As we launch our new ebook, Storing Video: The Ultimate Guide for TV, Film and Corporate Video Production Companies we thought it might be interesting to take a quick look through some of the video storage formats used in the past.
Analogue The history of capturing the moving image starts with still photography. By the mid-1800s, gelatin coated glass dry plates' had become the standard for photography but the hunt was on for a way of making film that was less fragile. Methods involving peeling the gelatin emulsion from paper and other flexible backings were tried but all proved unreliable, although they were used by early film pioneers.
Film By the late 1890s, several people, including George Eastman, had independently developed celluloid backed film. As the motion picture industry began to develop in the early 1900s celluloid nitrate film' became the industry standard. Despite its flammable nature, celluloid nitrate continued to be used until 1951 when it was discontinued and cellulose acetate, which had been used for home movie film for decades, took over.
Film is stored in cans in huge archives and film libraries which needed strictly controlled environments. If the film comes into too much contact with heat, moisture or acid, the chemical structure of the film begins to break down and the film would be destroyed.
Video tape In 1951, the first video tape recorder captured live images from television cameras by converting the information into electrical impulses and saving the information onto magnetic tape. Video recorders were sold for $50,000 in 1956, and videotapes cost $300 per one-hour reel. Tapes were 2 inches wide. The first video recorders to use cassettes (VCR) were sold by Sony in 1971.
Numerous formats of videotape were released for professional use, although as a home format it came down to a battle between Sony's Betamax and JVC's VHS with VHS eventually winning out. In the pro market though, the Betamax-derived Betacam format became the most popular format due to its better image quality.
Video tape has its limitations as a storage medium and while estimates vary, it's generally accepted that it has a shelf life of around 8-12 years before the quality begins to degrade badly.
Digital Laserdisc Although the first laserdisc patent was issued in 1961, it didn't appear on the US market until 1978 (just two years after the VHS video format was launched). Laserdiscs were the forerunner of CDs and DVDs, using bumps and flats that were read by a laser beam to represent binary sequences. Although it offered better picture quality than VCRs, the format never took off. Discs were large (30cm in diameter) and one side could only hold about an hour's worth of video meaning viewers had to turn the disc over when they watched a film.
For a brief period Laserdiscs were used in production for distributing dailies. Also some early computer editing systems used laserdiscs to access the footage (rather than downloading it to a hard drive).
DVD Following in the path of the laserdisc, DVDs were released in 1995. They work in the same way as CDs - data is stored as a sequence of bumps and pits in a continuous, spiralling data track on the disc and the bumps and pits are read by a laser beam. The changing reflections are interpreted as the binary data pattern which is converted to a video picture. Discs can be single or double sided and have up to two data tracks per side meaning they can store from 4.5GB up to 15.9GB of data on a single disc, the equivalent of 2 - 8 hours of video.
Hard drive The first hard drive was released by IBM in 1956. It used 50 24-inch discs to store 5MB of data. The first hard drive to have more than 1 GB in capacity was released by IBM in 1980. It could store 2.5 GB, was the size of a refrigerator and weighed 250 kg. The price when it was introduced ranged from $81,000 to $142,400. As way of comparison, the average cost per gigabyte of storage is now 3p.
Flash drives The successor to the floppy disk due to their easy portability and USB plug-n-play capability, flash drives first appeared in the late 90s. They are capable of storing anything up to 4GB of data (around 2 hours' worth of video) and are cheap and almost disposable.
SD cards SD cards also first appeared in the late 1990s and, in numerous variations such as MicroSD, became the standard for data storage in video cameras, cameras and mobile phones. Small and lightweight with big capacity.
XDCAM Discs Strictly speaking, XDCAM isn't actually a type of storage device, but instead is a recording format introduced by Sony in 2003. What people are actually referring to is called a Professional Disc. However as the sole pro-camera manufacturer to use Professional Discs, and only on their XDCAM camera range, they quickly became synonymous with the recording format, with many people combining the names and calling them XDCAM Discs.
Professional Discs (PFDs) are a type of optical disc, similar to that of a CD or DVD, however, by storing data more densely, they can achieve far greater storage capacities.
The cloud Cloud storage is an internet-based service where users can store data on a network of servers accessed online. The servers themselves are simply a type of hard drive, but among the benefits for the user are that they can access the data from any device with an internet connection and that they know their data is being backed up and secured by the cloud service provider. Services are scalable meaning users can use as much or as little storage as they need. Dont think youre using the cloud yet? Think again. Gmail, Facebook, Flickr and thousands of other companies you deal with every day (including Aframe!) utilise the cloud to provide their services.
Image credit: Kastians
Most recent headlines
06/10/2025
France T l visions, France's leading broadcaster, has received the 2025 EBU ...
04/09/2025
Monumental Sports & Entertainment (MSE), in collaboration with Dalet, has been a...
30/08/2025
WASHINGTON The Federal Communications Commission has adopted its FY 2025 Regulatory Fees Order that establishes the regulatory fee rates for the broadcast stati...
29/08/2025
Australian Red Cross and SBS launch training to help workplaces in the fight aga...
29/08/2025
The National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF), an agency of the Department of Sp...
29/08/2025
L3Harris Technologies has concentrated decades of expertise across the entire enterprise to develop affordable and reliable best-of-breed solutions to rapidly c...
29/08/2025
BURBANK, Calif. The CW Network and the Pac-12 Conference have announced a new media rights deal that will extend their broadcast partnership beginning with the ...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK Gracenote has released a new analysis of its global video dataset showing that the number of FAST channels grew nearly 14% from Q1 2025 and 76% since 2...
29/08/2025
SAN JOSE, Calif. Harmonic has announced a series of improvements to its live sports streaming solution that the company said will improve fan engagement, protec...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK and LOS ANGELES Fox Corp. and YouTube TV last night announced a renewal of the full portfolio of Fox networks, including Fox News Channel, Fox Business...
29/08/2025
Budapest, Hungary, August 2025 - The integration of Microsoft Teams Rooms (MTR) with Lightware's Taurus universal matrix switchers delivers a new level of f...
29/08/2025
Frequency, the engine behind many of the world's best-known streaming television channels, today announced it will launch Studio Live, a next-generation uni...
29/08/2025
In an era when AI and cyber resilience are essential, Scality will mark the 10th anniversary of Scality Day on October 16, 2025 in Paris. This flagship global e...
29/08/2025
Disguise's In-House Creative and Technical Teams Pre-Visualised, Programmed and Delivered Content for the Experience, All Powered by EX 3+
Technology solu...
29/08/2025
Disguise will be demonstrating the latest workflows for TV, film and live events on a number of partner booths at the show
Disguise, the industry-leading tech...
29/08/2025
STOCKHOLM, Sweden Accedo will showcase Accedo Compose, its AI agent-powered modular orchestration layer that assists streaming providers in transitioning client...
29/08/2025
LOS ANGELES Cineverse has announced that it is working with Xperi to bring four of its streaming channels to automobiles for the first time as part of the DTS A...
29/08/2025
DALLAS & ATLANTA Gray Media has announced an agreement with the sports streaming service Victory+ to simulcast 17 Dallas Stars NHL games in 15 television market...
29/08/2025
NEW YORK AND CULVER CITY Comcast NBCUniversal and Amazon have announced new and extended distribution agreements that will expand the content available on their...
29/08/2025
FOOTHILL RANCH, Calif. RED Digital Cinema will feature its Cine-Broadcast Module supporting live broadcast workflows during IBC2025, Sept. 12-15, at the RAI Ams...
29/08/2025
29 Aug 2025
Kyivstar Rings Opening Bell at Nasdaq Marking Landmark Listing and ...
29/08/2025
More than half of all NFL games live on Sky for the first timeFriday 29 August 2025
Sky Sports has announced a new three-year deal with the NFL, extending its ...
29/08/2025
Back to All News
RIV4LRIES: The Trailer of the New Series With Samuele Carrino ...
29/08/2025
Get ready for an inspiring and emotional insight into the world of competitive Irish dancing with My Story: Tomi Champion of the World airing on RT 2 this monda...
29/08/2025
RT has today announced that David McCullagh is to be the new presenter of RT Radio 1's flagship Today programme, which airs every weekday at 10am, replaci...
28/08/2025
By Kristin Feeley, Director, Documentary Film & Artist Programs
If you want to tell untold stories, if you want to give voice to the voiceless, you've got ...
28/08/2025
Directed by Steven Bognar and Julia Reichert, Sundance Institute-supported Amer...
28/08/2025
Corridos have been a cornerstone of M sica Mexicana for generations, telling stories rooted in everyday life. Now, a new chapter is taking shape: motivational c...
28/08/2025
Los corridos han sido un pilar de la M sica Mexicana durante generaciones, contando historias enraizadas en la vida cotidiana. Ahora, un nuevo cap tulo est tom...
28/08/2025
Earlier this month, we promised our Verano Forever party would bring the heat, a...
28/08/2025
L3Harris will provide the Polish F-16V fleet with the Viper Shield electronic warfare system as part of an upgrade program....
28/08/2025
Bilbao, August 26, 2025 - AgileTV, an international television and video technol...
28/08/2025
Ken Wilkinson is an Emmy Awards nominated New York audio engineer who specialises in production sound mixing for film, commercial, episodic and documentary work...
28/08/2025
NEW YORK FuboTV today announced that it will launch Fubo Sports, a skinny bundle that focuses on sports with a subscription price of $56 monthly....
28/08/2025
NEVADA City, Calif. At IBC2025, Sept. 12-15 at the RAI Amsterdam, Telestream will debut its new Global Ingest strategy, introducing a next-generation ingest arc...
28/08/2025
Dr. Rhoda Bernard Releases Groundbreaking Debut Book on Accessible Arts Educatio...
28/08/2025
TAG Video Systems, the leader in software-based IP end-to-end workflow monitoring, deep probing, and real-time visualization, has named Oliver Gappa as Sales Di...
28/08/2025
AI-based voice enhancement will be among a series of innovations making their IBC 2025 debut on the DHD stand B46 in Hall 8 at the RAI Amsterdam Convention Cent...
28/08/2025
Telef nica Servicios Audiovisuales (TSA), the leading system integrator and service provider in the media sector in Spain, with the support of Appear, the globa...
28/08/2025
To fully immerse sailing fans in the world's biggest offshore yacht race, production company, Optical Media turned to LiveU's On-site Production solutio...
28/08/2025
Working with Calrec on its most recent overhaul, radio and television broadcaster, WNED has migrated to a fully IP infrastructure with multiple Type R consoles,...
28/08/2025
Cleeng, the Subscriber Retention Management (SRM ) inventor, has unveiled Cleeng Pro, the first-ever direct-to-consumer (D2C) subscription management platform t...
28/08/2025
Zixi, the industry leader in live broadcast-quality video over IP, today announced that French media distribution platform OKAST has selected Zixi to enable rel...
28/08/2025
Solution offers a streamlined, speaker-free architecture to optimize integration with premium external loudspeakers and advanced loudness metering
Nixer Pro Au...
28/08/2025
Cinegy, the premier provider of software-defined television technology, has announced a strategic partnership with Vision One Touch Film Production Services L.L...
28/08/2025
Telestream, a global leader in media workflow technologies, will debut its new Global Ingest strategy at IBC2025, introducing a next-generation ingest architect...
28/08/2025
Tier 1 operator selects Broadpeak to power high-performance, unified CDN solution across Norway, Sweden and Finland
Broadpeak, a leader in streaming and moneti...
28/08/2025
Leading video software provider, Synamedia, today announced that 24 Frames Digital, one of India's leading live event streaming service providers, has chose...
28/08/2025
Meet VisualOn at IBC2025: See What's Next in AI-Powered Video Streaming Join VisualOn at IBC2025 and discover how our AI-driven Optimizer and advanced media...
As we launch our new ebook, Storing Video: The Ultimate Guide for TV, Film and Corporate Video Production Companies we thought it might be interesting to take a quick look through some of the video storage formats used in the past. 
