Videocámaras Sony Video 8

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How Video8 Camcorders Work

Camcorders swept onto the home video scene like a breath of fresh air. Vastly easier to use than 8 mm film cameras, the video camera, or camcorder, rapidly became a household name.

What Does Video8 Mean?

This was the first in a series of Handycam videotape formats from Sony. All three formats used similar 8 mm cassettes, and each revision was backwards compatible with its predecessor so that getting a new camcorder did not mean throwing away your existing collection of 8 mm tapes. The three formats were:

  • Video8: Introduced to compete with VHS-C, this format matched the video quality at approximately 240 lines but provided better sound.
  • Hi8: Shifting from ferric oxide to metal oxide allowed an increase in resolution to approximately 400 lines while retaining backwards compatibility with previous generation tapes.
  • Digital8: A complete format shift from analog to digital, Digital8 recordings were completely incompatible with Hi8, although the camcorder could use and play back Hi8 tapes as well as offering Video8 playback. This was an alternative to MiniDV that took advantage of the existing 8 mm user base.

What Features Do Camcorders Offer?

All camcorders offer the convenience of combining a camera with a video recorder, but a number of models such as the Sony CCD-TRV16 offered a number of additional features. Most of these features aimed to take advantage of the biggest strength of the format which was its immediate gratification. All you had to do was plug your Handycam into your TV and you could watch home videos as soon as you finished making them.

  • Optical Zoom: The TRV16 offers 18x optical zoom to bring things closer without losing resolution.
  • Digital Zoom: When optical isn't enough, digital options increase the maximum zoom to 180x.
  • NightShot: This feature uses two infrared LEDs for night-time illumination and lets you record videos in almost total darkness.
  • Titler: The camera features an internal titler that lets you add your own titles to scenes before taping.
  • Jacks: With both a headphone and a microphone jack you can both record sound and listen to what you're recording without being distracted by external sound.

Using a Camcorder

The basics of using a camcorder are very simple; you put the viewfinder to your eye and press record. As long as you have enough batteries and videotapes you can keep going as long as you want. Going with the Handycam size means you can carry the video camera almost anywhere, and the backwards compatibility means that shifting to a Hi8 Camcorder doesn't mean losing access to your existing library. There are also services that can transfer video from older analog recordings to digital formats that are accessible through a number of other devices.

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