MAGNETIC DAMAGE TO FAMILY VIDEO TAPES Magnetic tape damage is pretty common. Family tapes store video and audio information in the form of a magnetic strip. The VCR has special heads that can pick up on these magnetic signals and translate them into images and sound that plays on your TV. While magnets are used to write information to the tape, they are also used to erase footage from your tape. Since VHS uses an iron oxide as its formula, this makes them very susceptible to magnetic damage. A tape that has been exposed to magnetic damage is nearly always irreparable. There is no way to recover footage that has been magnetically erased or damaged. The best bet is to make sure you keep your video tapes away from anything resembling a magnet! CLIENT CASE Unfortunately one of our clients contacted us Friday with regard to his family Hi8 video tapes that had been damaged by the magnetic field given off by a mobile phone. He asked whether our company would be able to help recover
Sony’s Betamax lost out to JVC’s VHS in the home video entertainment format war in the 1980s. This didn’t stop Sony from venturing into another ‘Beta’ format, namely, Betacam SP or Beta SP. SP stands for Superior Quality. Sony introduced this analogue video camera format in 1986. Before Betacam SP was Betacam which was released in 1982 as the ‘pro version’ of Betamax. Betacam SP is an enhancement of the Betacam format. The Betacam system was a 1/2-inch tape format (similar to VHS and Betamax) that needed a camcorder, video recorder, and tape. It was targeted at the professional market. It was meant to be an improvement on Sony’s 3/4-inch U-Matic tape format. Betacam tapes came in two sizes – Short (S) and Long (L). Betacam camcorders for consumers could only load the S version. Only broadcast stations with a complete Beta system could support both the S and L versions through recorders meant for editing. Betacam offered a horizontal resolution of three hundred lines