MII (videocassette format)

This article discusses the MII video tape format. For information on the game console by Panasonic please see Panasonic M2
MII
Media type Magnetic Tape
Encoding NTSC, PAL
Read mechanism Helical scan
Write mechanism Helical scan
Standard Interlaced video
Developed by Panasonic
Usage Video production

MII is a professional analog recording videocassette format developed by Panasonic in 1986 in competition with Sony's Betacam SP format. It was technically similar to Betacam SP, using metal-formulated tape loaded in the cassette, and utilizing component video recording.

MII is sometimes incorrectly referred to as M2; the official name uses Roman numerals, and is pronounced "em two". Just as Betacam SP was an improved version of its predecessor Betacam (originally derived from Betamax) with higher video and audio quality, MII was an enhanced development of its predecessor, the failed M format (originally derived from VHS). There were two sizes of MII tape, the larger of which is close to VHS size and has a running time of up to around 90 minutes, the smaller tape was about half the size and runs up to around 20 minutes, and was also the size in which head cleaner tapes were supplied.

Panasonic manufactured mains-powered MII editing and playback decks which accepted both the large and small tapes, as well as portable recorders which used only the small cassette.

Unlike M, MII was somewhat successful when it was first launched, with customers like NBC in the USA and NHK in Japan using it for electronic news gathering (ENG), and PBS in the USA using it in the late 1980s to delay their television network programming by 3 hours on broadcast delay for later airing on the West Coast. But MII also suffered from lackluster marketing, a lack of customer support and public relations from Panasonic and Matsushita (Panasonic's parent company), and most importantly, a lack of reliability due to said lack of support for repair and service. This resulted in MII not being nearly as successful as Betacam SP. NBC eventually dropped the format in the early 1990s for Sony's D2 digital composite video format, and ultimately began broadcasting all of its television programming and television commercials from digital video servers in the 2000s.

In the UK, MII was used in the late 1980s and early 1990s by three ITV franchisees; Thames Television, Anglia Television and TV-am, whilst all other contemporary broadcasters adopted Sony's Betacam SP. Of the three, Thames and TV-am lost their licences in the 1991 ITV franchise auctions, depleting still further the already scant MII usage in the country.

MII is barely used nowadays, and spare parts as well as tapes for the format are now hard to come by, although used MII equipment can occasionally be found cheaply on the professional video equipment market and online auctions. MII faded earlier than other analog video formats, in favor of digital tapes such as DV, DVCAM and DVCPro, which were themselves superseded by high definition discs and cards. A small number of specialist companies maintain old MII machines in order to offer a transfer service for archive footage to modern formats.

Recording method

MII machines recorded six tracks: two by the moving heads and four by the stationary head. Starting from the top of the tape, the first two were stationary head audio channels two and one. Below these were the two moving head tracks called C and Y, which are frequency modulated parts of the video signal. The C track also contained audio channels three and four, frequency modulated. Going further down the tape, the last two stationary head tracks carried control and time code information, respectively. The control signal was used to synchronize the moving heads.

For the video, luminance was simply frequency modulated and written to the Y track. The two chrominance signals, Pr and Pb, were combined into one signal by chrominance time compressed multiplexing (CTCM), which is a type of time division multiplexing. The resulting CTCM signal was frequency modulated and combined with the FM audio carriers before it was written to the C track.[1]

See also

References

  1. ↑ Service Manual, Panasonic MII (P.N. VQS0264) by Panasonic Matsushita Electric
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