Changing tapes without stopping MRC
 

No, not in RELAY mode. We're shooting everything to card but also to tape, and last Saturday night we had Act II go eighty-five minutes, necessitating a tape change without stopping recording on the MRC.

I thought I had interpreted the rather cryptic instructions in the manual (may have been a cam manual rather than the MRC manual) to mean that to stop the tape but not the MRC when in SYNCHRO mode, you'd use the VCR stop and record controls on the top panel. But these didn't work. And when you pop the outer tape door open, it won't stop and eject if it's running -- the tape has to be already stopped.

So we had to press the REC button, and of course that stopped both the tape and the MRC, meaning we lost nearly a whole scene while we changed tapes. One of our shooters just let his tape run to the very end so it stopped by itself, at which point he was able to eject the tape without hitting the cam's REC button, and when he pressed REC again to start the tape, the MRC kept running.

So it seems there are three ways to to this, none of which are meant for simpletons like myself:

1. Do as my lone smart shooter did: let the tape run out, eject, replace, hit REC.
2. Hit CamLink on the MRC to disengage the REC signals from cam to MRC, hit stop, eject tape, replace tape, hit REC, turn on CAMLINK.
3. Turn of EXT REC CTRL completely and operate tape and MRC independently, using separate REC controls on each (somewhat defeating the purpose of all this nice seamless integration with our Z5s).

Am I missing something? Is there a better way?

Interestingly, the Z1 manual may have the answer.. it says to let the tape run out.

According to the Z5 manual, you can use the VCR control button on the top panel to start and stop tape only when you are in EXT ONLY mode...

Another interesting finding: if you change tapes while the MRC is running, even if the MRC runs completely uninterrupted, there will be a file break when the new tape cues up that cannot be joined the the Sony ru-util utility. It will always start a completely new file because of the audio interruption at the beginning of the new tape.

Hi Adam,

If you had any idea that the "Show" might go beyond the "60 min" time frame, then perhaps you could have used one of the longer tapes.

I use the Pana 80 min tapes, that also go to 120 mins at LP speed. I've never had an issue with them, even at the LP speed.

I applaud you for recording to two different mediums at once. I have used a second tape recorder - a Sony D-8 deck, and more recently a DVR, (neither in HD) but I'm not yet puting out HD, although I'm recording in HD on my HV30.

Harold

We knew exactly how long each act was going to be, but as we're only using tape for backup we'd never consider using the long tapes or at anything other than SP speed. Too many potential issues. But diff'rent strokes, I guess...

Plus we go through so many tapes the cost for the longer tapes is crazy. Pure blackmail, IMO.

But worth considering in a pinch, I suppose.