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I occasionally write long posts but you should assume I'm talking out of my ass until proved otherwise. I do like writing shit sometimes.  

 

50/50 chance of suit pictures end up here or on the Art Directory account. Good luck.

 

Be 18+ or be gone you kids act fuckin' weird.

 

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I tag all of my posts complaining about stuff #complaining, feel free to muffle that if you'd like a more positive cohost experience.

 


 
Art and suit stuff: @PlumPanAD

 


 
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I would really like to know why MiniDV and Digital8 both store the same runtime.

For those who are not already insufferable nerds: DV was a tape standard that came in different sizes, consumers only got MiniDV, but was also a digital compressed video standard as well. Kind of like mpeg but way different, but same basic idea. MiniDV tapes hold DV format data, an hour under normal circumstances. Digital8 is a format where DV format video was shoehorned onto an 8mm video cassette (Video8, Hi8) for, some reason. I mean it's great, a lot of Digital8 cameras can also play back Video8/Hi8 footage so you could buy a new camera that could still play all of your old tapes. And they do a better job of that than your old camera would too. But the tapes were physically MUCH larger than MiniDV.

Like, I get that Digital8 used a way faster tape speed and wider track width but... why? Like if you want to try and support the trashiest old video8 tapes sure, and I guess that was SORT OF the point, but that also doesn't work great and you could get ME Hi8 tapes that I would assume are on par with MiniDV tape formulation. Was it the heads? Could one not use the same head to read and write MiniDV size tracks and still do Digital8? Based on the larger DV formats, "M" being a similar size and presumably tape length to Video8, you would think it would be possible to get 2 hours or thereabouts of video onto a 120HME or similar cassette. Right?

"Why don't you hack a digital8 camera to run at MiniDV speed then and find out" No thanks! Above my pay grade!

EDIT: The drum speed is about 2x in miniDV, which probably explains it. 9,000RPM or thereabouts based on what I read, about half that for Digital8 and Video8/Hi8 is 3600 or 1800 depending on, presumably, the head count.

But why not just put more heads? Cost? :shrug:

EDIT 2: I guess if you have more heads you're actually reading multiple frames at once and you start to need a frame buffer which probably would have actually been too expensive.

BUT WHILE I'M THINKING ABOUT DRUMS, why are there different size Video8/Hi8 drums? There's gotta be some MATH bullshit answer to this but I'm real curious. My TR500 has a noticeably smaller head drum than most of the other Hi8 or Video8 cameras I've seen and used. Other models in that family have a smaller drum, and I've not found a service manual to at least tell me the name of the mechanism in which I would never ever find a service manual for...

TL;DR Plum is on that tape bullshit today friends !


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