1.
Magnetic tape
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Magnetic tape is a medium for magnetic recording, made of a thin, magnetizable coating on a long, narrow strip of plastic film. 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. A device that stores data on magnetic tape is a tape drive. Magnetic tape revolutionized broadcast and recording, when all radio was live, it allowed programming to be recorded. At a time when gramophone records were recorded in one take, it allowed recordings to be made in multiple parts, which were then mixed and edited with tolerable loss in quality. It was a key technology in computer development, allowing unparalleled amounts of data to be mechanically created, stored for long periods. Nowadays, other technologies can perform the functions of magnetic tape, in many cases, these technologies are replacing tape. Despite this, innovation in the technology continues, and Sony, over years, magnetic tape made in the 1970s and 1980s can suffer from a type of deterioration called sticky-shed syndrome. Caused by hydrolysis of the binder of the tape, it can render the tape unusable, the oxide side of a tape is the surface that can be magnetically manipulated by a tape head. This is the side that stores the information, the side is simply a substrate to hold the tape together. The name originates from the fact that the side of most tapes is made of an oxide of iron. Magnetic tape was invented for recording sound by Fritz Pfleumer in 1928 in Germany, based on the invention of magnetic wire recording by Oberlin Smith in 1888, pfleumers invention used a ferric oxide powder coating on a long strip of paper. This invention was developed by the German electronics company AEG, which manufactured the recording machines and BASF. In 1933, working for AEG, Eduard Schuller developed the ring-shaped tape head, previous head designs were needle-shaped and tended to shred the tape. An important discovery made in this period was the technique of AC biasing, due to the escalating political tensions, and the outbreak of World War II, these developments were largely kept secret. A wide variety of recorders and formats have developed since, most significantly reel-to-reel, the practice of recording and editing audio using magnetic tape rapidly established itself as an obvious improvement over previous methods. Many saw the potential of making the same improvements in recording television, television signals are similar to audio signals. A major difference is that video signals use more bandwidth than audio signals, existing audio tape recorders could not practically capture a video signal
2.
Sony
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Sony Corporation is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation that is headquartered in Kōnan, Minato, Tokyo. Its diversified business includes consumer and professional electronics, gaming, entertainment, the company is one of the leading manufacturers of electronic products for the consumer and professional markets. Sony was ranked 116th on the 2015 list of Fortune Global 500 and these make Sony one of the most comprehensive entertainment companies in the world. The group consists of Sony Corporation, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Sony Interactive Entertainment, Sony Music Entertainment, Sony Financial Holdings and others. Sony is among the Semiconductor sales leaders by year and as of 2013, the companys current slogan is BE MOVED. Their former slogans were make. believe, like. no. other, Sony has a weak tie to the SMFG keiretsu, the successor to the Mitsui keiretsu. Sony began in the wake of World War II, in 1946, Masaru Ibuka started an electronics shop in a department store building in Tokyo. The company had $530 in capital and a total of eight employees, in the following year he was joined by his colleague, Akio Morita, and they founded a company called Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo 東京通信工業. The company built Japans first tape recorder, called the Type-G, in 1958 the company changed its name to Sony. When Tokyo Tsushin Kogyo was looking for a name to use to market themselves, they strongly considered using their initials. The primary reason they did not is that the railway company Tokyo Kyuko was known as TTK, the company occasionally used the acronym Totsuko in Japan, but during his visit to the United States, Morita discovered that Americans had trouble pronouncing that name. Another early name that was tried out for a while was Tokyo Teletech until Akio Morita discovered that there was an American company already using Teletech as a brand name, the name Sony was chosen for the brand as a mix of two words. One was the Latin word sonus, which is the root of sonic and sound, and the other was sonny, a common slang term used in 1950s America to call a boy. In the 1950s Japan sonny boys, was a word into Japanese which connoted smart and presentable young men. The first Sony-branded product, the TR-55 transistor radio, appeared in 1955, at the time of the change, it was extremely unusual for a Japanese company to use Roman letters to spell its name instead of writing it in kanji. The move was not without opposition, TTKs principal bank at the time and they pushed for a name such as Sony Electronic Industries, or Sony Teletech. Akio Morita was firm, however, as he did not want the company tied to any particular industry. Eventually, both Ibuka and Mitsui Banks chairman gave their approval, according to Schiffer, Sonys TR-63 radio cracked open the U. S. market and launched the new industry of consumer microelectronics
3.
Television program
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It may be a single production, or more commonly, a series of related productions. A limited number of episodes of a show may be called a miniseries or a serial or limited series. Television series are without a fixed length and are divided into seasons or series. While there is no defined length, U. S. industry practice has traditionally favored longer television seasons than those of other countries, a one-time broadcast may be called a special, or particularly in the UK a special episode. A television film is a film that is initially broadcast on television rather than released in theaters or direct-to-video, a program can be either recorded, as on video tape, other various electronic media forms, played with an on-demand player or viewed on live television. Television programs may be fictional, or non-fictional and it may be topical, or historical. They could be primarily instructional or educational, or entertaining as is the case in situation comedy, a drama program usually features a set of actors playing characters in a historical or contemporary setting. The program follows their lives and adventures, except for soap opera-type serials, many shows especially before the 1980s, remained static without story arcs, and the main characters and premise changed little. If some change happened to the characters lives during the episode, because of this, the episodes could be broadcast in any order. Since the 1980s, there are series that feature progressive change to the plot. For instance, Hill Street Blues and St. Elsewhere were two of the first American prime time television series to have this kind of dramatic structure. While the later series, Babylon 5 is an example of such production that had a predetermined story running over its intended five-season run. In 2012, it was reported that television was growing into a component of major media companies revenues than film. Some also noted the increase in quality of television programs. When a person or company decides to create a new series, they develop the elements, consisting of the concept, the characters, the crew. Then they offer it to the networks in an attempt to find one interested enough to order a prototype first episode of the series. They want very much to get the word out on what types of shows they’re looking for, to create the pilot, the structure and team of the whole series must be put together. If the network likes the pilot, they pick up the show to air it the next season, sometimes they save it for mid-season, or request rewrites and further review
4.
Reel-to-reel audio tape recording
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Reel-to-reel or open-reel audio tape recording is the form of magnetic tape audio recording in which the recording medium is held on a reel, rather than being securely contained within a cassette. Reel-to-reel systems use a tape that is 1⁄4 inches in width and this compares to 0.15 inches wide and 1.875 inches per second for a cassette. By writing out the audio signal across more tape, reel-to-reel systems offer much higher fidelity. In spite of the tapes, less convenient use and generally higher cost media. Studer, Stellavox and Denon still produced reel to reel tape recorders in the 1990s, but as of 2014, only Nagra, Otari, originally, this format had no name, since all forms of magnetic tape recorders used it. The earliest machines produced distortion during the process which German engineers significantly reduced during the Nazi era by applying a bias signal to the tape. In 1939 one machine was found to make consistently better recordings than other ostensibly identical models, and when it was taken apart a minor flaw was noticed. It was introducing an AC signal to the tape, and this was adapted to new models using a high-frequency AC bias that has remained a part of audio tape recording to this day. American audio engineer Jack Mullin was a member of the U. S. Army Signal Corps during World War II and he acquired two Magnetophon recorders and 50 reels of I. G. Farben recording tape and shipped them home, over the next two years, he worked to develop the machines for commercial use, hoping to interest the Hollywood film studios in using magnetic tape for movie soundtrack recording. Crosby invested $50,000 in an electronics company, Ampex. Ampex went on to develop the first practical videotape recorders in the early 1950s to pre-record Crosbys TV shows, inexpensive reel-to-reel tape recorders were widely used for voice recording in the home and in schools before the Philips compact cassette, introduced in 1963, gradually took over. Cassettes eventually displaced reel-to-reel recorders for consumer use, however, the narrow tracks and slow recording speeds used in cassettes compromised fidelity. Columbia House carried pre-recorded reel-to-reel tapes from 1960 to 1984, even today, some artists of all genres prefer analog tapes musical, natural and especially warm sound. Due to harmonic distortion, bass can thicken up, creating a fuller-sounding mix, in addition, high end can be slightly compressed, which is more natural to the human ear. It is common for artists to record to digital and re-record the tracks to analog reels for this effect of natural sound. In addition to all of these attributes of tape, tape saturation is a form of distortion that many rock, blues. For the first time, audio could be manipulated as a physical entity, Tape editing is performed simply by cutting the tape at the required point, and rejoining it to another section of tape using adhesive tape, or sometimes glue
5.
Analog recording
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Analog recording is a technique used for the recording of analog signals which, among many possibilities, allows analog audio and analog video for later playback. Analog recording methods store signals as a signal in or on the media. The signal may be stored as a texture on a phonograph record. This is different from digital recording which digital signals are represented as discrete numbers, the Phonograph was the first machine used to capture analog sound, and was invented by the well-known inventor Thomas Edison in 1877. Edison incorporated various elements into his Phonograph that would become staples that can be found in recording devices to this day, for a sound to be recorded by the Phonograph, it has to go through three distinct steps. First, the sound enters a cone-shaped component of the device and that sound causes the microphone diaphragm, which is connected to a small metal needle, to vibrate. The needle then vibrates in the way, causing its sharp tip to etch a distinctive groove into a cylinder. In order to playback the sound recorded on one of the tinfoil cylinders, as the cylinder spins, the needle follows the groove created by the previous recording session. This causes the needle to vibrate, and then the diaphragm and this vibration comes out of the diaphragm, which is now functioning as a sort of sound amplification device, much like the bell on any wind instrument. The result is a reproduction of the originally recorded sound. Edisons phonograph was the first of its kind, but drawbacks were nevertheless obvious, the biggest of these, and the one that ended up being fixed first, came from the physical contact between the phonograph needle and the tinfoil diaphragm. Because the needle had to make contact with the groove in the diaphragm every time the recording was played. This meant that every time a recording was played, it was one step closer to being gone forever. Another problem with the phonograph was the permanence of its recordings, unlike music today, which can be edited endlessly, the music captured by phonograph machines were single-take, live recordings. The last problem with the phonograph was related to fidelity, fidelity is the similarity/difference between the original recorded sound, and that same sound after it has been reproduced by a playback device, in this case the phonograph. As can be expected from such an early audio recording machine and this lack of sound quality is why the phonograph was originally used to record speeches, meetings, and telephone calls, rather than music. Fans of modern players are already familiar with one very early improvement on the phonograph. Inventor Emile Berliner created the device in 1887, only ten years after Edisons original device, Berliners main improvement to the phonograph was related to the component of the device that actually held the recorded information
6.
Videotape
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Videotape is magnetic tape used for storing video and usually sound in addition. Information stored can be in the form of either a signal or digital signal. Videotape is used in video tape recorders or, more commonly, videocassette recorders and camcorders. Videotapes are also used for storing scientific or medical data, such as the produced by an electrocardiogram. Tape is a method of storing information and thus imposes delays to access a portion of the tape that is not already under the heads. The early 2000s saw the introduction and rise to prominence of high quality video recording media such as hard disks. Since then, videotape has been relegated to archival and similar uses. The electronics division of entertainer Bing Crosbys production company, Bing Crosby Enterprises, overall the picture quality was still considered inferior to the best kinescope recordings on film. Bing Crosby Enterprises hoped to have a version available in 1954. The BBC experimented from 1952 to 1958 with a high-speed linear videotape system called VERA and it used half-inch tape traveling at 200 inches per second. RCA demonstrated the magnetic recording of both black-and-white and color television programs at its Princeton laboratories on December 1,1953. The high-speed longitudinal tape system, called Simplex, in development since 1951, could record, the color system used half-inch tape to record five tracks, one each for red, blue, green, synchronization, and audio. The black-and-white system used quarter-inch tape with two tracks, one for video and one for audio, both systems ran at 360 inches per second. RCA-owned NBC first used it on The Jonathan Winters Show on October 23,1956 when a song sequence by Dorothy Collins in color was included in the otherwise live television program. BCE demonstrated a color system in February 1955 using a longitudinal recording on half-inch tape. CBS, RCAs competitor, was about to order BCE machines when Ampex introduced the superior Quadruplex system, BCE was acquired by 3M Company in 1956. Quad employed a transverse four-head system on a tape. On January 22,1957, the NBC Television game show Truth or Consequences, produced in Hollywood, Ampex introduced a color videotape recorder in 1958 in a cross-licensing agreement with RCA, whose engineers had developed it from an Ampex black-and-white recorder
7.
Ampex
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Ampex is an American electronics company founded in 1944 by Alexander M. Poniatoff. The name AMPEX is an acronym, created by its founder, at one time public, the remaining ongoing business unit was acquired by Delta Information Systems in October 2014, with the original parent, Ampex Corporation, ceasing operations in October 2014. Ampexs first great success was a line of tape recorders developed from the German wartime Magnetophon system at the behest of Bing Crosby. Ampex quickly became a leader in audio technology, developing many of the analog recording formats for both music and movies that remained in use into the 1990s. They also introduced multi-track recording, slow-motion and instant playback television, Ampexs tape business was rendered obsolete during the 1990s, and the company turned to digital storage products. They never managed to become a player in this field, russian inventor Alexander Matthew Poniatoff established the company in San Carlos, California, in 1944 as the Ampex Electric and Manufacturing Company. The name came from his initials plus ex to avoid using the name AMP already in use, during World War II, Ampex was a small manufacturer of high quality electric motors and generators for radars that used alnico 5 magnets from General Electric. Ampexs first offices were at 1313 Laurel St. San Carlos California, near the end of the war, while serving in the U. S. Army Signal Corps, Major Jack Mullin was assigned to investigate German radio and electronics experiments. He discovered the Magnetophons with AC biasing on a trip to Radio Frankfurt, the device produced much better fidelity than shellac records. Mullin acquired two Magnetophon recorders and 50 reels of BASF Type L tape, and brought them to America and he demonstrated them to the Institute of Radio Engineers in San Francisco on May 16,1946. Bing Crosby, a big star on radio at the time, was receptive to the idea of pre-recording his radio programs and he disliked the regimentation of live broadcasts, and much preferred the relaxed atmosphere of the recording studio. This may have been what Crosby was hoping to avoid, as that was the argument Crosby used with the network when he asked to use transcription disc recordings of his show. Those recordings were made directly from the live east coast show, in June 1947, Mullin, who was pitching the technology to the major Hollywood movie studios, got the chance to demonstrate his modified tape recorders to Crosby. When Crosby heard a demonstration of Mullins tape recorders, he saw the potential of the new technology. Ampex was finishing its prototype of the Model 200 tape recorder, after a successful test broadcast, ABC agreed to allow Crosby to pre-record his shows on tape. Crosby immediately appointed Mullin as his engineer and placed an order for $50,000 worth of the new recorders so that Ampex could develop a commercial production model from the prototypes. Crosby Enterprises was Ampexs West Coast representative until 1957, the companys first tape recorder, the Ampex Model 200A, was first shipped in April 1948. The first two units, serial numbers 1 and 2, were used to record the Bing Crosby Show
8.
Video
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Video is an electronic medium for the recording, copying, playback, broadcasting, and display of moving visual media. Video systems vary greatly in the resolution of the display and refresh rate, video can be carried on a variety of media, including radio broadcast, tapes, DVDs, computer files etc. Video was originally exclusively a live technology, charles Ginsburg led an Ampex research team developing one of the first practical video tape recorder. In 1951 the first video tape recorder captured live images from television cameras by converting the electrical impulses. Video recorders were sold for $50,000 in 1956, however, prices gradually dropped over the years, in 1971, Sony began selling videocassette recorder decks and tapes into the consumer market. The use of techniques in video created digital video, which allowed higher quality and, eventually. After the invention of the DVD in 1997 and Blu-ray Disc in 2006, sales of videotape, the advent of digital broadcasting and the subsequent digital television transition is in the process of relegating analog video to the status of a legacy technology in most parts of the world. PAL standards and SECAM specify 25 frame/s, while NTSC standards specify 29.97 frames, film is shot at the slower frame rate of 24 frames per second, which slightly complicates the process of transferring a cinematic motion picture to video. The minimum frame rate to achieve a comfortable illusion of an image is about sixteen frames per second. Video can be interlaced or progressive, analog display devices reproduce each frame in the same way, effectively doubling the frame rate as far as perceptible overall flicker is concerned. NTSC, PAL and SECAM are interlaced formats, abbreviated video resolution specifications often include an i to indicate interlacing. For example, PAL video format is specified as 576i50, where 576 indicates the total number of horizontal scan lines, i indicates interlacing. In progressive scan systems, each refresh period updates all scan lines in each frame in sequence, when displaying a natively progressive broadcast or recorded signal, the result is optimum spatial resolution of both the stationary and moving parts of the image. Deinterlacing cannot, however, produce video quality that is equivalent to true progressive scan source material, aspect ratio describes the dimensions of video screens and video picture elements. All popular video formats are rectilinear, and so can be described by a ratio between width and height, the screen aspect ratio of a traditional television screen is 4,3, or about 1.33,1. High definition televisions use a ratio of 16,9. The aspect ratio of a full 35 mm film frame with soundtrack is 1.375,1. Therefore, a 720 by 480 pixel NTSC DV image displayes with the 4,3 aspect ratio if the pixels are thin, the popularity of viewing video on mobile phones has led to the growth of vertical video
9.
Recording head
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A recording head is the physical interface between a recording apparatus and a moving recording medium. Recording heads are generally classified according to the principle that allows them to impress their data upon their medium. A recording head is often paired with a playback head. Record heads are constructed of laminated permalloy, ferrite, or sendust, as of 2006 this is by far the most dominant type of head in use. Optical - Optical recording heads use the principles of optics and light to impart energy on a recording medium, note that Magneto-optical recording, though using optics and heat, should properly be considered a magnetic process, since the data stored on magneto-optical media is stored magnetically. Earlier systems, such as records, used mechanical heads known as styli to physically cut grooves in the recording medium. A tape recorder, showing the head assemblies, photo of an early recording head as part of a wire recorder
10.
Betacam
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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, 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 cassette shell and case for each Betacam cassette is colored differently depending on the format, allowing for easy visual identification. There is also a key, that allows a video tape recorder to identify which format has been inserted. The smaller S cassettes use the form factor as Betamax. 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/recorder led to its rapid adoption by electronic news gathering organizations. DigiBeta, the name for Digital Betacam, went on to become the single most successful professional broadcast digital recording video tape format in history. The original Betacam format was launched on August 7,1982, a blank Betamax-branded tape will work on a Betacam deck, and a Betacam-branded tape can be used to record in a Betamax deck. However, in later years Sony discouraged this practice, suggesting, in particular, the guide rollers tend to be noisy. Another common point between Betamax and Betacam is the placement of the linear audio tracks. Also, some Betacam and Betamax portables share the same batteries, Betacam was initially introduced as a camera line along with a video cassette player. The first cameras were the BVP-3, which utilized three saticon tubes, and the BVP1, which used a single tri-stripe Trinicon tube, both these cameras could be operated standalone, or with their docking companion VTR, the BVV-1, to form the BVW-1 integrated camcorder. The only transport controls on the deck were Eject and Rewind, the docked cameras 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 viewfinder in black-and-white only. Sony then came out with the Play Adapter, a 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 and 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 unit with DC power and a handle. Unlike the BVW-10, it did not have a built in Time Base Corrector, or TBC, 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
