Here’s a small clip from our old clubhouse back in 1995. First we hear Latka and a bit later Stud shouting. Behind the bar we see Latka and Schweick [RIP]. The quality is as to be expected. Not that good. It is what it is….
For those who are interested in the technique behind this quality issue read the explanation below.
Of course this is a rather technical bullshit story about old tape recordings and has nothing to do with building and riding choppers but it does exlain why the old recordings seem a bit blurry compared to current recordings.
Old VHS tapes, or Video8, Video 2000, Betamax, and later Video Hi8 and Super-VHS and also the compact variants, in those days had a max quality of 720×540 [lines] pixels Interlaced [720×576 gross]. This was in the days you only had tv picture tubes.
Here in Europe we had the PAL standard. To make these recordings digital for LCD/LED/Plasma/O-L ED/Q-LED and so on, which are common nowadays, you have a ‘small’ problem. T o get get one still frame from Interlaced recordings you actually have half of the total resolution.
260 of the 540 picturelines at a rate of 50Hz that is. 25Hz for each ‘set’ of lines. So to make it progressive, a ‘full frame’, you need two frames. The first frame with 260 lines en the second frame with the next 260 lines. So, if you have a new camera shot, the new ‘half set of lines’ and the old camera shot with the other half set of old picturelines mixed together make a rather blurry full-frame. Nowadays the ‘minimum’ quality is Full HD [1920×1080 pixels], 4K [3940×2160 pixels] and 8K [7880×4320 pixels] Progressive framerate flatscreens
That’s one of the main reasons why older tape-recordings are never crystal clear and super sharp. You also have to consider the tape degradation. Over the years this gets worse and worse until there’s not much left over to see but some crappy images with a lot of snow.
This was all before the digital tape variants. And they had the same maximum quality. But one advantage, if proper configured, you had 25 progressive frames instead of 50 interlaced frames. And because these tapes are less old you also have less degradation.
Then there is the max. filesize of our blogprogram. It’s limited at 2mb.
That’s a bummer, but it is what it is.