>And why where you messing around with 4sec prerolls - I thought the axial could get most vtrs down to a couple of seconds. Although its technically true that DBetas can pre-roll down to 2 sec. in playback, my experience over the years is that record DBetas can not Auto-Tach into the upcoming edit reliably in under 4 sec. That causes either edit aborts, or even worse, the record DBeta to fail to Tach into the base recording during preroll and not go into record at the edit point. The red record light on the deck panel lights up, the status indicator on the Axial shows a red record banner but the VTR is NOT IN RECORD. After being burned by this phenomenon several times and conducting lots of experiments, I have settled on 4 sec preroll to get reliable record performance out of the DigiBetas. Since I online edit for VTA, we had our own in-house developed editor called "Fastrack" during the 1980's and 90's. It was an awesome online editor that allowed flexible and sophisticated machine control based on UNIX, ethernet and our proprietary LAN for VTR, switcher and router control. Since the designer worked onsite, I requested and got separate pre-roll amounts for each deck programmed into the software. In that case, I could have used 4 sec for a record DBeta and 2 sec. for the playback DBetas. We switched to Axial in the mid-to-late 90's when we built new composite and component digital online suites. We still have one Fastrack online for satellite feeds and duplication when they need to gang-roll playback and record VTR's of differing formats (up to 8 at once).

Well I believe the XPRi from Sony went for 2x ingest at the same time... and Lightworks VIP went for 4x ingest - but I guess no-one wants to spend the money on vtrs these days ;-). And why where you messing around with 4sec prerolls - I thought the axial could get most vtrs down to a couple of seconds. ;-)

Or just bill twice as much! It is funny to me that no non-linear edit system even attempts multiple machine control- playback and record. I've been able to do multi-VTR's rolls of long-form shows in which different language lower-third supers are added on different ME banks (using Axial switcher triggers) and the resulting versions are simul-recorded on different record VTR's - all in real time and without rendering! Only a 4-sec. pre-roll is needed!

Hi Bob, glad you got it to work! Now you can do 2x the work and go home earlier, right? ;)

That was it! I just performed simultaneous recordings in two bins of different PB->Rec combinations. Turning switcher and audio control OFF at the Axial allowed the simul-recordings. Thanks very much!

Bruce! Good to hear from you, glad you're back on some Axial work. It's good for you. You know you can never leave the Axial. (For those who don't know, Bruce is the brains behind the Axial, Ok there were others, but Bruce is "da man".) Your comments about the video switcher being used sheds some light on this. I, too, am not on an Axial any more and just haven't had the time wherever I've been to set this up, I'm afraid. But, Bob, if you still want to try this, it would be worth a try to see if just turning off switcher control helps any. -John

Hi John, Long time no see. Hope you've been well. Abekas hired me to do some Axial work, and I happened to notice this post on the Axial Editors Forum. The only thing that is keeping the Axial from running the bin recordings simultaneously is device contention. Most likely, the video switcher. One bin grabs it and that holds the other bin till the switcher is available. The solution is to configure one or both bins so the Axial doesn't use the same device in both bins. It's been a long time since I've operated an Axial, so you can probably get the specifics better than I can. As I recall, you can either configure the Axial to use routers to select the video and audio for each recorder, turn off the switcher control in the edits, or possibly other methods. If the Axial is configured for preview switchers or video aux bus control, that may also need to be addressed. If you're not sure what device is causing the contention, use the timeline debug mode to see which devices are used by each bin. Best regards, - Bruce

Bob, sorry but I wasn't able to have the time to try this today. I'll still think about it and ask Atul if he might know something I don't. -JH

Thanks John. We have three Axial 3000's with version 4.3 Display and Comms. I tried it just now enabling B-mode assembly and it behaved the same way- one edit per bin was executed at a time.

Hi Bob, It's been a long time since I showed that off, but I do believe should be able to do this. I think it did used to do this. I'll actually be down at Abekas today for a little bit and will check it out. Perhaps it's as easy as enabling B-Mode assembly in the Init Manager. More later. . . John PS- is your Axial a 2010 or 3000? And what s/w version are you running (press SYS/MAINT/VERS)?