New Video! Betamovie

Yes, don't even get me started on SonicStage!!

Gordo

Oh, I agree. Betamax was flawed. But, between the two formats, it DID have a better picture. Sony screwed up the rest...

Well, to be fair, the world at large had a VHS bias--why do you think it won the format war? :) Don't get me wrong, I like Beta as a format and can acknowledge its benefits. But it's a little too easy for me to poke fun at its missteps. Betamovie, while ingenious and important, is drastically limited in what it can do. I would have the same complaints about the BMC-110 even if I were comparing it against a theoretical Beta camcorder with 4 heads and an electronic viewfinder. The fact that it's Beta isn't the problem--it's everything else. I had also read at one point that Sony couldn't miniaturize the Beta cassette like VHS-C, and this was a large reason why Video8 was developed. That might be bullocks but I think it would have been wiser anyway. Video8 has some great advantages over VHS-C.

Technology Connections

First of all, I really like your videos (hence seeing me on Patreon), but you have such a VHS bias. I've been a video editor since 1984 and a hobbyist since 1977. The VHS vs Beta debate is tiresome for people of my age that messed around with the stuff. First of all, you have to compare apples to apples. Back in the day, there was a clear difference between the two in picture quality. I know you covered this, but you have to use two machines from the same year with tape from the same year on a CRT from the same year or older. Everything had to be tuned up. The difference in quality was more than noticeable. In fact, dubbing beta to beta still looked good. Dubbing VHS to VHS was smear city. But, the main problem with any of these decks (VHS-C and 8mm)with miniaturized scanners was the distortion they produced when panned too fast or if there was any kind of vibration introduced. The inertia of the tiny, spinning head had a really hard time coping with that. But, back to this... If I'm correct, the full-size VHS camcorder was still about 2 years out. This was also the time when circuitry was going through a radical change...from through-hole design to the more modern SMD. That BetaMovie looked mostly through-hole. Also, the VHS-C format was announced the same year as this, but...the first VHS-C camcorder was still 2 years out. Again, those two years were critical years. I never owned a BetaMovie, but I knew people that did and they didn't have any problems with focus. I think age is playing a pretty big role with your pick-up tube or circuitry. I used mostly VHS and U-Matic back then, but if it weren't for Betamax, there wouldn't be footage of my HS band from 1978 - 1981 (Wayne Valley on youtube). Looking at some footage of other bands from that day compared to what we had, I'm thankful for Beta. Things were either shot on Super 8 or some black & white EIAJ recorder. Again, this technology in that time frame was bleeding edge stuff for home electronics. The span of a couple of years made all the difference. Keep up the good work!

Oh the memories, but my parents started with a Video8 camcorder, we missed the VHS stage.

Paul Fisher

I never thought of it as a gimmick at all. Perhaps my family's weird, but we _never_ recorded more than a few minutes at a time. The longest video we ever made was of a school play, but even then my mom and dad only recorded the parts that I was in! (forgot you can't push enter) I think it was more about convenience. With VHS-C, the camcorder could stay in the camera bag. You never needed to hook it into the VCR at all unless you wanted to copy things. For some people that's worth a lot. And going back to previous statements, there are very few events where my parents used more than one VHS-C cassette, and most of the time they were recording SP speed. But maybe my experience is out of the ordinary.

Technology Connections

I think this is one of the best videos you have ever made! Thank you.

I always found those VHS-C adapters to be an interesting gimmick, but I can see why my dad opted for Sony's Video8 (technically Hi8 by that point) when he bought our first camcorder. Not being able to play the Hi8 tapes in our VHS VCR wasn't really an issue, since we could easily play them from the camcorder or dub them to a full size VHS tape (or DVD-R, many years later). It's crazy how much more recording time you could get with Video8 though, and in a physically smaller cassette too! It's a wonder that VHS-C, with a max recording time of maybe 40 minutes (30 minutes seems way more common), wasn't a complete flop. I guess backward compatibility (even if it required an adapter) was a big deal to a lot of people.

This is one of my internal struggles. I see different ways of explaining a thing, and rather than choosing the best way, I'll use both (or more). In my head, I think of it as hedging my bets--that way if someone doesn't understand something in one context, perhaps a different context will make it understandable. But I can recognize that for those that get it the first go around, the followup can be perceived as repetitive rather than a new perspective. Or perhaps my perception that these are different perspectives in incorrect, and the explanations are too similar therefore being genuinely repetitive. I don't know . One day I'll figure this out

Technology Connections

Pretty much. Then the VCR will spread that back out to the normal 1/60th of a second for your TV to use.

Technology Connections

Hahaha, stay till the end! Oh my god, died, lol. Okay, so you may have over-explained the single head, scanline gap thing a bit. I think you said exactly the same thing twice in a row in that section across 5 or so minutes. It's now burned in my head exactly how the dual azimuth head works and how the sensor (tube?) is overscanned and why it can't play. You explained it very well. But I had to pause the video and "deja vu??" around the second telling of the story... haha

Matt Falcon

So if I'm understanding correctly, one field is representing not 1/60 second (16.67 ms), but instead 1/75 second (13.33 ms) with a 3.33 ms gap between them. This would make the rolling shutter effect ever-so-slightly less apparent. edit: decimal places were wrong

Quinton Wilson