Tape formats used by GMV for recording our videos over the years since 1980.

U-matic
In the early 1980s, Sony introduced the semi backwards-compatible high-band or BVU (Broadcast Video U-matic) format, and the 'original' U-matic format became known as low-band. GMV shot on U-matic BVU up till the end of 1988.
This high-band format had an improved colour recording system and lower noise levels. BVU gained immense popularity in ENG and location programme-making, spelling the end of 16mm film (or super 8 film) in everyday production. By the early 1990s, Sony's ½" Betacam SP format along with opposition by Panasonic's MII format) had all but replaced BVU outside of corporate and 'budget' programme making. Sony made a final improvement to BVU by further improving the recording system and giving it the same 'SP' suffix as Betacam. SP had a horizontal resolution of 330 lines.
First generation BVU-SP and Beta-SP recordings were hard to tell apart, but despite this the writing was on the wall for the U-matic family, due to intrinsic problems with the format.

U-matic is no longer used as a mainstream production format, however it has found lasting appeal as a cheap, well specified, and hard-wearing format. The format permitted many broadcast and non-broadcast smaller institutions to produce video programming on an accessible budget, spawning programming distribution, classroom playback, etc.

Many television facilities the world-over still have a U-matic recorder for archive playback of material recorded in the 1980s. For example, the Library of Congress facility in Culpeper, VA, holds thousands of its titles on U-matic video, as a means of providing access copies and proof for copyright deposit of old television broadcasts and films.

Four decades after it was developed, the format is still used for the menial tasks of the industry, being more highly specialized and suited to the needs of production staff than the domestic VHS, although as time passes it has been replaced at the bottom of the tree of tape-based production formats by Betacam and Betacam SP as these in turn are replaced by Digital Betacam and HDCAM.

S-VHS
S-VHS (Super VHS) is an improved version of the VHS standard for consumer video cassette recorders. It was introduced by JVC in Japan in April 1987 with the HR-S7000 VCR and certain overseas markets soon afterwards. GMV shot several contests on S-VHS when a long running time was required.

Like VHS, the S-VHS format uses a "color under" modulation scheme. S-VHS improves luminance resolution by boosting the luminance carrier from 3 MHz to 5.4 MHz. This produces a 60% improvement in (luminance) picture detail, or a horizontal resolution of 420 lines per picture height versus VHS's 240 lines. The often quoted horizontal resolution of "over 400" means S-VHS captures greater picture detail than even analog cable broadcast TV, which is limited to about 330 lines.

In practice, when time shifting TV programs on S-VHS equipment, the improvement over VHS is quite noticeable. Yet, the trained eye can easily spot the difference between live broadcast TV and an S-VHS recording of it. This is explained by S-VHS's failure to improve other key aspects of the video signal, especially the chroma signal. In VHS, the chroma carrier is both severely bandlimited and rather noisy, a limitation that S-VHS does not address. Poor color resolution was a deficiency shared by S-VHS's contemporaries (Hi8, ED-Beta), all of which were limited to 0.4 megahertz or 30 lines resolution.

Comparison to other media
Here is a list of modern-day, digital-type measurements (and traditional, analog horizontal resolutions) for various media. The list only includes popular formats, not rare formats, and all values are approximate (rounded to the nearest 10), since the actual quality can vary machine-to-machine or tape-to-tape. For ease-of-comparison all values are for the NTSC system, and listed in ascending order from lowest quality to highest quality. "Lines" means horizontal resolution in vertical lines per picture height.

330×480 (250 lines): Umatic, Betamax, VHS, Video8, CED
400×480 (300 lines): Super Betamax, Betacam (professional)
440×480 (330 lines): analog broadcast, Betacam SP, MII
560×480 (420 lines): LaserDisc, S-VHS, Hi8

Digital:

352×240 (250 lines): Video CD
720×480 (480 lines): DVD, miniDV, Digital8, DVCAM (professional)
1440×1080 (1080 lines): HDV
1920x1080 (1080 lines): Full HD

Shadow of VHS
Despite its designation as the logical successor to VHS, S-VHS did not come close to replacing VHS. In the home market, S-VHS failed to gain significant market share; for various reasons, consumers were not interested in paying more for an improved picture. Likewise, S-VHS rentals and movie sales did very poorly. A few prerecorded movies were released to S-VHS, but poor market acceptance prompted studios to transition their high-end product from S-VHS to Laserdisc.

Community access television, local cable stations and other low-budget venues have made extensive use of the S-VHS format, both for acquisition and subsequent studio editing, but the network studios largely avoided S-VHS, as descendants of the more expensive Betacam format had already become a de facto industry standard. S-VHS-C competed directly with Hi8, the latter offering smaller cassettes and longer running time and ultimately selling much better.
From the 1989 NABBA Universe up till the mid 90s, GMV shot all their footage on Broadcast standard MII format, very similar to the specifications as used on SP Betacam.

HDV 1080i
When interlaced video is watched on a progressive monitor without proper deinterlacing, it exhibits combing when there is movement between two fields of one frame. Sony adapted HDV, originally conceived as progressive-scan format by JVC, to interlaced video. Interlaced video has been a useful compromise for decades due to its ability to display motion smoothly while reducing recording and transmission bandwidth. Interlaced video is still being used in acquisition and broadcast, but interlaced display devices are being phased out. Modern flat-panel television sets that utilize plasma and LCD technology are inherently progressive. All modern computer monitors use progressive scanning as well.

Before interlaced video is displayed on a progressive-scan device it must be converted to progressive using the process known as deinterlacing. Progressive-scan television sets employ built-in deinterlacing circuits to cope with interlaced broadcast signal, but computer video players rarely have this capability. As such, interlaced video may exhibit ghosting or combing artifacts when watched on a computer.

Some HDV 1080i camcorders are capable of recording progressive video within an interlaced stream, provided that the frame rate does not exceed half of the field rate. The first HDV 1080i camcorder to implement such Progressive Scanning was the Sony HVR-V1. To preserve compatibility with interlaced equipment the HVR-V1 records and outputs video in interlaced form. 25-frame/s and 30-frame/s progressive video is recorded on tape using progressive segmented frame (PsF) technique, while 24-frame/s recording employs 2-3 pulldown. The camcorder offers two variations of 24-frame/s recording: "24" and "24A". In "24" mode the camera ensures that there are no cadence breaks for a whole tape, this mode works better for watching video directly from the camera and for adding "film look" to interlaced video. In the "24A" mode the camera starts every clip on an A frame with timecode set to an even second margin. Several editing tools, including Sony's own Vegas, are capable of processing 24A video as proper 24 frame/s progressive video.

Progressive scan video must be properly deinterlaced to achieve full vertical resolution and to avoid interlace artifacts. 25P and 30P video must be deinterlaced with "weave" or "no deinterlacing" algorithm, which means joining two fields of each frame together into one progressive frame. This operation can be done in most editing tools simply by changing project properties from interlaced to progressive. 24P video must go through film-mode deinterlacing also known as inverse telecine, which throws out judder frames and restores original 24-frame/s progressive video.

In 1999 GMV changed over to shooting primarily in NTSC HDV 1080i, and on occasions in DVCAM format. HDV shooting is required if our project is also to be released on Blu-Ray as well as on SD DVD. Our first Blu-Ray DVDs were released in December 2010.