Betacam
Betacam is a family of half-inch professional videocassette products developed by Sony in 1982. In colloquial use, Betacam singly is often used to refer to a Betacam camcorder, a Betacam tape, a Betacam video recorder or the format itself.
All Betacam variants from analog Betacam, Betacam SP and Digital Betacam, HDCAM and HDCAM SR use the same shape videocassettes, meaning vaults and other storage facilities do not have to be changed when upgrading to a new format. The cassette shell and case for each Betacam cassette is colored differently depending on the format, allowing for easy visual identification. There is also a mechanical key that allows a video tape recorder to identify which format has been inserted.
The cassettes are available in two sizes: S and L. The Betacam camcorder can only load S magnetic tapes, while television studio sized video tape recorders designed for video editing can play both S and L tapes.
The format supplanted the three-quarter-inch U-Matic format, which Sony had introduced in 1971. In addition to improvements in video quality, the Betacam configuration of an integrated professional video camera and recorder led to its rapid adoption by electronic news gathering organizations. DigiBeta, the common name for Digital Betacam, went on to become the single most successful professional broadcast digital video tape format in history. However, by 2008, although Betacam remained in use in the field and for archiving, new tapeless digital products had led to a phasing out of Betacam products in television studio environments.
Variants
Betacam and Betacam SP
Original Betacam format
The original Betacam format was launched on August 7, 1982, as a relatively inexpensive cassette based physical format. It is an analog component video signal format, storing the luminance, in one track and the chrominance, on another, as alternating segments of the R-Y and B-Y components performing Compressed Time Division Multiplex, or CTDM. This splitting of channels allows higher quality recording with 300 lines of horizontal luminance resolution and 120 lines of chrominance resolution. Image quality is significantly improved compared to domestic Betamax and the professional U-Matic formats.The original Betacam cassettes, loaded with ferric-oxide tape, were identical in overall design and size to consumer-grade Betamax, introduced by Sony in 1975. Betacam cassettes could be used in a Betamax VCR; likewise, a blank Betamax tape would work on a Betacam deck. However, in later years, Sony discouraged this practice, suggesting that the internal tape transport of Betamax cassette was not well suited to the faster tape transport of Betacam. In particular, the guide rollers tend to be noisy.
Although there is a superficial similarity between Betamax and Betacam in that they use the same tape cassette, they are incompatible formats. Betamax records relatively low-resolution video using a heterodyne color recording system and only two recording heads, while Betacam uses four heads to record in component format, at a much higher linear tape speed of compared with Betamax's, resulting in much higher video and audio quality. A typical L-750 length Betamax cassette that yielded about 3 hours of recording time on a Betamax VCR at its B-II Speed, or on PAL, only provided 30 minutes' record time on a Betacam VCR or camcorder. Another common point between Betamax and Betacam is the placement of the stereo linear audio tracks.
Betacam was initially introduced as a camera line along with a docking companion VTR and a standalone video cassette player. The first cameras were the BVP-3, which utilized three Saticon tubes, the BVP-30, which utilized three Plumbicon tubes, and the BVP-1, which used a single tri-stripe SMF Trinicon tube. These three cameras could be operated standalone or with their docking companion VTR, the BVV-1, to form the BVW-1 integrated camcorder. Those decks were record-only. The only transport controls on the deck were eject and rewind. The docked camera's VTR button started and paused the tape recorder. Later, the Betacam SP docking decks had full transport controls but tapes could not be played back except in the camera's viewfinder in black-and-white only. Sony then came out with the playback adapter, the VA-500, a separate portable unit that connected via a multi-pin cable and had a composite video out jack for color playback. At first, color playback required the studio source deck, the BVW-10, which could not record, only play back. It was primarily designed as a feeder deck for A/B roll edit systems, usually for editing to a one-inch Type C or three-quarter-inch U-matic cassette edit master tape. There was also the BVW-20 field playback deck, which was a portable unit with DC power and a handle, that was used to verify color playback of tapes in the field. Unlike the BVW-10, it did not have a built-in time base corrector.
With the popular success of the Betacam system as a news acquisition format, the line was soon extended to include the BVW-15 studio player and the BVW-40 studio edit recorder. The BVW-15 added dynamic tracking, which enabled clear still frame and jog playback, something the BVW-10 could not deliver. The BVW-40 enabled, for the first time, editing to a Betacam master, and if set up and wired correctly, true component video editing. It was also possible to do machine-to-machine editing between a BVW-10 or 15 and BVW-40 without an edit controller—a single serial cable between the units was all that was required to control the player from the recorder to perform simple assemble and insert editing. Additionally, there were two field models introduced, the BVW-25 field recorder, and the BVW-21 play-only portable field deck.
At its introduction, many insisted that Betacam remained inferior to the bulkier one-inch type C and B videotapes, the standard broadcast production formats of the late 1970s to mid-1990s. Additionally, the maximum record time for both the cameras and studio recorders was only half an hour, a severe limitation in television production. There was also the limitation that high-quality recording was only possible if the original component signals were available, as they were in a Betacam camcorder. If the recording started as composite video, re-converting it to component for recording and then eventually back to composite for broadcast caused a drop in quality compared to recording component video directly.
Betacam SP
Betacam SP was released in 1986 in Japan before releasing internationally the following year. It increased horizontal resolution to 340 lines. While the quality improvement of the format itself was minor, the improvement to the VTRs was enormous, particularly in quality and features. In addition to the existing cassette a larger cassette was introduced with 90 minutes of recording time. Betacam SP became the industry standard for most TV stations and high-end production houses until the late 1990s. Despite the format's age and its discontinuation in 2001, Betacam SP remained a common standard for standard-definition video post-production into the 2010s. The recording time is the same as for Betacam, 30 and 90 minutes for S and L, respectively. Tape speed is slightly slower in machines working in the 625/50 format, increasing tape duration by one minute for every five minutes of run time. So, a 90-minute tape will record 108 minutes of video in PAL.Betacam SP is able to achieve its namesake "Superior Performance" over Betacam in the fact that it uses metal-formulated tape as opposed to Betacam's ferric oxide tape. Sony designed Betacam SP to be partially forward compatible with standard Betacam, with the capability that Betacam SP tapes recorded on Betacam SP decks can be played in oxide-era Betacam VTRs, but for playback only. Betacam SP-branded tapes cannot be used for recording in consumer Betamax VCRs like oxide Betacam tapes, due to Betacam SP's metal-formulation tape causing the video heads in a Betamax deck to wear prematurely, which are made of a softer material than the heads in a standard Betacam deck. However, Betacam SP tapes can be used without a problem in ED Beta VCRs, since the ED Beta format uses metal-formulated tape as well.
The new Betacam SP studio decks were the players: The BVW-60 and BVW-65 ; and the Edit Recorders: the BVW-70, and the Dynamic Tracking model, the BVW-75. The BVV-5 was the Betacam SP dockable camera back, which could play back in color if its companion playback adapter was used. A new SP field recorder, the BVW-35, possessed the added benefit of a standard RS422 serial control port that enabled it to be used as an edit feeder deck. Though the four new studio decks could utilize the full 90-minute Betacam SP cassettes, the BVW-35 remained limited to the original Betacam small 30-minute cassette shells. Answering a need for a basic office player, Sony also introduced the BVW-22, a much less expensive desktop model that could be used for viewing and logging 90-minute cassettes of both Betacam SP and oxide types, but could not be configured into an edit system and offered only composite video output.
Sony followed up the SP field recorder BVW-50 that could record and play the large-size 90 minute cassettes. After this, the deck line was relatively stagnant and incredibly popular for a decade, aside from some specialty models that could record digital audio.
Until the introduction of the BVW-200 camera, the camera and recorder configuration was a docking system. The BVW-200 was an integrated camera recorder system. It sacrificed the flexibility of a docking camera in order to lose a substantial amount of weight. Eventually, non-docking camcorders became the most popular design by the mid-1990s.
The final Betacam SP camcorder was the BVW-D600, which paired a digital professional video camera front section, very similar to the one on the DigiBeta DVW-700, with an integrated Betacam SP recorder. Like every other Betacam camera system, and unlike the DigiBeta DVW-700, the camera could not play back in color without the use of an outboard adapter.
In 1991, the less-expensive, "Professional", PV line of Betacam SP decks was introduced. The PV line consisted of only four models: the full-sized PVW-2600, PVW-2650 and PVW-2800 editing decks, and the PVV-3 camera-dockable VTR. These high-quality machines were similar to the original BV series machines, but lacked the third and fourth audio channels. In 1993, the far less expensive UVW series debuted. These machines were considerably simpler, somewhat lower quality, and were designed primarily to be used as companions to computer systems, for industrial video, and other low-cost, yet high-quality, uses. The UVW decks possessed very limited front panel controls, no jog and shuttle ; and with time base corrector control available only with an optional remote TBC controller. These were represented by the UVW-1800, a very popular editing VTR, and the non-editing UVW-1400 VTR, and UVW-1200 VTP. The UVW-100 one-piece camcorder rounded out the UVW series.