Here’s a slice of history that will make any retro-tech fan grin: before TikTok and iMovie, there was a beast called the Videonics DirectED Plus. This early attempt at democratizing video editing saved enthusiasts from six-figure pro setups—but only barely. Popular Science recently brought this retro marvel back to life in a video made using the very system that inspired it. Picture it: 1987, VHS at its peak, where editing your kid’s jazz recital video required not just love but the patience of a saint, eight VCRs, three Videonics units, two camcorders, and enough remotes to operate a space shuttle.
The Videonics DirectED Plus held promise with a twist. It offered a way to bypass monstrous editing rigs, yet mastering its panel of buttons felt like deciphering hieroglyphs. The ‘Getting Started’ tape was the analog era’s lifeline, often missing and leaving owners hunting through second-hand stores, forgotten basements, and enthusiast forums. Fast forward to today, and recreating this rig isn’t just retro fever—it’s a scavenger hunt.
Once assembled, the system resembled a spaghetti junction of cables and clunky commands. One wrong button press could erase precious minutes of hard-won footage. Still, the determination of DIY pioneers drove the machine’s success, setting the stage for the plug-and-play ease we now take for granted.
These adventures into retro tech remind us of the grit behind today’s seamless content creation. Curious for more? Watch the full journey by Popular Science here.
I had a high-end consumer JVC camcorder and compatible VCR where it was possible to program in a sequence of cuts to be copied from the camcorder onto a tape on the VCR, with clean transition between cuts. Fade in and out were supported along with assemble/punch-in, but not crossfade or other transitions., of course. It was possible to do some fairly tight editing, for total cost of about $1000… admittedly in 1990 dollars.
Just passed it to a film arts student. She won’t be using the editing feature since her PC can do that better, but the camcorder will save her school rental fees and has a lot more control over depth of field and so on than most.
A-ha! I saw your comment, but didn’t realise it was the same system as the UK magazine Personal Computer World reviewed in August 1986 (see my comment below).
The UK magazine, Personal Computer World covered home video editing in August 1986. They ran a review on JVC’s HC-95 (an MSX machine), but also an article on how to do VHS editing using your own computer. Basically the technique was to have 2x VHS recorders and a computer that could control fwd/rev/play/pause/stop/record inputs on both. You first take the source tape and record a time code on the audio at normal speed (using a program that generates the time code). Then you feed video and the other audio track (which you split) from the source to the destination. Then you feed the other audio track to your computer (it just uses a simple zero-crossing technique).
Your software can roughly work out how fast rewind and fwd operate. Then you go through the source tape listing all your clips on the computer. Finally, you set it to copy to the destination and the software shuttles to just before the right locations in turn; reads the time code to get the right frame; does pause on the source; unpause on both to record the next clip and repeats until the edits are done. I don’t think it covered subtitling.
https://www.computinghistory.org.uk/det/1088/Personal-Computer-World-August-1986/