Teac MMR-16 v4.0 - Manual (Page 108)

TASCAM MMP-16 Owner’s Manual • Chapter 6 • File Format Support MMP-16 110
Using TapeMode with ProTools Sessions
The MMR-8 has two record modes, Non-Destructive and TapeMode. Non-Destructive Record Mode
works the same way as Pro Tools in that each recording makes a new audio file on the disk and does not
over-write any existing material. In TapeMode, each track is considered to be a single continuous audio
file and successive recordings will destructively over-write any existing audio on the same track when a
punch-in is made. This is a useful way to record on the MMR-8 because it makes the most efficient use of
disk space when recording mix tracks that will have a lot of record punch-in and out passes over the same
part of the track. It is also more efficient in operation and will make the MMR-8 much less susceptible to
“media too slow” errors when punching in and out across many tracks simultaneously, particularly when
recording 24-bit files.
Although Pro Tools has a destructive record mode, it does not work the same way as the MMR
TapeMode, so some of the rules for using TapeMode on the MMR-8 do not have an equivalent on the Pro
Tools system. It is important to understand some of the consequences of using TapeMode when recording
in the Pro Tools Session file format, since there are differences between the way TapeMode recording
works with WaveFrame files and how it works with Pro Tools Sessions.
If the Record Mode (menu 200) is set to TapeMode when recording a Pro Tools Session, the MMR will
automatically allocate all disk drive space between the TapeMode Start Time (menu 230) and the time
where audio is recorded in each track. For example, in a TapeMode Session with a TapeMode Start time
of 01:00:00:00, if audio is recorded beginning at one hour, then only the audio actually recorded will take
up space on the disk. If the TapeMode start time is set to one hour and the current time location of the
MMR-8 is set to two hours and recording begins, the system will automatically allocate one track-hour of
disk space for each track in record. It is possible to verify that this is so by checking the Free Time on the
disk (press Shift + 3). This behavior is different from the way WaveFrame TapeMode projects work. The
WaveFrame file system allows continuous files to have “holes” in them but still be considered a single
file. The Macintosh Hierarchical File System has no way to do this, so a recording made after the start
time of a TapeMode Session will cause the system to automatically see all disk space between the
TapeMode start time and the last bit of audio recorded on a particular track as being allocated to that
audio file. This means that it is very important to set an appropriate start time when using TapeMode to
make sure disk space is not wasted or used unnecessarily. For example, successive reels of a film will
quite often carry a time code hour number that is the same as the reel number. If this method is being used
and reel 3 is being recorded (mixed) to an MMR-8, be sure the time code for the TapeMode start time is
set to 03:00:00:00 and not to 01:00:00:00, or the disk may show that it is full immediately as soon as
recording is started at the beginning of the reel (at the 03:00:00:00 time code) since all space between one
hour and three hours is allocated for the recording on all armed tracks. If this happens in error, you must
take the disk to a Macintosh computer and delete the audio files to regain use of the allocated disk space.
A future version of the MMR-8 will allow these files to be deleted by the MMR-8 using the Disk Cleanup
function, but this does not yet work for Macintosh disks in version 2.0.
Another distinction between the file system of Macintosh disks versus WaveFrame disks is that Mac disks
make different data block sizes on different volumes, depending on the capacity of the disk, whereas the
WaveFrame file system has a fixed data block size. One effect of this is that when a backup is made of a
Pro Tools TapeMode Session, the Session created will only be a TapeMode Session if made to a disk
which is formatted with exactly the same data block size, otherwise it will be backed up as a Non-
Destructive Record Mode project.