How do vhs tapes have sound

The only difference between the two formats is that super VHS tape records an image with to horizontal lines, a much higher resolution image than standard VHS tape. The chief advantage of this format is manufacturers can produce more compact camcorders, sometimes small enough to fit in a coat pocket.

The format offers about the same resolution as standard VHS, with slightly better sound quality. Like standard VHS tapes, 8 mm tapes hold about two hours of footage, but they are more expensive. To watch 8 mm tapes on your television, you have to attach your camcorder and use it as a VCR. Hi Hi-8 camcorders are very similar to 8 mm camcorders, but they have a much higher resolution about lines. Hi-8 tapes are more expensive than ordinary 8 mm tapes. Digital Digital camcorders differ from analog camcorders in a few very important ways.

They record information digitally, as bytes, which means that image can be reproduced without losing any image or audio quality. Digital video can also be downloaded to a computer, where you can edit it or post it on the Web.

Another distinction is that digital video has a much better resolution than analog video, typically lines. There are two consumer digital formats in widespread use:. Digital 8: Digital-8 camcorders produced by Sony exclusively are very similar to regular DV camcorders, but they use standard Himm tapes, which are less expensive. These tapes hold up to 60 minutes of footage, which can be copied without any lose in quality.

Just as with DV camcorders, you can connect Digital-8 camcorders to your computer to download your movies for editing or Internet use. In SP mode, the tape is moving past the head at 1. That means that if the video information were being stored linearly, you would need a mile-long km-long tape to store a two-hour movie.

Obviously, the rotating head approach, also known as helical scanning , saves a lot of tape! The only problem this creates is that a VCR designer has to get the video tape to wrap around the rotating head in order to record or play back the tape.

In addition, the device has to read the audio and control tracks from the tape, keep the tape moving at exactly the right speed and detect the end of the tape. To do all of this, the tape has to follow a tortuous path, like this:. Different VCRs use different approaches, but you get the idea.

The drive mechanism in the VCR has to extract a good long piece of tape from the cassette and wrap it around a variety of rollers, drums and heads in order to play the tape. It is absolutely amazing that a VCR ever works! Sign up for our Newsletter! Mobile Newsletter banner close. Mobile Newsletter chat close. Mobile Newsletter chat dots. Mobile Newsletter chat avatar. Mobile Newsletter chat subscribe.

Prev NEXT. It must deal with the tape -- an extremely thin, fairly fragile and incredibly long piece of plastic. As we will see in a moment, it is amazing what a VCR does with the tape. It must read the signals off of the tape and convert them to signals that a TV can understand. It tells the VCR how quickly to pull the tape past the drum since the tape may stretch or shrink over time.

It gets the heads lined up with the bands during playback. When you play with the "tracking" control on your VCR, what you are doing is adjusting the skew between the control track and the actual head position on the tape.

Usually, this is not necessary, but if a tape is badly worn or stretched you may have to adjust the tracking. Cite This! Print Citation.