Digital cassettes
Encyclopedia
Digital
audio
cassette formats introduced to the professional audio
and consumer markets:
Digital videocassettes include:
Analog cassettes used as digital data storage:
Digital
A digital system is a data technology that uses discrete values. By contrast, non-digital systems use a continuous range of values to represent information...
audio
Sound
Sound is a mechanical wave that is an oscillation of pressure transmitted through a solid, liquid, or gas, composed of frequencies within the range of hearing and of a level sufficiently strong to be heard, or the sensation stimulated in organs of hearing by such vibrations.-Propagation of...
cassette formats introduced to the professional audio
Professional audio
Professional audio, also 'pro audio', refers to both an activity and a type of audio equipment. Typically it encompasses the production or reproduction of sound for an audience, by individuals who do such work as an occupation like live event support, using sound reinforcement systems designed for...
and consumer markets:
- Digital Audio TapeDigital Audio TapeDigital Audio Tape is a signal recording and playback medium developed by Sony and introduced in 1987. In appearance it is similar to a compact audio cassette, using 4 mm magnetic tape enclosed in a protective shell, but is roughly half the size at 73 mm × 54 mm × 10.5 mm. As...
(or DAT) is the most well-known, and had some success as an audio storage format among professionals and "prosumers" before the prices of hard drive and solid-state flash memoryFlash memoryFlash memory is a non-volatile computer storage chip that can be electrically erased and reprogrammed. It was developed from EEPROM and must be erased in fairly large blocks before these can be rewritten with new data...
-based digital recordingDigital recordingIn digital recording, digital audio and digital video is directly recorded to a storage device as a stream of discrete numbers, representing the changes in air pressure for audio and chroma and luminance values for video through time, thus making an abstract template for the original sound or...
devices dropped in the late 1990s. Hard drive recording has mostly obsoleted DAT, as hard disk recorderHard disk recorderA hard disk recorder is a type of direct to disk recording system that uses a high-capacity hard disk to record digital audio or digital video. Hard disk recording systems represent an alternative to more traditional reel-to-reel tape or cassette multitrack systems, and provide editing...
s offer more editing versatility than tape, and easier importation into digital audio workstationDigital audio workstationA digital audio workstation is an electronic system designed solely or primarily for recording, editing and playing back digital audio. DAWs were originally tape-less, microprocessor-based systems such as the Synclavier and Fairlight CMI...
s (DAWs) and non-linear video editing (NLE) systems. - Digital Compact CassetteDigital Compact CassetteDigital Compact Cassette was a magnetic tape sound recording format introduced by Philips and Matsushita in late 1992 and pitched as a successor to the standard analog cassette. It was also a direct competitor to Sony's MiniDisc but neither format toppled the then ubiquitous analog cassette...
was intended as a digital replacement for the mass-market analog cassette tape, but received very little attention or adaptation. Its failure is generally attributed to higher production costs than audio CDsCompact DiscThe Compact Disc is an optical disc used to store digital data. It was originally developed to store and playback sound recordings exclusively, but later expanded to encompass data storage , write-once audio and data storage , rewritable media , Video Compact Discs , Super Video Compact Discs ,...
, and lukewarm reception by consumers.
Digital videocassettes include:
- Betacam IMX (SonySony, commonly referred to as Sony, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan and the world's fifth largest media conglomerate measured by revenues....
) - D-VHSD-VHSD-VHS is a digital recording format developed by JVC, in collaboration with Hitachi, Matsushita, and Philips. The "D" in D-VHS originally stood for Data VHS, but with the expansion of the format from standard definition to high definition capability, JVC renamed it Digital VHS and uses that...
(JVCJVC, usually referred to as JVC, is a Japanese international consumer and professional electronics corporation based in Yokohama, Japan which was founded in 1927...
) - D1D1 (Sony)D-1 is an SMPTE digital recording video standard, introduced in 1986 through efforts by SMPTE engineering committees. It started as a Sony and Bosch - BTS product and was the first major professional digital video format.- Format :...
(SonySony, commonly referred to as Sony, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan and the world's fifth largest media conglomerate measured by revenues....
) - D2D2 (video format)D-2 is a professional digital recording videocassette format created by Ampex and other manufacturers through a standards group of the Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers and introduced at the 1988 NAB convention as a lower-cost alternative to the D-1 format...
(SonySony, commonly referred to as Sony, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan and the world's fifth largest media conglomerate measured by revenues....
) - D3
- D5 HDD5 HDD-5 is a professional digital video format introduced by Panasonic in 1994. Like Sony's D-1 , it is an uncompressed digital component system , but uses the same half-inch tapes as Panasonic's digital composite D-3 format...
- Digital-SDigital-SD-9 or Digital S as it was originally known, is a professional digital video videocassette format created by JVC in 1995. It is a direct competitor to Digital Betacam. Its name was changed to D-9 in 1999 by the SMPTE...
D9 (JVCJVC, usually referred to as JVC, is a Japanese international consumer and professional electronics corporation based in Yokohama, Japan which was founded in 1927...
) - Digital Betacam (SonySony, commonly referred to as Sony, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan and the world's fifth largest media conglomerate measured by revenues....
) - Digital8Digital8Digital8 is a consumer digital recording videocassette for camcorders based on the 8 mm video format developed by Sony, and introduced in 1999.The Digital8 format is a combination of the older Hi8 tape transport with the DV codec...
(SonySony, commonly referred to as Sony, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan and the world's fifth largest media conglomerate measured by revenues....
) - DVDVDV is a format for the digital recording and playing back of digital video. The DV codec was launched in 1995 with joint efforts of leading producers of video camcorders....
- HDVHDVHDV is a format for recording of high-definition video on DV cassette tape. The format was originally developed by JVC and supported by Sony, Canon and Sharp...
- ProHDProHDProHD is a name used by JVC for its MPEG-2-based professional camcorders. ProHD is not a video recording format, but rather "an approach for delivering affordable HD products" and a common name for "bandwidth efficient professional HD models"....
(JVCJVC, usually referred to as JVC, is a Japanese international consumer and professional electronics corporation based in Yokohama, Japan which was founded in 1927...
) - MiniDV
Analog cassettes used as digital data storage:
- Historically, the Compact audio cassette which was originally designed for analogAnalog signalAn analog or analogue signal is any continuous signal for which the time varying feature of the signal is a representation of some other time varying quantity, i.e., analogous to another time varying signal. It differs from a digital signal in terms of small fluctuations in the signal which are...
storage of music was used as an alternative to disk drives in the late 1970s and early 1980s to provide data storage for home computerHome computerHome computers were a class of microcomputers entering the market in 1977, and becoming increasingly common during the 1980s. They were marketed to consumers as affordable and accessible computers that, for the first time, were intended for the use of a single nontechnical user...
s. See Kansas City standardKansas City standardThe Kansas City Standard , or Byte standard, is a digital data format for audio cassette drives. Byte magazine sponsored a symposium in November 1975 in Kansas City, Missouri to develop a standard for storage of digital computer data on inexpensive consumer quality cassettes, at a time when...
. - The ADATADATAlesis Digital Audio Tape or ADAT is a magnetic tape format used for the simultaneous digital recording of eight analog audio or digital audio tracks at once, onto a Super VHS tape that is used by consumer VCRs.- History :...
system uses Super VHS tapes to record 8 synchronized digital audiotracks at once. - There have also been several audio recording systems which used VHSVHSThe Video Home System is a consumer-level analog recording videocassette standard developed by Victor Company of Japan ....
video recorders as storage devices and video tape transports, generally by encoding the digital data to be recorded into an analog composite videoComposite videoComposite video is the format of an analog television signal before it is combined with a sound signal and modulated onto an RF carrier. In contrast to component video it contains all required video information, including colors in a single line-level signal...
signal (which resembles static) and then recording this to magnetic tapeMagnetic tapeMagnetic tape is a medium for magnetic recording, made of a thin magnetizable coating on a long, narrow strip of plastic. It was developed in Germany, based on magnetic wire recording. Devices that record and play back audio and video using magnetic tape are tape recorders and video tape recorders...
. These systems were generally used as "mixdown" recorders, to record the finished mix from a multi-track recorderMultitrack recordingMultitrack recording is a method of sound recording that allows for the separate recording of multiple sound sources to create a cohesive whole...
in preparation for the manufacture of a vinyl record, cassette tape, or CD. An example was the dbx Model 700Dbx Model 700 Digital Audio ProcessorThe dbx Model 700 Digital Audio Processor was a professional audio ADC/DAC combination unit, which digitized a stereo analog audio input into a bitstream, which was then encoded and encapsulated in an analog composite video signal, for recording to tape using a VCR as a transport...
. - Several companies sold VHS backup solutions in the 80s and 90s where data was converted to a video image which was then saved on a VHS tape http://www.stuartcheshire.org/rants/VideoBackup.html.