Camcorder, More Like Camcord-RW (It's A Disc Joke)

I've seen at least ten thousand videos about videotape and a thousand about discs but I've never seen a single mention of disc-based video recording in my life. Here's all the mentioning you'll ever need on the subject.
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Chapters:
00:00 Intro
00:17 Problems with Videotape
07:14 The Digital Option
08:49 Into The Digital Millenium
12:43 Disc Camcorders: A New Hope
14:23 Form Factor Musical Chairs
15:56 Media Handling! (AKA Caddyshack)
27:29 DVD Functions
27:39 Video Test
29:01 Still Photography??
30:23 Disc Friends With Disc Benefits
33:03 Watchin' Discs On The Teevee
35:16 The Finalization Countdown
42:13 Dreaded Simulacra (Power Cords)
43:36 Disc Camcorders: The Downsides
46:49 DVD Bitrates
48:04 DVD Codec Video Tests
50:00 DVD-RAM!!!!!!!!!
55:54 Apologies To Caddies
56:43 The Blu-Ray Factor
58:05 Blu-Ray Video Tests
1:03:27 2010 DVD Camera Reveal
1:05:46 2010 DVD Camera Video Tests
1:07:47 CD Camcorders / VideoCD
1:10:32 CD Mavica
1:13:13 Professional Discs?
1:15:28 Yes! Professional Discs!
1:20:11 XDCAM PFD Video Test
1:23:05 The End Of Evangelion

[@ColinHuth]

This is why you watch the whole way through, people. If you don’t get to the 1-hour mark, you miss out on Theoretical Blu-Ray Dad™.

[@christopherhenderson3715]

This is my new favorite made up guy™

[@Randy14512]

I come back and watch this video just for that segment

[@Roxor128]

I've got to admit, it is a pretty cool scenario.

[@mndlessdrwer]

I also love theoretical Gadget Dad. He's the kind of geek we nerds wish we had the confidence to be. Unabashedly displaying his love of weird tech in public while making people feel incredibly awkward about things that are given out of enthusiasm for the tech and good will that they know for a fact they will never use, but will feel indescribable guilt for tossing. What a legend.

[@hentosama]

Godspeed to Blu-Ray Dad o7

[@taldmd]

You know a video is great when after 84 minutes of runtime, you feel like you spent 5 minutes watching, and you want more. Congrats man for your great work.

[@CathodeRayDude]

awesome! that's exactly what I'm aiming for, haha. thank you so much!

[@csorrows]

@@CathodeRayDude Wow, I did not realize that I'm an hour in. How the hell did you do this Ray? It's some kind of dark magic.

[@Rowlesisgay]

hey. im mad/j you stole my reply idea.

[@slickstretch6391]

39:00 "You have to finalize it, mom. Like I told you last time..." I felt this in my soul.

[@UnbornApple]

I’ve waited my whole life to hear those five special words: Let’s talk about disc caddies.

[@gianni_schicchi]

My Grandpa worked for IBM and had a PS/2 system at home. The first CD-ROM with SCSI, all these disc caddies and jewel cases. I remember being so proud when I was allowed to change the discs in the caddy myself. Needed to play F-15 Strike Eagle. I learned to hack on that system, changing random letters in the save files to give myself promoted ranks and new missions. Ah, disc caddies.

[@kaitlyn__L]

I know they’re so bad, but yet I’m still drawn to them…

[@rayoflight62]

It was all fault of Plextor, caddies were their idea of professional. Creative Labs broke the ice.

[@SixArmedSweater]

I adore disk caddies. They look so futuristic.

[@carlklitzke9455]

Circa 1994 my elementary school computer lab had CDROM drives that used caddies. The CD software we had access to was shared amongst the lab, so using caddies made sense.

[@tOSdude]

My father didn't quite live the blu-ray camera fantasy, but he did edit footage of my elementary school Christmas concerts with a video toaster, and burn them to DVDs which were then sold by the school.

[@sn1000k]

Endless cool points at no cost to you

[@vwestlife]

Out of the blue, my coworker told me today he was looking for a DVD camcorder. I told him modern ones record onto SD cards, but he said he wanted something he could play on his TV as soon as he is done recording. I always thought of DVD camcorders as a kludge, but I guess there really was consumer demand for them after all?

[@mndlessdrwer]

Most televisions have USB ports and built-in media players. Tell him to just get a SD card to USB adapter. It's just so much easier.

[@Felamine]

​@@mndlessdrwer One of the first memory card based camcorders I bought recorded its video to a proprietary format that couldn't be played on anything, not even on VLC media player. The video files had to be run through a program that came with it to convert them to MP4, or I had to physically connect the camcorder to my TV through the HDMI port and play videos that way. Thankfully I now have a camcorder that records to a universally compatible format.

[@misium]

why don't tv have card readers - stupid

[@AllonKirtchik]

@@Felamine what was that?

[@rayoflight62]

@@misium TV have USB ports, to which you can connect a card reader. The problem with Smart TV, they use a SoC very similar to those in smartphones, running a version of Android OS. Under Android, the video codec is not executed from the software, but must be embedded into the SoC, which uses a dedicated hardware core (an accelerator) to decode the video stream from the file on the memory card. Cheap TVs with cheap SoC can only execute few video codecs (note: the codec used, is independent from the file extension). Only pricey TVs can decode all video formats. If you have one of those 50 inches $250 TVs, your best bet is to place a laptop with VLC connected to the TV to play ALL video files. The problem as I said - is the cheap TV utilise a $5 SoC, while an 888-style SoC, similar to those installed in flagship phones and able to decode everything, costs $50 at the factory door.

[@anthropic42]

For some reason I really love the composition in the scene where you’re watching yourself on the TV off the recorded DVD. The hat in the foreground makes the whole scene.

[@CathodeRayDude]

thank you, i am so proud of that shot

[@-Gadget-]

It was sort of like watching a "Cam" copy..... 🤔 Just glad he didn't get up to get more popcorn a quarter of the way through 🤣🤣🤣

[@xureality]

There's actually a reason why PFDs has the caddy/cartridge and BluRays doesn't: the coating that allows the bluray disc to even survive at all wasn't invented yet when PFDs was released. For CDs, the layer that holds the data is a coating that is just below the label. that's why early CDs rot so easily; when the label becomes damaged or wasn't a perfect hermetic seal, air gets in and rots things. On DVDs, they sandwiched the data layer in between two half thickness polycarbonate discs. They can't do that on blurays because the disc itself was deemed too optically imperfect to cram 23 gigs of data onto, so they made the bottom layer 0.1mm thick. as opposed to a cool 0.6mm on DVDs. This means that light scratches could penetrate the layer, thus ruining the disc. Thus PFDs came in caddies. And then when TDK figured out a scratch resistant "hard coating" they didn't need a caddy anymore and the hard coating was written into the bluray standard and the rest is history.

[@CathodeRayDude]

that's REMARKABLE. thank you for this info, I wish I'd had it. I actually forgot to include a snip from the blu-ray spec that I'd found that outright stated that the caddy probably would not survive into the released spec, but this clarifies *why*.

[@ArceusShaymin]

@@CathodeRayDude It might be a good idea to pin this comment - it's really relevant to the blu-ray talk at the end and might get buried in the future otherwise.

[@thetechgenie7374]

The PDW camcorder, I remember those, as use to service those when they were beat out on the field. Yep you beat me to explaining the reason for the caddies for the PFD disc's in a nutshell. They actually had quad layer did that could store up to 128gb. Never made it to consumer market as prohibitively expensive at the time as higher quality components and coating was required to eliminate caddy for reason you stated ready. I actually still have the PDW-F30 desktop Recorder. Thank God for SxS cards which replace the Panasonic P2 cards. Hitachi did make a couple Blu-ray consumer camcorders but wasn't successful as SD and HDD camcorders took over by then.

[@llMarvelous]

@@CathodeRayDude A little bit offtopic, but it just fun to notice, that trough out the history many improved formats of different media had eventually envolved, but they never had a chance to shine, because there were already another format on the way... And pretty much till recent 10 years, all the media that came out was unfinished in some way, and exacly by the time manufacturers finally figured out how to make some media format reliable - its already been too late so ironical and sad in some sence By the way, do u remember DataPlay? It was just nuts - 500Mb on 32mm disk, for such density it`s like 25Gb for 120mm disk in 2001, not to mention that they were going to launch 7Gb version of this 32mm disk later, that translates to at least 300Gb for 120mm disk, and all this for single layer (but double side)

[@user-yg4kj2mf1p]

HD-DVD has the data layer at the same depth as DVD, and takes a hit in capacity as a result. That was the main physical difference between the two formats, the wavelength of the laser was the same.

[@gay_milhouse1160]

I hope Blu-ray dad exists. I hope he’s doing well.

[@Helladamnleet]

I can kind of see it too. A bunch of other parents being legit stoked to have the footage, but literally never watching it and eventually throwing the disc away 20 years later.

[@karlramberg]

He has now uploaded 312 hours of soccer practice from 2006 to 2012 to his KZbin channel. He has 3 subscribers and 81 views. Life is good.

[@Kellanium]

"I could probably mix this in with my regular footage and you wouldn't notice. In fact, I did." A plot twist worthy of the twilight zone. Or maybe a Saw movie, with that montage.

[@TimDAnnecy]

"They knew what was coming and they didn't want to wait. And who could blame them?" Hidden sci-fi manifesto right there. The last 2 minutes of this video are pure gold.

[@hanchymanchy5680]

"You know like how people will just leave their dishes dirty for like a whole -" 😎 he's gonna say week " -day, " 😰

[@chrism6952]

week? I left a dirty rolling pin out from christmas until easter since I didnt need it in between.

[@Minimelkav]

Oh! the joys of DVD finalization! At a previous employer, we actually ended up "bundling" our DVD camcorders with a rolling cart containing two DVD-DL burners. The full-size burners could finalize a disc in ~10 seconds, rather than the 20 minutes of the internal mini DVD drive. And of course we needed two burners to allow for continuous operation ;)

[@user-yg4kj2mf1p]

Unfortunately, finalization is necessary since formats such as Audio CD and DVD-Video only allow for one table-of-contents (and you can only create that TOC once, and can't add data afterwards). Recorders workaround the TOC problem by writing recording info in a special area of the disc (called the Program Memory Area) and then creating the TOC when you press "finalize". What's infuriating is the spec could've allowed for multisession discs (with multiple TOCs) but doesn't.

[@user-yg4kj2mf1p]

I mean, I get why Audio CD doesn't allow it, since it wasn't a thing back then, but multisession was a thing long before DVD-Video existed (first defined in 1990), so there was no reason for the DVD-Video spec to not have it. You could even replace files (such as the DVD menu) with multisession! It was left out because of the bonehead assumption DVD-Video would always be "authored", never recorded.

[@adamreid5901]

From what I recall, the reason they tried to make consumer blu-rays use caddy's was because at the time they didn't have the fancy scratch resistant coating that blu-ray would end up with.

[@Mister_Brown]

which still sucks and gets damaged way more easily

[@adamreid5901]

@@Mister_Brown ok

[@user-yg4kj2mf1p]

Fun fact: The reason Blu-Rays even need the special scratch-resistant coating is because the data is so close to the surface of the disc. HD-DVD has the data at the same depth as DVD, but this comes with a hit on capacity (which is why HD-DVD has less capacity than Blu-Ray despite using the same wavelength laser as Blu-Ray).

[@nomodz4real]

Over an hour of camcorder talk? This got me to be a patron.

[@CathodeRayDude]

whoop whoop! glad you dig it!

[@doctacorrecciones]

Hey, @@CathodeRayDude, we need more videos of you going nuts about stuff!

[@FliesLikeABrick]

yeah I hope this longer-form content doesn't end up being shoved onto a second channel

[@josh_dick]

I’m guessing unfinalized discs suffered from the XKCD “now there are even more standards” problem. Probably, in the amount of time it would have taken for manufacturers to agree on a new standard for DVD players to access arbitrary clips without a DVD table of contents as the bridge standard, optical media, or at least DVD, was already becoming obsolete.

[@albertoamatucci6167]

Speaking of standards: after 16 years, I still have troubles with a single multi-session DVD. The entire content is viewable only on one very old computer.

[@josh_dick]

@@albertoamatucci6167 I've learned to not even bother with multi-session DVDs for this reason. I wonder if tools like Nero Burning ROM had their own arbitrary multisession format that was nonstandard/different than that of Windows.

[@FennecTECH]

Different companies implimented multisession discs in different ways. Finalizing is adding the universal TOC that turns it into a classic DVD. I remember using NERO express to write multi session discs it was magic But it was anyones guess weather it would work on any spesific computer

[@misham6547]

I think that camera just buffer the timestamps to an internal eprom, which would leave no information on the disk, but I have no proof

[@theblah12]

It’s weird because MP3-CDs are a thing (basically just CD-ROMs) and can be used on basically every player, if you’ve ever burned some MP3s onto a disc and managed to play it on a standard CD player, then it’s using that standard (which is basically just defining how a CD player should handle a bunch of MP3 files). There’s even a pretty large library of MP3-CDs, usually spoken word stuff like audio books that are too long to fit in 80 minutes of audio. Would have assumed the same thing would be true for DVDs?

[@vwestlife]

I recognize that footage of recording and editing Internet video in 2001. :-) And Sony attempted to bridge the gap with Cassette Memory, a microchip in MiniDV and MicroMV tapes which would store the times, thumbnails, and titles of each scene on the tape, allowing (somewhat) more rapid access to your footage. And with DV's time code, professional editing workstations could play back clips from the tape in a programmed order, and with frame-accurate timing, considerably easing the burden of editing video in the era before computer-based non-linear editing.

[@KRAFTWERK2K6]

It's a shame this wasn't used more often. Chip on MiniDV tapes could have been great like for storing camera profiles for cameras like the Pansonic DVX100/A/B. But at least you could save that as DataDump on a normal Mini DV tape. And as someone who worked with Linear Editing on tape machines (Betacam SP, Digibeta, HD-CAM, HD-CAM SR and DV Cam) i really learned to appreciate the existence of Timecode back then for that :P It's awesome to do insert cuts frame & timecode correct. Something i could only dream of when editing my own videos on a consumer VHS deck. (edit: removed typos)

[@MickeyMishra]

@@KRAFTWERK2K6 I remember buying the tapes but then realized that they literally didn't do anything in my Panasonic consumer device even though it had the little recording pins for it it. doesn't seem like it actually did anything

[@KRAFTWERK2K6]

@@MickeyMishra Not many cameras used that anyway. It's like Time- & Date stamp on MiniDisc recordings that was saved when you had a MD recorder / walkman who supported that. Most MD decks didn't have it. Same with 20bit or 24bit ATRAC encoding. It was possible but not every MD device could do that. But they all could downsample 20 or 24bit recordings to normal 16bit playback. So the recording was always made sure to be compatible. That goes for normal recordings. Not talking about NetMD.

[@MickeyMishra]

@@KRAFTWERK2K6 wait are you telling me that minidisc did 24-bit recordings? I never knew that! that's something I'm going to have to look into and honestly it's way past minidiscs prime and I've already decided to just go ahead and keep my collection of CDs and of course music on their various hard drives. I literally just use Spotify for just about everything these days and a micro USB for anything that I need to do serious testing or listening.. I remember buying the so-called 20 bit CDs HDCD's for just the reason that my computer would play back the files with the hdcd logo/ unfortunately I really didn't hear very much more Fidelity but again I didn't have the equipment to really do so at the time either even my headphones couldn't tell the difference between the two recordings. it took me I think about another 10 to 15 years to finally get a system that was capable of actually providing that sort of resolution so I could actually hear it. but the noise floor and everything that's required in order to hear at that bit depth and the recording as well is pretty rare for me where I can on every single instance audibly pick out the differences. I used to think there was something wrong with my ears but then I became very thankful that there wasn't. I'll see if I can try to look around for a 24 bit player because that really would be kind of interesting to see how that would work

[@KRAFTWERK2K6]

@@MickeyMishra yes ATRAC wasn't restricted to 16 bit only but also allowed 20 and 24 bit resolution. It was possible but not many manufacturers used that potential. NetMD and HiMD didn't have that anymore i think. So if you recorded HiMD with lossless audio it was PCM 44,1khz 16bit. Just like CD and basically what normal MD could have been since the beginning. If you wanna try MD with higher resolution, you may look for a stationary MD Deck by Sony or a portable Sharp MD walkman.

[@zacksstuff]

The one missing link between here and modern camcorders is hard disk camcorders. I remember really wanting one back in the day, because _woah 80 gigs of standard definition video_

[@xureality]

I saw one at the mall and went "80 gigs? Shit! That's half the space of my hard drive in a camcorder!" To be fair, I was using a pretty old laptop at the time.

[@rxgtv]

@@xureality 160 gb isint that bad lol

[@zacksstuff]

@UnluckyFridays are they using 2.5" laptop drives or 1.8" iPod drives? I wonder if anyone's ever bothered flashmodding one of them.

[@rxgtv]

@@zacksstuff seems like 1.8" going off the size

[@bootmii98]

@UnluckyFridays I have plenty of 120 and 160 GB 2.5" sata mechanical hard drives

[@oasntet]

Yay bluray soccer dad. Living his best life. On VCD: In the early 00s I had a really cheap DVD player that I got because it was hackable to remove region blocking (which I never needed) but incidentally supported VCDs. I burned a ton of anime episodes to CDRs in that format, and they actually looked okay. Oddly, it would only play certain CDRs, and there was never any logic to which ones it could read; I had the most success with some Art Logic white-label rebrands, but even they didn't know what the original disc was or why it worked.

[@alibizzle2010]

I pity the engineer from Sony's storage department. Every day the engineers from the sensor department be like "Bigger! Faster!"

[@whatr0]

it's a fate they deserve for enabling the continuation of memory stick

[@LonSeidman]

I am one of those hyper nerds. My camcorder had audio dubbing capabilities:)

[@rxgtv]

yo!!!!!

[@johnfisher2595]

Hyper Nerds Unite!

[@AshtonCoolman]

Lon!

[@pjf674]

RE the finalization question... Does the camcorder create and save the table of contents data off disc? I'd be curious to know if it is possible to film 5 mins on a DVD cam, take the disc out w/o finalizing and put it in a different camcorder to play that clip and continue filming on the same disc.

[@realJoshiBOI]

I have a Quasar VM-22 with audio dubbing capabilities, but I haven't figured out how yet

[@ted_stevens]

I like the prominently placed tokimeki memorial box and densha de go(?) controllers next to the TV. Gotta show off when you've got good taste.

[@kathrynelrod5570]

your sense of humor in these videos is just perfect. writing, delivery, graphics, it's amazing and I love it.

[@CathodeRayDude]

thank you so much!

[@idontusenumbers]

Finalizing creates a standards compliant index. Before finalization, no doubt the camcorders are using a proprietary index which only the camera supports. The un-finalize must be creating supplemental indexes maybe using some sort of no-op sleds on the DVD menus they create which fill from the back with additional skip pointers. There were a number of 'packet writing' formats that supported modifications without finalizing but they were late to the format and not baked into the original standards I don't believe; they needed proprietary 'drivers' to use but eventually windows supported some of these natively. Finalizing a file index takes a lot less time than building out a DVD thumbnail menu which is probably what it's taking all that time to do. Maybe It's baking in DVD-standards-compliant video headers into what were up until that point were naked mpeg streams plus the proprietary index held elsewhere.

[@bootmii98]

Yes, I too remember Mount Rainier

[@NillKitty]

This is exactly what i was thinking. Either that or the camera erases the last X tracks from the RW disc (enough to clobber the final index) and then rewrites the tail end of what was there and a new index.

[@mndlessdrwer]

Fantastic comment! Thanks for taking the time to share!

[@gens0kyo]

Ty

[@trinitron384]

As a camcorder collector, a video like this is a dream, not thought to ever be found... Thank you so much for the amazing A/V videos!

[@CathodeRayDude]

glad to hear it! i'm making this stuff for The Rest Of Us as it were, hahaha

[@itachi1145]

Dude, I distinctly remember my local news station had cameras with dvd drives with the clear disk tray. I remember seeing the dvd logo on the disk they put in it because it was before my family got a DVD player and I remember my young self finding it really cool. There is no way you made up that memory, I remember the same exact thing.

[@CathodeRayDude]

oh man now I gotta find one, aaaaghh

[@tolentarpay5464]

I remember seeing a Hollywood blockbuster with something like that; Die Hard or something - it was red, I think? Maybe that was a prop...

[@skom714]

those video cd things is how like, i watched vast majority of legal media as a teenager in poland, bc like every magazine had like a movie attached with it as a freebie, and like, i haven't been to A Store in a while but I'm absolutely convinced some paper trash aimed at senior demographics still do it, i had to sit down my mom and explain that the format sucks ass and i can just download a bd rip of anything she wants

[@CathodeRayDude]

that's absolutely amazing

[@RingoBuns]

I remember as a kid we had a camcorder with this format and the tiny RW discs and after we stopped using the camcorder, I used the discs to transfer all sorts of data back and forth between computers and locations and such since at the time, USB sticks were to expensive (and my iMac g3 only had limited USB slots) but DVD burners were fairly common!

[@Shadowcat]

I remember that too. Majority of magazines aimed at women had these movies and all of them had these split into 2 or more discs. Titanic was spilt into 3 if memory serves me well I still don't know why. Like, price difference wasn't probably that great and to play VCD you still have to had a DVD player.

[@Barabyk]

Yup, VCD was THE format for some time back in Poland. It was everywhere. But mostly ‘freebies’ in magazines.

[@juliaz12345]

I was a nerd in the TV lab of my high school back in 1994, starting on prosumer equipment on the SVHS format. Once I hit my senior year in 98, we got a mini DV camcorder that had inputs for our editing devices, but they wouldn't allow us to use them because it might damage the mechanism in the camera. I loved the format, though. It was so crisp and clear compared to SVHS. Then, we became the first school in the area to have Avid video editing software and it was amazing! With the use of my titling box, I was able to produce some pretty nice stuff back then. I never got into DVD camcorders, but I definitely used DVD-R, DVD-RW, DVD+R, DVD+RW and CD-RW disks. I never knew DVD RAM existed until much later. You got me to watch a video about a pretty tame topic for 1½ hours. Well done.

[@dziban303]

I also graduated HS in '98. However, we barely had air conditioning at my high school, let alone prosumer recording equipment. Ah, the South™

[@kostis2849]

Hello, I am your friendly AVID CSR (Customer Support Representative ) of the time. But why would you have to use a titling box, when you already had theTitle Tool?

[@juliaz12345]

@@kostis2849, because I wanted more sophisticated titles than I could get from Avid. I also used then for sports productions.

[@ClusterShart]

Easiest way to describe the 8mm disks is GameCube size. They’re the only thing beyond the camcorders that really used the format

[@criticalyeet1916]

Actually no there was a Mini CD for like CD singles

[@Charlesb88]

Mini CD formats where used for several applications such as CD music singles, CD business cards/bootable business card (these where mini CD’s with semi square format that works in any tray loading CD-rom optical drive), computer Hardware driver software distribution (as a replacement fir floppy driver discs). There was also miniDVD discs which where used for video singles.

[@Roxor128]

You missed a zero. It's 80mm. 8mm would be smaller than a MicroSD card (which are 10*15mm).

[@Garbaz]

59:24 Going by the Japanese Wikipedia Entry, Hitachi's "Wooo" branding is supposed to stand for the "Unconscious expression of surprise when seeing something beautiful" (I presume what you more commonly would write as 'Woah' in English); And/or is supposed to stand for the "Wo~" from the English words "Wonder", "World standard" and "Worthwhile" with I guess the three "o"s for the fact that it's three words... Though there unfortunately is no source given for this. It was primarily a brand name for plasma televisions, but also was applied to digital camcorders and DVD recorders. 【Woooに込められた意味は、美に対する無意識的な感嘆の発声としての「ウー」と驚きがある、世界の新しい基準である、高い価値があるという意味の英単語の「Wonder」「World standard」「Worthwhile」の3つの‘Wo～’という2つの意味から成る造語で、2001年8月からスタートした。 】 - ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wooo

[@CathodeRayDude]

that would honestly make sense. I also found Wooo applied to at least one feature phone!

[@simon5007]

Wow, I just watched almost an hour and a half of this, and didn't even realise! Great episode!

[@TheMoonSpoon]

The process of finalizing discs does remind me a bit of rewinding film. Including never developing some because "I can't just waste those three pictures"

[@chompers5568]

I think this channel could make any subject interesting. 90mins on a subject I have little interest but still highly enjoyable. If this channel doesn't end up with half million subscriber eventually then KZbin truly has lost its way.

[@corebreach]

As someone who grew up fascinated by video cameras and is still keen to learn about them, thank you for sharing with your incredible passion (& great scriptwriting skills) for this!

[@maxwellcrafter]

DVD RAM is the perfect format, can't change my mind

[@user-xu7rp3kw3z]

fellow technology connections viewer?

[@Rudofaux]

SD? It's small enough to fit on your finger nail. Easily compatible with multiple devices. From smart phones to PCs. It's read write speed is faster than DVD-ROM. It can also be used as a SSD with the right adapter & know-how.

[@maxwellcrafter]

@@Rudofaux But hear me out, DVD RAM can also fit on your finger nail if you are good at balancing things ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[@Rudofaux]

@@maxwellcrafter Touché.

[@rxgtv]

@@maxwellcrafter lol

[@joannaatkins822]

This whole video was fascinating, I'm so glad I watched the whole thing! I love how you admit to what you don't know, speculate but say that's what you're doing, and correct yourself if you've gotten details wrong in the past. These are very rare, valuable traits!

[@CathodeRayDude]

Thank you so much, I'm trying my best to do this right!

[@zacharyhunter8340]

Your content is brilliant! Nobody else makes as thorough in depth explorations of such niche and specific camcorder tech topics like DVD camcorders or P2 media. Love it!

[@CathodeRayDude]

thank you so much! i made it for The Rest Of Us lol

[@cuteuiboy]

Loved the simulated Video CD demonstration. I bought a Philips CD-I along with the optional Video CD Decoder Cart. I had the blurriest commercially available copies of Star Trek VI, Forrest Gump, Silence of the Lambs, and Naked Gun. The only thing that would have made your demo even better would have been to add some ABYSMAL macroblocking artifacts. I swear when scenes changed or the action ramped up, it was just a sea of giant blurry blocks floating across the screen. Oh the memories!

[@sjogosPT]

Low quality digital video sucks. I prefer watching vhs than a low res digital video with artifacts.

[@user-yg4kj2mf1p]

This, again. Philips wanted VCD players to be able to use existing "1x" read mechanisms from Audio CD players, so they capped the bitrate to 1376 kbps of constant bitrate (CBR) inclusive of audio (224kbps). This meant that you couldn't give complex scenes more bitrate, every second was capped at 1152kbps bitrate (this also meant the 80min runtime was the runtime you always got, not a theoretical maximum).

[@gorillazfan85]

A neat fact I always found interesting is that non-caddy Bluray discs were used in Casino Royale (at least as props) for the security camera backup media. Bluray as a home media format just barely hit the market when the movie came out so for many it would have been their first time seeing them, as it was mine.

[@kaitlyn__L]

Someone else brought this up, I was thinking about it. That legit got me interested in BDs, ah the power of product placement (especially when the studio got it for free from their parent company…)

[@audiodood]

My man made an hour and a half long documentary about camcorders with movie-level production quality for youtube... mad respect

[@DubioserKerl]

Take my premature Thumbs Up solely for that video title!

[@CathodeRayDude]

oh my god i absolutely did NOT intend to release it with that name but i guess this is how the cookie crumbled. it's locked in now. i'm riding that name to eternity

[@scheibenhonig360]

I hope you never DISContinue using such titles ;)

[@dbozan99]

At the end of the video (1:23:42) you show the Rave:MP, a music player that uses clik disks. I bought one of them off of eBay about a year ago. It's a fun little novelty. The biggest flaw with it, IMO, is that it buffers data and spins the drive down just to spin it back up again after 20-30 seconds to buffer some more; this doesn't sound like a big deal, but the drive spins pretty fast which makes a fairly quiet, but somehow also really obnoxious, high pitched whirring sound while spinning. If the drive were always spinning, the your brain would just fade the droning into the background after a while, but since it keeps starting and stopping it's really noticeable. The last time I used it on the bus, the guy next to me was clearly very puzzled by the noise but he couldn't quite tell where it was coming from.

[@CathodeRayDude]

that's absolutely delightful. thank you so much for this

[@pokepress]

AVCHD is a pretty neat format. On a full-size DVD, you have enough space for a movie-length HD video. I have a few movies captured off my DVR that way.

[@frostech3149]

I was at a thrift store looking for blank CDs for cheap and they had a case of 100 CDs for 10 dollars and 5 CD-RWs for 10 dollars. I went with the CD-RWs and it turns out my drive couldn't read them. And when I went back, the 100 CDs were gone. Which is why I use cassette tapes

[@endlesswanderer1753]

This is the second time I've watched this and man... the dedication you put into your videos. Not just the obvious script work and time you put into structuring the entire thing, or all the footage and editing, or post-edit comments in the video itself. But straight up the followup work. Timestamps, hearting comments, responding to comments... you put a lot of work into this stuff and holy crap I respect you for it. I hope you make enough from this to make it worth it, because I love you.

[@CJT3X]

Thank you for doing so much awesome research, and I definitely didn’t notice when you swapped out the footage - though mobile KZbin compression likely hides a lot of the flaws when you aren’t actively looking for them.

[@andrewkowalczyk1156]

go figure that the channel with random broadcast video production hardware would have some of the highest production quality on youtube (but seriously these are awesome thank you!!!)

[@frankdogau]

And BOOM you finally covered XDCAM! I launched XDCAM for Sony in Australia. It's still widely used in news and production here in Aus. I produced some environmental testing videos about the toughness of the format. I'll find it and share it with you.

[@CathodeRayDude]

haha, yeah! it took me a while to find one I could afford! I would be very interested in those, if you want to email me when you find them, it's cathode ray dude at gmail.

[@frankdogau]

@@CathodeRayDude hey did you get my email?

[@duncathan_salt]

To be fair, Dazzles (and in a more contemporary setting, El Gatos) are still useful for live capture of composite video! I've organized enough Melee tournaments to be familiar with em :P

[@ravewulf]

What you said about the professional market was pretty true for the prosumer market, too. I used to work at a local public access studio recording local government meetings onto DVD decks (before we got a video server) in the studio but not for school events and other field work. We transitioned straight from DV cameras (Canon GL2) to HDD and flash based cameras with no disc based cameras at all.

[@LaskyLabs]

I still can't believe I actually sat through and watched the premiere live. God that was fun.

[@postersm7141]

Just found your channel the other day and I’m glad I did. I can tell you put a lot of time and effort into it and you have another sub!

[@KevinError]

This video is like a Christmas gift I didn't know I wanted. Thank you.

[@thefireguy22]

YES new upload! been in dire need of a new CRD vid to binge. then i saw this one is FEATURE LENGTH! yes pls

[@concr3t3]

Dude I love your "random finger scrabbling to show the caddy is caddying" shots. :D

[@CathodeRayDude]

I had intended to include two or three of those but only found out I'd forgotten the others after release, hahaha

[@s3vR3x]

great vid. its very rare i sit through an hour and a half youtube, and i went through this all the way and enjoyed

[@divzero_again]

Big Disc Energy

[@CathodeRayDude]

i was GOING to, i was GOING TO name this "These Cameras Have Big Disc Energy" but now it's too laTE

[@CathodeRayDude]

(also, eh, i guess maybe not a mildly lewd joke directly in the video title)

[@rpavlik1]

Hey, you tell "tape has been gone a long time by now" to my mini-DV camcorder and dual G4 mirrored drive door! (Yeah I did the dual deck thing in middle school, for condensing news for school announcements.) May actually still have the kiddo use that... My parents had an 8mm tape camcorder that was like that view cam kinda: big screen, a few inches thick, with the actual lens and sensor off to the side on a pivot. Very strange ergonomics best summarizes as "use a tripod". Galaxy brain: an SD card adapter is just a caddy for a micro SD card. But at least it helps you not lose it...

[@Vorpalsword138]

Knocking it out of the park with the presentation my dude. Love the production value that goes into your vids

[@tonetiyahoo]

Hi!! This is just the best video Ive ever seen about these lovely cams!!! Thxs from Spain!!

[@BenJonesVideographer]

BBC's Top Gear shot on XDCam Disk from 2006 to 2011 I believe, starting with the Polar Special. They still used it even before they made the full leap to HD in around 2008/2009.

[@joman66]

Love your camcorder-type content of your channel man! Ever thought about doing a retrospective of 3-D camcorders of the early '10s?

[@CathodeRayDude]

I have, yeah! Haven't put much thought into it (I missed that entire era really) but it's definitely something I'd like to do

[@estebanalbanesi7922]

I just watched though the entire thing. Great great job. Keep doing this!!

[@Bou_Diran]

really enjoyed this odyssey of tech and all of the examples you use/edit into the video as usual~

[@DerTabak]

Your channel deserves wayy more subscribers, I love the content.

[@CathodeRayDude]

workin on it!

[@JetRun15]

I was hoping you would cover XDCAM (especially the HD version) and I am glad you did. I almost got myself a professional video camera that shot on XDCAM but realized, it wouldn't be logistical. Ended up getting a Sony HVR Z7, which had a memory recorder attachment you could put on it (to record to CF since it only records on HDV tapes). Kind of happy I went that route instead, but I do miss the "thumbnail" feature, which the XDCAM could do and my particular camera couldn't (due to limitations of the recording attachment unit itself). But then again, my camera seems to be the halfway point between recording on flash media and still tape formats. But now I am just rambling on. Great video!

[@staticfanatic]

i'm so glad youtube suggested this channel to me. CRD, your videos started off a bit rough around the edges, but this latest "season" is pure quality.

[@mikelawlerlawler4290]

love the way you come of on your videos. I've noticed those funny ass things you leave in the video, caught me off guard with the yawzuhhh!.

[@HamousIceCreamTruck]

I seem to remember that premiere had the ability to not only read miniDV footage off firewire, but also control the camcorder itself? Like rewinding, stopping etc. Sometimes i just think about that. Like the experience of clicking buttons in premiere which would put a tape mechanism in motion. Hitting "render" upon which the tape rewinds to the point in the footage where your proxies point to and starts playing back and fast forwards thru the cuts, as if driven by some black magic. Anyway, great video my man

[@StevenBradford]

This is correct.

[@CathodeRayDude]

Yep, 1394 AV/C does full remote control, it's upsetting to see "software" working so slowly. thanks for watching!!

[@Stjaernljus]

Video? On the internet? Huge if true.

[@iSleepDoc]

Pure genius!!! Jaw dropping presentation!!! Your command on this subject is second to none!! I watched it without even taking a breath ! Bravo👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏

[@thebiggestoneyouveverhad]

I can really dive into you're videos. Your narration is interesting, informative, and concise. Liked and subscribed.

[@CoolerQ]

IIRC some computer drives could indeed read unfinalized discs! Usually it was only drives that natively support DVD+/-RW. And there's also the whole concept of "sessions", where you could write the same file onto the disc multiple times. :) (Edit: I see you did eventually mention sessions.

[@Nabeelco]

Great video! Thanks! Holy CRAP it was long though. If I may request/suggest: I think a multi-part series would have worked better. Information fatigue kicked in at about the 30--40 minute mark, and I think the info would have been much more digestible as a 4-5 part series. Either way, thanks for putting so much time and effort into this. If the final product was 90 minutes, I can only imagine how many hours and hours of work went into this.

[@CathodeRayDude]

Thank you for watching! it took me a few weeks to write, shoot (two days plus several more hours of pickups), and edit this, and frankly by the time I was done I simply didn't know how long it was going to be - I don't really have the forethought to know how to break things up cleanly; but also, a number of people have specifically requested longer videos, so I'm experimenting.

[@Nabeelco]

@@CathodeRayDude Yeah, I can imagine! I've done some video work myself, and I know how much more work it takes to do something like this for just the footage alone, not counting the script writing, background work, research, etc... It's a massive job, and the finished product is really good and really shows the time and effort you put into it. Maybe if it was a two part series? Even if there was a somewhat un-natural hard cut with a quick recap at the end of pt 1 and what will get covered next? IDK. I'm just thinking from an audience consumption prespective, because it would be a shame for people to get fatigued and miss some of the good info if their attention doesn't last. Anyways. You've made good content, so I'm sure you'll figure out the best way. 😉🙂

[@RogerRHF]

Amazing hour long informative video about camcorders, thank you for all the effort and heart you put into making these videos. I know it must be quite time consuming, especially when it's over an hour long.

[@AlsCollectibles]

Wow man! You explain things very well.. very detailed! Thanks. Very professional

[@jakedelmastro]

CRD: "15 minute record times are unusable" 16mm camera: "Hold my beer"

[@jimmx2]

In my experience, during the early 2000s, dvd ram was just too expensive, i could get 100 dvd-r for price of 10 DVD-ram disc's and since had already spent several years burning cds that would fail 1/5 of the time during the burning process, i just assumed same thing would happen if i tried dvd-ram.

[@-Gadget-]

Nope, bought a DVD Ram recorder (Video Recorder for the TV), bought 3 ram disks, and never had even one failure. That was around the time I considered buying more at the R200 per pop disk, but realized there was absolutely no need, as they were so rock solid, so, just landed up with the 3 disks to record the TV shows for the week on to. 🤔🤷‍♂️ Ps. 1/5 seems like you may have had better quality disks than what was available to me, I had a 3/5 failure rate at some point. It got so bad, that I was going through a spindle of 50 a week and landing up with 10 or 15 usable copies 😂

[@fl0atpvnk]

I just found this channel yesterday and already im hooked

[@ericdelmar2618]

I recently found your channel, and damn, you're good. Excellent info (and frequently funny), smoothly and rapidly delivered, and garnished with quick inserts of trivia and other sidebars that enrich the video's satisfaction index. As for this vid. you've filled a gap in my camcorder knowledge that spans from hi-8 to smartphone, and I'm struck by the level of effort that I imagine must have been needed to weave this all together. I'm really looking forward to viewing a lot more of your vids, since I'm confident it will all be good, and worth my time (and a bit of Patreon). Thank you.

[@alibizzle2010]

That peel was worth waiting an hour for :D

[@CathodeRayDude]

it didn't quite click that i set up a reveal and then performed it an *hour later*. god i'm killing it at this game

[@MrSpacelyy]

Finalize is because that makes the disc standard. Dvd drives in pc can via software read unfinilized discs. It's just software that limits this.

[@DarronBirgenheier]

I didn't think I'd be able to watch a video about this subject for nearly 90 minutes, but you made it interesting enough for me to do so. Bravo!

[@DarronBirgenheier]

Keep up the good work, sir, and I look forward to your future videos.

[@ImeanFFS]

Yes-with-knobs-on to long-form content like this! Ten minute videos are great and all, but sometimes I really want to get my teeth into a subject. Love this!

[@SleepingCocoon]

excellent video - i'd say "as always", but this one especially so! i have a hard time paying attention for too long but this one had me all the way through. i still remember getting my first CD burner and struggling to figure out how the hell to "finalize" a disc to make it play in a CD player - nevermind that burned discs were such a crapshoot with so many of the players on the market when they first showed up. ... nice Tokimeki box!

[@itachi1145]

Look at captain nostalgia opening the floodgates with a fairly straight forward history lesson.

[@matthewpalmer9820]

thank you so much for making for making a movie length youtube video about crappy camcorders. I love your humor and editing. big swag to you

[@boowiebear]

Great video! Brought back memories. I totally forgot about disc finalizing! We are so spoiled today!

[@baaelectronics]

Great and informative video! For growing up with MiniDV and going straight to H.264 on SD cards (now shooting to CFast in ProRes on cinema cameras) and even writing DVD-Video discs back in the day, the DVD camcorder era is quite interesting to me. Perhaps you would be interested in making a dedicated video on the weirdness/difficulties of dealing with interlaced video on PC? I'm a big fan of 60fps playback but quality deinterlacing gets overlooked a lot when consumers deal with legacy formats.

[@DrGabber]

Great video! The weird 352 pixel wide resolutions are holdovers from VCD and SVCD. VCD was 352x240 and SVCD was 352x480.

[@knife-wieldingspidergod5059]

AHHH.... VCD such fond memories of watching bootlegged Asian horror movies back then, which, most can be found on BR today.

[@toastierbear9447]

Nice work on the video, u did lots of homework and it was a nice trip down memory lane

[@butchgarner3911]

lol "That's a lie..." love it! I m hooked on your videos! Thanks for sharing!

[@henryatkinson1479]

Well, I'll pour one out for that Mavica CD500... rest in peace.

[@LightTheUnicorn]

Throughly enjoyed this! Disc-based camcorders are utterly bizarre things and this was a great look at them. I only ever used a relatives DVD camcorder once and found it utterly infuriating, going back to my MiniDV one was a dream, some of the things noted here definitely have that make sense!

[@JustLarry315]

This is one of my new favorite channels. But it took 12 minutes to get to the DVD. Ugh. But I just realized this was a live. And it was very informative.

[@HouseOwl]

Been Watching For Years... Finally Subscribed!!!

[@chrism6952]

I have no idea why I watched this as Ive never owned or wanted a camcorder but it was still interesting. Honestly I have no interest in owning most of the stuff you do videos about and if I ever came across any of it I would probably just offer to send it to you for a video. Ive watched most of your videos at this point and they all make me nostalgic for stuff I never had or wanted at the time.

[@TimothyCizadlo]

I recognized the sony camcorder even with the tape on it, but I had an advantage - I sold them. Having worked in a big box store in the late aughts AVCHD DVD recorders were moderately popular due to their lower cost (both unit, and media) than BD camcorders. The problem was that they were competing against both legacy systems (DVD, MiniDV, ect), True Blue Ray (which they were distinctly winning against), Hard drive based units (spinning platters), and SD card units (which, so much as any format ended up winning, won). In the end, for a lot of people, the winning format was.... The phone in your pocket. Just as with point and shoot cameras, for the vast majority of people the best camcorder you could have is the one that you have with you at all times, even if the ergonomics are terrible.

[@grumpus811]

I just watched this a second time after a while. This is a masterpiece. You should release this on a DVD.

[@kelownatechkid]

As always, fantastic video. Really appreciate the details (all the clips). Also, love the hat :)

[@kelownatechkid]

DVD Ram was overpriced compared to just buying a giant stack of dvd-r

[@kelownatechkid]

I also have memories of such a pro camera (with a full size DVD)... strange