CED VideoDisc and Player Discussion

[ketonic_dude]

So I'm sure lots of people have seen some sticker on a disc with a big long number on it. Well that's the Press Run # and it typically looks like 2363512653. That number is scratched onto every disc. I have yet to decipher it but sometimes it is broken down like this 23-635-1265-3. I imagine it has something to do with how many stampers, mothers, and masters there have been made of said title up until that date. It could also possibly include the date, shift, production line, etc. If anyone has any information on the topic I would love to hear it. Thanks all.

[lynx]

This message is now one month old, and I've been meaning to share my findings about the numbers & letters stamped on the inner centre of CEDs. I figure that now is as good a time as any to share what I found in my CED collection.



I decided to check the CED titles in my collection that I own more than one copy of, and I wrote down what I found so far. I also noted any differences and likenesses that I was able to notice while researching and collating them.



On nearly every disc that I've looked at, they all have a code with part of the title's UPC number, usually typed, and the rest of the production run information handwritten. The press run number is usually scratched on the disc with thin writing, and another code is on the disc with thick writing, using a pen, pencil, or sharp object with a much thicker tip to write it. I also found a few discs in my collection with an arrow written on the same area, and also some of the codes crossed out, for whatever reason. One title that I have two copies of has interpuncts in it. Typically, side one has more writing on the discs than side two has.



There is an old message here in the CED Magic forum written by ketonic_dude, dated Tue Feb 10, 2015 12:53 pm, in the first page on the topic CED Label and Caddy Variations about this actual subject. A former RCA employee called Pam N Indy wrote about how to read the numbers and letters stamped on CEDs, and also whenever a variation is discovered, then we have a way to determine which production run it was made during. That way, we can find out whether it's an earlier or later production run of the title. It was very interesting, and I didn't find any topic about that information anywhere on here!



A few years ago, I read thru that topic, and I posted which variants of each title I own. Earlier this year I discovered a label variant on a title that no one else mentioned, so I posted it on there too.



Getting back to the production run codes in my collection, before I start, I should warn that this is a very long and complex message, and I haven't finished going thru my entire collection. Some of them were difficult to read, and I found out that you need really good lighting to read them. In alphabetical order of title, here are my findings.



My first title that I own multiple copies of is 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea, UPC number 7647600701. I own two copies of this title, with different production runs.



On one copy I own, side one has the code 00701-1AF in typed letters and numbers. In another section of the inner circle, the code 16-164-0502-6 2123A is written in thin handwriting. Another code, in thick handwriting, reads A2A.



On side two of this disc, the code 00701-2AH is typed, and the code A5C is written in thick handwriting.



On my other copy of 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea, side one has the code 00701-1J is typed, with 0303129401 in thin handwriting, another code 1434 in thin handwriting on another section of the inner circle, the code A4B in thick handwriting, and an arrow in thin handwriting on another section of the inner circle.



Side two of this copy just has the code 00701-2L typed, and the code A5C in thick handwriting.



The next duplicate title I own is The African Queen, UPC number 7647601501, which I own four copies of.



In one of my copies, side one has 01501-1E typed, 1323720524 in thin handwriting, 6592A in thin handwriting, and D1F in thick handwriting.



Side two just has 01501-2G typed, and C2N in thick handwriting.



My second copy of The African Queen has on side one 01501-1D typed, 2513235416 in thin handwriting, 10468 in thin handwriting, an arrow in thin handwriting, and in thick handwriting D1M, with something next to it crossed out; it looked like 2Q, from what I could make out.



Side two of this copy has just 01501-2G typed, with G3F in thick handwriting.



On side one of my third copy, it has 01501-1E typed, 1323720524 in thin handwriting, 6592A in thin handwriting, and D1F in thick handwriting.



Side two just has 01501-2G typed, and C2N in thick handwriting.



Finally, side one of my fourth copy has 01501-1A typed, 17-457-0523-4 in thin handwriting, 54577 in thin handwriting, and 5-3-1 in thick handwriting.



Side two is different than the production codes that I've found, since it just has 01501-2D typed, then 2-2-9 in thick handwriting, and another code in thick handwriting the number 2, then a hyphen, then something crossed out, then another 2.



The next title Against All Odds, UPC number 7647614005, was an interesting discovery. I own two copies of this title, and what's weird about both of them is that they both have identical information, and just like a forensic document examiner, and could tell that the handwriting was exactly the same on both of my copies!



On side one of both discs they both have the whole UPC number typed, 7647614005, instead of just a partial UPC, then a production run code. They both have 1753925643 in thin handwriting, the code 1·1·5 in thick handwriting, another typed code, 1 01 60S, and finally, the code 76031 in thin handwriting.



Side two of Against All Odds has the full UPC typed, 7647614005, and the typed code 2 02 60S, and another code 2·1·2 in thick handwriting.



The next duplicate title I looked at is Airplane!, UPC number 7647600638, which I own four copies of.



Side one of one of my copies has 00638-1B typed, then 020501-54134 in thin handwriting, 3088 in thin handwriting, and H3K in thick handwriting.



Side two of this copy has 00638-2D typed, 3088 in thin handwriting, and D1H in thick handwriting.



Side one of another copy of Airplane! that I own has 00638-1F typed, 1520914322 in thin handwriting, 5139 in thin handwriting, and L4L in thick handwriting.



Side two of this copy has 00638-2A typed, and D1D in thick handwriting.



Side one of my third copy has 00638-1J typed, 0404627915 in thin handwriting, 6313 in thin handwriting, and B1E in thick handwriting.



Side two had 00638-2E typed, and B5A in thick handwriting.



On my final CED copy of Airplane!, side one has 00638-1F typed, 1610029611 in thin handwriting, and 7188 H6B in thick handwriting.



Side two has 00638-2D typed, and C1L in thick handwriting.



Finally, the last duplicate title I own that I've looked at so far is The Black Stallion, UPC number 7647601409, which I own two copies of.



Side one of my first copy has 01409-1V typed, then 13-0-063-3031-2 in thin handwriting, and 7624-P4B in thick handwriting.



Side two of this copy has 01409-2X typed, and D2C in thick handwriting.



My final disc that I've examined in my collection so far is my other copy of The Black Stallion. On side one, it has 01409-1P typed and D3A in thick handwriting.



That's all I've looked at as of today, but I'm planning to look at the production run codes on the rest of the duplicate titles in my CED collection.



One final subject that I want to mention before I finish this message is an observation I noticed on the spines. A few CEDs in my collection have a different spine design than the typical spines. They have two extra holes near the upper left hand & right hand corners, near the part of the spine which is exposed and has the side number. Side 2 of the spine also has the number 1467301 on it. I never noticed this different design before, and I can't find any other message about it on here anywhere.



This has been a long message, and I hope to come back to it again soon!
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[ketonic_dude]

Lynx, May I ask your first name so I can be a little more formal with you. My name is Josh Gibson, I run the CEDatum website now. I'm also in the CED Magic Facebook group. It's good to meet someone who is as curious about all these numbers as me. I had posted this on our Spine numbers discussion and you had mentioned it here about Pam providing some information about the number on the disc, here is what I posted,

John Stevens had given me some decoding information for the numbers pressed into the disc itself.

So first we must know how the disc is made. Starting with step 1.

1. Aluminum Blank - the plate which is coated with copper.
2. Copper substrate - the copper coated plate into which the grooves are cut.
3. Recorded substrate - the copper coated plate after the grooves are cut.
4. Master - a negative replica of the final disc surface electroformed from nickel to a thickness of 0.015-inch.
5. Mold - or Mother, - a positive replica of the final disc surface electroformed from nickel to a thickness of 0.015-inch. A number of molds are made in the videodisc manufacturing process.
6. Stamper - a negative replica of the final disc surface electroformed from nickel to a thickness of 0.0075-inch. A number of stampers are made from each mold, and the stampers are used to compression mold the final disc.

So that said the numbers stamped on the disc would be as follows.

60=60 cycle (US NTSC)
50=50 cycle (European PAL)
B=Bilingual or dual audio channels
M=Monaural (1 channel) audio
S=Stereo audio
C=Closed Captioned
61=60 cycle + "banded"
62=60 cycle + "interactive"

John also noted that on a pressed disc, the scratched markings usually indicate the number of molds and stampers that might be made from a master or recorded substrate. Stamper life varied, but usually at least 500 to 1,000 discs could be produced from a single stamper.

Pam, another former RCA employee, has also told me "open the caddy and look on the inner circle, no grooves, you will see some numbers....example...Urban Cowboy...00639-1A... the first number is assigned to movie, the 1 is side 1, and letter tells you what substrate it was or how many times they had to make a new substrate. All the way through the alphabet. A few times we would use up the alphabet and start over...1AB, etc.

Now when she says substrate she must mean stamper or maybe the mother or even the master. I spoke with one of the employees who actually cut the discs from the studio tape to the copper substrate and he said that one substrate was used to press all the discs of that title.

...so that said, if a disc says 60M that would mean it's an NTSC disc with mono audio. But as you stated on say, 20k Leagues it says 00701-1AF so the 00701 is the program number or the last half of the UPC, same thing. The 1AF would mean side 1, and AF means it was the 33rd stamper. They start with A then run through the alphabet until they get to Z then start over with AA, AB, AC, etc. If they get all the way through again it goes to BA, BB, BC, etc. So 27 letters in the alphabet plus A, B, C, D, E, F, would make 33. So as John said 500 to 1,000 discs per stamper would mean there was somewhere between 16,500 and 33,000 copies made of 20k Leagues before yours was pressed. The highest I've seen so far has been Star Wars, I think I have one that says like FA which means there could be up to 162,000 copies made. Probably not that many though, I'm guessing some stampers failed more quickly then others, some might have only got 10 discs even, who knows.

Also in your quest, I have noticed a lot of the CBS/Fox discs are different than RCA discs. That's because CBS Records had a factory in Carrollton Georgia. It opened in 1981 but didn't start pressing CED's until sometime in 1982.

CBS Record Pressing Plant 1981-1991
5152 Columbia Dr, Carrollton, GA 30117

All the copper substrates had a number stamped into them which corresponded with a title. One substrate was used to make all the masters, stampers, and discs for each title. Once the production run was over the substrate was resurfaced, the number was x'd out and it was re-used for the next title. The copper substrate that I own was used for 5 different titles, the numbers were,

17399
17166
16560
16263
11414

I have searched all UPC's for these numbers with zero results so they don't correspond to the program number. So this would have been a separate unique number recorded in the log when they cut the substrate. But I would imagine this number could correspond to one of the segments of the production run number, or even the smaller number scratched into the disc itself. But I have yet to find any that match these so it's just a theory at this point.

That's about all the information I have on the matter other then I did the same as you and took the titles I have multiples of and record the numbers to see if any matched or I could find any links. Nothing seemed to jump out at me.

Here are the ones I have,

Back to the Future
27-641-1216-1
25-452-1216-0
28-650-1226-1

Fire & Ice
26-565-1044-1 (71631)
13-627-1144-2 (71687)
04-527-1034-2 (71608)

Best Defense
12-585-0315-1 (79109)
21-639-0315-1 (79105)

Empire Strikes Back
17-639-2994-2 (77079)
21-572-2964-1 (76949)

Youngblood
26-629-1566-1
30-645-1606-1

I did notice the later releases seem to omit that second smaller scratched in number. Probably around the same time they stopped using the spine number we were trying to decode. Which may correspond to when Columbia Pictures got sold to Coca-Cola but continued to produce titles through RCA.

Well I hope this information helps in some way. Let me know if you figure anything else out. Thanks.

[lynx]

Hello Mr. Gibson. My name is Kyle, and I chose the word "lynx" as my pseudonym here on the CED Magic forum because I'm a "cat person", just like Tom. I really like the new cedatum.com web site, and you're doing a good job of managing it. Just like you, I'm interested in all the obscurities about CED that no one else has written about on here before, like the spine numbers & now the production run codes on the discs. I wonder if any one else has ever tried to figure it out besides us.



I spend the last two days investigating the codes further, and I was able to figure out some more clues about the production runs.



Apparently, some changes were made to these production run codes midway thru 1982. I read the CED Timeline that Tom wrote, and I compared the titles I own to when they were released. From January until May of 1982, the production run codes were identical to the codes used on titles released in 1981.



When the stereophonic titles and players were released to the public in June of 1982, the additional numbers and letters on the discs began to be used. For June and July 1982, the stereophonic discs had the complete UPC number stamped on the discs, but the monophonic discs just had the final five numbers of the UPC. In August 1982, the monaural discs started having the entire UPC number stamped on the discs. This pattern appears to have continued thru the rest of CED production until 1986.



Taking another look at the duplicate titles in my collection, I compared two Star Wars CEDs in my collection, one disc with the CBS/Fox Video logo, and the other one with the Twentieth Century-Fox Video logo.



First I examined the Star Wars disc with the CBS/Fox Video logo, and it has the same numbers and letters as the rest of the stereophonic titles released on CED on both sides. When I checked my other Star Wars CED, which has the Twentieth Century-Fox Video logo, I noticed a very unusual pattern. Side one is just like any other disc, but side two has the UPC number 74643-11309 typed on it, along with 2G 60S typed on it. I understand that the 2G stands for side two, and the seventh stamper, but the numbers 74643 is the manufacturer number for MGM/CBS Home Video, which I didn't think ever had any involvement with Star Wars. 11309 is the second half of the UPC number for this title.



I did some research about the CBS/Fox Video discs, and I found out that the titles they released were originally manufactured at the RCA factory in Indianapolis, but then from 1982 to 1984 they were manufactured at the Columbia Records factory in Carrollton, Georgia. An old message on here says that all of the CEDs produced by CBS in Georgia don't have a copyright stamp in the centre of the disc, and that besides CBS/Fox Video, they also produced CED titles for Embassy Home Entertainment and Vestron Video. It seems like titles released by those two studios are harder to find, but I looked at some of them that I own.



What I noticed is that the production run codes on the discs produced by CBS in Georgia is that they're different than the codes used on CEDs produced by RCA in Indiana; they're just not quite as detailed as RCA-produced CEDs. They have the handwritten numbers and letters indicating the stamper and substrate, and then the other codes seem to vary based on the studio and the soundtrack.



The titles released by CBS/Fox Video have the letters CF, Embassy Home Entertainment titles have EH, and Vestron Video titles have VC. Next is a hyphen, and on stereophonic titles, the letter S, but no M on monaural titles. Then they have the last five numbers of the UPC, then finally 1 or 2, depending on the side of the disc, then one more letter. That final letter may represent which substrate was used to produce that particular disc, but I don't know for sure.



Finally, on the subject of the CED factory in Georgia, back in 1999, a fellow called Gordon Lupien wrote an interesting message about the very last CED ever produced at the CBS factory, which is Meatballs, UPC Number {2848506009}. It's located in CED Digest Vol. 4 No. 33.



That is all the research I've conducted so far on these codes, but I will continue to look thru my collection, and post it on here when I discover something new.
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[SelectaVision420]

nice work, that seems pretty accurate!
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[Jesse Skeen]

Wish there was more info about the CBS Records pressing plant.

I've wondered how many of these multiple pressings had noticeably different content? I have one copy of Cruising that has a high-pitched tone throughout side 1 and another where the sound is clean. A few CBS/Fox titles were printed with different fanfares at the beginning, an odd one is Sayonara which has it at the end of the movie but there are 2 variations of that. There was a stealth remastering of Looking for Mr. Goodbar with the newer RCA opening and a different transfer, and the first printing of Secret of NIMH had a scene accidentally cut out and a corrected version was made. The first copies of the Fox version of West Side Story also had side 3 with mono sound although the stereo signal still triggers, this was corrected also.
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[lynx]

On Wednesday, I bought another collection of CEDs, so I am reviving this topic because I found an interesting master on a disc that I just bought.



I've been looking thru them, and pulling the discs out of the caddies to see which production run they came from. On side 1 of the second disc of Disney's Mary Poppins, near the centre hole, the information reads "NEW MASTER A1B" and then "741D" in thick handwriting, with the letter "S" written backwards. The thin handwriting on the disc reads 0309630013, and the typed code is 00714-3E. Side 2 is blank, and it has C2J in thick handwriting, with T-3672 typed on it.



I'm sharing this new information because it's the first time that I've seen it on any CED, but there may be others still in existence today.
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[Jesse Skeen]

I've compared some discs that have "NEW MASTER" enscribed on them with the ones of the same title that don't, and haven't noticed any difference. I haven't been obsessive enough to hold onto duplicate titles just for that reason.
_________________
Videodisc and stereo sound- there's no better value around!