Operator`s manual

Model VR240 Audio Logging Recorder
January 2000
5-17
Section V. DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF RECORD OPERATION
Sections III and IV covered the operations you might want to do either while recording or before
actually recording on the drives. When the recording is stopped, all of those operations and
many others (including Config) are available. Once you start recording, the selections are
limited. The reasons for this include the fact that it is undesirable or inappropriate to perform
certain functions while a recording is in progress. For example, you cannot and should not
change a descriptor in the middle of a recording. Once you press the
Rec
transport key, only
these limited selections are available.
5-10. OPERATION DURING RECORD.
After hitting
Rec:
The
Display
now shows the status of the upper and lower drives. At least one will be recording,
and next to the display of the recording drive are these items:
Time and Date:
This is simply the actual time and date being recorded on the media. It
should agree with your local (or UTC) clock time depending upon how
you set the clock.
Media Counter:
This is a 4-digit number that reads 0000 at the beginning of the media,
and progresses in proportion to the amount of data recorded. The
counter shows how much data has actually been recorded. The number
can be regarded as a percentage of the media available, with 9918 being
approximately 100%. The counter takes storage capacity into account. A
DDS cassette and Rewriteable DVD-RAM disk reach the end at about the
same count even though the number of channel hours will vary.
5-11. MEDIA COUNTER AND DRIVE SWITCHOVER.
The media counter provides valuable information on how much media there is remaining. When
the media counter reaches approximately 97%, (equal to approximately 500 channel hours on a
120M DDS), and if you have another media in the second drive ready to record, the VR240 will
switch over to the second drive at this time. Note that this switchover occurs before the media
is exhausted.
If you do not have another media ready to record, the VR240 will continue recording on the
current drive until it cannot record any longer. After the media counter reads approximately
9000, the
Almost Full
LED next to the channel status array will blink and the unit will start to
beep regularly (providing that the alarm volume is not set to 0) indicating that the media is
Almost Full
. Recording will continue as long as possible. Eventually the media will end and
the unit will stop beeping and the
Full
LED will light indicating
Media Full
. (If recording ceases
after the
Almost Full
point, the media will rewind and eject or not depending upon the setting of
Media Usage
and
Lock
.) Just as analog media have lengths that vary somewhat, digital media
do not have identical capacities. Not only do media have slightly different lengths but, less
obviously, the quality of the media also affects recording time. Tapes with more dropouts will
require more retries, and will store less data. Thus, you cannot predict with certainty how high