I recently purchased a Sony RDR-GX315 DVD Recorder. I have been recording my home movies onto DVD with the a/v plugs on the front of the machine. I am using a cam corder to play the original tapes. The video looks great on screen while recording, but some times (3 of 10 so far) the finalized DVD has what I will call pixelation on all or part of the screen. For example - a face will occasionally become distorted, kind of like an intentional attempt to mask someones identity on a news show. This happens regularly throughout the length of the DVD. None of this is evident in the original tape. I am using Imation DVD-R 8x DVDs and recording on SP (2 hour). I have also had 2 instances where the DVD was unreadable after the recording. Any help would be appreciated. And by the way, I have no idea how to spell pixelation, so please do not hold that against me! Thanks and regards, GC
Lol, Im not the best speller either. Is there any way you can set the dvd recorder to burn slower like 4x. I dont know if that will help but block noise seems to be worse at higher burning speeds.
I assume that you're recording in 'real time' 1x on a set top recorder ... First of all, Sony set top recorders prefer using +R format discs to the -R format ... Secondly, I really don't know how else to put this so I won't sugar coat it ... Imation discs are crap. Get yourself some Verbatim or, better yet, get some Sony discs .. with your machine it really doesn't matter whether the Sony discs are made in Japan or Taiwan .. your machine will love Sony +R discs and I'd highly recommend them And ... if you have a firewire port on your camcorder and your DVD recorder use it!
Another guess for the pixilation: you have the recorder set for 2 hour (SP) instead of 1 hour (HQ). I've found you get nicer results for one-pass real-time recording by using HQ. Yep that means you'll have to use two discs for a 90-minute tape but the quality is much better with virtually no pixilation. And as suggested, if your camcorder and DVD recorder support DV (Firewire/iLink/IEEE 1394), use that instead. Quality Firewire cables are cheap from sources like NewEgg and ZipZoomFly.
While the above suggestions would help, I find the single most important variable is the quality of the discs you are using. As Catfreak has pointed out, you will get great results if you use quality blank discs. Imation is not the greatest and would be a concern for both the pixalation as well as the complete failures.
I've read about Firewire from miniDV camcorders being not the way to go on account of the digital system (?) being different from that used by DVDs. Something about the camcorder signal, although remaining digital all the way, needing to be converted to MPEG2 for the DVD recorder, resulting in loss of signal. This seemed to fit in with my experience today trying to copy our Sharp camcorder miniDV videotapes to DVD on a LiteOn 5005 recorder, using TDK discs. Using the firewire connection, the DVDs I made couldn't be played at all on our Toshiba SD K-750 DVD player. It just wouldn't recognize them. On our CyberHome CH-DVD300 player the same DVDs were recognized OK, and played not badly, but towards the end of the DVD the pixels and the freezing-up would start. Re-recording the same miniDV tapes down RCA cables resulted in the Toshiba playing the new DVDs OK (but with occasional pixellation and freezing) and in a reduction in the pixellation on the CyberHome. So, it looked to me as if the Firewire/MPEG2 argument was the answer to the initial problems I had encountered. But then I read this thread and found that Catfreak and others are adamant that Firewire is the way to go. The whole DVD-making deal is starting to look like roulette to me. Is there any configuration at all (i.e. DVDrecorder/media/DVD player) that's sure to work for miniDV to DVD conversion?
No, the digital compression that your Digital and and MiniDV camcorders use isn't MPEG2. However, DVD recorders that accept Firewire/iLink/IEEE 1394 connections have the proper software to take the content and convert it to MPEG2. Now if you are having problems with this, it could be that the problem is with the software or firmware on the DVD recorder. Theoretically, however, you will not get better quality video using your RCA cables, which are analog. It may be good enough that you not notice any difference in quality, but that's probably more a factor of who is looking at it. I can notice a remarkable difference between the analog and digital recordings.
Since my original post I have tried Sony -R Discs and have had the same problem on 1 of 4 discs. I did not try +R disks because I do not think my other DVD player will play them. I am using RCA (analog) cables. I think IanHNL is right about playng DVD Roulette. Thanks to everyone for the input!
I have found out a couple of things today that shed a little light on pixellation problems, at least for me. (1) My Toshiba DVD player had been playing Netflix and other movie DVDs just fine, and had played my own DVDs copied from camcorder tapes OK too, at least until a few days ago. Then it either started failing to recognize both the old and the new homemade DVDs completely or it played them with tons of freezing and pixellation, while still playing DVD movies just great. So this morning I took my 11-month-old Toshiba DVD player back to Costco, where they gave me all my $59.99 back, in cash. I bought (reluctantly) a Sony DVD player there, also for $59.99, as a replacement. The new DVD player played just wonderfully the very same homemade DVDs (copied from miniDV camcorder tapes and from 20-year-old Betamovie camcorder tapes) that the Toshiba had decided it couldn't play any more. I was so happy, and in my spaced-out state of euphoria I actually began reading the manual that came with the new Sony DVD player. And in there I found my second piece of information, which may just help solve a few mysteries. (2) To quote from Sony - ...DVD software can be divided into two types: film-based software and video-based software. Video-based software is derived from TV...... and displays images at 30 frames/60 fields per second. Film-based software is derived from film and displays images at 24 frames per second.... (And so on)... The point is that it's pretty clear to me now that either the Toshiba player's software was never really up to this dual role, or the video-based software in the Toshiba had somehow become corrupted, leaving the movie stuff intact. It certainly explains why (at least logically it explains why) the Toshiba discriminated so badly against my homemade DVDs. The DVDs that I had copied from my old camcorder tapes now look super. There's zero freezing and no pixellation at all - and these are the self-same discs that yesterday I thought were total write-offs. By the way the discs are TDK DVD+R and TDK DVD-R and they were recorded in HQ mode on a LiteOn 5005, meaning that each full disc has only one-hour of video on it. I hope this helps gredith a bit.
Sony likes +R media use Verbatum, Tiyo yuden or maxell. Personally I would recomend the first 2. Good Luck Spacedust
