At times, higher-end VCRs provided functions for the user to manually add and remove these marks[1][2] — so that, for example, they coincide with the actual start of the television program — but this feature later became hard to find.
For example, Panasonic's Tape Library system assigned an ID number to each cassette, and logged recording information (channel, date, time and optional program title entered by the user) both on the cassette and in the VCR's memory for up to 900 recordings (600 with titles).
Each gap in the control track, no matter how brief, destroys synchronization and continuity, which can make a segment of a recorded video difficult or impossible to use for editing.
For this reason, many video professionals would "pre-stripe" every analog videotape to be used in the field or studio beforehand to help ensure good control track throughout.
Pre-striping also facilitated spot-checking for dropouts on the video portion of the tape (usually seen as brief white horizontal "dashes") before use.