DVD Recorder owners, are you loving your machines or...? (1 Viewer)

[videobruce]

Big question...............

Is playback of a store bought DVD movie as good on a RECORDER as it is on a progressive scan PLAYER? From what I have read it isn't.


BTW, thanks for that link, looks like a very good fourm!

 

[DAN NEIR]

Unless I'm wrong the pan E80 has progressive scan.

 

[videobruce]

So do others , but that along doesn't make a better pic!

 

[Cahyo Wicaksono]

Going back to the original question "is it worth it?"

Well, to transfer Video8/Hi-8/Digital8 to DVD usually Blacks and Japan Camera charge around $30 for the first hour and $20 for the extra hour. So each tape will cost me about $50 to transfer.

I have 10 tapes to be transferred, a recorder cost (at the time) $700, so it's a no brainer to me to buy the recorder because on top of that I can transfer my remaining LD titles that are not available on DVD yet (or ever) which (again, at the time) were 10 titles.

 

[Don_Berg]

You can do a better job transferring video to DVD by using a PC with a video card like the ATI All-In-Wonder Radeon with its own PVR/MPEG recording software. Just add a cheap recordable DVD drive in the PC and you can do it much higher quality and cheaper, plus you will be able to use if for other purposes than just broadcast recording or VCR/LD copying. You will be able to make copies of DVDs which you can't do on the standalones, also store PC data files and backups. Much more versatile. Also with a newer multi-format recordable DVD drive you can burn copies in different formats for the ultimate in compatablity with other standalone DVD players.

 

[DAN NEIR]

Please explain. I don't understand how there could be a possible difference.

 

[Alf S]

You can do a better job transferring video to DVD by using a PC

My experience was totally opposite. Since my PC (and I venture to guess many others' PC's) is a couple of years old it has just barely enough oomph to withstand all the demands of doing vieo transfers using my NEC 1300A PC DVD burner (copying DVD movies is easy however). I tried using two different USB 2.0 video capture devices and they never worked right and it was very frustrating so I gave up.

Since my PC isn't next to my Directv receiver, I had no way of copying shows to DVD etc..I don't want to JUST copy old video tapes and camcorder tapes.

Now that I have the standalone in my entertainment center, I have my Directivo hooked up to the DVD recorder, a VHS player hooked up to the recorder, and a cable set up to plug in my camcorder. Very clean and easy to use set up for my needs. Something my PC set up could never do.

I am a happy camper now with my Philips recorder, and I wouldn't go any other route.

Alf

 

[Don_Berg]

Of course USB video capture devices are terrible, you must use a PCI or AGP capture card. I use the ATI combination video card with video capture combined on one AGP card. I got a $10 25foot video+audio cable to use for video captures from an STB in the other room - no problem at all.

 

[Scott Merryfield]

Is playback of a store bought DVD movie as good on a RECORDER as it is on a progressive scan PLAYER? From what I have read it isn't.

The playback capabilities of a DVD recorder are no different than those of a standard DVD player. The Panasonic E80's playback quality is very similar to that of the current model Panny DVD players, since they use the same Panasonic-made video chipset. Of course, Panasonic's previous generation models used a Faroudja chipset that was superior.

Philips makes a DVD recorder model with the Faroudja chipset, as does Pioneer.

Sometimes the user interface for playback on DVD recorders is not as user-friendly as playback-only models, though. My Panny E80 would be rather cumbersome to use as a player, but I did not purchase the device for that purpose.

 

[Parker Clack]

I have looked around but have been unable to find any one that makes a DVD Recorder and VHS recorder in the same machine. Does anyone know if such an unit exists?

Parker

 

[Alf S]

Your probably a year or two away from such a creature.

 

[Will_B]

Since my PC (and I venture to guess many others' PC's) is a couple of years old it has just barely enough oomph to withstand all the demands of doing vieo transfers

I can relate. My computer is 450Mhz, from several years ago. Sure, I can burn DVDs just fine, but there's just no way a computer as old as mine can capture video without dropping frames all over the place, and the audio and video ends up completely out of sync after a couple minutes.

But I will definately wait and save up for a better PC rather than getting a set-top DVD recorder, because I want to be able to lavish attention on what I am recording.

 

[Don_Berg]

My PC is over 3 years old (P3-850Mhz) yet with an ATI AIW-
Radeon video card it has no problem capturing full 720x480 resolution video and encoding high quality MPG2 in real time with ATI's software. You don't need a fancy 3Ghz P4 to do it!

 

[KevinFord]

This question is going back to page one of this thread, and is related to High Speed recording on my Panny DMR-E80H. I learned from this forum that I must set DVD Compatability mode to on to make this work.

When I set DVD Compatability mode to on, to enable high speed recording, I got a message that informed me that certain settings would be assumed with this feature on.
- MTS (Main or SAP)
- Hybrid VBR Resolution (Normal)
- TV type (4:3)

What is the effect of the TV type setting, with respect to the recorded material? How does it affect the DVD I'm recording?

Another thing I don't understand. In this thread, I read a post from Scott M., who wrote,

Using the flexible recording (FR) mode to the hard drive (for optimum data compression based on program length) in combination with high speed dubbing to DVD-R will result in highest quality recordings possible, with zero loss of quality when copying from HD to DVD-R.

I'm not questioning the accuracy of the statement, just trying to get some understanding... I thought Flexible Recording would use the highest bit rate that would allow the selected content to fit on the media. This makes sense to me, if dubbing to a DVD. It seems, though, that if I'm recording to HD, given the size of the HD, that I would always be recording in the best quality (as long as there is a lot of space on the hard disk). What's wrong with my thinking?

Thanks for the advice.

 

[Scott Merryfield]

I thought Flexible Recording would use the highest bit rate that would allow the selected content to fit on the media. This makes sense to me, if dubbing to a DVD. It seems, though, that if I'm recording to HD, given the size of the HD, that I would always be recording in the best quality (as long as there is a lot of space on the hard disk). What's wrong with my thinking?

The E80's flexible recording mode will use the highest quality compression to fit the recording onto a 4.7GB disc, regardless of whether you actually record directly to a blank DVD or to the hard drive. The assumption is, if you are recording in FR mode to the hard drive, you will then high speed dub the resulting material to a DVD-R or DVD-RAM disc.

I use FR mode to the hard drive all the time, then high speed dub to a DVD-R.

 

[KevinFord]

This may be nitpicking, but when I record movies, from HBO or Showtime, or whatever channel, I setup timer recordings and I usually subtract 2 minutes from the scheduled start time and add 2 minutes to the scheduled end time, because I have had problems where I would miss small amounts if I scheduled the E80 based on the cable guide's schedule.

I'm going to define an example below, just so you can help me understand if my logic is right and what the best way would be for this situation. ALSO: In my example, I'm defining my own imaginary compression ratio with the baseline being equal to XP... so, for my examples...
1:1 == XP == 4.7GB == 60 min

So... If I schedule a recording for a 120 minute program, using my method above, and using FR mode, it will compress it in such a way as to fit 124 minutes (120+2+2) on a 4.7GB DVD, right? Given my baseline above, then FR mode in this instance, (for 124 mins) would be a 2.07:1 compression ratio.

Then, I will "shorten segment" to remove the extra content, which will probably be between 4 minutes and a great deal more, because the program doesn't always fill the whole block of time that the cable guide suggests. Let's say that I end up trimming 10 minutes of content out, the result would be 114 minutes that was recorded at 2.07:1 compression ratio. This 114 minute program, though, could be squeezed onto a 60 minute disc at a 1.9:1 compression ratio, in which case we would have lost the quality between a 2.07:1 compression and an optimal 1.9:1 compression ratio.

Now. I know even XP mode is compressed, but we have to have a baseline and since XP is the best this device can do, we'll use that. Given that, if I record the above show, 124 minutes of it, in XP mode, 1:1 ratio, then trim it up to 114 minutes, still at 1:1 ratio, is it possible to then let the E80 figure out the ratio while dubbing to the DVD-R, so I can end up with a DVD-R with 114 minutes of video at 1.9:1 compression ratio?

I have been recording OZ episodes lately, and been putting two per disc, in SP mode. I end up leaving about 10-20 minutes on each disc unused, in SP mode. I think there must be a better way, so I can fully utilize the space that the DVD has to offer.

Hopefully there's a way to fully utilize all the capacity of the DVD, if I have only 100 minutes of content and it is split into multiple programs on the disk.

Looking forward to a solution!

 

[Scott Merryfield]

Kevin,

Yes, even using the FR mode, I never 100% completely fill a disc with material. I also add a few extra minutes to the end of the recording to make sure I do not lose the end of a movie and then use "shorten segment" to remove the excess (I usually only record from classic films from TCM). Honestly, though, I doubt you will ever be able to see any difference between a recording that utilizes 95% - 98% of disc capacity vs. 100%, especially on cable TV source material. I'm certainly not going to lose any sleep over the matter.

 

[KevinFord]

Scott,

I have one last question about FR mode. What happens if I want to put two 45-minute programs on one disc in the best possible compression? What would the process be, from start to finish? It seems to me that because the recorder does not know that I want to squeeze 90 minutes on to the disc at the time it is recording each of the 45 minute segments, it would assume that each of the 45 minute segments were intended to stand alone.

Kevin

 

[Scott Merryfield]

Kevin,

I do not think you can do that via the timer recording. You could manually start recording when each program starts, and set the FR time to 1:30 for each of the two programs -- even though each program is only 45 minutes. Once both programs are recorded on the hard drive, you would then use the high speed dubbing process, and select both programs to dub to DVD-R.

I have used the above technique when dubbing home videos and VHS tapes to get optimum compression quality for multiple video programs onto a single disc. I have not tried it with recordings from CATV.

Using the timer function, the E80 compresses each individual program to fit completely on a single disc when using FR mode, even when the target media is the hard drive. There is no way to "group" multiple timer recordings into a single FR session. The only way around this would be to set the recording quality to XP on the timer recording, and then use FR mode when dubbing from the hard drive to DVD-R. This will re-encode the material, though, so you will need to experiment to see how much quality you would lose during the re-encoding process. Personally, I usually try to avoid re-encoding and only high-speed dub from HD to DVD-R. However, I do not record any TV programs where this function would be useful. I mostly record classic films from TCM, and place a single film on a DVD-R (since most of the movies are between 1-2 hours in length).

 

[Scott Strang]

Scott sez

I purchased a Panasonic DMR-E80...

Are you able to use plain jane office depot/Verbatim/sony DVD-R's or are you only able to use Panasonics? How about DVD-RAM discs from places like Office Depot?

thnx
Scott (another one)