What is SCMS?

- Often referred to as "scums". Serial copy management system. A DAT machine that incorporates this "feature" writes copy protect along with the rest of the data when you record a tape ( 1 0 ). When copying this tape, with the copy protect data on a machine with scms a second level of copy protect data is written on this tape ( 1 1 ). This tape cannot be transferred to another DAT machine with SCMS, without the aid of an outboard device known as a SCMS stripper. The SCMS stripper resets the SCMS bits to allow an SCMS machine to copy the data. Many of these devices (often the cheap ones) produce excessive amounts of jitter, which will rob your recording of fine detail.They are best avoided.

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