Film and Theater studies Analysis of video recording medium

Analysis of Video Recording Medium

Introduction

Video is a clear and a compelling way of presenting information. It is also a very interesting way of highlighting interesting and experimental information and can also be used to illustrate and show different concepts. The unique feature of videos is that the provider a well detailed and permanent record that can be analyzed in several different ways in the search for information. These benefits have long been witnessed in education, training and testing over the years.

Although video has now been used for quite some time, there are very few tools that have been developed to analyze video data, or the medium by which such video has been recorded. Not to mention the constant development of video recording for example new applications in video mail,

Interactive multimedia systems which are increasingly driving the industry.

The Video Tape Recorder

This is a tape recorder that can record video material. At the beginning, video was firs recorded onto single reels of tape as was audio recording. In order to load the tape, one had to thread it through rollers and across recording and playback heads onto a reel that took it up (take-up reel).

Before the video tape recorder was invented, live video had to be recorded onto motion picture film; a process that was known as tape-recording and even though the product was relatively of good quality, the recording could neither be slowed down or freeze framed. Even after the invention of the video tape recorders, tele-recording was still used for over ten years on.

The first commercially successful videotape format was the 2 inch quadruplex that was developed for the broadcast television industry sometime in 1956. It revolutionized television broadcast production and operations before the motion picture film industry. In contrast, the motion picture film used the kinescopes which were more costly and took more time to develop. Later, color videotapes were introduce in 1958 and first became available in the early 1970s.

The major disadvantage of this technology is that the tape got damaged from hand-threading, contamination of the media on the tape as a result of threading using bare hands and dust which ultimately contaminated all the exposed surfaces of the tape.

These inconveniences brought about the development of the video cassette recorder where the videotape is enclosed in a user friendly videocassette. Until later in the century, this was the most common and well known video tape recorder. Ideally, the tape is attached onto two reels enclosed in the cassette and the loading and the unloading became automated. So the problems that were brought about by the touching, dust, dirty and misalignments that could foul the recording mechanisms were sorted. However, when the videocassette resulted to a failure, for example by getting stuck, the user had to manually sort it out.

The Video cassette recorder

As already mentioned above, this is a type of videotape cassettes containing magnetic tape that records the audio and video from a television broadcast. Numerous videocassette recorders have an inbuilt tuner and a timer that could be used to pre set when to start recording. The development of the videocassette recorder cannot be divorced from that of the videotape recording as a whole. One of the major renowned models includes the Telcan that was produced by the Nottingham Electronic Valve Company. This was the first home video recorder but its shortcoming was that it was too expensive for those times. It was also very technical to put together and could only record up to 20 minutes of output, in black and white.

The development of videocassette followed the replacement of other open reel systems that were being used at the time. The Philips model that was developed in 1970 revolutionized the market because it had a recording time of one hour. However, it was very expensive. It was not until some time later in the late 1970s that mostly Japanese and European companies developed machines that were more advanced and accurate and as thus the video cassette recorder started to become a commodity for the mass markets. With companies trying to out do each other by improving on the features such as the timers and recording durations as consumers flocked for longer recording hours.

The video cassette recorder has been said to have had certain glitches. For instance, the magnetic tape was “chewed” especially when ejected from the machine. This was commonly as a result of old age and lack of cleaning.

In addition, there were tapes which when recorded in LP or EP/LP modes could not playback in certain machines. It was also noted that tapes that had been recorded in older machines could not play in machines developed after 1995. This was paradoxical because newer video cassette recorders tend to have a shorter lifespan than their older counterparts and have very few buttons hence relying more on the remote and the inbuilt automatic features.

At the dawn of the millennium, DVDs gradually overtook the video cassette recorders as they extensively became more popular as the best format to play in pre-recorded video. Given their recent drops in prices they have been seen as the death of the video cassette recorders. As the reduced sales of video cassette recorders increased so did their production which is almost coming to an end.

This declining market and several legal mandates of the recent past have seen major electronic makers ending non-economical productions. Another problem that the video cassette recorder faced was especially the exchange or recording between PAL and NTSC countries. Multi Standard video recorders and TV sets gradually overcame these incompatibility problems.

The U-matic machines were made with Stereo and Beta and VHS started out splitting the audio track on the tape but given the slow speed, the quality was not good enough. Thus came the development of Hi-Fi which modulated the left and the right soundtracks as FM mode on the video portion of the tape.

Digital Video Recorder

This is a device that records in a digital forma to a disk drive, flash drive or a memory card or any other mass storage device. The term includes setup boxes that have a recording facility, recorders and software for personal computers which enable video capture and playback from a disk. Until 2007, there were no television sets with digital video recording. In 2007, LG launched the firs one.

In 1998, the first consumer digital video recorders were launched. In 1999 Microsoft Corporation demonstrated a unit that had digital video recording capability although it had been show cased the previous year and was mainly for dish networks.

Initially, several legal actions have moved companies to remove a lot of features such as automatic commercial skip and the sharing of recordings over the internet; newer devices have steadily regained these functions while adding several complimentary abilities like recording onto DVDs and programming. They also developed remote controlling facilities using PDAs, networked personal computers and Web browsers.

The hard disk based digital video recorders have made the time shifting feature that in the pas was done by video cassette recorders much more convenient. These times they allow modes that enable the consumer to pause live television, instantly replay interesting scenes, chase playback where the viewer can view scenes before the recording is completed and of course skipping the advertisements.

The format that is mostly used by the digital video recorders is the MPEG format which compresses digitized video signals. Hardware that would later have digital video recording capabilities with the assistance of the Microsoft software was developed in 1999 and it too came with the shifting capabilities of the normal digital video recorders and with it came tremendous market sales.

The UK has their “plus boxes” and South African’s Multichoice also launched their digital video recording available in the DSTV platform.

As time goes on, several satellite and cable companies are incorporation in their systems digital video recording capabilities and functions. The advantage with digital television is the that there is no encoding that is necessary or required in the digital video recorder since the signal is already transmitted in digital format encoded in the MPEG stream.

The digital video recorder simply stores the digital stream directly to the disk. Having a broadcaster involved with , and sometimes subsidizing the design of the digital video recorder can lead to features such as the ability and capacity to use interactive television.

It can also facilitate pre-loading of programs or directly recording encrypted digital streams. The downside is that it can also force the manufacturer to implement features that will prevent skipping advertisements or that will be able to counter the skipping features of advertisement in the digital video recorders. They may also have to develop recordings that will automatically expire.

Video recording still continues to mesmerize the masses. Take for example in 2003 many satellite and cable providers introduce the dual-tuner digital video recorders. These machines have two independent tuners within the same receiver. The main use for this feature is the capability to record a live program while watching another live program simultaneously or to record two programs at the same time possibly while watching a previously recorded one.

There are instances even where the market has allowed free-to-air television to be recorded on a removable hard drive. There are also some dual tuner digital video recorders that have the ability to output two separate televisions sets at the same time. While others now even have triple tuners, so long as all the three channels are on the two multiplesexes and sometime even a single one.

Some of the formats of digital video recording include:

DVB digital television contains audio/visual signals that are broadcast over the air in a digital rather than analog format. The DVB data stream can be directly recorded by the DVR.

Recording satellite or digital cable signals on a digital video recorder can be more complex than recording analog signals or broadcast digital signals. There are several different transmission schemes, and the video streams may be encrypted to restrict access to subscribers only. A satellite or cable set-top box both decrypts the signal if encrypted, and decodes the MPEG stream into an analog signal for viewing on the television.

In order to record cable or satellite digital signals the signal must be captured after it has been decrypted but before it is decoded; this is how DVRs built into set-top boxes work. Cable and satellite providers often offer their own digital video recorders along with a service plan. These DVRs have access to the encrypted video stream, and generally enforce the provider’s restrictions on copying of material even after recording.

Many DVD-based DVRs have the capability to copy content from a source DVD. In the U.S. this is prohibited under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act if the disc is encrypted. Most such DVRs will hence not allow recording of video streams from encrypted movie discs.

A digital camcorder combines a camera and a digital video recorder. Some DVD-based DVRs incorporate connectors that can be used to capture digital video from a camcorder. Some editing of the resulting DVD is usually possible, such as adding chapter points.

Some digital video recorders can now record to solid state flash memory cards (called flash camcorders). They generally use secure digital cards, include wireless connections (bluetooth and WiFi) and can play swf files. There are some digital video recorders that combine video and graphics in real time to the flash card, such as the video logger from Racelogic which takes multiple camera inputs and GPS generated graphics and merges them into one video (or stores the GPS coordinates in the image data).

The future of TV advertisements

Digital video recorders are also changing the way television programs advertise products. Watching pre-recorded programs allows users to fast-forward through commercials, and some technology allows users to remove commercials entirely. This feature has been controversial for the last decade, with major television networks and movie studios claiming it violates copyright and should be banned.

Conclusion

With an improvement in the recording technology comes more user friendly and advance features and so does the relatively lower prices of owning the recording medium. From mass storage in boxes and cabinets, to mass storage in a single flash drive or memory card, the change and growth of the industry has been more than captivating.

The new high definition optical disc format may gradually replace the DVD format. Some analysts expect this to change to have a similar effect as that of the DVD on the video cassette recorder.

The 8mm format always used the video portion of the tape for sound, with an FM carrier between the band space of the chrominance and luminance on the tape. This was upgrade to stereo and later to Hi-Fi. Recent times saw the development of the Hi-Def recording and such is the development of video recording.

From tape recorder to digital video recorders, manual handling to automatic management, the phases of video recording have kept with the urges of people to present the best of what has happened, is happening, will happen in the best and most visually captivating way.

With improvement of the recording medium so has the change in the development of laws for them. In the United States for example, the FCC ruled that starting the 1st of July, consumers would be able to purchase set-top box from a third party rather than being forced to purchase them or rent them from their cable their cable companies. This applied to navigation devices that are otherwise known as cable television set – top box and not the security functions that control the users’ access to the content of the cable operator.

The overall net effect of digital video recorders and their related technology is unlike to be substantial as the standalone digital video recorders are currently readily available to the open market.

References

Jenkins, H. “Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide. Buying Into American Idol”

Stelter, B.(2008). “A Ruling May Pave the Way for Broader Use of DVR”. The New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/05/business/media/05adco.html?ref=business.

Chaney, J. (2005).”Parting Words For VHS Tapes, Soon to Be Gone With the Rewind,” The Washington Post, August 28, 2005; p. N01.

1965 – Sony releases first home video equipment

Diehl, R.N. “Labguy’S World: The Birth of Video Recording”. Labguysworld.com. Retrieved from http://www.labguysworld.com/VTR_BirthOf.htm..