Video

Video (pronounced vid-ee-oh)

(1) A visual product (usually moving images), with or without audio, saved on some form of playable media.

(2) The visual element (film, television etc), as in a program or script, pertaining to the transmission or reception of the image (as distinct from audio).

(3) The visual component of any transmission.

(4) Of or relating to the electronic apparatus for producing the television pictures; of or relating to television, especially the visual elements.

(5) A clipping of video cassette or video cassette recorder (VCR).

1935: From the Latin video (I see), first person singular present indicative of vidēre (to see), on the model of “Audio”, thus the appended –o.  The adjective came into use in 1935 (as the visual equivalent of audio) while the noun in the sense of “that which is displayed on a television screen” dates from the early British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) transmissions in 1937; the early form used by the technical staff was “video transmission” echoing “audio transmission” in radio.  The first known instance of “videogame” in print dates from 1973 although by then consumer products have been available for some eighteen months and it’s possible that among developers or users, the term had earlier been in use.  Whereas all audio (tapes, clips, grabs etc) contain exclusively sound, a quirk of video media is that most contain both visual and audio content; in practice, this cause no confusion because the conventions are well-understood.  Other conventions have also evolved.  Movie obviously has some overlap with video a some long-form commercial product (such as the typical feature film) would always be described as a “movie” or a “film” rather than a video bit if the same thing exists on tape or optical media, it will often be called a “video”, especially if on tape (videotape the generic term).  In an optical disc it’s more likely to be called a DVD, a product which in 1995 actually began life as the “Digital Video Disc” but was soon renamed “Digital Versatile Disc” because the eight-fold increase in capacity compared to the CD (Compact Disc) meant they were a convenient low-cost storage option in computing.  Even discs in the more recent Blu-Ray optical format appear often to be called “DVDs” at the consumer level, an indication Blu-Ray came too late to gain critical mass as the industry switched to streaming and weightless distribution to static libraries.  The videocassette (more often used as video + cassette) seems first to have been mentioned in patent application documents in 1970, the Videocassette recorder (VCR) first available at the consumer level in 1971.

Many of the futurists who predicted something like the internet got much right but few predicted the upload aspect of sites like YouTube and TikTok, the conjunction of a high percentage of the population enjoying both the possession of a video camera and access to bandwidth meaning that within years there were billions of content providors, many of whom found an audience.  Such videos are rarely called “movies” and are described variously with terms like “videos”, “clips”, “vids” or “shorts”.  Modifiers have been applied to “video” to created whatever meaning is needed including direct-to-video, full-motion video, home video, martyrdom video, video arcade, video camera, video clip, video conference, video game, video journalism, video nasty, videographer, video-jockey, videotape and videogram.  Video is a noun, verb & adjective, videoing & videoed are verbs; the noun plural is videos or videmus.  The plural videmus (the first-person plural form of the Latin verb) is rare and used usually for humorous effect.

Video meliora, proboque, deteriora sequor

The Latin phrase video meliora, proboque, deteriora sequor is from the Roman Poet Ovid’s (Publius Ovidius Naso; 43 BC–17 AD) Metamorphoses, appearing in a passage in which Medea acknowledges her obligations towards her father and her homeland but decides anyway to desert her people and run off with Jason.  Poets and others have since used the words to refer to those who know right from wrong and choose to do wrong, the purpose to illustrate either human weakness or immorality.  In English, the best known of the authors who cited the phrase are the worthy John Locke (1632–1704) and deliciously wicked Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) and earlier, Saint Augustine of Hippo (354–430) couldn’t resist, noting “he sees what the rectitude of actions requires and he wants it and is unable to do it”, something on which he may have reflected when writing in Confessiones (Confessions (397-400)) of his prayer to God: “Oh, Master, make me chaste and celibate - but not yet!”

Lindsay Lohan and her lawyer in court, Los Angeles, December 2011.

Video meliora, proboque, deteriora sequor appears in The Wise Virgins, the second novel published by Leonard Woolf (1880–1969) and a work which until re-published a decade after his death was neglected and tended to be assessed only as the catalyst for what proved the worst of the breakdowns suffered by his wife, the novelist Virginia Woolf (née Stephen; 1882–1941).  The book was released two years after their marriage and the first drafts had been begun during the honeymoon in Spain; something which over the year has drawn the odd wry comment.  The autobiographical elements were undisguised, the subjects the two newly-wed protagonists and a supporting cast drawn from the Bloomsbury set and although for decades dismissed, it’s regarded now as an engaging satire of the last days of the pre-1914 world of English society.  For the modern reader, it’s a compelling tragedy, a tale of someone who attempts to escape society’s conventions but through his own weakness of character finds himself trapped in that very world.

Leonard and Virginia Woolf, a photographic postcard, Dalingridge Place, West Hoathly, Sussex, 23 July 1912.

Commercially, The Wise Virgins was a failure and Leonard Woolf took the opportunity to blame the unfortunate timing of publication: “The war killed it dead” he recorded in his autobiography, not bothering to list the work in the index.  There’s long been the idea he wasn’t unhappy to see it buried; Virginia Woolf read The Wise Virgins three months after publication and although with the bloodless austerity of a don she noted in her diary that the work was “very good in some ways and very bad in others”, within a fortnight she descended into what would prove the worst of her many breakdowns and the only one, feminist critics like to mention, during which she rejected her husband, refusing for some two months to see him.  Virginia Woolf's own works, including her two fictional portraits based on him are more sympathetic to his memory, his character in The Wise Virgins perhaps a portrait of what he imagined he might have been had he not repressed his worse impulses and certainly, Leonard Woolf’s reputation has not suffered like that of Ted Hughes (1930–1998; Poet Laureate 1984-2008) after the suicide of his wife Sylvia Path (1932-1963).  As with many a roman-à-clef, one must always be conscious that much is fiction but it’s a tale of the fate of another flawed man and the quote from Ovid is not misplaced.