitutes the frame boundaries of an analog Video waveform. (I can do digitally encoded frames too). That large bitmap is then scanned using my software using technology similar to Optical Character Recognition (OCR) where I can change the Greyscale/YIQ/YUV/YDbDr scanline information that is likely to be on the NASA tapes into an uncompressed 720 by 480 pixel RGB video frame or to a super-sampled 1920 by 1080 pixel progressive RGB HDTV frame that can then be converted to any modern digital video format that I want.

And I estimate the storage of uncompressed video based upon the number of reels strewn about in the McDonalds photos, to be almost one Petabyte (1000 Terabytes) of data, which is NOT a problem for me, it's just a matter of buying enough extra hard drives to hold it all on a more permanent basis. I've already got almost two petabytes of off-line digital storage so another petabyte ain't gonna hurt me.

The biggest problem is the quality of the original tapes themselves...tape oxide DETERIORATES over time and my biggest worry is it flaking away from the polyester substrate and the only way to fix that is to BAKE the tape in an oven to harden it and then play it ONLY ONCE through my apparatus in order to get a clean optical-scan transfer.

I have NO IDEA as to the current condition of the NASA tapes so I can only speculate as to what needs done thus I would need a sample tape to test the quality of transfer...If the tape itself is good, then the transfer I do will
be equal to the original recording and since I can filter out magnetic tape noise, I might even get close to the quality of the original space-to-ground broadcast.

If some people, who have speculated that the tapes are DIGITALLY ENCODED, are correct, I can ALSO transfer that using my OPTICAL SCAN method and since all I need to know is the width, height and greyscale/colour
format of the pixels, I'll be able to convert the probably PCM-based (Pulse Coded Modulation) picture frames into absolute digital clarity. If it's digital we might be able to get some really AWESOME quality video footage.

Hopefully I can still get a hold of Dennis Wingo to get the ball rolling.

Just so I don't get your hopes up too high, please be aware this might
take a week or more in order to to get replies and talk on the phone.
So don't expect a miracle tomorrow but I will do my best...!!!

You can post this email on ATS or forward to others who are interested
if you want so as to possibly spark some mainstream media interest.

Thanks

Henry A. Eckstein
email: henry@comwave.com

Redacted


There has been an email update... I am suspending the letter writing campaign for the moment until the new information is processed


[edit on 29-9-2008 by zorgon]

Originally posted by spacebot
Find me the links for the photos and descriptions of events and you get a star and a flag.

Seems YOU missed the bus

Keep your star and flag mate and read the thread...