Info about Video Tapes
Video tapes
Videotape is a support for recording images and sound. It is a magnetic tape used in movies and other domains like storing data in medical industry, servers. . Videotape is used in both video tape recorders (VTRs) or, more commonly and more recently, video cassette recorders (VCRs) and video cameras. Tape is a linear method of storing information and, since nearly all video recordings made nowadays are digital, it is expected to gradually lose importance as non-linear/random-access methods of storing digital video data become more common. In these days it is already difficult to find tape recording methods. The first demonstration of video recording was made by Bing Crosby Enterprises in November 11, 1951. The device was developed by J. T. Mullin and Wayne R. Johnson. First time was not so functional and it was described as “blurred and indistinct” images. A year later, a better version was developed but it was still inferior to the best kinescope recordings. The first practical professional videotape machines capable of replacing kinescopes were the Quadruplex machines introduced by Ampex on April 14, 1956 at the National Association of Broadcasters convention in Chicago. Quad employed a transverse (scanning the tape across its width) four-head system on a two-inch (5.08 cm) tape, and linear heads for the sound track. CBS first used the Ampex VRX-1000 Mark IV at its Television City studios in Hollywood on November 30, 1956 to play a delayed broadcast of Douglas Edwards and the News from New York to the Pacific Time Zone. On January 22, 1957, the NBC game show Truth or Consequences, produced in Hollywood, became the first program to be broadcast in all time zones from a prerecorded videotape. The first color videotape recorder was developed by Ampex in 1958 together with RCA. The oldest network color videotape is an NBC show in 1958 named An Evening with Fred Astaire.
It is interesting the fact that very few early videotapes still exist. A lot of them were erased and reused in order to be cost effective. The first video cassette was introduced in 1969 by Sony and it became commercial in September 1971. It was developed as Broadcast Video U-matic or BVU. Also a video camera was launched on the market in 1982 named Betacam (Camcorder).
The request for high quality images and sounds resulted in the digital revolution where Sony was also the main developer with the systems D-1, D-2 and D-3. Ampex introduced the first compressed component recording (DCT series in 1992).The DV standard, which debuted in 1996, has become widely used both in its native form and in more robust forms such as Sony's DVCAM and Panasonic's DVCPRO as an acquisition and editing format.
The latest trend in consumer camcorders shows the switch from tape-based to built-in hard disk drives, optical discs and solid-state memory. In professional video recording settings, such as broadcast television, videotape was still heavily used in the mid- to late 2000s, but formats like DVCPRO P2, XDCAM and AVCHD, are gaining broader acceptance.