Oddity Archive: Episode 183 - Video8 (8mm Video) (and its children)
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- Опубликовано: 13 ноя 2019
- Getting the History of Home Video train back on track with the first great (albeit rather dull) camcorder format.
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I absolutely love the tech history lessons!
my thoghts exactly
History Lesson is my favorite Part!
They make a great audiobook when you’re in a pinch, I love them
All Video8 and higher-quality Hi8 Handycams with stereo microphones were discontinued soon after Sony introduced Digital8, but low-end mono Hi8 Handycams remained in production exactly as long as the Digital8 models, even sharing the same body shells and basic features with them over the years, until they discontinued both Hi8 and Digital8 camcorders in 2007. But unlike Video8 and Hi8 which were used by a wide array of equipment manufacturers, Hitachi was the only other brand besides Sony to ever sell Digital8 camcorders.
Interestingly, Hi-8 tape was also used professionally in the audio realm for digital multitrack recording. With decks such as the Tascam DA-88, regular old Hi-8 tapes could be used to record 8 simultaneous tracks of 16-bit PCM audio for 108 minutes, multiple decks could be chained together for additional tracks, and later models could even record 24-bit. This came out around the mid 90s as a response to the ADAT system by Alesis which, oddly enough, used standard VHS tapes as the recording medium which could also record 8-tracks of digital audio.
And there's the JVC digital audio recorders that use full size VHS.
My family obtained an S-VHS Panasonic camcorder in the late 80s/early 90s. The viewfinder was black and white, but you could playback (vision only) through the viewfinder, so could do some crude editing on the go. The camera came with a VHS adaptor, which was basically a VHS sized shell that you put your S-VHS tape into, so you could then watch the tape back as simply as you would an ordinary tape. It cost about £800, which was quite a reasonable price for a camcorder with such easy playback at that time. My family used it quite a lot as well, even my technophobic mother found it easy to use.
You call it boring, I call it interesting!
Fun fact: You could say that Philips Video 2000 was the grandfather (grandmother? Well... at least an ancestor) of Video 8: The Dynamic Track Following system from V2000 was also used in Video 8.
Via Betamax, that is. Sony licensed Philips' VTF and incorporated it into Betamax and then later Video8/Hi8 equipment.
@@vwestlife That would be awesome, but I'm pretty sure that Betamax predates V2000 by a few years. Do you have a source for that?
I've always enjoyed the tech history lesson episodes as I find them interesting. They allow to me to discover a format that is new to me or rediscover one that I have forgotten about.
It's good to see that you've started doing them again. :)
Boring topic? This is a great video, Ben. Don't sell yourself so short. :)
The Video-8 and Hi-8 cameras and cassettes deserve praise for the following: Before the ability to create home-made DVD movies, you'd dub the content from your Video-8 or Hi-8 camera tapes to VHS by connecting the camera to your VCR(same for Beta, if that's the home VCR format you were using) and build a library of home movies in this fashion. But when home computers got powerful enough to play and burn DVD discs, software and ancillary devices(capture cards) became available to transfer your old videotaped movies to DVD, the image quality off those VHS(or Beta) dubs from the Video-8/Hi-8 tapes would be perfectly usable as the masters for transfer to digital, as well as the original Video-8/Hi-8 tapes themselves. but a VHS-to-VHS dub used as a master tape would result in an atrocious transfer to digital. Some of my earliest Trams & Trains videos on my channel were sourced from VHS dubs of Video-8 or Hi-8 tapes and they scrubbed up pretty darn good, even for the analogue source. Had I shot the original material on VHS then dubbed that to another VHS tape, the 1st-generation copy would've been unusable and I'd have to use the master. But dubbing Video-8/Hi-8 tapes to VHS then using that VHS dub, the picture quality was on par with the Video-8/Hi-8 tape masters. That's been my experience with the Video-8/Hi-8 format.
Didn't the Video-8 have an adapter that looked like a vhs cassette? Where you could essentially put a vidoe-8 cassette into your vcr.
@@djmajiktuch82 no - that was VHS-C. The 8 mm format was thinner so could not be used in a conventional VCR - and that is before you get into the incompatibilities of the recording methods on both formats
@@djmajiktuch82 No, that was VHS-C. The VHS-C cassette contained about a half-hour's worth of half-inch(wide) videotape that was inserted into the camera to record, and could be played back by the camera through the viewfinder, or connected via its A/V connections to a TV or a full-size VCR(which could be Beta in that situation) to dub the content, but because it was effectively VHS-to-VHS, the resultant dub would be poorer in quality and not suitable for later transfer to digital media(and likely the Beta dub would suffer similarly), but the VHS-C cassette could be put into an adaptor cassette, which could then be loaded in the normal way into any VHS VCR and played that way.
I didn't think that was boring!
Not boring in the least! I want a Sony Ruvi. I had never heard of it before and that commercial for it is from Japan, but I feel nostalgic for it anyways. I love absurd old tech like that.
Techmoan did a video on it awhile back. It's just as awkward as described. ruclips.net/video/Qt_ct4wBnv8/видео.html
OddityArchive thanks! Checking it out.
13:11 The backward-compatibility was for Hi-8 cameras to play the standard Video-8 tapes only. Ordinary Video-8 cameras could not play the Hi-8 tapes properly as the method of laying the signal on the tape, though still analogue resulted in.....well, words fail in trying to describe the effect, you'd have to try it for yourself(play a Hi-8 tape in a regular Video-8 camera) to see what I mean.
@@vwestlife Yeppers!
@@vwestlife Your comment was chopped off mid-sentence. As I see it, a Hi-8 camera will play a standard Video-8 cassette. If it's possible to record to a standard Video-8 tape in a Hi-8 camera, it would not be practical as the quality would suffer. The Hi-8 camera is specifically designed to use the higher-grade formula tape loaded into the cassette for Hi-8 cameras. As standard video-8 camera attempting to play a Hi-8 tape will struggle, and the picture would be as you correctly identified. Thus it's better that Hi-8 cameras should only play back the standard Video-8 tape and record only to Hi-8 grade tape. This is all analogue, but when the Hi-8 cassette was used in digital cameras, the digital camera laid its signal(both audio and video) in a different fashion that made a digitally-recorded Hi-8 cassette incompatible with an analogue Hi-8 camera(found that out myself when I loaded a friend's cassette into my camera to copy the content, saw and heard nothing). A digital camera using Hi-8 format tapes will play back an analogue Hi-8 or standard Video-8, stereo or mono, but will ONLY record digitally and ONLY on Hi-8. Digital and analogue cameras set for using Hi-8 tapes have a sensor which detects the type of cassette loaded into them, and it's the sensor which may prevent a Hi-8 camera from recording to a standard Video-8 tape.
Re-posting my comment: If you play a Hi8 tape in a Video8 camcorder, you will get a picture and sound, but the image will be very smeary and washed out. But you can record a standard Video8 signal onto a Hi8 tape without any problems. And likewise if you record onto a Video8 tape using a Hi8 camcorder, it will simply fall back to standard Video8 resolution. Digital8 at SP speed can be recorded onto either Video8 or Hi8 tape, but Sony recommended using Hi8 tape for the best results, and required it for recording Digital8 at LP speed.
The Sony Digital 8 was good and it could playback old 8mm standard tapes!
Loving to learn about things I never knew about. Oh btw I live in Florida so I know about the Orlando Sentinel alot.
My family had a Sony TRV-103. We never were really a home movie type of family, but my god did I love recording televison programming with it and capturing it with my PC via FireWire.
Don't worry, I had little trouble staying awake through all that. History episodes are best episodes :D
most of my early childhood was recorded on hi8
I've actually run into an 8mm VCR once.
Why didn’t the companies record their demo tapes in HiFi?! ....or was it off the air? Nonetheless, surely more people had HiFi VCRs by 1999.
In the early 2000s, I had a Hi8 camera that I used as a VCR because the camera part didn't work. I backed up my laserdiscs and played the backups on hi8. Wasn't any perceivable difference in quality. Wish I still had the tapes.
Holy Mother... I applaud the people who keep these devices running and those, who come-up with new stuff, whose prices we wait to drop.
My first video camera shot on Video 8 (might have been Hi8 actually) great memories. Recorded with it well into the early 2010s.
These are what I used to film on. Still have a few (even a digital8 and a hi8 VCR!). They hold a special place in my heart.
Excellent video! So many formats and being the camera geek I am I own all of them apart from svhs-c. Grew up using mostly video 8 and hi8 units over the years then went to mini dv. Many years later I got myself a hdv camera then started really collecting cameras over the last few years so not have most the formats and I love them all 🤗
It's interesting that "they" wanted the term "Video-8" to be used rather than "8mm". I always called it "8mm" If I had to differentiate it from 8mm film, I just said 8mm videotape.
I don't think you can trademark the term 8mm, so therefore the funny name
We had a Nikon 8mm camcorder in the late 80s. My in-laws had a Super 8 model which didn't do audio. My wife and I had what was left from our collections transferred to DVD.
I actually owned that final model handycam... i didn't know until today that it was the end of the line. Pretty good little camera for the time. Great video on this format that many of us grew up with it, even if it was in the background of life.
Very informative episode...since our neighbors had a Sony Handycam that we frequently borrowed for vacations, special events, etc, I had some familiarity with Video 8, but didn't know that there were dedicated VCRs which played back/recorded in said format, or that Sony and Kodak were offering prerecorded V8 movies as far back as 1986 (I only knew of the latter's existence after seeing some offered in a 1990 J&R Music World catalog, and also saw the Video Walkman in there).
Old-style in-flight entertainment with one movie for the whole cabin was how I discovered I, a full-grown adult, liked Shaun the Sheep.
That flight was around Christmas 2015, on a B757 built in 1991. I can't help but wonder if the setup involved was indeed one of the Video8 systems mentioned in this video.
I've just acquired a Video 8 XR model CCD-TR415E from 1998. It all still seems to be working perfectly, including the battery!
Tape types were detected using holes on the bottom side of the tapes.
My friend just offered me an in-box Sony Video 8 TRV37. She said it was basely used. Would you consider a worthwhile piece of old tech, just as a toy to play around with?
At this point, probably more a toy than anything else. If it interests you, go for it.
@@OddityArchive Thanx, there's already @1/2 ' of snow here, so the more Winter hobbies the better I guess.
Take it, you'd be hard pressed to find one on eBay for a decent price, because people like to gouge out the people looking to transfer old videos.
I myself managed to get two Hi8 camcorders for $25, and I regularly use mine.
@@VectraQS Right on, I'll find a use for it. And I know if she says "barely used and in the box" it probably means she filled a tape up and realized it wouldn't play back in a regular player, and it's been boxed up ever since, ha ha
The Ruvi looks like it could've been repurposed as a camcorder for children or something. Great video!
Oh boy.. U-Matic. So many (heavy) memories from college and my early career.. 3/4 was so much fun...
I have a Hi8 and a Digital8 and what's keeping me from using them more is finding Hi8/Digital8 blank tapes to record onto.
A note about PCM on video 8. It's not actually lossless in comparison with, say, CD. Video 8 had limited bandwidth so they reduced the sampling rate to just 32 kHz and then stored, as I recall, only 10 bits per sample. The ADC and DAC were 12 bit and a digital compansion scheme used to close the gap between 10 and 12 bits. There was then another analog compander used to achieve s/n ratio similar to 16 bit audio / VHS hifi. How audible all this was I can't tell you. The latter schemes to use the cassettes for multitrack pro audio don't have these limitations.
I had often wished that 8mm became a mainstream VCR format, just to save space! (I once had my hall closet 1/3 filled with Beta and VHS tapes,LOL!) DVD/Blu-ray solved this for movies, For recorded video I want to keep around, I have a 3Tb HDD connected to my TV via an elcheapo chinese media player that also has an SD card slot, so I can shoot "home movies" on my DSLR and pop the card into the "box" and watch in HD. We've come a LONG way just since 2000!
Not boring, very interesting and enjoyable.
You're confused about resolutions of analogue video formats. Scan lines are fixed for a given television standard: It's 480 in NTSC (nominally 525, but 45 are black), and 576 in PAL/SECAM (nominally 625, but 50 are black). This figure defines top-down resolution, and any standard definition video format (both digital and analogue) will be the same in that regard, because the video machine can't help but record the line pulses it gets fed.
The quality differences are in the left-right resolution only: Along each scan line, the analogue signal is continuous, and how fast the level can change between black and white defines how good the resolution is. This quality measurement is sometimes given in "lines of resolution", which roughly means how many black and white lines next to each other will still be recorded without blurring into grey. The unfortunate wording causes many people to confuse this measurement with scan lines, but it has nothing to do with those. 400 "lines of resolution" and more is broadcast quality, and S-VHS and Hi8 are up to that, digital formats are even above. Anything below 350ish is sub-broadcast consumer standards. For example native VHS is 240 "lines of resolution", which means that the picture is washed out from left to right as compared to broadcast quality. But even mediocre VHS will record 480/576 top-down scan lines (depending which continent you're in).
Oddity Archive on Video8 when
i still shoot video sometimes on a 1080i mini dv sony camera (Sony HVR-HD1000U)
That Sony ad was gold.
Video8 will record in a Hi8 camcorder, but it will record a regular Video8 signal unless you move the tape stock to a Hi8 shell and even then, the results are about as stable as using regular VHS tape stock in a SVHS camcorder in a modified cassette (read: negligible dropouts if any).
always a good day when OA puts out a video!
I still own my parents miniDV camera (SONY DCR-HC20) and cassettes that works to this day!
It gives an “retro” vibe that’s hard to recreate in full-digital video :)
To say the S-VHS roughly duplicated Laserdisc "resolution" is fair but should come with a caveat:. It only does so in luma bandwidth of 5mhz or ~400TVL (vs 5.3mhz or ~425TVL); the chroma bandwidth of ~.4mhz or ~30TVL (vs ~1.5mhz or ~120TVL) means that color reproduction is significantly more limited on S-VHS than Laserdisc resulting in the smeary, chunky color reproduction that many associate with home videotape.
S-VHS isn't limited by composite though.
Hi Ben. I think that you have gotten the NTSC and PAL speeds around the wrong way. PAL tapes (as far as I can remember) run faster than NTSC, so an E240 (4 hour) PAL tape would record and playback on an NTSC machine for a lot longer than 4 hours. I remember when a load of American RCA 2 hour tapes were imported over here in the UK they had to be relabelled over the cover as they ran for less than 2 hours when used on PAL machines.
PAL runs slower.
Video 8 now on the second hand market is still very expensive... why.
Not gonna lie, when Ben said Video8 was indirectly responsible for the first episode of Archive, I thought he was referring to the Max Headroom incident.
You forgot another format that used the same tape. Tascam's DTRS 16/24-bit 8 track digital audio format. It was mainly used in studios along with ADAT which used S-VHS tapes.
Before smartphones had the ability to take photos & video, there was Sony's Ruvi.
At 12:41, Mammaw is not capturing those kids unless they're playing on the roof.
17:17 That was my first camcorder!
wow.. i really WAS sleeping at 22:04!
geek heaven
You can't have a Video 8 video without a cameo appearance of Creepy Bob trying to sell you batteries and cleaning tapes. Oh, and those early 90s Sony tapes really really suck. I had a transfer job that involved a ton of them. Clogged up one of my D8 camcorders real good. Oddly I don't think it was tape shedding, but faulty 20+ year old lubricant.
Found a Kodavision 2400 with the cradle but no timer at a yard sale - was someone's Christmas gift at the time, had the original price written in the manual but I can't remember what it was at the moment. Only had one tape recorded from the period, but it was from the later 80s and was probably the last time the camera was used.
D8 using the same stock as V8 might explain wby my Digital8 camcorder didn't want to record on them in LP mode. And i have a bunch of 160m tapes, which give roughly 90 minutes of digital video.
And you didn't mention VXA and DTRS.
Hey ben could you perhaps do an episode on the colossal failure that was HD-DVD
Am a vhs-c mini dv, hi8 and mini dvd camera owner. Recordable media for my digital camcorders is cheap but I can't say the same for analog. That is why I tend to avoid analog tapes.
And Then There Were Three was digitally mastered? I had always been under the impression that Duke was the first Genesis album to take advantage of such technology, hence the long playtime and little reduction in sound quality compared to previous 1hr+ releases.
Great album though. Burning Rope is one of my favorites of Genesis
5:55 $1,899 then = $4,703 now!
IKR, Today, I have a $300 phone that shoots video in 4K (UHD)! ..... A friggin PHONE! (and NOT even a "flagship"!)
The minimum wage in 1984 was about 3.35 an hour. So only well to do people could afford to be recorded in a high resolution video.😁
Didn't certain adats use 8mm tapes? I seem to remember the studio the band used to use 8mm tapes for theirs.
Geez, Kodak should've worked out the kinks with all the extra hardware before releasing it to the public.
Three years ago Techmoan did a great video about the Sony Ruvi
ruclips.net/video/Qt_ct4wBnv8/видео.html
I'm afraid to ask you this, Ben, but... Are you going to get a haircut soon?
i remember TechMoan did a video on the sony ruvi
ruclips.net/video/Qt_ct4wBnv8/видео.html
apparently so did VWestlife
ruclips.net/video/tSzKXuU08a8/видео.html
The switch to a higher metal content formulation for Hi-8 tape was to increase the frequency response, and thus the data density, of the tape; not to increase the abrasiveness. *rolls eyes*
Higher metal-concentration is more abrasive--and, yes, it increases frequency response. So much for a bit of snark. *rolls eyes*
@@OddityArchive 😊👍👍👍
If you hate doing these videos there is one weird trick that the algorithm hates you can use.
Just don't make them
Man, I'm early. Comment #10.
This boring. I just wish your videos of history lesson of old videos formats can go another three hours. Even my non Techie Wife found this video fascinating.