I was watching a YouTuber I watch regularly who shows off and explains both old and new audio and video technology. Mostly vintage though. It got me thinking about when I was a kid watching movies on vhs. Then I started wondering how did they make millions of copies of a movie for home release? I tried googling it, but all I found were old forums where it was explained in very technical terms that i couldn’t wrap my head around. How are vhs tapes duplicated en mass for home release?
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There are/were equipment made specifically to do this. Basically a tape duplication machine but one that works far faster and is automated.
Tape duplication itself is very straightforward (in a sense). An electrical signal (the video recording), is passed through a recording “head” that creates a magnetic field that replicates that signal. This magnetic field when passed over a moving tape causes the tape (a special tape that contains magnetic particles) to “record” that signal as a semi-permanent magnetic imprint on the tape.
That tape now contains an imprint of the original video signal and can be packaged into a VHS cassette or similar.
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