Betacam is family of half-inch professional videocassette products developed by Sony

Sony

, commonly referred to as Sony, is a Japanese multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Minato, Tokyo, Japan and the world's fifth largest media conglomerate measured by revenues....

 in 1982. In colloquial use, "Betacam" singly is often used to refer to a Betacam camcorder, a Betacam tape, a Betacam video recorder or the format itself.

All Betacam variants from (plain) analog recording

Analog recording

Analog recording is a technique used for the recording of analog signals which among many possibilities include audio frequency, analog audio and analog video information for later playback.Analog recording methods store signals as a continual wave in or on the media...

 Betacam to Betacam SP and digital recording

Digital recording

In digital recording, digital audio and digital video is directly recorded to a storage device as a stream of discrete numbers, representing the changes in air pressure for audio and chroma and luminance values for video through time, thus making an abstract template for the original sound or...

 Digital Betacam (and additionally, HDCAM

HDCAM

HDCAM, introduced in 1997, is an High-definition video digital recording videocassette version of Digital Betacam, using an 8-bit DCT compressed 3:1:1 recording, in 1080i-compatible downsampled resolution of 1440×1080, and adding 24p and 23.976 PsF modes to later models...

 & HDCAM SR), use the same shape videocassettes, meaning vaults and other storage facilities do not have to be changed when upgrading to a new format.