VHS and SuperVHS (SVHS)
Case size: ~7 3/8' x 4 1/16" x 1"
Tape Size: 1/2 inch wide

This is a standard "video tape" to many people. These are the tapes that we rented for years at the video store before DVD came to dominate the home video market. VHS and SVHS have the same sizes and shapes; SVHS encodes video at higher resolutions and with better quality.

VHS tape images © Jared C. Benedict. Licensed under the Creative Commons

VHS-C
Case Size : ~3 5/8" x 2 5/16" x 7/8".
Tape Size: 1/2 inch wide

This format was commonly used in camcorders prior to the introduction of the various 8mm tape formats shown below. This video tape could be played in a standard VHS video player with an adapter. One such adapter is shown above. The standard VHS adapter has same dimensions as VHS tape.

Images are from the Wikimedia Commons.

Video8, Hi8, Digital8
Case size: ~3 11/16" x 2 3/8" x 9/16"
Tape Size: 8mm wide

These different video formats have identical tape casing and tape size. They are normally labeled with the type of recording. These tape formats are commonly used in camcorders. Video8 and Hi8 are analog recordings, Digital 8 is digital recorded on Hi8 video tapes. These different tapes are not compatible with each other and require different equipment to play them back.

Image is from the Wikimedia Commons.

MiniDV
Case size: ~2 9/16" x 1 7/8" x 7/16"
Tape Size: 6.3mm wide

The mini DV format was introduced in 1994 and has been used widely in home and professional video.

Image provided by Tom Anderson under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.

Betamax
Case size: 156 × 96 × 25 mm
Tape Size: 12.7 mm
The Betamax format was introduced in 1975 by Sony. It lost the video tape "format war" to VHS.