G.4.4 How to create/modify the file that MK_VCR uses

The file has some descriptions about how to change it. Basically, the lines in the file look like the following:

 8000				; Position to a blank frame (provide leader)
 6077, 6077,    4,    0, [ -1  0  0  0] "Movie Title Page"
 6078, 6078,    2,    1, [ -1  0  0  0] "Nov 1991 Movie - Title"
 5048, 5225,    2,    1, [  1  2  1 -1] "Nov 1991 Movie"
; c0    c1      c2    c3       [c4]         "  c5   "

The above sequence will display the Nov 91 press release sequence if Side B is inserted. Some notes about the format:

• Text following a `:' is considered to be a comment.
• Only the first column is required. All subsequent columns are optional.
• c0 is starting frame number.
• c1 is the ending frame number.
• c2 is the wait (in sec) after displaying the first frame
• c3 is the wait (in sec) after displaying the last frame
• c4: The number in the boxes are the speeds that are used by sonyloop. Up to four different speeds can be specified.

      0 is no operation
      1 is normal speed (30 frames per second)
      2 is twice slower (15 frames per second)
      3 is 3x slower, etc (10 frames per second)
      -2 is 3x faster.

If a fifth parameter is specified in the brackets, it is a repeat number. If this number is negative, sonyloop will play the sequence forward and backward. For example,

 5048, 5225, 2,  1, [  1  0  0  0  1] "Nov 1991 Movie" ;1 time forward
 5048, 5225, 2,  1, [  1  0  0  0 -1] "Nov 1991 Movie" ;1 time forward/backward
 5048, 5225, 2,  1, [  1  0  0  0 -3] "Nov 1991 Movie" ;3 times forward/backward

SPECIAL NOTES:

• Sonyloop doesn't send the correct commands to the Sony Laser Recorder to go backwards. Thus, no matter what speed you specify, it always goes at normal speed in reverse. (Maybe a Japanese reader can study the manual and fix this problem).

• Sonyloop tries to compute the time it will take the laser disk recorder to play the specified sequence. Because the timings in IDL can be off by a certain amount (less than or equal to about a second), it is wise to make one of the wait parameters (c2 or c3) equal to at least 1. If they are set to 0, IDL will sometimes send the next sequence before the previous sequence has had a chance to complete.