Wednesday, February 28, 2007

Video Camcorder Formats and Media

There are manner too many tape, disc and lodge formattings out there:

VHS - The old standard, too big, not digital, easily played anywhere without conversion.

VHS-C - Type A little cassette that tantrums in an arranger to play in a regular VCR. Most people who have got these aged units of measurement record at the slow EP or SLP velocity which gives them boundary line crummy results. Not my favorite, as you may guess, but these camcorders are cheap, cheap, cheap. In the right hands, I've seen fulgurant results.

S-VHS and S-VHS-C - Called "super" VHS, this formatting sets more than inside information on a VHS-like tape than regular VHS camcorders do, but unless you have got a videocassette recorder that plays it back, the image looks all lacerate and raggedy. A good non-digital formatting for professionals but on its manner out.

8mm, Hi8 and Digital8 - A popular household of camcorder tapes primarily engineered by Sony, the little cassette looks kind of like VHS-C but there is no arranger to play it in a VHS VCR. It started with 8mm, got improved by Hi8 (which used to be expensive), and went digital with Digital8. Hi8 camcorders are now on sale very cheaply-- they are a good pick for the budget-minded. The D8 (Digital8) formatting ain't bad -- it bes less take down than some of the other digital formats, it's a little bigger (therefore more than robust?), and D8 equipment is compatible with computing machine redaction systems through it's Firewire stoppers just like pro gear.

MiniDV - A small tape formatting that at one time or another all the major makers agreed upon (but some have got broken ranks as you step up into pro gear wheel wheel or move to still littler tape or non-tape formats). At the time this is written, I'd state this is the best all-purpose formatting around. It's used in mid-range consumer photographic cameras up to some mulct pro-gear used by the broadcast industry, worldwide. You can generally record 1 hr or so on a tape at normal velocity and can acquire 50% More time at slow speed, but ticker out: tapes recorded at the slow L-P velocity may not play back anywhere but in the camcorder that made them -- great 10 old age from now when the camcorder have gone to camcorder Heaven and you desire to delve out those old shots only to detect they play like your videocassette recorder have a bad lawsuit of the hiccups.

DVCAM and DVCpro - Industrial step-ups of the MiniDV formatting and standard. Electronically these digital formattings are the same as MiniDV, but the tapes are larger and there are other differences that Sony and Panasonic love to reason about. We premix and lucifer a batch of MiniDV and DVCAM at our (primarily Sony) shop, using DVCAM in our more than expensive camcorders where we necessitate to hit for two or three hours without stop. Panasonic's DVCpro is similar and have got been bought into by a figure of broadcasters, but it is less compatible when mixing and matching with MiniDV (in my opinion).

Then there are some emerging formattings that I've seen for sale or read about, but haven't bought into yet:

MicroDV - a very little tape in very little Sony camcorders

MiniDVD - a DVD disc in a cartridge used in some Hitachi camcorders.

MPEG video in still digital photographic cameras - some still photographic camera makers experience that you desire to also record video with their units. Usually you can accumulate snips of less than a minute. The results are interesting to post on a web site, but that's about it. This video is usually captured on whatever memory lodges or floppies the photographic camera utilizes -- another whole topic beyond the scope of this discussion.

DVD - A major playback formatting but not yet widely available in camcorders.

I didn't travel into all the aged formattings and broadcast formattings that are still lurking around: 3/4", BetaMax, BetaSP, and 1" to call just a few. On top of that, if you are kind of an international soul, you've run into the fact that other parts of the world have got different television standards. Ours is called NTSC, much of Europe is PAL, French Republic is SECAM and there are subsets of these. If you are a pupil of world history shortly after World War II, you can fan out these three major formattings to the remainder of the world by who was in complaint of or aligned politically with whom. The tapes and discs are the same mechanically, but what's recorded on them is different. It takes particular equipment to interpret from one formatting to another.

A large portion of our concern is dedicated to just transferring all these old and new formattings to the more than popular playback formats: VHS and DVD. The digital formattings are here to remain and pretty-much outdated the aged formats. As this is written, high definition camcorder equipment is not yet available for consumers -- this equipment will probably be very expensive when it first shows up. Get a good camcorder today while everyone is still healthy and around, and the children haven't grown too big, and don't 2nd conjecture yourself about what might or might not be coming down the road.


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