begin loading media with all of the vacuum concentrated in a single band when the paper leading edge meets the platen by dynamically coordinating the rotation of the drum platen with the paper feed sleeve movement at a rate which would allow the second band of vacuum 426 to appear and effectively remain at the sheet loading point until the trailing edge of the media is captured at that time the sleeve stops translating and the second band stays with the trailing edge during printing operations this has a positive effect on vacuum efficiency since waste flow through exposed holes is kept to a minimum higher concentrations of vacuum stay with the leading and trailing edges of the sheet where higher holddown force is needed thus the combination of platen 402 with the sliding valve plate sleeve 413 provides discrete sleeve positions to produce discrete vacuum patterns at the outer surface 403 of the holddown 401 it will be recognized by a person skilled in the art that the vacuum distribution features of a holddown in accordance with the present invention u2014 width adjust length dynamic length adjust depletion zone creation and the like as might be useful in a particular implementation u2014 can be combined as desired through creative shapes and orientation of valve apertures 417 for any given platen surface 403 structure thus ideal flexible sheet material handling ability can be tailored to the need at hand as can now be recognized the sliding sleeve 413 need not be a unitary part two or more sleeves residing side by side in the axial direction would allow keeping some channels or columns of channels closed for use of a narrow print medium this avoids larger vacuum.