The problem with Betamax was how good it was at stepping forwards. This is because the C wrap (remember all those grinding noises as the deck threaded a tape) placed enough of the tape around the heads that as one transitioned off the tape, the other was already in position to pick up data. My Betamax decks, on the other hand, could manage perfect still frames. One might have noticed the colours were a bit “flatter” in pause, but then VHS was pretty rubbish so maybe not. When proper freeze became available, it was often a digitised sample that was switched in place of the data coming from the heads. The reason for this is purely technical – as it is an M wrap system, there simply isn’t enough tape in contact with the heads. The problem here is that VHS is a bit rubbish, and for a very long time was unable to produce a good static pause picture.

These recorders index each individual frame with SMPTE (Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers) timecode, which can then be used to trigger a digitiser board whenever a frame with the required index code is being displayed: As the digitiser board does not capture to disc in real time, the videotape is played several times, with different frames being captured on each pass:

Hehe, there’s a document that talks about making Replay video… Unfortunately, it is not sufficient to simply use the freeze frame facility found on most video recorders, as the quality of the still image is so low as to produce an unuseable result when subsequently compressed ( digitiser boards are genlocked to the video, the pause button on a domestic VHS recorder is not!): Broadcast quality videotape recorders such as the Betacam SP (£15,000) can be used to capture still images at the appropriate level of quality for Replay movies.

Mts format no sound smplayer