Betacam SP the best analog format? (yes!)
 

Betacam SP has to be the best SD analog format ever, Even after de-interlacing and encoding and no image enhancement or adjustments applied still looks good, This is part of my effort to sort through 25 Betacam SP tapes and look for interesting stuff to capture. If you are nostalgic to the 90's commercials enjoy:


http://www.mediafire.com/file/icwt09...yPC704DOut.mp4

http://www.mediafire.com/file/wvwydy...her704DOut.mp4

http://www.mediafire.com/file/mkfrqs...rh/AOL704D.mp4

http://www.mediafire.com/file/kyaptg...rah704DOut.mp4

http://www.mediafire.com/file/e0jpr8...aho704DOut.mp4

Here is a screen capture from one of the encoded files (All files are 704x480 the official capture resolution for NTSC analog videos):
http://www.digitalfaq.com/forum/atta...1&d=1592176060

Well it was *the* broadcast standard analog tape format for 20+ years. I'd think all the component VTR formats will do a good job, mostly because color is stored on a separate full resolution tape track. That being said, it isn't the highest resolution analog tape format due to the luminance channel being limited to around 340 analog lines (SVHS and ED Betamax are much higher, but the color still sucks). It wasn't really a problem though since broadcast TV was limited to that anyway.

S-VHS theoretical luma resolution is indeed high but once it's recorded on tape it's crap, I compared the two formats by eliminating the chroma signal and Betacam SP looked much much sharper due to the high speed recording on tape of 10.15 cm/s (4 ips) compared to VHS/S-VHS of 3.335 cm/s (1.313 ips) for NTSC, Huge difference.

Its dependent on source. Off air analog was never going to take advantage of all of SVHS or ED Beta's extended luminance because of NTSC/PAL channel bandwidth limitations. Feed those VCRs a pristine digital source via S-Video and you'll likely see a difference. Even then its debatable since most people had pretty lousy CRT TVs or connected everything via RF or composite!

Maybe, But had pre-recorded studio S-VHS tapes and the quality wasn't that great compared to Betacam SP tapes, The luma noise is very low in Betacam SP compared to S-VHS that was a lot noisier. But without lab equipment you can never tel exactly which one is better in terms of luminance.

Supposedly Panasonic's MII (pronounced em two) was superior to BetaSP in terms of picture quality, but the reliability of the decks and Panasonic's support was very poor. The format was used by NBC and PBS for delaying programs for the West Coast as well as ENG in the late 80s. NHK in Japan used it as well. For NBC MII was an experiment that failed epically, and they quickly switched to BetaSP like everybody else.

One of the reasons BetaSP hung on so long was because via composite video (analog broadcast standard in the 'States) its picture quality was indistinguishable from the later DVCPro/DVCAM/DV formats save for some dot crawl on certain types of graphics.

I've always said this. It's just good quality. In terms of good/better/best, this is best.

Better was always S-VHS.

Hi8 was "better" in theory, but not in practice due to no quality cameras (just consumer camcorders). For home "movie makers" (family home movies), Hi8 was the superior choice. Sadly, not a choice we made. Sometimes hindsight sucks, I'm constantly reminded of our missteps in family home movie recording (VHS, VHS-C, S-VHS-C, rather than Hi8).

Good was VHS by default. But it's more like "not horrible"/better/best. VHS could look quite good with the right cameras and playback hardware, but that rarely happened. Even if using the best S-VHS decks to play old tapes, you still have to contend with the poor shooting of the cameras (mostly consumer camcorders).

Video8 wasn't much better than VHS.

U-mastic didn't fair much better than VHS either, somewhere between VHS and S-VHS quality (more towards VHS than not).

S-VHS was supposed to deliver 390 lines but it turns out the first generation of RS-422 S-VHS Deck control were sent out without the DNR boards. Plus, S-VHS tape was not hardy enough use for edit mastering. What S-VHS was was a superior format to Hi-8 for image capture, but the cameras were bigger than Hi-8. Once DNR boards, (which originally cost a LOT of money), were reduced in price the edit deck playback quality was surprisingly good, but not as good as Betacam Sp.

If I were going to make a low budget BW horror film back in the day, I would consider using the luminence channel of S-VHS, that was a pretty hardy signal, although Black and White Super-8mm film was also pretty cool.

S-VHS bottle neck is the tape itself, The live bandwidth of a S-VHS luma signal from a camera is good, but once recorded on tape it's ruined, Pro recorders used high speed for a reason even if it records only 30min. Consumer camcorders should have offered that option for special occasions where quality is more important than the cost of the tape.

Wow, a 30 minute 2 hour Super-VHS recording speed, that would have been intriguing but environmentally wasteful. Probably would have made too much noise but that would have been interesting to see how much 'better" the S-VHS signal might have looked.

Super VHS, ED Beta, and Hi-8 all had higher luminance bandwidth over Betacam-SP. Where pro formats shined was the chrominance was equal bandwidth/resolution to luminance and stored on a separate track. All the consumer "color under" formats got by with no more than ~620khz of bandwidth for color data.

Pros really didn't care that Betacam-SP have limited bandwidth, it was broadcast quality and thus "good enough". NTSC-M broadcasters were stuck with a 6Mhz composite video signal at the transmitter, so the extra resolution would be wasted thanks to comb filtering.

As I understand it, slower linear tape speed meant narrower video tracks, so carrier frequency could remain the same but picture reliability including resistance to dropout would be lower.

Another part of the reason for the faster linear tape speed in Betacam, Umatic was higher linear audio bandwidth, less audio dropout, plus more reliable head to tape alignment. The much slower linear tape speed in consumer formats like Beta and VHS made for lower audio bandwidth, higher noise and less reliable tape to head alignment, this last factor being something many people who are otherwise expert in the picture side of things seem not to bother about if they know about it at all.

This was especially evident with the later digital DV formats. miniDV had LP and SP, and there was the "pro" DVCam and DVCPRo formats, all used the same video and audio quality (with some audio format differences and DVCPro PAL being 4:1:1 instead of 4:2:0), but DVcam used faster tape speed for reliability and more precise editing than consumer DV, DVCPro used even slightly faster tape speed than that. The LP variant of miniDV was still the same picture quality, but was even less robust than SP miniDV and very suspect to dropouts and alignment differences.

The various types of tapes Sony experimented with in regards to their small format Hi-8 tapes produced a gift of the magi result. The metal evaporated tapes produced the best signal to noise camera masters, but could literally start to have drop outs after a pass or two. They were made to immediately bump up to another format.
Then the more robust standard Hi-8 grade tapes produce less dynamic range signal recording. So either way the user had to compromise on either longevity or resolution/chroma/reproduction

Yes and they could only work as well as they did because of factors such as very fine high energy tape, great precision in tape to head alignment and being inside a moderately pollutant free cassette.

But I once momentarily walked my recording mini DV camera past an open BBQ. The smoke didnt really bother my nostrils but on playback later there was temporary loss of picture for a second or so. A tiny amount of smoke must have entered the camera and microscopically lifted the tape away from the heads, causing temporary loss of picture.

Compare to this example of using 2" videotape. The ABC TV editors actually smoked while editing and winding, and physically handled the tape with bare hands, no cotton gloves. Only a huge format like that could have coped.

https://youtu.be/lXmGpLQgwAk

I highly doubt the BBQ smoke infiltrate the camcorder closed cassette compartment, It just there isn't enough air flow to push the smoke inside, you would have to actually create a vacuum inside so the smoke gets sucked in. What you have experienced is tape drop out.

I was very surprised myself.