Training for the Masses: I Should Give You a Good Dubbing!
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Drubbing — with an R — is certainly both, but dubbing is not. What, exactly, is dubbing? It's a television (and probably the recording industry before it) term for copying. When we have a tape (or a disc) that we need to copy, we say that we need to dub it. The copy itself is called a dub.
My guess is that it's rooted in the word double; hence, to copy a tape is to make a double of it. Then, for the sake of expediency (don'tcha just love big words?), double was reduced to dub, and the rest — as they say — is history.
Whether this guess is accurate or not is anyone's guess. But accurate or not, dubbing remains a vital part of TV production. Video editing, for example, would be impossible without it.
To use a digital editor, you need to dub all of your stock footage into the editor before you can begin editing. And analog editing? The really old-fashioned way of editing videotape was to cut and splice it like movie film, but the editor I trained on was nothing more than a selective dubbing system.
It took the signal from the tape of stock footage and dubbed it onto another tape known as the "Edit Master." That system allowed one to select start and stop points and set audio levels. But there were no special effects, and only two audio tracks, and if anything happened to your stock footage or Edit Master, you were up the creek. Fortunately, digital technology has provided us with much better and more efficient ways of getting ourselves up the creek.
Then there are shows that everybody wants a copy of: Concerts, school plays, dance recitals, documentaries, etc. Analog dubbing tends to reduce quality; tapes stretch as they get older, signal quality breaks down over time, and copying from a copy lowers signal quality all by itself. Digital dubs, on the other hand, stay sharp and clear longer, especially when the signals are stored on discs, and copies are as crisp and clean as the originals.
Now, I know what you're thinking: Great! But what does this have to do with me? Well, nothing! Unless you're interested in learning about TV production.
So if this has piqued your interest, and makes you wonder if you're up to the challenge of attempting to dub "solo," come and see us in Building Six in Heritage Park. Or give us a call at 663-9006. Whatever you do, don't just sit there at home! Get out there and dub, Bub!
Paul W. Marino is program director at Northern Berkshire Communcity Television Corp., public-access TV, located in Western Gateway Heritage State Park.
