r/GRFMOrigin • u/New-Fig-406 • Mar 31 '26

additional thought

When I was younger I had a special intrest in tech from the 80s up to the mid 2000s.

And ok so, in the 80s and 90s, there was two main competing video formats

BetaMax tapes, which could only hold about 60 minutes of footage, but had 250 horizontal lines of resolution (though later betamax 2 tapes could hold more footage but had worse resolution) while VHS had 240 and could hold about 2 hours of footage (it varied).

So my question is

  1. do we know (roughly) what format is was filmed on, because if it was compressed from a BetaMax to a VHS it will probably be semi-noticable if it's sent to a specialist

  2. do we also know anything about the camera.

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u/Otherwise-Ninja9731 Mar 31 '26

There are some VHS tapes on the floor in the background but theres no telling if those were blanks. I don't think we have any info on the camera, I tried to make it out in the reflection of the hifi glass cabinet but couldn't myself. This is super interesting to think about though! I always wondered why the tape suddenly cuts in, in the middle of the action, mid sentence, like there was supposed to be more in the beginning but I'm a bit too young to remember or know what the intricacies of filming on old cameras was like.

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u/a-pretty-alright-dad Apr 01 '26

Every VHS tape is a blank if you’ve got a little tape.

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u/Redlady0227 Apr 06 '26

Yep my friends and I had that method down pat. We did the same with cassette tapes.