8 mm video format

In 1982, five companies – Sony, Matsushita (now Panasonic), JVC, Hitachi, and Philips – created a preliminary draft of the unified format and invited members of the Electronic Industries Association of Japan, the Magnetic Tape Industry Association, the Japan Camera Industry Association and other related associations to participate. As a result, a consortium of 127 companies endorsed 8-mm video format in April 1984.

In January 1984, Eastman Kodak announced the new technology in the U.S. In 1985, Sony of Japan introduced the Handycam, one of the first Video8 cameras with commercial success. Much smaller than the competition's VHS and Betamax video cameras, Video8 became very popular in the consumer camcorder market.

History

Video8

Video8 was launched in 1984, into a market dominated by the VHS-C and Betamax formats. The first two models were the Kodak Kodavision 2200 and 2400, both over US$1,500. The Kodak machines were produced by Matsushita Electric, but Matsushita itself had shown no interest in selling the same product under its own name.

The first Sony camcorder capable of recording to standard 8mm videotape was the Sony CCD-V8, with 6× zoom but only manual focus, released in 1985 with an MSRP of approximately $1,175, ($3,517 in ) and a mass of 1.97 kg (4.3 lb). The same year, Sony released the CCD-V8AF which added autofocus. Also in 1985, Sony released the first of their compact Handycam range: the CCD-M8, which at one kilogram was half the mass of the CCD-V8, though it had no zoom and supported only manual focus with three focus settings.

In April 1986 six Japanese electronics companies—Matsushita, Hitachi, Pentax, Minolta, Mitsubishi, Sharp and Toshiba—announced their lack of plans to embrace eight millimeter in the foreseeable future and instead adopted VHS-C format. Yet, several months later at the summer 1986 Consumer Electronics Show Olympus introduced an eight-millimeter camcorder manufactured by Matsushita, and Hitachi was reported to be making eight-millimeter machines for Minolta & Pentax.

Video8 offers similar video quality to Beta-II and VHS in their standard-play modes.

In terms of audio, Video8 generally outperforms its older rivals. Audio on Standard VHS and Beta is recorded along a narrow linear track at the edge of the tape, where it is vulnerable to damage. Coupled with the slow horizontal tape speed, the sound was comparable with that of a low-quality audio cassette. By contrast, all Video8 machines used audio frequency modulation (AFM) to record sound along the same helical tape path as that of the video signal. This meant that Video8's standard audio was of a far higher quality than that of its rivals. Early Video8 camcorders used mono AFM sound, but this was later made stereo. This cost less than including 8mm's optional digital stereo audio track. Linear audio did have the advantage that (unlike either AFM system) it could be re-recorded without disturbing the video, doing this in 8mm required a deck that supported digital audio. While full sized VHS machines often provided AFM stereo recording, (VHS HiFi), it was much less common on consumer-grade VHS-C camcorders.

The small size of media means that many Video8 camcorders are small enough to hold in the palm of the user's hand. This was impossible with Betamax and full-sized VHS camcorders, with all of them having shoulder-mount form factor.

Video8 also has an advantage in terms of recording and playback time over VHS-C – 180 minutes vs 45 minutes in SP mode for standard cassettes for each format.

Video8/Hi8's main drawback is that tapes made with Video8 camcorders cannot be played on VHS hardware. Instead it was assumed that the camcorder would be directly plugged into one's TV. Although it is possible to transfer tapes (using the VCR to rerecord the source video as it is played back by the camcorder), the VHS copy would lose some quality compared to the 8mm original. During the 1990s Sony did market a few VHS VCRs that also feature an 8mm deck to allow convenient transfer to VHS. GoldStar also made a similar dual-deck machine.

Ultimately, Video8's main rival in the camcorder market turned out to be VHS-C, with neither dominating the market completely. However, both formats (along with their improved descendants, Hi8 and S-VHS-C) were nevertheless very successful. Collectively, they dominated the camcorder market for almost two decades before they were eventually crowded out by digital formats, such as MiniDV, 8cm DVD.

Hi8

To counter the Super-VHS format, Sony introduced Video Hi8 (short for high-band Video8). First demonstrated in February 1989, it was initially endorsed by ten other manufacturers — Aiwa, Canon, Fuji, Hitachi, Konica, Matsushita, Maxell, Ricoh, Sanyo and TDK, which were joined later by Nikon, Samsung, Sharp and TEAC. Japanese companies produced camcorders for other brands like Fisher and Siemens.

Similar to S-VHS, Hi8 used improved recorder electronics and media formulation to increase the recorded bandwidth of the luminance signal. The luminance carrier was shifted from 4.2 MHz for regular 8-mm up to 5.7 MHz for Hi8, and the frequency deviation was increased to 2 MHz from the 1.2 MHz of standard 8-mm.

Like S-VHS, Hi8 was officially rated at a luminance resolution of 400 lines, a vast improvement from their respective base formats and are roughly equal to LaserDisc quality. Chrominance resolution remained unchanged.

Sony retained monaural AFM and stereo digital PCM audio in its initial offerings, while Canon introduced HiFi AFM Stereo with the A1. HiFi AFM Stereo improved the original AFM audio format, making it stereo; it was also cheaper than digital PCM. Sony accepted HiFi AFM Stereo for its future mid-range models and relegated digital PCM audio to top of the line camcorders and VCRs.

All Hi8 equipment can record and play the standard 8-mm video. The reverse is not usually the case though a few late-entry 8-mm systems recognize and play Hi8 recordings.

PCM Multi Audio

The Sony EV-S900 (Hi8), Sony EV-S800, Sony EV-S700U, and Pioneer VE-D77 (Video8) all support a mode called "PCM Multi Audio Recording". While other 8mm decks support only a single stereo PCM recording, these units provide five additional stereo PCM tracks that are recorded in the video area of the signal. This allows 8mm tapes to hold 6 parallel tracks of audio, each up to 4 hours long (in LP mode). Only one stereo track can be recorded or listened to at a time, and tracks are selected with the "PCM Multi Audio" selector button.

Digital8

Introduced in 1999, Digital8 is a form of the industry standard DV codec, recorded on Hi8 media. In engineering terms, Digital8 and MiniDV are indistinguishable at the logical format level. To store the digitally encoded audio/video on a standard NTSC Video8 cassette, the tape must be run at double the Hi8 speed. Thus, a 120-minute NTSC Hi8 tape yields 60 minutes of Digital8 video. Most Digital8 units offer an LP mode, which increases the recording time on an NTSC P6-120 tape to 90 minutes.

For PAL, the Digital8 recorder runs 1½ times faster; thus, a 90-minute PAL Hi8 tape yields 60 minutes of Digital8 video. PAL LP mode returns the tape speed to the Hi8 SP speed, so a Hi8 90-minute tape yields 90 minutes of Digital8 video.

Sony has licensed Digital8 technology to at least one other firm (Hitachi), which marketed a few models for a while; but by 2005 only Sony sold Digital8 consumer equipment. Digital8's main rival is the consumer MiniDV format, which uses narrower tape and a correspondingly smaller cassette shell. Since both technologies share the same logical audio/video format, Digital8 can theoretically equal MiniDV or even DVCAM in A/V performance. But by the year 2005, Digital8 had been relegated to the entry-level camcorder market.

Digital8 recordings are not interchangeable with analog recordings, although many models of Digital8 equipment are able to play Hi8/Video8 analog recordings.

Decline

By 2009, the popularity of the analog 8mm formats had dwindled considerably and new camcorders that support the format were unobtainable, having been superseded by digital formats, mainly MiniDV and 8 cm DVD. These in turn have been largely displaced by high-definition camcorders that record to flash storage cards. Both Video8 and Hi8 blank media remain available and affordable but are increasingly rare. Tape-based camcorders are still readily available in the secondhand market. The last Hi8 camcorder (the Sony CCD-TRV238) and the last Digital8 camcorder (the Sony DCR-TRV280 (NTSC) / DCR-TRV285 (PAL)) were both discontinued in 2007, ending the 8mm format's 22 years on the market.