[ I bet these videos are mostly interviews with people who knew Obama in college and their recollections or video of documents (transcripts, application forms, etc.)
Obama started college in 1979 at Occidental College and graduated from Columbia University in 1983. Portable type consumer camcorders were not available until 1983 and were very expensive. ]
A lot of “good” colleges had plenty of access to multimedia equipment in the late 70’s early 80’s because they would produce crap for the local PBS stations.
They would have been Betamax Tape or some other medium.
There were several nice consumer 8mm movie cameras with sound back in the ‘70’s
Seems they’re referred to as “Obama Harvard Tapes” - so we’re up to 88 and well into the VHS timeframe.
I’m having trouble figuring what Obama would’ve been doing in those days that anybody would’ve bothered to tape. Video equipment was huge and clunky back then and wasn’t just everywhere like it is now. I doubt if he was giving many big speeches, though maybe he spoke at some demonstrations? Lectures maybe? I doubt it would have been just casual home-movie type stuff.