Frederick M. Remley

Portable Television Cameras and Videotape Recorders

Publisher Summary This chapter discusses portable television cameras and videotape recorders. Contemporary selections among portable, hand-held television cameras are attractive in terms of size, weight, and performance. Portable use of video recording equipment poses many problems for the equipment design engineer. The environment encountered by all portable equipment, television or other, tends to be quite hostile. Early in the design of second-generation, post-U-format, portable video recording systems for ENG and EFP use, some potential users insisted that new equipment designs use tape cassettes identical to the types originally designed for domestic video recorders, for example, VHS format or Beta format. Professional users normally opt, as was almost always the case when film was used for similar applications, to carry their blank recording medium with them and do not rely on purchases on location. Once this fact is accepted, it is possible to design portable recording systems to use magnetic tape of different, much improved performance characteristics; tapes that cater specifically for the needs of professional users. The longitudinal tracks designated for audio recording in portable video recording systems are quite narrow, limiting the signal/noise ratio. Because of the rotary head principle used for the video portion, the longitudinal tape velocity is low, causing degradation of sound recording frequency response due to losses at short wavelengths.

EBU Technical Committee Meeting, Amsterdam, the Netherlands, April 18–21, 1967

The Annual Meeting of the Technical Committee of the European Broadcasting Union convened on April 18 at the Grand Hotel Krasnapolsky, on the Dam in Amsterdam. This meeting was held to permit the Directors of Engineering of the broadcasting organizations active in the European Broadcasting Area to discuss mutual problems and to review the progress of the several Working Parties that the Technical Committee has established to carry projects forward in the interim period between formal Technical Committee meetings. In addition, the staff of the EBU Technical Center, headed by Georges Hanson, was given an opportunity to report on the activities of the Technical Center and its facilities in Brussels and Jurbise, Belgium.