Remember Betamax? VHS? Laser Disc? With the rapid pace of technology, the quality and type of video formats have been changing and improving continuously. It would be interesting to look at how video formats have developed and improved over the years to further appreciate the progress video has made over the years and maybe catch a glimpse of what is ahead. Kyle Cassidy helps us by giving a rundown of the various video formats over the years.
Betamax and VHS waged a format war in the 1980’s with the latter coming out as the home video standard. The format allowed for three speeds and used a helical recording head which allowed the data stripes to be longer despite the ½ inch wide tape. VHS had other variants which used smaller cassettes such as Super VHS which had improved video and audio. Both the Betamax and VHS formats allowed stereo and mono audio. VHS had 240 scan lines while Betamax had 250 scan lines, a shorter tape and shorter playing times. Although nearly all movie studios have stopped making videos in these formats, the number of home videos recorded on VHS assures that it will remain in people’s homes for some time yet. While it lost the home video war, Betamax became the standard for professional use and remained so for more than two decades.
Kodak’s introduction of the Video8 format in 1984 allowed the creation of extremely portable cameras. Sony later on developed an upgraded version of the Video8 format called Hi8 with improved image quality. This gave a big advantage to those who do corporate video production.
The dawn of the digital age did not leave video behind. Video was now transferred by DVD to large, multi-channel home theaters or watched on low resolution portable devices. Sony developed the Digital8 format, a highly improved version of the Video8 with 500 lines of resolution and twice the tape speed. However, the decks and the camcorders didn’t score high with consumers and the format is considered dead by many, according to Cassidy.
In 1995, Sony announced it was releasing two cameras which would record in digital format which meant there would be no loss of quality during duplication and 25% more lines of resolution than Hi8. Big companies found it amusing and used it for their corporate video production. Other manufacturers followed suit and soon professional news outfits and indie film makers embraced the smaller, sleeker cameras. Cassidy remarks that there were three popular DV formats, the Mini DV, DVCAM and the DVCPRO each with 500 lines of resolution.
The entry and use of digital recording ushered the entry of the HD formats. JVC launched the first HDV consumer camcorder which could record 720p video. All HDV camcorders record in MPEG-2 compressed bitstreams to standard Mini DV tapes. AVCHD, on the other hand, writes MPEG-4 AVC bitstreams to devices such as memory cards, hard drives, or optical discs.
