Videotape

An assortment of video tapes

Videotape is magnetic tape used for

storing video and usually sound in
addition. Information stored can be in the
form of either an analog signal or digital
signal. Videotape is used in both video
tape recorders (VTRs) or, more commonly,
videocassette recorders (VCRs) and
camcorders. Videotapes are also used for
storing scientific or medical data, such as
the data produced by an
electrocardiogram.

Because video signals have a very high

bandwidth, and stationary heads would
require extremely high tape speeds, in
most cases, a helical-scan video head
rotates against the moving tape to record
the data in two dimensions.
Tape is a linear method of storing
information and thus imposes delays to
access a portion of the tape that is not
already under the heads. The early 2000s
saw the introduction and rise to
prominence of high quality random-access
video recording media such as hard disks
and flash memory. Since then, videotape
has been increasingly relegated to archival
and similar uses.

Early formats
The electronics division of entertainer Bing
Crosby's production company, Bing Crosby
Enterprises (BCE), gave the world's first
demonstration of a videotape recording in
Los Angeles on November 11, 1951.
Developed by John T. Mullin and Wayne R.
Johnson since 1950, the device gave what
were described as "blurred and indistinct"
images using a modified Ampex 200 tape
recorder and standard quarter-inch
(0.6 cm) audio tape moving at 360 inches
(9.1 m) per second.[1][2] A year later, an
improved version using one-inch (2.54 cm)
magnetic tape was shown to the press,
who reportedly expressed amazement at
the quality of the images although they
had a "persistent grainy quality that looked
like a worn motion picture". Overall the
picture quality was still considered inferior
to the best kinescope recordings on film.[3]
Bing Crosby Enterprises hoped to have a
commercial version available in 1954 but
none came forth.[4]

The BBC experimented from 1952 to 1958

with a high-speed linear videotape system
called VERA, but this was ultimately
unfeasible. It used half-inch (1.27 cm) tape
on 20-inch reels traveling at 200 inches
(5.08 m) per second.

RCA demonstrated the magnetic tape

recording of both black-and-white and
color television programs at its Princeton
laboratories on December 1, 1953.[5][6] The
high-speed longitudinal tape system,
called Simplex, in development since 1951,
could record and play back only a few
minutes of a television program. The color
system used half-inch (1.3 cm) tape on 10-
1/2 inch reels to record five tracks, one
each for red, blue, green, synchronization,
and audio. The black-and-white system
used quarter-inch (0.6 cm) tape also on
10-1/2 inch reels with two tracks, one for
video and one for audio. Both systems ran
at 360 inches (9.1 m/30 feet) per second
with 2,500 feet on a reel.[7] RCA-owned
NBC first used it on The Jonathan Winters
Show on October 23, 1956 when a
prerecorded song sequence by Dorothy
Collins in color was included in the
otherwise live television program.[8][9]

In 1953, Dr. Norikazu Sawazaki developed

a prototype helical scan video tape
recorder.[10]

BCE demonstrated a color system in

February 1955 using a longitudinal
recording on half-inch (1.3 cm) tape. CBS,
RCA's competitor, was about to order BCE
machines when Ampex introduced the
superior Quadruplex system.[11] BCE was
acquired by 3M Company in 1956.

In 1959, Toshiba released the first

commercial helical scan video tape
recorder.[12]

Broadcast video
Quad

A fourteen-inch reel of 2-inch quad videotape

compared with a modern-day MiniDV videocassette.
Both media store one hour of color video.

The first commercial professional

broadcast quality videotape machines
capable of replacing kinescopes were the
two-inch quadruplex videotape (Quad)
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 stationary
heads for the sound track.

CBS Television first used the Ampex VRX-

1000[13] 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 City to the Pacific Time Zone.[13][14]
On January 22, 1957, the NBC Television
game show Truth or Consequences,
produced in Hollywood, became the first
program to be broadcast in all time zones
from a prerecorded videotape.[15] Ampex
introduced a color videotape recorder in
1958 in a cross-licensing agreement with
RCA, whose engineers had developed it
from an Ampex black-and-white
recorder.[16] NBC's special, An Evening With
Fred Astaire (1958), is the oldest surviving
television network color videotape, and
has been restored by the UCLA Film and
Television Archive.
On December 7, 1963, instant replay was
used for the first time during the live
transmission of the Army–Navy Game by
its inventor, director Tony Verna.[17]

Although Quad became the industry

standard for approximately thirty years, it
has drawbacks such as an inability to
freeze pictures, and no picture search.[a]
Also, in early machines, a tape could
reliably be played back using only the
same set of hand-made tape heads, which
wore out very quickly.[b] Despite these
problems, Quad is capable of producing
excellent images. Subsequent videotape
systems have used helical scan, where the
video heads record diagonal tracks (of
complete fields) onto the tape.

Many early videotape recordings were not

preserved.[c] While much less expensive (if
repeatedly recycled) and more convenient
than kinescope, the high cost of 3M
Scotch 179[13] and other early videotapes
($300 per one-hour reel)[19] meant that
most broadcasters erased and reused
them, and (in the United States) regarded
videotape as simply a better and more
cost-effective means of time-delaying
broadcasts than kinescopes. It was the
four time zones of the continental United
States which had made the system very
desirable in the first place.

However, some classic television

programs originally recorded on studio
videotape still exist, and are available on
DVD - among them NBC's Peter Pan (first
telecast in 1960) with Mary Martin as
Peter, the television version of Hal
Holbrook's one-man show Mark Twain
Tonight (first telecast in 1967), and Mikhail
Baryshnikov's classic production of the
ballet The Nutcracker (first telecast in
1977).

Types C and B
The next format to gain widespread usage
was the 1" (2.54 cm) Type C format,
introduced in 1976 (although some
sources say 1978). This format introduced
features such as shuttling, various-speed
playback (including slow-motion), and still
framing, but the sound and picture
reproduction attainable on the format were
of slightly lower quality than Quad
(although 1" Type C's quality was still quite
high). However, compared to Quad, 1" Type
C machines required much less
maintenance, took up less space, and
consumed much less electrical power.
In Europe a similar tape format was
developed, called Type B. Type B machines
(also known as BCN) use the same 1" tape
as Type C but they lacked C's shuttle and
slow-motion options. The picture quality is
slightly better, though. Type B was the
broadcast norm in continental Europe for
most of the 1980s.

Professional cassette formats

A U-matic tape
A videocassette is a cartridge containing
videotape. In 1969, Sony introduced a
prototype for the first widespread video
cassette, the 3/4" (1.905 cm) composite
U-matic system, which Sony introduced
commercially in September 1971 after
working out industry standards with other
manufacturers. Sony later refined it to
Broadcast Video U-matic or BVU. Sony
continued its hold on the professional
market with its ever-expanding 1/2"
(1.27 cm) component video Betacam
family (introduced in 1982), which, in its
digital variants, is still among the
professional market leaders. Panasonic
had some limited success with its MII
system, but never could compare to
Betacam in terms of market share.

The next step was the digital revolution.

Among the first digital video formats was
Sony's D-1, which featured uncompressed
digital component recording. Because D-1
was extremely expensive, the composite
D-2 and D-3 (by Sony and Panasonic,
respectively) were introduced soon after.
Ampex introduced the first compressed
component recording with its DCT series
in 1992. Panasonic trumped D-1 with its D-
5 format, which is uncompressed as well,
but much more affordable.
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.
However, due to concerns by the
entertainment industry about the format's
lack of copy protection, only the smaller
MiniDV cassettes used with camcorders
became commonplace, with the full-sized
DV cassettes restricted entirely to
professional applications.

For camcorders, Sony adapted the

Betacam system with its Digital Betacam
format, later following it up with the
cheaper Betacam SX and MPEG IMX
formats, and the semiprofessional DV-
based DVCAM system. Panasonic used its
DV variant DVCPRO for all professional
cameras, with the higher-end format
DVCPRO50 being a direct descendant.
JVC developed the competing D9/Digital-S
format, which compresses video data in a
way similar to DVCPRO but uses a
cassette similar to S-VHS media.

High definition

The introduction of HDTV video production

necessitated a medium for storing high-
definition video information. In 1997, Sony
bumped its Betacam series up to HD with
the HDCAM standard and its higher-end
cousin HDCAM SR. Panasonic's
competing format for cameras is based on
DVCPRO and called DVCPRO HD. For VTR
and archive use, Panasonic expanded the
D-5 specification to store compressed HD
streams and called it D-5 HD.

Home video

Video 8, VHS and MiniDV.

VCRs

The first consumer videocassette

recorders (VCR) were launched in 1971
(based around Sony U-matic technology).
Philips entered the domestic market the
following year with the N1500.[20] Sony's
Betamax (1975) and JVC's VHS (1976)
created a mass-market for VCRs and the
two competing systems battled the
"videotape format war", which VHS
ultimately won. At first VCRs were very
expensive, but by the late 1980s the price
had come down enough to make them
affordable to a mainstream audience.
Videocassettes finally made it possible for
consumers to buy or rent a complete film
and watch it at home whenever they
wished, rather than simply catching it at a
movie theater or having to wait until it was
telecast. It also made it possible for a VCR
owner to begin time-shifting the recording
of films and other television programs
straight from the transmission. This
caused an enormous change in viewing
practices, as one no longer had to wait for
a repeat of a program that had been
missed. The shift to home viewing also
changed the movie industry's revenue
streams, because home renting created an
additional window of time in which a film
could make money. In some cases, films
that did only modestly in their theater
releases went on to have strong
performance in the rental market (e.g., cult
films).

VHS became the leading consumer tape

format for home movies after the
"videotape format war", though its follow-
ups S-VHS, W-VHS and D-VHS never
caught up in popularity. In the late 1990s in
the prerecorded video market, VHS began
to be displaced by DVD. The DVD format
has several advantages over VHS tape. A
DVD is much better able to take repeated
viewings than VHS tape, which can crack
or break, which makes DVDs a better
format from a rental store's perspective.
As well, whereas a VHS tape can be
erased if it is exposed to a rapidly
changing magnetic field of sufficient
strength, DVDs and other optical discs are
not affected by magnetic fields. Even
though DVDs do not have the problems of
tapes, such as breakage of the tape or the
cassette mechanism, DVDs can still be
damaged by scratches. Another factor for
movie rental stores is that DVDs are
smaller and take less space to store. DVDs
offer a number of advantages for the
viewer: DVDs can support both standard
4x3 and widescreen 16x9 screen aspect
ratios and DVDs can provide twice the
video resolution of VHS. As well, a viewer
who wants to skip ahead to the end of a
movie can do so much faster with a DVD
than with a VHS tape (which has to be
rewound). DVDs can have interactive
menus, multiple language tracks, audio
commentaries, Closed Captioning and
subtitling (with the option of turning the
subtitles on or off, or selecting subtitles in
several languages). Moreover, a DVD can
be played on a computer.

Due to these advantages, by the mid-

2000s, DVDs were the dominant form of
prerecorded video movies in both the
rental film and new movie markets. In the
late 1990s and early 2000s, though,
consumers continued to use VCRs to
record over-the-air TV shows, because
consumers could not make home
recordings onto DVDs. This last barrier to
DVD domination was broken in the late
2000s, with the advent of inexpensive DVD
recorders and other digital video recorders
(DVRs). DVR devices, which record shows
onto a hard disk or flash storage, can be
purchased from electronics stores or
rented from cable or satellite TV providers.
Despite the mainstream dominance of
DVD, VHS continues to have a role. The
conversion to DVD has led to the
marketplace being flooded with used VHS
films, which are available at pawnshops
and second-hand stores, typically for a
lower price than the equivalent film on a
used DVD. As well, due to the large number
of VHS players in schools and libraries,
VHS tapes are still produced for the
educational market. As of November 2014,
at least one Public Library in the Detroit,
Michigan area has discontinued lending
out VHS prerecorded movies.

Consumer and "prosumer"

camcorders
DV cassettes
Left to right: DVCAM-L, DVCPRO-M, DVC/MiniDV

Early consumer camcorders used full-size

VHS or Betamax cassettes. Later models
switched to more compact formats,
designed explicitly for smaller camcorder
use, like VHS-C and Video8. VHS-C is a
downsized version of VHS, using the same
recording method and the same tape, but
in a smaller cassette. It is possible to play
VHS-C tapes in a regular VHS tape
recorder by using an adapter. After
Super VHS had appeared, a corresponding
compact version, Super VHS-C, was
released as well. Video8 is an indirect
descendant of Betamax, using narrower
tape and a smaller cassette. Because of
its narrower tape and technical
differences, it is not possible to develop an
adapter from Video8 to Betamax. Video8
was later developed into Hi8, which
provides better resolution similar to
Super VHS.

The first consumer-level and lower-end

professional ("prosumer") digital video
recording format, introduced in 1995, used
a smaller Digital Video Cassette (DVC).[21]
The format was later renamed MiniDV to
reflect the DV encoding scheme, but the
tapes still carry "DVC" mark. Some later
formats like DVC Pro from Panasonic
reflect the original name. The DVC/MiniDV
format provides broadcast-quality video
and sophisticated nonlinear editing
capability on consumer and some
professional equipment and has been
used on many films, like Danny Boyle's 28
Days Later (2001, shot on a Canon XL1)
and David Lynch's Inland Empire (2006,
shot on a Sony PD170)

In 1999 Sony backported the DV recording

scheme to 8-mm systems, creating
Digital8. By using the same cassettes as
Hi8, many Digital8 camcorders were able
to play analog Video8/Hi8 recordings,
preserving compatibility with already
recorded analog video tapes. As of 2008,
Digital8 camcorders have been removed
from the equipment offered by Sony.

Sony introduced another camcorder

cassette format called MicroMV, but
consumer interest was low due to the
proprietary nature of the format and
limited support for anything but low-end
Windows video editors, and Sony shipped
the last MicroMV unit in 2005. In the late
2000s, MiniDV and its high-definition
cousin, HDV, were the two most popular
consumer/pro-sumer tape-based formats.
The formats use different encoding
methods, but the same cassette type.
Since 2001, when MicroMV was
presented, no new tape form factors have
been introduced - with HDV (High
Definition Video) offering consumers a
bridge on HD video on MiniDV tape.

Future of tape
With advances in technology, videotape
has moved past its original uses (original
recording, editing, and broadcast
playback) and is now primarily an archival
medium. The death of tape for video
recording was predicted as early as 1995,
when the Avid nonlinear editing system
was demonstrated storing video clips on
hard disks. Yet videotape was still used
extensively, especially by consumers, up
until about 2004, when DVD-based
camcorders became affordable at
consumer level and domestic computers
had large enough hard drives to store an
acceptable amount of video.

Consumer camcorders have switched

from being tape-based to tapeless
machines that record video as computer
files. Small hard disks and writable optical
discs have been used, with solid-state
memory such as SD cards being the
current market leader. There are two
primary advantages: First, copying a tape
recording onto a computer or other video
machine occurs in real time (e.g. a ten-
minute video would take ten minutes to
copy); since tapeless camcorders record
video as computer-ready data files, the
files can simply be copied onto a
computer. Second, tapeless camcorders,
and those using solid-state memory in
particular, are far simpler mechanically
and so are more reliable.
Despite these conveniences, tape is still
used extensively with filmmakers and
television networks because of its
longevity, low cost, and reliability. Master
copies of visual content are often stored
on tape for these reasons. particularly by
users who cannot afford to move to
tapeless machines. Professional users
such as broadcast television were still
using tape heavily in the mid- to late
2000s, but tapeless formats like
DVCPRO P2, XDCAM and AVCHD, are
gaining broader acceptance.

While live recording has migrated to solid

state (Panasonic P2, Sony SR MASTER or
XDCAM-EX), optical disc (Sony's XDCAM)
and hard disks, the high cost of solid state
and the limited shelf life of hard-disk
drives make them less desirable for
archival use, for which tape is still used. As
of 2016, some news and production
camera crews still have cameras that use
tape formats, even in HD.

Notes
a. In fact, the quadruplex format can only
reproduce recognizable pictures when the
tape is playing at normal speed.[18]
b. Later machines had longer life and used
delay lines to compensate for the
differences in the four heads.
c. Some early broadcast videotapes have
survived, including The Edsel Show,
broadcast live in 1957, and 1958's An
Evening With Fred Astaire, the oldest color
videotape of an entertainment program
known to exist (and the second-oldest color
videotape known to survive, the oldest
being the May 1958 dedication of the WRC-
TV studios in Washington, DC). In 1976,
NBC's 50th anniversary special included an
excerpt from a 1957 color special starring
Donald O'Connor; despite some obvious
technical problems, the color tape was
remarkably good.
References
1. "Tape Recording Used by Filmless
'Camera' ", The New York Times, Nov. 12,
1951, p. 21.
2. Eric D. Daniel, C. Denis Mee, and Mark H.
Clark (eds.), Magnetic Recording: The First
100 Years, IEEE Press, 1998, p. 141. ISBN 0-
07-041275-8
3. "Tape-Recorded TV Nears Perfection",
The New York Times, Dec. 31, 1952, p. 10.
4. "New Deal on TV Seen at Parley", The
New York Times, May 1, 1953, p. 30.
5. "Magnetic Tape Used By RCA to
Photograph Television Program", The Wall
Street Journal, Dec. 2, 1953, p. 1.
6. "Color TV on Tape ", Popular Mechanics,
April 1954, p. 157.
7. Stewart Wolpin, "The Race to Video" ,
Invention & Technology, autumn 1994.
8. "TV Goes to Tape ", Popular Science, Feb.
1960, p. 238.
9. Ed Reitan, RCA-NBC Firsts in Color
Television (commented) .
10. SMPTE Journal: Publication of the
Society of Motion Picture and Television
Engineers, Volume 96, Issues 1-6; Volume
96 , page 256, Society of Motion Picture
and Television Engineers
11. Daniel et al., p. 148.
12. World's First Helical Scan Video Tape
Recorder , Toshiba
13. "Charles P. Ginsburg ". Memorial
Tributes: National Academy of Engineering,
Vol. 7. 1994: The National Academies
Press, Washington DC.
14. Ampex Corporation, Ampex
Chronology .
15. "Daily N.B.C. Show Will Be on Tape",
New York Times, Jan. 18, 1957, p. 31.
16. "Industry Agrees to Standardize Tape
Recording on Ampex Lines ", Billboard, Oct.
28, 1957, p. 3.
17. "He Invented Instant Replay, The TV
Trick We Now Take For Granted" , Morning
Edition, NPR, January 20, 2015
18. Wink Hackman; Expert training for Sony
MVS users worldwide Retrieved September
19, 2015
19. Elen, Richard G. "TV Technology ". BFI
Screenonline.
20. "Philips N1500, N1700 and V2000
systems" . Rewind Museum. Vision
International. 2011. Retrieved January 19,
2015.
21. "DVC Product Probe" .

External links
 Wikimedia Commons has media related
to Videotape.

The Loss of Early Video Recordings

History of Recording Technology
(WayBack Machine)
History of Magnetic Tape (WayBack
Machine)

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