Hello everyone, A few months ago I bought this unit to start converting all my VHS and 8mm home movies to DVD. I'm happy with it. I really dig the hard drive and the FR mode. However, recently I've run into a couple of problems that I can't figure out. I'm trying to burn a ballgame (with implied oral consent) that looks amazing on the hd, but pretty much like crap after I burn it to DVD. On the first try I included the pre and post game show that made the running time about 5 hours. I knew I would lose quality doing it this way, but I'm ok with that.(I've burned 4 hour Simpsons DVDs that look great.) The result was unwatchable. You couldn't see the players faces at all and the field seemed to be "melting." So I immediately bagged the pre and post game and tried burning the game again in FR mode (the run time was 2:57). The results were equally as bad. This happened once before when I was burning videos from VH1 classic from my play list. I kept these DVDs to under 2 hours and they lost a considerable amount of quality also. Am I missing something? I'm currently using Fuji DVD-Rs and I'm not using a cable box nor do I have HDTV. Thanks in advance. Chuck
I am assuming that when you recorded the ball game at FR you had plenty of room on the hard drive so it probably recorded in XP or about 4.5Gb/Hour. When trying to drop it down to the disk you probably had to drop down to the slowest speedor .75 Gb/hour. The system had to compress the video quite a bit more for it to fit on to the disk (Which will only hold 1 hour at XP the best recording) Does your unit support high speed dubbing? If so I would pick a recording speed that matches what you want to do with the finished product. If it is a two hour show record it in SP, Longer in LP (4 hour) or EP (6 hour) with each step down in speed you cut in half the available amount of data per second of recording. I regularly use SP for recording series that I care about the quality and after removing the comercials I can fit three programs on a disk with fairly good quality. For programs I want to keep but don't require the higher quality I'll record in LP and get six hour long episodes(after removing comercials) on a disk with quality that is equivalant or better than a VHS tape at SP [bold]Hope this helps[/bold] Dazed-N-Confused
D & C, Thanks for such a quick reply. When I recorded the game to the hd I used the SP mode. The unit cannot high speed dub from the playlist, only from the hd (direct navigator). Are you suggesting that I burn this 3 hour game in LP mode as opposed to Flexible record mode? I can live with a drop in picture quality. I've basically been using Flex record for everything whether I'm burning a one or four hour program. Is that wrong? Again Dazed, thanks for the quick answer. CFB
Just did a little reading in the manual about FR mode and I think I'll have to play with it a little before I say anything. It looks like it could have some interesting uses. I'll play with it over the weekend and report back. I assumed that it simply picked from one recording speed or another (Or a combination of the two, Start in XP then switch to SP or LP if the recording was not going to fit) It sonds like it might use a variable compression to fit things in. That would work great for a 2:15 movie onto a disk. I'll also check the quality differnce between the two. Later D&C
My thinking has really been a little dazed & confused. In playing around with the Fr setting it looks like it will pick a compression to fit the recording exactly on a disk. (I thought it would simply switch recording quality to make the item fit. IE.. start at SP and switch to LP at a certain point. I burned two 2.5 hour movies down to disk last weekend and they worked out great. I started by recording them to the hard drive at XP to get the best quality and then editing out the comercials and cleaning up the begining and end of the movies. Next I burned them to a DVD-RAM disk at FR to get the movie down to exactly two hours. Then I burn it back to the HD in high speed mode to add title, thumbnail, and chapters. Lastly I burn it back to a DVD-R at high speed and everything carries over. It's kind of a roundabout way to do it but I get the best quality available and I can keep my chapter marks and titles. I think that is you record more than three hours the quality woul probably suffer as the compression would have to get really high. Although I have recorded TV shows (Not HDTV) at LP and not seen a lot of change from the original program.
