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. Click here
for a more detailed explanation of SCMS.