In article ,
dave weil writes:
On Sat, 22 Nov 2003 10:38:19 -0500, "Arny Krueger"
wrote:

"dave weil" wrote in message
m
Yep, my venerable Mitsubishi U57 VCR finally bit the dust, eating a
tape (the door retractor had been acting up in the last month).


Unfortunately, VCRs are being phased out and it's hard to find
anything other than very expensive models or dirt cheap ones.

Here's the problem. The U57 was an editing deck, which made it very
easy to take commercials out, or make glitch-free transitions between
material.

Here's how it worked:

You started recording and then when you got to the point that you
wanted to take out (or the end of the previous segment), you would hit
a little button called "adjust", which normally activated the shuttle
ring and inner adjust dial, but, when in record mode, would put the
deck into record pause and switch the on-screen picture to the
recorded image (in freeze frame). You would then turn the adjust dial
to advance frame by frame until you found the point where you wanted
to resume. The picture would, in about 3 seconds, switch back to the
live picture and all you had to do was hit the pause button to start
the record mode again.

This made taking out commercials a breeze.

Unfortunately, there don't seem to be any reaonably priced VCRs that
do this.

Or are there?

Anyone have any practical experience with this in current VCR models?

After watching this post die on the vine for a day, I'm struck that one
occasionally sees justice in life. One of the leading trashers of RAO as an
audio forum is David Weil. Now that he has a technical question, he posts it
on RAO and the fact that he's been actively working for years to chase
technically competent people off, comes around to bite him.

The question itself is another example of how Weil fails to observe the
direction that modern technology has taken.

The whole concept of editing video on a VCR is totally obsolete. If people
have things like this to do they do it with a computer... But Weil seemingly
can't conceive of computers as anything but vehicles for spewing personal
attacks, stimulated by the boring, depressing life that he leads.

I tried some years ago to convince Weil that computers were a functional
replacement for CD changers and he scoffed at me. Now, people walk around
with special and general purpose portable computers that they use as music
and video storage and playback devices. I've personally got two of them.
I'll bet that bound by his earlier dismissal of them, Weil still has none.

Now that I've suggested that computers are a functional replacement for VCRs
as video editing devices, I'm assured that he will scoff at me again.

The only thing I've got to say is that I've already had another RAO
solve my problem by selling me his same era Mitsubishi VCR for a
reasonable price, allowing me to to spend some money on fixing the
tape mechanism, which should cost lest than $75.

Since I have hundreds of VCR tapes, with thousands of hours of
content, I'm happy to continue to use "legacy" technology.

As to any other help needed, I think that silence answered my
question. There *aren't* any editing decks available on the new market
for a reasonable price. That's why I'm going to stick with this era of
Mitsubishi decks.

As to portable computers for music, no I don't have any. I don't have
cassette or CD walkmen either. Maybe this will give you a clue as to
why I haven't embraced digital portable players.

I *knew* you couldn't help yourself in regards to this thread. I'm
just surprised that it took you this long to offer *nothing* in terms
to the questions posed. Thank you for fulfilling my expectations.

Every SVHS VCR I've owned have had this capability due to having flying
erase heads. The only difference is you didn't push a button to get
into editing mode, you just paused the recording and then used the jog
shuttle to find the edit point. When the jog shuttle was moved during
record-pause the unit temporarily switched to playback mode so you
could locate the edit point, and then once you stopped operating the
jog shuttle it went back into record mode after a few seconds.

I've has several JVC and on Mitsubishi that did this, and as far as I
know most SVHS decks still do this. Also, most SVHS decks that are
mid-priced and higher also have image processing that improves
playback of even standard VHS immensely.

Just look for an SVHS VCR with flying erase heads and you should get
what you are looking for.