Camera Recorder

.. Camcorder in 1982, two events happened that eventually led to the home camcorder boom: from JVC introduced the VHS-C format, and from Sony released the first professional camcorder named Betacam. VHS-C was essentially VHS with a reduced-size cassette that had been designed for portable VCRs. Sony's Betacam was a standard developed for professional camcorders, which used S-video (separated luminance & chroma signals) to provide a superior picture. At first, cameramen did not welcome Betacam, because before it, carrying and operating the VCR unit was a work of a video engineer; after Betacam they came to be required to operate both video camera and VCR. However the cable between cameramen and video engineers was eliminated, and the freedom of cameramen improved dramatically and Betacam quickly became the standard for both news-gathering and in-studio video editing.

The Camcorder In 1983, Sony released the Betamax-based Betamovie, the first consumer camcorder. A novel technique was used to reduce the size of the spinning video head drum, which was then used for many subsequent camcorders. The unit was bulky by today's standards, and since it could not be held in one hand, was typically used resting on a shoulder. Some later camcorders were even larger, because the Betamovie models had only optical viewfinders and no playback or rewind capability. Most camcorders were and still are designed for right-handed operation, though a few possessed ambidextrous ergonomics.Within a short time JVC released its own camcorder using its pre-existing VHS-C format. The VHS-C cassette held enough tape to record 40 or 120 minutes of VHS video, while a mechanical adapter enabled playback of VHS-C videocassettes in home VCRs.

After seeing the popularity of the small VHS-C "palmcorders", Sony redesigned its Betamax system to create the Video8 standard. Video8 eliminated the problem of short running time, by using an all-new metal composition video cassette. 8 mm video used a tape whose width is 33% less than VHS/Betamax tape (~12.7 mm), allowing even further miniaturization in the recorder's tape-transport assembly and cassette media. Get the Best Digital Camcorder with hard disk.