Hi all, Ok, here goes. Now I have to caution you about this, because what I'm going to do here is allow you to record instantaneously. So, it's up to you to make sure that you have everything set up correctly. You might play with another command, like, say REWIND, instead of the RECORD command shown below just to make sure. I'll paste the code you have to add to the specfile, but remember that you will need to REREAD the DEVICE for any changes to take effect. You can edit them right on the Axial (even an Axial 2020!), but you will still need to reread the device for which you are changing. So, open the specfile for the device and add the following code after the line that has the file name and revision and before the DEVICE section. You can use the return key to add some extra rows. [code:1]MENU USR3 # you can change this to whichever of the USR menus you'd like { ITEM 1 { "Record" COMMANDS { ( DEV_CMD "CurDev.Record" ) } } }[/code:1] That's it. Don't forget that the numbering is based on a first position of 0, so when it says ITEM 1, it's the second button over. When you press the USER 3 button, on the bottom should appear what's between the first set of quote marks, "Record." You can copy the line labeled ITEM 1 and make it ITEM 2 and change the DEV_CMD "CurDev.Record" to whatever command you'd like. The "CurDev" part makes it a bit dicey in that it'll send the RECORD command to ANY machine you have highlighted. So, if you'd like it to only to to the Master or Recorder, just change the "CurDev" to the name of the master in your Assign manager. So, it'd be "Master.Record" or something like that. As I mentioned before, it's been a while, but I'm pretty sure about all this. It's amazing what I still retain and can't remember what I had for lunch. :) Enjoy, John

Thanks very much to all who replied. I tried it just now and it works great using D CMD. John, how do you add that or other commands to the user menus? I've looked at the example files and can't wrap my head around the command syntax inside the menus text files. Thanks again!

Hey, John, I hope all is well. Phil & Bob, as John described you open the command window for the device you want to issue the command for. As described pressing the select button will immediately issue the command to the device. If you press the D CMD button on the Axial console instead it will add the command to the edit as a device command. You can then control when the command is sent using start, end, TC,etc. On the BVW75 specfile the command is record. Don't forget you can also add stop commands as well.

Yep, Paul's right. Heck, I might've even showed him a while back. It's an 'undocumented' feature, sorry I didn't show you, Phil. :-( To see all the commands that the Axial can send to a machine, oh, it's been a long time since I was in front of an Axial now. . . Select the machine (the R machine in this case) and press SYSTEM, DEV, CMD. You'll see a window pop up with lots of commands. Some will make sense, some will not. I think you can just scroll down to find the REC or REC ON command, something like that. I'd have to look at the BetaSP specfile, but it should make sense. So, with that command highlighted, press the SELECT button, I do believe, to issue that command. So BE CAREFUL, if I've done this correctly, it'll start recording right away. Play at your own risk. The cool thing is you can do some nifty things like make a USER menu for this and other commands. Or add this into a macro, but that get's scary. Hope this makes sense, let me know if it works. Enjoy, John

You can use a device command from the Axial to send the record command to the Beta Deck

I don't think so. I looked to do a "hard" record about a year ago, just like we used to do on the GVG editors, and i couldn't find it on the Axial. Phil Boal