Control of the video recorder For a VI student, freezeframe and slow motion controls are not just luxuries. A small increase in the quality and price of a VHS recorder makes a large difference to the quality of still-frame display. Similarly, ensuring that the machine has a remote control the student can use costs very little except time to review what is on the market. Indexing Your students need to know where important bits of the tape are. Where your recorders are accurate enough, you can provide a list of tape lengths or elapsed times.
Most recorders just count spool revolutions, which makes for quite inaccurate elapsed time listings.
A better way is to 'index' the tape, for which teachers will need a recorder capable of adding index marks. Your student will need a similar recorder. Equipped with an indexed tape students can press a single button, and leave the recorder to find the next index precisely. You will make mistakes, so ask how easy it is to clear index marks - recorders aimed at amateur editors can simplify things. The index systems we are talking about here are very simple.