I'm looking for some freeware that will report how a DVD was recorded. I'm trying to solve a mystery that came up with a set-top Panasonic DVD recorder. I'm testing the Panasonic as a possible replacement for our Liteon. I want to see if Panasonic's FR mode (flexible recording) will let me get a 2 hour 10 minute movie onto 1 DVD with acceptable quality. But I ran into an intersting problem while waiting for a movie to record. I regularly record a 1/2 hour series in SP mode for the kids, import them into NeroVision, edit out comercials and burn 4 or 5 episodes onto a DVD. Nero uses Smart Encoding to burn episodes recorded on the Liteon very quickly (15 minutes per DVD) and with no loss of quality, but when I process episodes recororded on the Panasonic (also in SP mode), Smart Encoding doesn't kick in and I get an estimate of well over an hour to burn a DVD, not to mention the loss of quality from re-encoding. So clearly, Panasonic's version of SP is not the same as Liteons and I would like to find out the differences.
Update: Still looking for something to anylize the DVDs created but some more web searching turned up a case where this happened due to non-standard encoding by Panasonic recorders. It went on to say the problem could be eliminated by turning off the "hybrid VBR" option. Unfortunately, Panasonic did not see fit to let owners turn that option off in their newer models. So back to the store with the DRM-ES45VS.
