CompuServe Messages

Format wars? The biggest problem in selecting formats is trying to decide how much degradation you can stand in the duplication process. Feeding a 3/4 Umatic machine with a Par is fairly good quality but it goes soft when using this 3/4 tape to produce VHS copies. Since the PAR can output real time it is always much better to output the animation directly to the VHS tape. The exception to this original recording to VHS from the PAR is if your PAR output is recorded to a component recording process such as betacam or 1". Now you can edit and make several generations of dubbing in the component format without noticeable loss. In fact, your VHS tapes will look about as good from the betacam tape as it would if the VHS was recorded live from the PAR.