Video recording — many old time artists and producers have lamented — sucked the life out of television. All the old rules of precise timing still applied, but the happy accidents of the live television era were mostly lost.

Before his death, I had a conversation on this subject with Milton Berle, the pioneering comedian who became known as "Mr. Television" after emerging as the first real TV star on NBC.

Berle recalled that some of his best moments came during on-air accidents, such as falling scenery or misplaced props. He said he held membership in several labor unions simultaneously during his live TV days so he could do any job required on the show — including emergency carpentry with a hammer and nails on a fallen set wall during commercial breaks.

“They didn’t call me Mr. Television for nothing,” he said, describing his behind-the-scenes skills. That day, when I was shooting an interview with Berle, he helped me light the set. I worked with him a couple of times after that and he was hands-on all the way.

So was Jackie Gleason. He, like Berle, relied on precise physical comedy in his on-air appearances. Each performer relished the accidents that breathed tension into their live television broadcasts.

In his later years, after video tape arrived, I did Gleason’s first off-line edit for the final two episodes of his classic television show, The Honeymooners.

Gleason knew everything about live TV, but just as much about what happens behind the camera as in front of it. He also understood the value of editing, which offered a new precision to his comedic timing.

After the initial run of the Honeymooners in New York City, Gleason boarded a train and moved to Miami Beach. It was 1964 and the reason was the Great One liked year-round access to the golf course at the nearby Inverrary Country Club in Lauderhill (where he built his final home). It was a sort of semi-retirement for Gleason.

Gleason did a lot of shows from the auditorium in Miami Beach while living in the area. In late 1977 and 78, he decided to bring the original cast back together and do a couple of special versions of the Honeymooners. It would be the last two episodes of the legendary series.

Because I owned a mobile ¾-inch off-line edit van in Miami, I got to work on the two shows with Gleason and his production company. We pushed that technology, then in its primitive stages, to the outer limits.

For Gleason, I did an off-line edit of the two Honeymooners shows on Sony 3/4-inch U-Matic tape. In the late 70s, the problem with the hardware technology was editing accuracy. The format was originally designed for news production — not entertainment — which required far greater precision in editing.

Editing on U-matic tape at the time was accurate to plus or minus 30 frames per second. It would get much better in a year or so, but that was the situation at the time.

Gleason said that wouldn’t work for him. To judge the accuracy of his comedy — the purpose of the off-line edit — the tape had to be much more precisely cut than the U-Matic system was designed for.

Gleason told me we had to get the edit to within two to three frames of accuracy — a tiny fraction of a second — to determine if a comedy sketch worked.

I was in a sweat and determined to make it work. I was incapable of saying “no” to Jackie Gleason. So I took on the job anyway — against all good sense and reasonable judgement.

In the coming days, I spent hours repeatedly doing edits for those shows, seeking that random moment when the edit was close to accurate. That meant editing the same shot over and over until the stars aligned.

It was only a rough cut edit, yet a perfectionist like Gleason demanded it be accurate. It was tortuous work that went on for days, but I finally got every edit within a couple of frames.

By then, my lifelong love of the Honeymooners had faded. I had seen the underbelly of the beast! But Jackie Gleason was happy and that was all that mattered to me.

Of course, the on-line editing, done later with the help of my “rough cuts,” was frame accurate and done on equipment designed to do the job.

What I learned from Gleason during that experience is that timing is EVERYTHING — in comedy, acting, music or just about anything else in the creative arts. The same was true with not only Gleason, but Berle, Soupy Sales and the Howdy Doody crew — all 1950s performers whom I knew.

I had never fully appreciated how important precise timing and the serendipity of accidents was before those experiences. The work in those days gave me a new respect for what those great performers did on those tiny, simple sets.

Timing, of course, was a key to Jackie Gleason’s great comedic genius. As the years went by, I realized why Orson Welles nicknamed him, “The Great One.” He taught me some of the most important and eternal elements of good television production.