Strange nobody invented these

[Marcello Mazzilli]

When I was a kid somebody invented fake tapes. You could connect a portable CD player through an audio jack and put the fake tape in your car stereo and listen to CDs where in theory you could only listen to tapes. Obviously was a transition thing but worked

Moving from tapes (Betacam, IMX, DV, HDCAM) to cards (CF, SD, etc..) nobody invented fake tapes that actually recorded the same digital stream (that is MPEG2 for IMX, MJPEG for DV, etc...) pmtp an SD card.Shouldn't be too complex and also could probably be done in the small space a MiniDV tape leaves, and certainly an HDCAM tape.

Wonder why nobody did it. We had to give away our wonderful cams while they could still work perfectly. Obviously there are external recorders.. but.. you know.. it's not the same thing

M.

[Oren Arieli]

The manufacturers would rather you buy a new camera than a new accessory. It's a bigger profit, and allows the marketing wars to continue.

[Marcello Mazzilli]

Well sure that's always the case but maybe a tape profucer coud have done it. It' s not complicated as the digital signal is already encoded and compressed

[Andrew Smith]

There would be a whole bunch of engineering issues why it hasn't been done.

For a start, video tape formats such as VHS and Mini DV employ a helical scan method whereas the cassette tape format had a stationery non-spinning head.

Even if you could, there are some other market based reasons that mean the product wouldn't sell.

Andrew

[Marcello Mazzilli]

You don't have to spin nothing.
Just let the cam think the tape is running

[Andrew Smith]

It's not a matter of having the tape running or appear to be running. Have a search on YouTube for a video on how these playback heads work.

Andrew

[Marcello Mazzilli]

I think hdcam and dv don't have drums (where tape goes round) but only one point contact heada

[Andrew Smith]

Those formats do have the spinning head.

It's safe to say that any tape format that gives a decent video image will use a spinning head / helical scan method as it's the only way of writing and reading the info fast enough without having great spools of tape going through at very high speed.

Andrew

[Marcello Mazzilli]

The point is not if the head spins or not... the head is in the camera!
The point is if the head inserts itself in the tape, creating a curve, like in VHS, or just spins next to the tape.
Remember we are simulating the tape not the head and we could do that just with elecronics... i think

_______(o)________ NO (like VHS)


________o________ YES (head is next to the tape but tapes runs straicght)

[Noa Put]

Originally Posted by Marcello Mazzilli

We had to give away our wonderful cams while they could still work perfectly.

You can still buy and use 10 to 15+ year old camera's if you want to but why? Do you miss the standard definition format so much that you want to go back to it? If you don't like the tape format and the realtime wait while transfering your data then just add a recorder to it. Don't understand what benefit the invention you are talking about would have.

[Marcello Mazzilli]

Hey. No need to make such a fuss. Was just an idea... for a transition period... that now is over anyway...
Something like this
Car MP3 Tape Audio Cassette Player Adaptor 3.5mm aux Cable For iPod iPhone 3G 4G | eBay

[Noa Put]

Not making a fuss, the remark from you that I quoted didn't make any sense to me because if your intention was to continue shooting with your old tape camera's you still could and even today, if your camera had a firewire port you could also just connect a external recorder to it. The technology was there at that time for easier transfers, what you are talking about now didn't exist then (small sd card) and making a modification now for a camera with codecs nobody is using anymore is something no manufacturer is going to invest to anymore because who's going to buy that? And why because even smartphones have better image quality today as those dv camera's more then a decade ago.

[Andrew Smith]

Marcello, I'm going to leave it at "it just isn't going to work" and that will be it for now. No more correcting from me.

Andrew