🚀 go-pugleaf

Excerpts from netnews.comp.multimedia: 16-Nov-92 Computer controlled
VCRs by I. Systems@tigger.jvnc.n 

> Controlling a VCR from a PC.
> Can anyone help with how to do this? What are my options? Can I use any VCR?
> Or do I need a special machine? If so where do I get it? I'm looking to be
> able to perform very simple functions (play, pause, fast forward, rewind...)
> on a standard home VHS machine, to the extent possible. I'm also hoping for
> a fairly simple solution, to the extent possible. Can a computer read the 
> VHS sync track, or do i need a seperate time code on one of the audio tracks?
> And as for controlling it, is there a way to do this through the infra red
> remote technology already built into the VCR? 
> All help in this matter is greatly appreciated.
> Thanks, 
> Jay

A year ago when we were looking into this, our only option was NEC's
PC-VCR. It takes commands through the serial port on our Mac, but also
will work with a PC. It understands a whole mess of commands from simple
play/stop to commands I could never imagine giving it. And it worked
just like it should have. You have to add another synch stripe to the
tape, which is put somewhere on the tape where it doesn't interfere with
a current synch track or either audio track (or, obviously, the video
track). 

The bad news is that it works like a vcr. Your program sends the Play
command out to it. It plays the tape a couple seconds to read the
control track, scans forward or backward to the right neighborhood
(several more seconds), then plays a couple more seconds till it gets to
the correct spot, pauses, then starts giving you the video. A very
tedious process to sit through, especially if you're in a training
session. When a user hits the "Show me the clip" button, they want to
see it soon. Not 5-7 secoonds later. So it wasn't a good solution for
us. We've gone to using digital video.

Disclaimer: I'm not affiliated with NEC in any way, nor have I looked at
the newer versions of the PC-VCR. It's likely that they've sped up the
machine. You probably want to get more recent opinions.