CompuServe Messages

>>>3D Studio doesn't do a real great job of controlling the unit. When it works, it really works great, but doing Disk-To-VTR is more of a pain that anything else (and Disk-To-VTR is where I start making money, if you know what I mean!). What I am wondering is if there is a utility that will allow me to do frame-by-frame control of the unit through Visual Basic (or whatever, but VB would be nice and customizable).<<< I haven't had any trouble controlling the unit with 3DS, but it would be easy to do it with any other program. To control the deck, you simply send it commands over the COM port, just like a modem. For instance, "REWD" sent in ASCII over the com port will cause the deck to rewind. All the commands are there in the user's guide. I have done a lot of batch mode xfer to tape, using a little program I wrote to create a script that uses the "SAN" program to send single commands to the deck. I do this to put multiple animation sequences to multiple places on the tape overnight.