Picture noise is used to describe any form of visible disturbance in the video during playback. Commonly called dropouts these can result from imperfections in the tape or from signal errors. They can be seen as white or black lines, comet tails, bursts or sparkles in the picture. All VCRs have a dropout compensation circuit (called the DOC) that can electronically remove, or cover up most of these bugs. But it can't stop them all and some still manage to get through. Their occurrence is very dependent on the quality of the tape. Therefor it is always desirable to use the highest quality media available for your recordings. The mantra is: the better the tape the fewer the dropouts (missing information). Sparkles can also appear when a SuperBeta recording is played back on a standard Beta machine (and vice versa). This signal mismatch can be compensated for to some degree by turning the SuperBeta switch on or off (if the VCR is so equipped). It is always a good practice to play a tape in the format in which it is recorded. That is a SuperBeta recorded tape on a SuperBeta machine and a standard Beta recorded tape on a standard Beta machine. ©Misterßetamax go to homepage