Recording Technology

Initial documentation work was carried on in wire spool recorders. Recording of great masters like Ustad Hafiz Ali Khan and T. Chowdia and many other masters were done on this format. Later most of these recordings were transferred to analogue tapes. With the passage of time, this format was replaced with quarter inch magnetic tape.
In the area of archival cine material, initially, the filming was done on 16 mm format on reversal colour films. The filming of Republic Day Parade and the Folk Dance Festival was a regular activity of the Documentation Unit in early 50s. Perhaps the only exhaustive collection of the rich tradition of folk dances of that time is available with the Akademi. Later on, this format was replaced with 16 mm black & white and colour negative films of which prints were also made. As entire filming in 16 mm films was done with non-synchronize camera, only the silent film material was possible, although in most of the cases, sound was also recorded simultaneously during the filming. In order to have synch sound with cine film nonprofessional Super 8 Sound film was used for the documentation from May 1979 to December 1980. Subsequently the unit acquired a 16 mm Eclair a professional synch sound camera with Meltron (Nagra) synch recorder.
From 1981, the Akademi started recording in U-matic low band format which was subsequently upgraded to High Band in 1991. At the same time, DAT was introduced for Audio recordings. Longer coverage of SVHS, VHS format was used occasionally to cover seminars and workshops etc.
In 1999, video format was again upgraded to the internationally recognized Beta format and the Documentation Unit adopted Digital Technology for video recording by using DVCAM format in 2001.
In the case of still photography, initially 120 size black & white and colour negatives, and 120 size colour slides format were used for the purpose of documentation. 35 mm black & white and colour negatives I slides I still films were also added in negative format. A bigger format of 6 X 7 cm. size was also used for the black & white and colour still photography for which Hasselblad, Mammia and Bronica camera were used.