Doing a google search for "md data disc edit" I came up with a couple interesting links and some curious information. Sorry for the rehash, a lot of this is very old stuff but I'm still trying to get a clear picture of what we can do. This article from the DAT-Heads digest talks about pro MD units simply being Sony MDH-10 drives with different software. Can anyone confirm this? http://www.solorb.com/dat-heads/digests/V4.000/D019 The Yamaha MD4 web pages give some good info as well. On this link http://www.yamaha.co.jp/product/proaudio/homeenglish/pastpro/mtr/mdrec/md4/n ew.function.html they give instructions for enabling an older model recorder to use regular audio discs. It seems that the capability was always there, just not allowed by some format legislation, and the format standard was changed in August 1996 to remove this restriction. Can anyone else shed more light on what exactly was changed? All in all, the Yamaha MD4 FAQ has a lot of good info that gives a hint about how things work... The Sony MD Discam FAQ is also informative, but discouraging. http://www.sel.sony.com/SEL/service/mdcamcorder.shtml The Discam is incompatible with existing MD-Data and Audio discs. However, they talk about MD-Data2, and how it is going to be a single unified format (I.e., they aren't going to artificially split it into data-only and audio/video-only discs). This is a plus. (Never mind that no one has an audio application for MD-Data2 yet...) Overall this first attempt at a Discam looks pretty poor. Using ethernet for the connection is interesting, but their implementation is incredibly limited. If they had done the right thing from the start (introduced a standalone SCSI or IDE MD-Data2 drive) there would be no need for a camera to PC connection, just move the discs back and forth. Or they could have gone with Firewire/i.Link. It amazes me to see them diverge into a completely different link technology when they already have such well established high performance alternatives to choose... Finally: I've sent gripes/requests thru Sony's customer feedback email link asking for MD-DATA and software ATRAC support. Here's the link. http://www.sel.sony.com/SEL/consumer/ss5/feedback.shtml Maybe if enough of us ask for it, Sony will wake up and deliver. Transferring audio from PC to MD over USB in realtime is a lousy hack when we know the technology to do it at 5x realtime has been available for over 5 years now. Let's all whine and beg for MD-DATA2 drives that can read/write raw data at current CD-writer speeds, or read/write ATRAC'd audio at 16-20x realtime! -- Howard Chu Chief Architect, Symas Corp. Director, Highland Sun http://www.symas.com http://highlandsun.com/hyc ----------------------------------------------------------------- To stop getting this list send a message containing just the word "unsubscribe" to [EMAIL PROTECTED]
