Can anyone help identify which '80s VHS camera was used to film th

[alexjoy]

Hi there to everyone! By chance I found this forum via Google search, and as I am trying as well to find a '80s VHS camcorder expert. I have an identification issue related to a camera from the '80s. Most likely could be a VHS one but can be as well as VHS-C. Can anyone tell me or recognise which type/brand camera filmed this images judging after the way it displays clock/date on the right side below of the screen? Here is a link: https://www.youtube....h?v=awWJn3QmDuM . I will appreciate any info on the camera which filmed these images. I can be contacted at alexjoy4ever@yahoo.com for any detail. This is an historichal project, and the images are from a modern revolution back in 1989 in Eastern Europe during the communism fall. Thanks in advance to however can help me. Alex

[Gerry]

TVR are a Spanish TV broadcaster.

So was this recorded directly off a TV transmission?

Cheers

Gerry

[paulears]

This is a bit silly. Somebody has commented on the placement of the text in the display as proof it is X. Frankly this is rubbish. We are looking at a period when video cameras were becoming popular, and there were dozens of brands, and each replaced their cameras extremely quickly - Sony and Panasonic typically had two models a year, and a range of four or five all the time. The positioning of the display text simply indicates a domestic user who didn't even know how to switch it off. JVC, with their OEM partners like Ferguson and Baird had that kind of display, but so did Sanyo. Sony from memory was not clustered like that, but Panasonic has some models in the cheaper end of their range that did that. You are looking at a likely pool of maybe 40 camcorders from the popular brands, plus even more if the equipment was imported from anywhere in the world. My geography is a bit iffy, but I assume the footage was shot in Romania? When I was there in the 80s, the country was so poor that they had no home grown video market at all - even TV was a luxury. Importation of electronics was banned, so it must have been somebody there as a visitor, so you have to add in foreign branding too. There's simply no way to identify video in this way.

 

Back then, I handled practically every bit of video kit from cheap domestic to expensive commercial kit, and the displays were all extremely similar - so similar I suspect many shared the technology. Sony, JVC and Matsushita back then all had other named manufacturers rebadging products, or incorporating identical chassis and boards.

[sleah]

Paul is 100% correct IMHO too.

 

The video has a 'look' of VHS about it. I'd expect VHS-C to be a tad worse, but really it's impossible to say.

 

Equally, it could easily be 8mm.

 

There was also SVHS, SVHS-C and Hi-8 but it looks too much like the 240 line resolution than the 400 line of Hi8 or SVHS.

 

I've used Panasonics with an identical display to that, so they are a definate possibility.

[paulears]

VHS-C never showed any difference in image quality on the ones I used - just rotten rewind speed!

 

He's posted this topic all over the video forums too - along with extra material shot on different cameras on the same subject, and the material comes from the state broadcaster. Not sure what is going on, to be honest.

[sleah]

I noticed on the video, that the broadcaster logo has been overlaid on to a copy of the footage, which has then been uploaded. A couple of times the 'tape' rewinds and pauses with the associated loss of vertical hold, yet the logo doesn't so much as flicker...

So it was either added in realtime as the tape was captured or simply overlaid on to the digital 'rushes' rather than being added during editing - unless the 'rewinds' were deliberately left in the 'edit' :blink:

[Dave m]

The only difference in full size and C format VHS was the cassette size Not in picture quality Same with the s-vHS version

I can't think for the life of me why the camera model is so interesting, but it's not my video/project

[paulears]

I'd assume the ident was simply the usual overlay on the output. It seems such a strange project, with no conceivable end product, apart from youtube hits on the video clips.

 

What strikes me is that I went to Romania a few times before the Dictator was toppled, and the concept of any video recording on foreign equipment used publicly, by state sponsored sources was unbelievable. The public at that time had access to such a narrow selection of electronics - maybe, if they were lucky, a car radio! Foreigners shooting video would have been seriously dangerous. I remember once the plane landing, and on the steps, one UK passenger took a photo. A Russian equipped soldier ran up - yelled no photos, and opened the camera, and ripped out the film, like a spy movie. We disembarked with machine guns pointed at us. They still had steam trains, and everyone drove the same model car - the only state approved model, based on the old Renault, made by Dacia. Weird to see a car park full of the same car, but yellow ones with red doors, where old ones had been used for parts. I became quite good at spotting the secret police, and spotting the locals avoiding them. The idea of a national with a video camera back then was impossible unless the person was linked to the state, and while I have no doubt the state recorded these events, the broadcast would have been after the Dictatorship ended. It was a bit scary back then to a visitor, but I actually had a bit of fun with the system, while feeling sorry for the people. You could buy Coke, but only with dollars or stirling. Their own people could not hold onto foreign currency and didn't have passports. Leaving the country with piles of their money that I could not change because I bought it on the black market meant spending it at the airport - and the only thing you could buy with it was oranges and salami!