[ARC Tech-109]

Hi8 had some success in the mainstream production, some stations used it for ENG and it was good enough for the TV drama series "Life In The ER" (I think it was) and many of the FOX affiliates used the Sony EVW-300 package or the docked EVV-9000 for the COPS series, it's my understanding they sent the rookies out in the field to shoot the events as most of the time was spent just riding around waiting for the "right" call. I did some of my early interviews using the Canon L2 Hi8 camcorder as it was far easier to set up and not so "intimidating" to some of the talent compared to a full-size ENG package. To them it was a home camcorder and not so formal. Overall the video was about as good as SVHS but it didn't survive a generational chain or editing very well and a good TBC was almost mandatory. Hi8 also had a 400KHz color bandwidth which yielded about 30 horiz lines of resolution. I think the perception of the "better" color was due to many of the recording improvements that were made during the development of the format. My work at the time was very non-technical for a well known drug & alcohol rehab organization and most of it was on the city streets. Lightweight and easy on the batteries were its strong points. The Hi8 tapes were also compatible with my Tascam DA-88 8-ch DAT, this was very handy with boardroom (bored room) meetings where I could mic the major players with bodypacks and keep everything separate should someone go off script. Bland at best but it paid well.

I didn't adopt the early desktop NLE until the Pinnicle Systems Targa-2000Pro came out, most of what was out there at the time was either the consumer grade Matrox capture cards or the Amega Video Toaster. There was an uber-expensive Macintosh based IMIX Video Cube in the mid-90s, it used a proprietary control surface and had a rather "sparkly" quality to the finished video that did a great job of smearing on tape. it had to be calibrated every 8 months and only a few of the staff were allowed to use it... I wasn't one of them so I stuck with tape and got good at it.