CompuServe Messages

Peter, The whole business of audio and video dubbing is another issue which maybe I can shed some light on too. UMatic records audio in two narrow tracks down the edge of the tape, with about the same fidelity (more-or-less) as a tape cassette (e.g., not great). That's the only way it can record audio. VHS and SVHS also use the same method (and since the tracks are narrower and the tape moves slower than in UMatic, the quality is much worse). But these two formats also provide a second method — a pair of audio hi-fi channels recorded on the same track as the video information. These hi-fi channels actually sound quite good, but since they're on the video track you can't dub audio and video separately — at least as far as the hi-fi tracks go. You're stuck with the extremely lo-fi linear tracks. In addition, most consumer and low-level industrial machines provide two hi-fi tracks, but only a single audio-dub-capable linear track. The same thing, BTW, is true of the Beta-SP format, which has hi-fi channels encoded into the chrominance tracks on the tape, thus permanently wedding them to the video signal. The advantage with Beta is that the tape moves much faster, so the quality of the linear tracks is much better. Pete