video editing

[dillon]

every time I try to insert a piece of film into a video i always end up with a gap at the end that says 'no signal' - How can I avoid this

[smorodina]

When you make a recording the tape is first erased by the erase head and then the video head records onto the, now blank, tape. As the erase head is a few cms away from the video head, this leaves a gap of a few seconds with no signal recorded on the tape. Normally this does not matter, as it is at the end and if you want to add another section at the end you record over the blank section. If, as it sounds to me from your question, you want to edit a section into the middle of an existing recording, it will leave this blank section at the end of it and will be shown as no signal before the head reaches the previous recording. Some older vcrs had an 'edit' facility for this purpose, which turned off the erase head to enable inserting sequences, but I have not seen this on a vcr for a good many years. The only other way to achieve this is to re-record the whole program in sequence.