concerning mixing down too Hi-Fi VCR

[James HE]

I haven't tried mixing down to Hi Fi VCR yet, but i have done some Video editing and whenever you make a "master" tape to do your edits you have to "black" or lay sync down to the tape (i.e. record black or put it in the camera with the lens cap on) and you lay you edits on top of that so that the edits are seamless and you don't get staticy horzontal lines between edits. I don't know why this works but you have to do it. The audio signal is probably unaffected by this, but i'm not really sure. From what I've read you can't get your tracks too close together because the recorder does take like five seconds to get to it's best recording capacity. I wonder if "blacking" the tape would enable you to sequence one track right after the other? I guess i'll have to do a little experimenting!

 

[drstawl]

Dragon's article on VCR mixdown suggests using at least 30 seconds at either end of the tape for leader and leaving plenty of room for the tape to get stabilized during transport. A small price to pay when you consider the length of a cassette.