YET a cassette is an analog device....how is it that it is digital when it plays analog?</strong><hr></blockquote>
if just stores digital information on the tape. you can't play it back in an analog player. It's the same idea as having a dolby digital signal encoded onto film at your local movie theatre.
A cassette in this instance uses magnetic signals to store data which is interpreted digitally. Same as a floppy disk or hard disk, just different size/shape/speed (well, and probably way of formatting the signals on the cassette's tape). Audio CDs (analog) and data CDs (digital) both store information in the same way, pits and valleys on the CD's reflective surface. Even DVDs are the same, though their pits and valleys are much smaller (thus there are more).
<strong>yes this is all well and good, but still a cassette is an analog device so the answer would then be that
its an analog device storing a digital signal...which is kind of silly but whatever its still great quality video </strong><hr></blockquote>
We use tape because we can store so much information on it while keeping a relatively low cost, and most of the time it doesn't need to be accessed in a non-linear fashion - when you're recording, you're writing linearly, and when you go to edit, you digitize the whole tape, which is linear when dumping to disk.
Years back people tried making backs to cameras that recorded directly to a hard drive. The idea was to be able to record directly to a hard drive in the camera, then that drive could be pulled, and docked directly into an Avid MediaArray. Was way too expensive.
Anyhow, to get back on track, while the tape is an analog medium, we are storing digital data on it like you mentioned, but the whole DV system is pretty much digital unless you decide to go out to an analog device. The whole system is digital, and technically, it's a "digital tape" ;-)
Comments
I don't think you can only have analog on a tape.
<strong>Mini DV cassette tapes.
They are DV which is digital video
YET a cassette is an analog device....how is it that it is digital when it plays analog?</strong><hr></blockquote>
if just stores digital information on the tape. you can't play it back in an analog player. It's the same idea as having a dolby digital signal encoded onto film at your local movie theatre.
A cassette in this instance uses magnetic signals to store data which is interpreted digitally. Same as a floppy disk or hard disk, just different size/shape/speed (well, and probably way of formatting the signals on the cassette's tape). Audio CDs (analog) and data CDs (digital) both store information in the same way, pits and valleys on the CD's reflective surface. Even DVDs are the same, though their pits and valleys are much smaller (thus there are more).
its an analog device storing a digital signal...which is kind of silly but whatever its still great quality video
Same concept. In the digital model information is out of bits. In the analog model the information is frequency based.
<strong>yes this is all well and good, but still a cassette is an analog device so the answer would then be that
its an analog device storing a digital signal...which is kind of silly but whatever its still great quality video
We use tape because we can store so much information on it while keeping a relatively low cost, and most of the time it doesn't need to be accessed in a non-linear fashion - when you're recording, you're writing linearly, and when you go to edit, you digitize the whole tape, which is linear when dumping to disk.
Years back people tried making backs to cameras that recorded directly to a hard drive. The idea was to be able to record directly to a hard drive in the camera, then that drive could be pulled, and docked directly into an Avid MediaArray. Was way too expensive.
Anyhow, to get back on track, while the tape is an analog medium, we are storing digital data on it like you mentioned, but the whole DV system is pretty much digital unless you decide to go out to an analog device. The whole system is digital, and technically, it's a "digital tape" ;-)