Recording video in the 1950s

[Mike Watterson]

… Gradually computer disks and then solid state memory replaced tape which is now only of interest to archivists and vintage enthusiasts.

Recording pictures has gone from almost impossible to utterly trivial.

When I first got PC based PAL video editing the biggest disk I could afford allowed only a 20 minute project (source and destination) of SD PAL using MJPEG.

My oldish still camera (EOS 70D) can store 6 hours of full HD at lowest compression (a so called "edit format") on the full size SD card (256G), which is cheap. Actually free because I bought a micro-SD for the tablet before I had the camera, and Amazon sent a full size card by mistake. The current EOS 90D can do 4K video (but a mirrorless Micro Four Thirds camera is now best value video with interchangeable lenses, better now than a camcorder). I think there 4T SD cards, because 2T micro SD cards are easily found, and full size SD can have two chips, always twice maximum of micro size). I've many terabytes free space on both workstations and nearly 1T free on laptop. One WS and laptop are hybrid, have SSD for OS and HDD for user files. My wife just got a Nintendo Switch and the 256 G micro SD card was under €22 inc shipping. It can record video files from your gameplay.

Also you can point it at an LCD screen (running different frame rate video at any resolution, it's a 4K HDR LG 23″ screen) and have flicker free HD video. VGA, composite & Component adaptors to HDMI are cheap too.

The €45 HD sat box can drive composite PAL, NTSC and the HDMI can do HD to 4K screen, or downscale to drive an old 5:4 LCD with only 768 lines @ 60 fps. Interlace or deinterlace no matter what the source was. An extra €40 gets a version with DVB-T2 also (though HD here is DVB-T, so a €12 USB DVB-T stick works).

The 4K TV manages NTSC DVDs with no obvious issues and upscales. It even fixes ghastly US DVDs where the film souce was incomprehensibly encoded at 480 30i instead of usual progressive.

Amazing changes since I was a child watching The Wooden Tops in 405 line with the curtains needing pulled in 1960. Or even watching the moon landing our 405/625 mono TV in 1969.

Richer people used to do home movies on 8mm (actually 16mm, and you turned round the film and recorded other half, then lab cut it into two 8mm lengths with sprocket on one side).

The film home movies survived till VHS camcorders where affordable. Digital 8 was the last gasp of tape based home movies and I thought it was brilliant when I got it in about 2006 (S/H). MFT makes it and any video camera under £1500 look stupid. My daughter-in-law does 4K cookery videos on a Panasonic MFT. My camera (EF/EF-S APS-C & 20 M pixel) is better for stills and the lenses are cheaper, but the mirrorless and OLED viewfinder beats it (and latests model) on video.

It's amazing that there are few working machines and heads for almost every commercial video tape system ever used since 1956, yet some of the video disc formats might be unplayable. There was even a CD sized LaserDisc (1987) I've never seen. I never saw RCA CED either. No doubt someone can still play CD-i, but I'm surprised that up to maybe 2000 I could and now can't, though my bought Video CDs and home made SVDs still play.

At least my CD-i is cheaply replaceable, remastered Blu-ray is only €12 (maybe only £6!) . Shame BBC deliberately destroyed 16mm film and reused video tape of expensive to make "drama", not just time shifted mass produced stuff like in USA. More ITV stuff survives.