Videotape Solutions

Videotape solutions were fairly straightforward.

Stick a VHS tape in the tape player, hit record and, if necessary, hit the amount of time lapse you want, whether it is a 6-hour tape in a 6-hour mode, 12-hour mode, 24-hour mode, 48-hour mode or 96-hour mode.

That’s right, the 6-hour tape would be expanded to give a total of 96 hours, or instead of the full framing for each second of recorded tape, you’re only getting – the time or a quarter of the actual activity. These pictures actually are “jump action” videos.

You could adjust this time lapse duration but it was pretty much a one for one matchup between camera and recorder.

While some manufacturers decided that an encoded tape would be great for eight or even 16 cameras, the solutions, the syncing and the time coding on the tape, were often of miserable quality and hard to manipulate after any length of time period.