USING THE SANYO GVR-S950 By Chuck Baker -- Newtek Technical Support Sanyo has recently provided our Newtek Technical Support Department the opportunity to work with the Sanyo GVR-S950 S-VHS recorder, which has single-frame recording capability built-in. While all the information needed to use the deck for single frame recording from Lightwave is included in the manuals for the deck, the information is scattered in many different sections of the documentation. For the convenience of those who have this deck and may be having difficulty, or who intend to acquire one, we present here the necessary steps for using the Sanyo deck, with citations to the Sanyo manual for reference. 1) Hardware Setup: the GVR-S950 must be connected to the Amiga via the included serial cable. Instructions for the connection are in the Computer Control Reference Manual (CCRM) on p. 3. The cable connects the 9-pin serial port on the back of the Sanyo deck to the 25-pin serial port on the Amiga. The Video Toaster Program Output must be connected to the Video In 1 connector on the GVR-S950. 2) Install the Sanyo Amiga software on the Amiga hard drive. It is not necessary to install the software in the Toaster drawer, or even on the same partition as the Toaster software. The instructions are on p. 1 and 2 of the CCRM, and the install routine is automatic, simply double-click on the Install icon. 3) The Amiga Preferences must be set properly to allow use of the Sanyo deck. Settings are: Serial Preferences (p. 10-11 CCRM): Baud: 9600 Handshake: None Parity: None Bits/Char: 8 Stop Bits: 1 Input Buffer Size: 512 IControl Preferences (p. 12 CCRM): Text Gadget Filter: OFF (not checked) 4) Prepare a tape for single frame recording by striping with time code. Instructions are on p. 4-6 of the CCRM. This may be done from the computer or manually on the GVR-S950 control panel. Requirements are (p. 4-6, p. 20-22 CCRM): > a good video source connected to "Video In 1" jack, black burst or color bars preferred; > back panel "Audio CH 2 Select" set to "Time Code"; > front panel "LTC/CTL" button set to "Time Code" (the words "Time Code" must be visible in the LCD display window just above the HH:MM:SS:FF display); > Manual time code striping will use non-drop-frame by default. If you do the striping under computer control, specify "CODE 2" for non-drop-frame time code. After time-code striping part or all of the tape, rewind the tape to prepare for single frame recording. 5) Once you have successfully time-striped a tape, and are ready to attempt single-frame recording, the following settings are required for successful recording: Front Control panel settings (p. 4-5 CCRM): LTC/CTL: "Time Code" (shows on LCD window) Front Control Panel Settings (continued): Frame Servo: ON (not mentioned in manual) Sync Select: Edit Control: Remote Hi-Fi: On Video: Composite (if feeding directly from VT Program Out) Back Control Panel Settings (p.4 CCRM): Audio CH 2 Select: Time Code 6) If you used SANComm to time stripe your tape, you must quit the SANComm software. Be sure no other programs which require the serial port are running. Open the SANComm drawer, then open the TellSAN drawer. Double-Click on the SANSetup.bat file. This will run TellSAN and initialize the GVR-S950 for single frame recording. Then start the Video Toaster software. 7) Enter Lightwave, and load your scene. For this example, we are going to record on the tape beginning at the one-minute mark. (p. 82-84 CCRM) Note: A period is required after each command to the GVR-S950! Do not omit the "." characters in the commands mentioned below. Go to the record menu, and do the following: >Click on the "Serial Recording" button. >Click on the "Record Setup 1" button, and type "PLAY." in the requester, then hit enter. The deck should play. >Click on the "Record Setup 1" button, delete the previous entry, and type "STOP.", then hit enter. The deck should stop playing. >Click on the "Record Setup 1" button, delete the previous entry, and type "EDTP 5.", then hit enter. >Click on the "Record Setup 1" button, delete the previous entry, and type "TALK2.", then hit enter. This tells the deck not to send feedback after completing activity. If this command is not issued, then a signal coming in the port from the deck will collide with other activity in the I/O chips from the Toaster software and cause the computer to reset. >Click on the "Record Setup 1" button, delete the previous entry, and type "EDOT 1800.", then hit enter. >Click on the "Record Command" button, type "APND 1.", and hit return. >Click in the Frame Record Delay box and type in "20.0 s" to insure that Lightwave does not attempt to record frames sooner than every 20 seconds. >Click on "Continue". Click on "Render", select Automatic frame advance, be sure the status window shows that Serial Recording is on, and click on "OK". 8) Should your computer crash or reset during single frame recording, which may happen if you have neglected to use the "Talk2" command in the Record Setup 1 entry procedure, then review the material recorded to determine at what frame number recording stopped. Then do as follows: > Power down and reset both the computer and the deck; > Load lightwave, load the scene; > Set the scene menu "first frame" entry to the last frame that was recorded, i.e., the last frame successfully recorded was 121, so set "first frame" to 121. > Go to the record menu. Follow the steps above under item 7) above, but make the last entry in the "Record Setup 1" line "EDOT 1921." (1800 + 121). When this works correctly, recording will resume by overwriting the last frame at the correct position, and continuing the recording of the remaining frames in the animation.