Cassette Tape Hack / VHS [Old School/Tech Hackers]

So you’re asking how to write video on an audio-tape?

If so, then I’m pretty sure it can’t be done due to bandwidth limitations…but I might be wrong. I am certain, however, that you can put still images instead of audio, if you really want to :)

Hmm…. write it through a TV ?
I did not grasp what you wrote above. I’d like some more information and explanation on that! ?

@Fishhard I think you are quite right. A video cannot be put on a tape, but simultaneous images can be put. Like what we see in movie theaters, they are just images on the negeative (also called role which we used to have in old cameras) which are projected on the screen in very small intervals of time, which we see as a movie. ?

Well yeah, but the frame-rate will not be high enough for a video…

suppose you get 8bits encoded on every “frame” of sound. If you want to encode a color video, using 24bits of color per pixel, you get 3 sound “frames” for every pixel…you get a lot of “frames” for very few pixels…changing images with 16fps (minimum to see it as continuous film), assuming a bad resolution of 380x240 pixels requires an audio frame-rate of: 4377600 which is highly unlikely for audio-tape…

And this is assuming a mute film, of course :)

@IAmDevil It’s like this, if I take the white AV cable, splice it along with a set of cheap headphones, “wire them” ,excuse me I do not know the proper terminology, twist them around eachother, and then plug the input from the my tv to the cassette tape player and do a quick test run I get a mediocre (fuzzy) audio signal to the tv. So something has to be working, right? One of these tvs similar. I’ll post my model later since I’m at school.

Doing research of different types of cables, I think using an iPod AV cable and some how run the the red and white Audio wires into the right and left Audio ground and then the yellow Video wire into the video ground for the final product.

Upon this collaboration, if possible, I don’t see this working in a prison since there’s no access to any external source of hardware, besides cassette tapes and other allowed shipment, letters, etc, or any access to external input into the tv set itself.

Bell just rang I’ll get back to you @Fireshard later

Thank you both btw!

Well…in pure theory it is possible to do it the way you want. The only thing that won’t work right is the limited bitrate a cassette has, which i doubt (again, i don’t know any numbers of this, it’s just speculation) is enough to get a video signal going. Take a look here for more details.

Edit:

Upon reading a little here: “The typical encoding method for computer data was simple FSK, which resulted in data rates of typically 500 to 2000 bit/s, although some games used special, faster-loading routines, up to around 4000 bit/s.”

From the first link, we get: “16 kbit/s videophone quality (minimum necessary for a consumer-acceptable "talking head” picture using various video compression schemes)"

Which kind of proves my point…

Hi guys I’m not too sure that this might be what you are looking for but have a look see anyway. Here is the: URL LINK HERE

Hi ANONRA long time no hear hope you are well ??

See that’s what I like. @ANONRA and @Fireshard . You guys have a completely different approach on this than I did. I mean yeah you can’t (well in theory, but we haven’t figured it out yet) write or are unlikely to write an entire movie to an audio tape. I meant to say some of this earlier as well, I’m so sorry, I was at school lol. However, if we take several audio tapes and with your theory @Fireshard you could create a movie on tape series (attempted pun). Now thank you for that link @ANONRA that is an interesting way to go about things. Now taking that and putting it together with what @Fireshard has hypothesized, we could then make the movies on audio tape series and then FF the film and play a completely separate tape for audio. Although this is more than likely a very tedious task and an incredibly uncomfortable way to watch a movie, that’s when you question your values on the situation. Do you have life or a couple of months? . I never said it had to be a pleasant visual/auditory experience. If you’re screwed anyways then why not give it a shot y' know? Now that is said, if any of you get in trouble for “anything” and get caught up in some bad work… remember this thread!

Now I think I have figured out most of the visual interface side of things, with some more tinkering around, the movie hack would still be an issue. Here’s what my original approach was on this obstacle. Instead of writing video to something designed purely for audio, take the tape of a vhs and some how cut, trim, or even compress it’s data to a much thinner strip of tape and be able to fit, wound up, and read by a few more adjustments to the interface. Basically using the cassette tape as camouflage to sneak in the actual vhs and allow it to be compatible with our newly designed interface. It would all still come out as a very low resolution film. That is not an issue though, lol.

Well you can write it on a single tape, you just can’t play it back fast enough. :) Even if you could spin that tape fast enough and read it (which the normal cassette players can’t - but you could use brush-less motors from RC helicopters, for this, let’s say), the process would surely be destructive to the actual tape due to frictions, vibrations and other mechanical unwanted behavior.

You can, indeed, use multiple tapes for this, if you don’t mind the tedious work involved in reading and writing of parallel tapes, synchronizing them, etc…

Now, your approach is, in theory at least, possible, since as far as i know, they used no compression algorithms on tapes. You’d just have to fiddle with the interfaces' software to encode/decode the stuff. You’re probably gonna still need more than 1 audio tape per 1 VHS tape, though, since i doubt any compression algorithm is efficient enough to bring your bit rate low enough to read off an audio tape. (This is all speculation, i have little knowledge of compression algorithms).

If you actually do manage to pull this one off, please document it somewhere on the site. It’s a rather interesting project :)

Like Fireshard said it would be interesting to see how you get on with the project. Good luck. :)

Hmm.. @Maxlockhart have you tried to connect the cassete player to a LCD or LED Tv?
cus the TV you have shown in your post is a cathode ray tube Tv which has electrons flowing through it which might make disturbances in the speaker !!

[quote=MaxLockhart] and then plug the input from the my tv to the cassette tape player and do a quick test run I get a mediocre (fuzzy) audio signal to the tv[/quote]

This might be the reason for the “fuzzy”-ness, but he’s saying the signal is still audible, if i understood corectly…

Yeah @Fireshard it’s audible. The reason the signal isn’t going through all the way is more than likely a short somewhere, due to my horrible splicing skills. Half fast if I made! I’m going to leave this thread open still in case anyone has anything else to suggest or questions to ask. Is that alright with everyone? I’ll update as well… May not get to it anytime this week though

Audio signals have very weak voltage. If you had a short anywhere, you’d have lost the whole signal, so you did great! :)

Keep this open and keep us updated. You may find more ideas later on into your project, as you try stuff and give us feedback.

Good luck!

Yeah i also would like to stay updated as we have got an interesting thing brewing !! ?

@MaxLockhart Any updates on this? I wanna see how it goes :D

Hmm… Maybe he lost interest in it. ;/ ‘cus if he did something he should have had updated it here, eh? Who knows? :)

I would love to know what happened here :O It sounded interesting

Yeah, few factors. I tend to be a slacker at times, seemed like it wouldn’t work and too much risk of getting in trouble, money is a @#*&! to come by when wasted on things that may not work, and then there’s –

I mean, it still sounds like a fun thing to do. Maybe if I ever decide to make a YouTube channel where some people and I do all kinds of weird and cool hacks that apply to specific scenarios in peoples lives as well as some universal stuff, then yeah. Other than that maybe I should close this thread? It was a fun chat everyone.

Anyone who has got to know me or has chatted with me for a long period of time on this site probably has realized and understood my attention span pretty well. To mention, between all of the partying, school stuff, completing projects/websites halfway in a night then letting them die in the abyss due to interest lost or losing touch with people, work, etc. I am suprised I am not dead yet. Seriously! I don’t know how I am still alive. Soooo… I don’t know!