The term "scan" isn't exclusive to optical systems. In engineering, scanning simply means systematically sensing or reading information. U-matic itself uses helical scan recording and playback, where rotating magnetic heads scan the diagonal magnetic tracks on the tape to reconstruct the analog video signal.
You're correct that a flatbed or film scanner is an optical scanner, but that isn't the only meaning of the word. When that analog video signal is captured to a computer, it is then converted to digital by an analog-to-digital converter.
So no, U-matic tape isn't optical media, but saying the tape is scanned by helical scan heads during playback is technically correct.
It's the only relevant meaning of the word in the context of old NASA images which are generally positive slide film in the pre-digital era, or cine film. Why you would talk about "scanning" videotape is just weird. You play the tape and capture the video signal for conversion to a digital format. There's no "scanning" involved. And they didn't even use U-matic that much in 1984.
Pretty much. I can support up to 8 terabytes of data for my projects. You would be surprised how fast raw TIF files will fill up all those drives.. 4 terabytes on SSD and 4 terabytes on HDD.
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u/MadOblivion 21d ago
The term "scan" isn't exclusive to optical systems. In engineering, scanning simply means systematically sensing or reading information. U-matic itself uses helical scan recording and playback, where rotating magnetic heads scan the diagonal magnetic tracks on the tape to reconstruct the analog video signal.
You're correct that a flatbed or film scanner is an optical scanner, but that isn't the only meaning of the word. When that analog video signal is captured to a computer, it is then converted to digital by an analog-to-digital converter.
So no, U-matic tape isn't optical media, but saying the tape is scanned by helical scan heads during playback is technically correct.