The VHS-C format was initially an idea to make portable VCRs much more lighter and smaller. It was introduced in 1982 with the JVC HR-C3 portable recorder, a year before the Betamovie.

My older brother had a few VHS-C units back in the day but I remember them being terrible compared to 8mm. My first camcorder was a second hand full sized VHS unit my grandad got me and I remember the joy of owning my first camera then later I got a Sony Video 8 XR unit in late 90’s and much preferred that format. Later I remember the wonderful new Digital 8 units going on sale and when my grandmother past away she left us all some money and with mine I traded my Video 8 XR unit in with my added money to get a shiny new Digital 8 unit in 1999 the Sony TRV310E with a massive flip out screen and the joys of playing old tapes and recording awesome digital picture on the cheaper HI8 tapes. Years later (about a month ago) I picked up that very same model off eBay and apart from the built in speaker sounding rather distorted for unknown reason it functions like new 😊 I use that to digitise all my 8 mm tapes now and customer tapes when the jobs come in.

Fascinating. Thanks! Glad to know the bloke who sold us a Video8 camcorder was telling the truth.

I cannoy but agree with every single statement you made here. I've been archiving Video8, Hi8 and Digital8 the past days and I didn't have any problems at all. I also tried to read a miniDVD but without initial success, but managed to recover a lot using IsoBuster, a nice piece of software that reads out discs sector by sector and is able to detect video and other data. The quality of the material was very poor indeed, but I have never been a fan of MPEG2 compression as it clearly is unable to record a lot of fine details in a single frame while encoding on the fly. Thanks for the nice video. Your happy face at the start was a warm welcome at five P.M. on this grumpy day I'm having. Thank you!

I used VHS-C quite a bit back in the day and never had an issue with tape slack. Very early versions of cassette did have an issue as there was no mechanism to lock the spools and stop them from winding themselves lose, however, as the cassette you demonstrated with, this was fixed by adding teeth to the spool and having it lock itself with a ratchet mechanism. Great video and comparison.

I was a 9 year old kid when my parents bought our first video camera, it was a Sony Hi8, and I remember being dissapointed because I wasn't able to play back the tapes on our VHS tabletop VCR using an adapter like my cousin's camera (a VHS-C, obviously), but later I discovered that I could record up to 2 hours, or even 4 in LP mode, while theirs only could record 30 minutes, or 1:30 hours in EP mode but drastically recuding not only video quality but audio fidelity as well, meanwhile mine had excellent video and audio quality no matter the recording speed I used, so I'm glad that my parents chose an Hi8 and not a VHS-C camcorder.

Luckily there is software out there that I use for customers with non finalized DVDs. It reads the blank disk and exports a mpeg file. A life saver

Thank you for your educational course on camcorders. I hadn't realized that so many types and formats were sold.

Ma-tsu-shi-ta with stress on "i"

Must share some comments on this videogenic subject... VHS-C, in the beginning (1984/85), with the sexy JVC GR-C1 was a historic leap into the future. A real camcorder that could actually replay its tapes instantly, unlike Betamovie. But it was still a shoulder mounted Saticon tube camera... Just around the corner, Sony launched Video 8, in a new sleek approach to camcorders, now CCD sensor equipped and a full range of accessories. Do you remember Sony Sports? Fresh concepts that brought out, simultaneously, the ever-smaller Handycam and the impressive semi-pro range with V100/V200. Later in Hi8, Sony cameras like the V5000/V6000 and VX1 really set standards that no other would match with its digital processing. Must also remember that Canon helped a lot in the massive market share of Video 8, and offered the option of interchangeable lens in Hi8, with the Canon L1. One last good shot from JVC was the GR-S707, an SVHS-C. Of course full SVHS from JVC (GF-S1000H) and Panasonic (MS1/MS10) could be a great hi-band option. But in the early 90s, the trend was set and Video 8/Hi8 was king. At the same time, in the broadcast industry, Betacam SP had become THE standard. Cheers 🇵🇹

thanks for your effort to explain all this

I would also like to add that Video8 and Hi8 tapes look sexy and camcorders are slicker.

Thanks a great video as always and kind of agree with all said but I think you glossed over just how fragile tape can be. A tape used be a consumer who has no understanding that maintenance is important can easily end up with a recorder that trashed everything that goes in it, tramlines and flats on pinch rollers come to mind.

great video

Thank you for the video. Unfortunately (or fortunately) I did not catch the time of analog cameras, but I am filling this gap now. And now it's easier, they are very cheap. Judging by the ads on the secondary market in my country, the VHS-C models were more popular. I will add that later on VHS-C cassettes a stopper was added to the take-up spool. Also from the features of VHS-C there is support for glorious SECAM and the ability to dub a linear audio track, and since VHS-C cameras are larger, manufacturers equipped them with large lenses and CCD. In this regard, I admire the S-VHS-C light sensitivity of the Panasonic NV-S88 model, and the ability to set the aperture not in arbitrary units, but in f-number. There are significantly fewer 8mm / hi8 cameras on our secondary market, and the situation is aggravated by the fact that models from the 90s have capacitor leaks, and their restoration is almost pointless, unless it is some kind of top model. And the models of the 2000s already belong to the decline of analog cameras, they were cheaper, it happened in hi8 models that they began to install small matrices with a video8 resolution of 250 lines ... The situation with VHS-C is interesting, as you know, there is a reduced drum with twice the number of video heads. Ever since LP speed was introduced in camcorders, instead of installing an additional 4 heads with LP gap (24μm), manufacturers have simply installed all 4 LP gap heads, and at SP speed they don't use the full available track width, which means less RF signal, and when rewinding and freeze frame we have wide noise bands. There were exceptions, in the early top model camcorder from JVC there were 8 heads, 4 for each speed, but then there was no Hi-Fi Stereo yet. And with this in mind, you would have to install 12 heads + a flying eraser with a counterweight, and all this on a small drum. In this regard, the 8mm format clearly wins, there are only 2 heads and a flying eraser with a counterweight, and Hi-Fi sound is already built in. I don’t know how it was in early models, but in the 2000s we see the same situation, separate heads for LP did not appear, instead the main heads have an LP gap and all the same problems with wide noise bands on rewind and pause

I paid £1000 for a very early DVD-RAM camcorder, a Hitachi DZ-MV100E, in the early 2000s. Think it was reduced from around three grand. Took it to its native Japan where there were quite a few people visibly impressed by the thing. It worked really well with a Toshiba DVD-RAM/HDD home recorder I had, the recordings worked across both machines. Unfortunately I dropped it from about three feet onto concrete and it never worked properly again. It was almost certainly just bad alignment (it became super-picky with media and recordings glitched). I don't think such delicate mechanicals lend themselves well to portable use. I may still have it somewhere and can donate it if you're interested.

THe 8mm cassette was a great invention that surived considerable amount of time after Video8 was phased out. Nice mug in the background, though. I'd love to try these problematic LP tapes on my machine.

I rememeber JVC pushing SVHS, even after Panasonic threw in the towel and started producing Mini-DV. They did not sell well. Sony was still selling Hi8 as a base models to their D8 lines for another 5 years. Sony was making all three formats with Mini-DV being aimed at more of the pro-sumer. I don't think VHS was passable by the consumer by the time Hi8 was phased.

My family went to vhs-c camp back then. The main reason would be compatibility. The quality would be on less priority. Only if we first realized to use hi-8 as "aquision format", then dubbed it to normal VHS tape(s) as "distribution format" among relatives... A big duhhhhhh every time I though about that. What a goof...😓

As a side note, in the NTSC system, the recording time difference between Video8 and VHS-C is even bigger, because here, standard VHS-C tapes only can record 30 minutes in SP mode or 1:30 hours in SLP mode, but drastically reducing the audio and video quality. High capacity tapes were availabe later that could store 45 minutes in SP or 2:15 hours in SLP. On the other hand, standard Video8 tapes could record 2 hours in SP and 4 hours in LP, reducing video quelity but not the audio fidelity.

Yep, we started using EP on VHS-C . Very hard to track up. Original camera is dead as door nail. Have to fiddle with the vcr to get it to lock up

Some of them are on my channel. Thank you. Useful info

Cool 💫

Every one of those videos with the VHS-C adaptor that I've seen, have the automatic one with the battery. I've literally never seen one of those in person, they were always manual.

I'm not the only one who has broken VHSC cassettes to bits trying to access to the tape then! Those screws are a nightmare and if you put too much force on it the head strips. Some minidv tapes are a pain too when the manufacturers decided to get rid of the screws and fuse the 2 halves together. Some very cheap VHS cassettes are the same. We're 4 tiny screws really that expensive? Great video Colin as always

i never had any cam's at all my mate did have used one's he was with a cam club used to record live bands in reading dad and mate did wedding is the past alot of the pro deck this was in the 80's just before betacam cam came out

Freshly recorded EP video looks acceptable back then considering it triples the video length and no one warns the consumers against using it.

I was pleasantly surprised how reliable Video8 and Digital8 tapes are, I've recently transferred around 50 of our old family tapes with the exact Sony camera my parents used to record me around 20+ years ago, only few Digital8 tapes gave some trouble that was easily solved by cleaning the heads. The picture quality even on the older Video8 tapes that are almost 30 years old is great for what it is, much better than classic VHS. And being able to transfer it directly to raw DV files via firewire without having to mess with capture cards was great too.

Nice video! I have a 1994 SVHS-C palmcorder with Hi-Fi audio. It shoots pretty good quality video with F1.2 lens and a half-megapixel sensor. The recording can be played on an SVHS VHS machine or on a machine that has SQPB mode, so there is some compatibility, Hi8 cannot be played on anything but Hi8. Well, it can be played on a Digital8 machine. I wish DV cassettes were never created, and we would continue into 21st century with 8-mm tapes. DVD recorders were completely useless - bad quality, too much fiddling. Same with AVCHD machines that recorded onto Mini-DVD. I never had a camcorder with optical media, I went straight to ones that recorded on SD cards.

Can I ask you a quick question about VHS-C? I have some old VHS-C tapes that plays in like green/White gameboy colours if you know what I mean. Do you know what can be causing this issue?

Just a quick question is there a good or bad brand of video tape or does it not matter?

Hi! Nice video. Do you know how long a 8mm cassette can hold the data one stored?

Great info! I’m trying to digitize my family’s home videos from VHSC and some of the audio has flutter like people are talking into a fan, regardless if I play it back in-camera or in a VHS player. Anyone have any idea how to mitigate that?

Uhh... Colin, you've seemed to have the VHS-C cassette in the case bottom side down. Not top side up, where we see the supply reel with the remaining tape used, and the label right next to it.

Hello. Would you be able to do a video on D-VHS please? In particular how to record onto one using firewire?

I recently acquired a VHS-C Camcorder for cheap (A JVC GR-AXM18u), and after doing some research on it, it's a model that was manufactured and sold as early as 2006. I never used Video 8 before apart from one time when I was pretty young (or any camcorders for that matter apart from the one I recently got), but I'm convinced by this video that Video 8 had the clear advantage over VHS-C in every aspect. Though, I'm curious about VHS-C. What made VHS-C hold on for just as long as Video 8 if it had so many drawbacks? Was it just brand recognition? Were VHS-C tapes and camcorders cheaper than Video 8? Were people just that convinced on being able to playback their films on their VCRs?

I've always liked Video8 as a format, forums will tell you it's full of dropouts (digitalfaq and the usual suspects detest it) but I'm yet to find any poor Video8 recordings (and by extension Hi8) - usually it's a format that provides nice clean transfers. Perhaps I get lucky, but I'm yet to really struggle with it - VHS-C on the other hand....

I detect a little bit of bias in this video... heh. You didn't go over cost of actually owning and using the two systems, including blank tapes etc. And of course a degausser will erase the VHS... that was the point. Metal tape erasers were a totally different thing. And I don't think anyone could "accidentally" put their VHS tape through a degaussing...

My dad had a Chinon VHSC camcorder for many years, and I don't recall it ever going wrong. What was the issue?

but if you want something as low res as possible, vhs-c is good option ?

Did it matter so much in the UK with the PAL format?

1:26 for a second i though it was a panasonic nv a1 like i have, but i was close 😂

What about Digital 8? Physically different to Mini DV, but compatible data stream. MPEG was later used in other formats, including consumer and professional ones such as HDV, Betacam SX, MPEG-IMX and I think HDCAM and possibly HDCAM-SR and XDCAM. How did these formats manage to use MPEG as an acquisition format when it would seem to be more suited to being a release one?

I agree 8mm is vastly superior than VHS-C in almost every way but I think it's unfair to call it a 'bodge'. For what it was, it was pretty good. Let's not forget that Sony went through so much complexity and over-engineering to get a camcorder that would record onto Betamax but which wouldn't play the footage back, whereas JVC just made the same format using smaller tapes and hey presto record and playback, and the ability to play back in a home VCR if required. Effectively 8mm tapes were part of Sony's response to losing that particular duel - and in that way should probably not be seen as a rival format to VHS-C in any more way that Betamax should. Sure they were superior in every way to VHS-C but they would have needed to be in order to wrestle the camcorder format war back in their favour. While any 8mm camcorder looks a lot sleeker and appealing than a VHS-C from the same era, the same could also be said of the JVC GR-C1 over any of the Betamovie cameras.

hi got a old mate he loves the lp on vhs i have watched alot of your video's time time he gets used vhs decks in i told him to keep to only some models as you say about tape line up on the long play as you know by how i am a betacam fan them mate don't under stand betacam they thing the hi -fi is better than beta cam sorry betacam sound blow away hi if stereo i had the hifi to many drop outs you have go points in this video pleased you made this bob

i didn't realise there were so many formats and quality problems. I didn't hear you say much about the cost to the public, most camcorders would cost you a kidney from new, and sony wanted all your familys kidneys :-D. It seems almost imposible to make a new product without someone jumping on the band wagon and making the water muddy.

VHS-C is good not bad

Can a minidv tape work on 8mm video cam

Can you show us how to properly break open a VHS-C tape?

Well, i feel that i''m lucky. My camcorder is mini-DV Panasonic NV-GS400. so i got a best quality video format first, no troubles with VHS-C or Hi8, etc. I also bought the CHEAPEST BUNDLE IN THE WORLD ( 600 rubles = around 10 USD, with that exchange rates) with included 6 mini-DV tapes, good condition at all, AND, ORIGINAL PANASONIC POWER SUPPLY, with means that i can plug my nv-gs400 in power supply, then plug power supply straight to 220V. And this is inportant , 'cause both batteries is dead. first wont charge at all, second charging, but camcorder can work with it, around 4-5 minutes. I dismantled first battery and going to reestablish it. Gonna buy the imax b6 impulse charger. good luck to me UPD: i can now throw video from mini-DV no through the Firewire caple, cause my Win10 pc don't have this port, i use USB, NV-GS400 shots pictures to SD card, and have a PC CONNECTIN MODE, through USB . progs to get video is Scenlyzer Pro and WinDV. Scenlyzer works better.

VHS-C isn't bad. :D)

What a nonsense. VHS-C was a better system when you look at the specs. A higher signal to noise resolution and more natural colors. 8 mm had a better sound quality but that was limited by the standard microphone. I was a salesman in the 80's and most people preferred the harder and more artificial colors of a 8 mm camcorder. A big disadvantage is the fact that many 8mm tapes are dropout city because of the metal vaporized tapes and when you're camcorder has broken down its quiet difficult to play them while you can play back your vhs-c tapes in any vhs recorder what you can buy for next to nothing. I have some old magazines from the 80's and in every test the conclusion was the camera from a 8mm camcorder was sometimes better the playback part was important less then his vhs c counterpart.

and guess what format is used today by the collective majority ??? Smartphone