I welcome a TOC update while recording. I lost a days work this
spring from a battery discharge while recording. I am guilty for not
watching my battery level and chasing to far a field after a
wonderful recording when I already had a great one. Usually if my
battery goes down the sony unit will power itself down and save the
TOC then turn itself off. But using a 2 year old battery it died a
fast death and took a whole days worth of recording with it. I have
not yet gotten a class A replacement sound for that bird.
I do look forward to the day when I can upgrade to pro-level
machines. Now that one meg flash is available I agree that those
flash recorders look pretty sexy.=20
I still think that the flash chips are looking better than the micro
drives but time will tell on that.=20
I trust Marantz products more than I trust either Flash chips or
Microdrives. I experienced a grown man beating himself last friday
when his flash chip died on re-format 15 mins before a meeting with 4
people from his biggest client. The Flash was being used on a
commercial sound exhibit sound system. It was my sound and I was a
whole lot less bent then him. I suspect he will carry backups in the
future.
I hope there is a easy way to check chip function after format as I
sure would like that if I go CF recorders.
--- In Walter Knapp <> wrote:
> Dan Dugan wrote:
> >
> > Matt Jarvis, you wrote,
> >
> > >You could also consider our Professional MiniDisc recorder, the
PMD650,
> > >which has several unique features, including a 2 second TOC
update whilst
> > >recording, giving an additional layer of security for your
recordings.
> >
> > Could you explain that a little more?
>
> I have a HHb Portadisc, not the Marantz, but I understand what this
is.
> Note first, in 5 years of using MD, I've never had a TOC problem. It
> probably helps that I'm careful about keeping the machine and disks
> clean. And that I always do my field recording on new freshly
unwrapped
> disks. Those that have reported TOC problems seem to always be using
> well used disks that they have done a lot of editing one (read
> fragmentation), or they appear not to care for their disks or
machines well.
>
> A MD is organized as one long continuous length of ATRAC encoded
data.
> And there's a Table of Contents space that contains the mapping
> information to map that into tracks. It contains a whole set of
pointers
> to locations on the main data space. Most MD write the TOC info at
the
> end, often keeping it in memory and only writing it when the disk is
> ejected or the machine is turned off. By the sound of it the
Marantz is
> periodically writing to the TOC during the recording to keep it
updated.
>
> I'm not sure if this is a good idea or not. Those frequent updates
give
> more chances to write a corrupt TOC. Of course in theory it's
insuring
> if something happens the current recording is less likely to be
lost.
> With my HHb Portadisc, the TOC information is being updated into a
> memory buffer that will survive things like loss of battery power,
so
> it's pretty safe even before writing.
>
> The real way to handle the possible damaged TOC is for a machine to
have
> a method of forcing a rewrite of the TOC to list the disk as one
long
> continuous track. Current recovery methods involve fooling certain
> models of MD recorders into doing this using a disk switching
technique
> that's not sanctioned by the manufacturers. But, particularly in
> professional machines this should be a menu choice. That way you
could
> always get the recording back, even though you would have to then
> manually break out the tracks again, and they could be fragments if
you
> have been editing. Currently I know of no machine that has this
bailout
> built in.
>
> Walt
>
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