VHS: The ubiquitous VHS format is the undisputed leader among consumers. It also happens to be probably the lowest quality format in use today, with a measly 250 lines of resolution. VHS should only be used for making final dubs for home use. It should never be used for acquisition (shooting) or editing. All analog formats are subject to generation loss, which means that it decreases in quality as it is copied. VHS is highly susceptible to generation loss, so if you care at all about quality, you should never make a copy of a VHS tape.

 

 

S-VHS (Super-VHS): A marked improvement over regular VHS, S-VHS achieves this quality improvement by recording the luminance and chrominance separately and using 400 lines of resolution. Compared to other formats, S-VHS is still rather low quality, yet it is used rather widely by low-level professionals such as public access or event videography. Note that while S-VHS decks can play regular VHS tapes, regular VHS VCRs cannot play S-VHS tapes.

 

 

The 8mm video format refers informally to three related videocassette formats for the NTSC and PAL/SECAM television systems. These are the original Video8 format and its improved successor Hi8 (both analog), as well as a more recent digital format known as Digital8.Their user-base consisted mainly of amateur camcorder users, although they also saw important use in the professional field.In 1985, Sony of Japan introduced the Handycam, one of the first Video8 cameras. Much smaller than the competition's VHS and Betamax video cameras, Video8 became very popular in the consumer camcorder market.Resolution:270 lines.

 

 

To counter the introduction of the Super-VHS format, Sony introduced Video Hi8 (short for high-band Video8.) Like SVHS, Hi8 used improved recorder electronics and media-formulation to increase picture detail. In both systems, a higher-grade videotape and recording-heads allowed the placement of the luminance-carrier at a higher frequency, thereby increasing luminance bandwidth. Both Hi8 and SVHS were officially rated at a (luminance) resolution of "400 horizontal TV/lines," a vast improvement from their respective base-formats of 240 lines. Chroma resolution for both remained unchanged, well below 100 TV/lines. All Hi8 equipment supported recording and playback of both Hi8 and legacy Video8 recordings. Video8 equipment cannot play Hi8 recordings.

 

 

The original Betacam format launched in 1982. It is an analog component format, storing the luminance (Y) in one track and the chrominance (R-Y, B-Y) on another, performing Chroma Time Division Multiplex, or CTDM. This splitting of channels provides a crisp, true broadcast quality product with 300 lines of horizontal resolution. In 1986 Betacam SP was developed, which increased horizontal resolution to 340 lines. Beta SP (for "Superior Performance") became the industry standard for most TV stations and high-end production houses until the late 1990s.

DV is an international standard created by a consortium of 10 companies for a consumer digital video format. The companies involved were Matsushita Electric Industrial Corp (Panasonic), Sony Corp, Victor Corporation of Japan (JVC), Philips Electronics, N.V., Sanyo Electric Co. Ltd, Hitachi, Ltd., Sharp Corporation,  Thompson Multimedia, Mitsubishi Electric Corporation, and Toshiba Corporation. Since then others have joined up; there are now over 60 companies in the DV consortium. DV, originally known as DVC (Digital Video Cassette), uses a 1/4 inch (6.35mm) metal evaporate tape to record very high quality digital video. The video is sampled at the same rate as D-1, D-5, or Digital Betacam video -- 720 pixels per scanline -- although the color information is sampled at half the D-1 rate: 4:1:1 in 525-line (NTSC), and 4:2:0 in 625-line (PAL) formats.The sampled video is compressed using a Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT), the same sort of compression used in motion-JPEG. However, DV's DCT allows for more local optimization (of quantizing tables) within the frame than do JPEG compressors, allowing for higher quality at the nominal 5:1 compression factor than a JPEG frame would show.

Sony's DVCAM is a semiprofessional variant of the DV standard that uses the same cassettes as DV and MiniDV, but transports the tape 50% faster, leading to a higher track width of 15 micrometres. The codec used is the same as DV, but because of the greater track width available to the recorder the data are much more robust, producing 50% less errors known as dropouts.

The Digital8(introduced in the late 1990s) standard uses the DV codec, but replaces the recording medium with the venerable Hi8 videocassette. Digital8 offers DV's digital quality, without sacrificing playback of existing analog Video8/Hi8 recordings.

MicroMV was a videotape format introduced in 2001 by Sony. A cassette is physically smaller than a Digital8 or DV cassette. In fact, MicroMV is the smallest videotape format — 70% smaller than MiniDV or about the size of two quarters across. Each cassette can hold up to 60 minutes of video.The MicroMV format does not use the highly popular DV format. Instead, it uses 12 Mbit/s MPEG-2 compression, like that used for DVDs and HDV. Footage recorded on MicroMV format cannot be directly edited with computer DV editing software. Sony supplies its own video editing software (for Windows PCs only).MicroMV has not been a successful format. Currently, Sony is the only electronics manufacturer to sell MicroMV cameras.

Digital Betacam (commonly abbreviated to Digibeta or d-beta or dbc) was launched in 1993. The Digital Betacam format records a DCT-compressed component video signal at 10-bit YUV 4:2:2 sampling in PAL (720×576) or NTSC (720×486) resolutions at a bitrate of 90 Mbit/s plus 4 channels of uncompressed 48 kHz PCM-encoded audio.

Betacam SX is a digital version of Betacam SP introduced in 1996, positioned as a cheaper alternative to Digital Betacam. It stores video using MPEG 4:2:2 Profile@ML compression, along with 4 channels of 48 kHz 16 bit PCM audio. All Betacam SX equipment is compatible with Betacam SP tapes.

HDCAM, introduced in 1997, is an HDTV version of Digital Betacam, using an 8-bit DCT compressed 3:1:1 recording, in 720p or 1080i-compatible (1440x1080) resolution. The recorded video bitrate is 144 Mbit/s. Audio is also similar, with 4 channels of AES/EBU 20-bit/48 kHz digital audio.

HDCAM SR, introduced in 2003, uses a higher particle density tape and is capable of recording in 4:4:4 RGB with a bitrate of 440 Mbit/s. The increased bitrate (over HDCAM) allows HDCAM SR to capture much more of the full bandwidth of the HDSDI signal (1920x1080). Some HDCAM SR VTRs (SR camcorders are not available) can also use a 2x mode with an even higher bitrate of 880 Mbit/s, allowing for a single 4:4:4 stream at a lower compression or two 4:2:2 video streams simultaniously. HDCAM SR uses the new MPEG-4 Studio Profile for compression, and expands the number of audio channels up to 12.

MPEG IMX is a 2001 development of the Digital Betacam format. It uses the MPEG compression system, but at a higher bitrate than Betacam SX. Compression is applied in three different formats: 30 (6:1 compression), 40 (4:1 compression) or 50 Mbit/s (3.3:1 compression) which allows different quality/quantity ratios. Video is recorded at MPEG-2 4:2:2 Profile @ ML.

XDCAM is a professional digital camera system introduced by Sony in 2003. It features tapeless (non linear) recording of DVCAM, MPEG IMX and, in the XDCAM HD variant, HDV video data, as well as MXF metadata and a low resolution AV proxy stream, on an optical disc similar to a Blu-Ray disc called the Professional Disc, which holds about 23 GB of video data. The XDCAM format uses multiple compression methods : MPEG-2 when recording in MPEG IMX, DV25 when recording in DVCAM and MPEG-4 when recording in a low resolution proxy stream.Additionally, the XDCAM HD variant of XDCAM records HDV at up to 35MBit/s.Most standard definition XDCAM camcorders can switch from IMX to DVCAM with the flick of a switch, although a DVCAM only model is available. MPEG IMX offers Digital Betacam equilavent quality at 50Mbit/s and eight audio channels, making it perfect for even the highest quality TV productions. DVCAM allows the user to record twice as much footage and maintains a large compability with a large amount of low end NLE's. MPEG IMX can record at a bitrate of 30, 40 or 50 Megabits per second, while DVCAM records at 25Mbit/s. The low resolution proxy is recorded at 1.5Mbit/s with 64 kbit/s for each audio channel.

JVC's D-9 (formerly known as Digital-S) and Panasonic's DVCPRO50 use two DV codecs in parallel. The tape data rate is doubled to 50 Mbps (video) and the compression work is split between the two codecs. The result is a 4:2:2 image compressed about 3.3:1. It's visually lossless and utterly gorgeous.

D-VHS is a digital video format developed by JVC, in collaboration with Hitachi, Matsushita and Philips. It uses the same physical cassette format and recording mechanism as VHS, and is capable of recording and displaying both standard definition and high definition content. The content data format is in MPEG 2. The format was introduced in 1998.HD content is stored at 28.2 Mbit/s, while SD content can be stored at bit rates from 14.2 Mbit/s down to 2.0 Mbit/s.

Panasonic specifically created the DVCPRO family for electronic news gathering (ENG) use (NBC's newsgathering division was a major customer), with better linear editing capabilities and robustness. It has an even greater track width of 18 micrometres and uses another tape type (Metal Particle instead of Metal Evaporated). Additionally, the tape has a longitudinal analog audio cue track. Audio is only available in the 16 bit/48 kHz variant, there is no EP mode, and DVCPRO always uses 4:1:1 color subsampling (even in PAL mode). Apart from that, standard DVCPRO (also known as DVCPRO25) is otherwise identical to DV at a bitstream level. However, unlike Sony, Panasonic chose to promote its DV variant for professional high-end applications.

DVCPRO50 is often described as two DV-codecs in parallel. The DVCPRO50 standard doubles the coded video bitrate from 25 Mbit/s to 50 Mbit/s, and improves color-sampling resolution by using a 4:2:2 structure. DVCPRO50 was created for high-value ENG compatibility. The higher datarate cuts recording-time in half (compared to DVCPRO25), but the resulting picture-quality is reputed to rival Digital Betacam, a more expensive studio format.

DVCPRO HD, also known as DVCPRO100, uses four parallel codecs and a coded video bitrate of 100 Mbit/s. Despite HD in its name, DVCPROHD downsamples native 720p/1080i signals to a lower resolution. 720p is downsampled from 1280x720 to 960x720, and 1080i is downsampled from 1920x1080 to 1280x1080 for 59.94i and 1440x1080 for 50i. Compression ratio is approximately 7:1.

DVCPRO P2 (P2 is short form for "Professional Plug-In") is a professional digital video format introduced by Panasonic in 2004, and especially tailored to ENG applications. It features tapeless (non-linear) recording of DVCPRO or DVCPRO50 streams on a solid state flash memory card. DVCPRO HD recording on P2 is possible with the Panasonic AG-HVX200. Since the memory capacity of the P2 card is relatively low (as of January 2006, 2, 4 and 8 GB cards are available), cameras, decks and drives have multiple slots, with the ability to span the recording over all slots. This way, effective recording time is multiplied, allowing up to 80 minutes on 5 4 GB cards in normal DVCPRO mode. Maximum datarate: 640 Mbit/sec.

EDITCAM is a professional digital camera system manufactered by Ikegami and first introduced in 1995, available both as professional camcorders and modular dock recorders. Its most distinguishing feature is the recording medium: The FieldPak, which is a cartridge that contains a notebook hard disk with up to 80 GB of storage, or its compatible companion, the RAMPak, a flash memory module with up to 10 GB. The latest generation of the Editcam system, Editcam3, can record in the formats Avid JFIF, DV and optionally MPEG IMX and DVCPRO50. HDTV variants are now also available, which record in the Avid DNxHD format.