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History of the Umatic Tape Format

U-matic is a videocassette format first shown by Sony in prototype in October 1969, and introduced to the market in September 1971. It was among the first video formats to contain the videotape inside a cassette, as opposed to the various open-reel formats of the time. Unlike most other cassette-based tape formats, the supply and take-up reels in the cassette worked in opposite directions during playback, fast-forward and rewind: one reel would run clockwise while the other would run counter-clockwise. As part of its development, in March 1970, Sony, Matsushita Electric Industrial Co., Victor Co. of Japan (JVC), and five non-Japanese companies reached agreement on unified standards.
The videotape was 3/4 inches (1.9 cm) wide, so the format is often known as 'three-quarter-inch' or simply 'three-quarter'. U-matic was named after the shape of the tape path when it was threaded around the helical video head drum, which resembled the letter U. Betamax used this same type of "U-load" as well.
The total potential lines of horizontal resolution for standard U-matic is 250 lines per picture height (the NTSC television system signal that it records is capable of 330 lines per picture height). Vertical resolution is the NTSC standard of 486 visible scan lines.

U-matic is also available in a smaller cassette size, officially known as U-Matic S. Much like VHS-C, U-Matic S was developed as a more portable version of U-Matic, to be used in smaller sized S-format recorders such as the Sony VO-3800 (the first portable U-Matic S machine released by Sony in 1974), the Sony BVU-100, and the Sony VO-6800. S-format tapes can be played back in older top-loading standard U-Matic decks with the aid of an adapter (the KCA-1 from Sony) which fitted around an S-sized tape in order for it to load properly in the deck, while newer front-loading machines can accept S-format tapes directly. U-Matic S tapes had a maximum recording time of 20 minutes, although some tape manufacturers such as 3M came out with 30 minute tapes by loading the cassette with a thinner tape. It was the U-Matic S-format decks that ushered in the beginning of ENG, or Electronic News Gathering.

In the early 1980s, Sony introduced the semi backwards-compatible High-band or BVU (Broadcast Video U-matic) format, and the 'original' U-matic format became known as 'Low-band'. This High-band format had an improved colour recording system and lower noise levels. BVU gained immense popularity in ENG and location programme-making, spelling the end of 16mm film in everyday production. By the early 1990s, Sony's 1/2" Betacam SP format had all but replaced BVU outside of corporate and 'budget' programme making. Sony made a final improvement to BVU by further improving the recording system and giving it the same 'SP' suffix as Betacam. First generation BVU-SP and Beta-SP recordings were hard to tell apart, but despite this the writing was on the wall for the U-matic family.

U-matic would also see use for the storage of digital audio data. Most digital audio recordings from the 1980s were digitally mastered to U-matic tape. The Sony PCM-1600 PCM adaptor used a U-matic recorder as a transport. The PCM-1600 output standard "pseudo video" in 525/60 format, which appeared to be a video image of vibrating checkerboard patterns that could be recorded on a video recorder. The PCM-1600 was the first system used for mastering audio compact discs in the early 1980s, with the famous Compact Disc 44.1 kHz sampling rate based on a best-fit calculation for the U-matic's video horizontal-sync rate. The later PCM-1610 and 1630 units also used U-matic cassettes as a storage medium.

U-matic is no longer used as a mainstream production format, yet it has such a lasting appeal as a cheap, well specified, and hard-wearing format that many television facilities the world-over still have a U-matic recorder for archive playback of material recorded in the 1980s. For example, the Library of Congress facility in Culpeper, VA, holds thousands of its titles on U-matic video, as a means of providing access copies and proof for copyright deposit of old television broadcasts and films.

Four decades after it was developed, the format is still used for the menial tasks of the industry, being more highly specialized and suited to the needs of production staff than the domestic VHS, although as time passes it has been replaced at the bottom of the tree of tape-based production formats by Betacam and Betacam SP as these in turn are replaced by Digital Betacam and HDCAM.

U-matic tapes were also used for easy transport of filmed scenes for dailies in the days before VHS, DVD, and portable hard drives. Several movies have surviving copies in this form. The first rough cut of Apocalypse Now, for example (the raw version of what became Apocalypse Now Redux), survived on three U-Matic cassettes