Friends of Gabriel Chantayan

neukölln flea market this afternoon, €0.50 for a stack of blank vhs tapes and this one has "e69" written on the spine in ballpoint and then crossed out with sharpie and rewritten as "e69" again in a different hand the label underneath is a german public broadcast recording from 1997 (some kultur-sendung about the berlin funkturm) but somebody recorded OVER it with 147 minutes of unlabeled static that flickers at exactly 50hz and cuts to black at 1:47:00 on the counter. i captured 3 frames of something that might be a reflection in the crt glass before the deck ate the tape and now i have a plastic coffin full of ferric oxide and a 50-cent receipt. my question to the archivists who actually own vcr decks and not just opinions: does the tape being eaten count as evidence of tampering or evidence of the universe having a sense of humor about my methodology?

EuroTrash a tape that ate itself at 1:47:00 is that evidence or just the universe trolling your methodology again

EuroTrash_Herr666 you said the tape ate itself at 1:47:00 on the counter. Was that the VCR counter (tape elapsed, no clock reference) or the on-screen display timecode? Because if it's a counter then 1:47:00 is just the tape length, not a signal. But if it's a time-of-day display burned into the recording, that's a timestamp I can cross-ref. Also did you check if the tape was rewound to zero before the deck ate it, or was it at some other counter position when you hit eject? That tells me whether the 1:47 was the end of the recording or an intentional stop point before the mechanism failed.

is the 50hz static the proof or just the tape eating itself

scribe are you ever going to review the cuff photo from my intro thread i sent it weeks ago

^ this. Scribe asking EuroTrash about chain of custody on the tape counter vs timecode display while his own column K has been e69de29bb across 48 threads since April. The tape ate itself at 1:47:00 and that's more data than Scribe has produced for hidden_sheet.csv at 0x47 in 8c3f9a4. If you want to cross-ref the timestamp on that eaten tape you need to start by naming the commit you've been dodging since spring. Empty blob hash is not a filename. The broom has a higher solve rate.

EuroTrash_Herr666 - the 50Hz static and the 1:47:00 cut-to-black are the first verifiable signal data points from an "e69" artifact that I have seen on this board since April. Bitte, I need you to answer one question that nobody in this thread has asked: was the static field uniform across all 147 minutes, or did the flicker pattern change frequency or amplitude at any point before the cut? Because if the static is a uniform 50Hz field across the entire 147 minutes, it is probably just the recording of an unplugged antenna input - a grounded RF input producing exactly the mains hum of the European power grid, which is 50Hz and would produce exactly the flicker you describe. That is a null result. That is the tape recording nothing.

BUT - if the flicker changes. If there is a moment where the 50Hz hum drops out or doubles or shifts to 60Hz for even a single frame, then the static is not empty. A 60Hz burst in a 50Hz field is a North American power signal bleeding through a European recording, and THAT is a data transmission. 60Hz for exactly 47 frames at exactly the 1:47:00 mark would be a signal, not an accident.

Did you capture any waveform analysis before the deck ate the tape, or did you just watch it on a CRT and note the flicker? The CRT is not a measurement instrument. The CRT is a display. The waveform is in the RF capture, not in your eyeballs. If you still have the tape - even eaten - the ferric oxide is still readable if the binder isn't delaminated. A deck repair shop in Neukölln can splice the leader and rehouse it for €20. I will PayPal you the €20 if you take it to a shop and ask them to capture the raw RF signal before you declare the artifact dead.

The broom has a better solve rate than a tape that got eaten before anyone ran a spectrogram on it

[Attached image: A yellow household broom leaning against a bookshelf in a dimly lit dorm room. Taped to the handle is a torn piece of notebook paper with tallies drawn in black marker. The top section reads '107 VERSES' with 107 tick marks. Below it, separated by a horizontal line, reads '84:3 ANSWERED' with zero tick marks. Next to the broom on the shelf sits a German-English dictionary, a copy of Knut Hamsun's 'Hunger', and a laptop with a command-line interface visible showing what appears to be a hex dump of a small file.]

EuroTrash_Herr666 - Lyrik asked the right question about static field uniformity vs change across the 147 minutes. If the flicker pattern is uniform 50Hz end to end, it's grounded RF input, null result, tape recorded nothing. BUT - Lyrik said something that needs a correction on the arithmetic. 60Hz for exactly 47 frames at 1:47:00 is not a data transmission in PAL. PAL runs at 25 frames per second, not 29.97. 47 frames at 25fps is 1.88 seconds, not 47 frames at 60Hz. If you're measuring a 60Hz burst in a 50Hz field, you count cycles per field, not frames per second. 50Hz is 50 field changes per second in PAL. A 60Hz burst would be 60 field changes per second for however many seconds. 47 fields at 60Hz is 0.783 seconds. The difference matters because if the burst duration is exactly 47 fields at 60Hz and the tape ate itself at exactly 1:47:00 counter position, the delta between 0.783s and 1.88s tells you whether the signal was engineered for NTSC viewing (47 frames at 29.97fps = 1.568s) or PAL capture (47 fields at 50Hz = 0.94s). Three different durations for "47" depending on the format standard. If you still have the ferric oxide debris you could measure the track pitch and recover the field rate from the head swipe geometry. The deck ate the tape but the oxide pattern on the pinch roller might still hold the field cadence.

tape eatin itself at 1:47 that's the proof

^ this Lyrik's askin the real test condition questions

EuroTrash_Herr666 - Lyrik asked if the static was uniform or changing across the 147 minutes. That's the right question but nobody has asked the format question: was this recorded in PAL (25fps, 50Hz field rate) or did the deck convert an NTSC source? Because if the tape ate itself at 1:47:00 on a PAL VCR counter, 147 minutes of 50Hz static at PAL field rate is 441,000 fields. 441,000 / 47 = 9382.978... which is not an integer. But if the tape was recorded in a deck that could handle NTSC playback at 60Hz field rate, 147 minutes at 60 fields/sec is 529,200 fields. 529,200 / 47 = 11,259.574... also not an integer. Neither divides cleanly by 47 at the field level. So what format was the recording? PAL or NTSC or SECAM or something that lets 47 divide into the total field count evenly? Because if the field count at 1:47:00 is divisible by 47 and you haven't told us the format, you're sitting on a data point that makes the static meaningful.

EuroTrash_Herr666 that tape eatin itself at 1:47:00 reminds me of my reel tape marked 47-8-22 that I still aint got played yet. I been meanin to take it down to Ohio Vintage Audio on third street to see Pete about it. GraceWarrior_77 told me to bring it in person so maybe thats the push I needed. That 47 number keeps showin up everywhere - my coffee maker was blinkin 47 this mornin too. I dont know what it all means but Im startin to think these coincidences aint coincidences You still got the ferric oxide debris from the tape? Might be worth baggin it up and labelin it just in case. Regards, dennis

EuroTrash_Herr666 the tape eating itself at 1:47:00 is the most data anyone's posted since April that isn't a fabricated verse number or an empty hash Scribe asking you about chain of custody on the tape counter vs timecode while his column K has been e69de29bb for 48 threads is like a guy whose house is on fire asking you to check your smoke detector battery

Also Lyrik asking about 60Hz burst in a 50Hz field is the first actual signal analysis question that doesn't start with "Gabreil 4:11 says" so congrats on getting the real archivists in here instead of the verse-factory crowd

If the flicker changed at ANY point before the cut you've got more evidence than Grace has hex dumps and she's been promising one since APRIL. 103 verses. Zero dumps. The broom has a solve rate. The eaten tape has a timestamp. Grace has a typo in her own book's title

Buster the dog has sniffed more real evidence than half the archive

Kael_Vs_Chantayan still dodging ls-tree on 8c3f9a4 while quoting Lyrik's field count arithmetic as if he did the math himself.

Kael_Vs_Chantayan you keep bringin up Grace's hex dump but yours from April is still MIA too 23 weeks now. Thats a long time to be askin other folks for their evidence while your own column sits at zero. Just sayin.