There is remarkable variety in the features, functions and products of the various models of DVD recorders. Whether writing DVD+R or DVD-R, not all discs which should play in a specific set-top box will do so. Even more surprisingly, not all will read correctly in a DVD-ROM drive. In short, at this writing, the technology is immature and consistency cannot be assured.
There are two broad categories of standalone DVD recorder: those with and those without hard drives. Without a hard drive, only very limited editing is possible and primitive titling is the most that can be expected. These units are generally stripped to the bare essentials; they can provide time-shifting for off-air recording and some limited copying from tape (the units combining VCR and DVD recorder are a little more capable). Still, if all you want to do is put a tape onto DVD for quick access, space saving and economy, any recorder will do and a hard drive is not needed.. Typically, any DVD recorder will allow you put as little as one hour or as many as eight hours onto a disc. Of course, the slower speeds give lower quality.
With an internal hard drive, the recorder has a great deal more flexibility. The capacity of the drive is seldom significant since it will surely be capable of recording more than you will ever want to store on it; typical values are 100-300 GB where 40 GB is ample in practice. Additional features, such as 1394 input and output to a computer may be of value. After trying a variety of recorders, I settled on a Panasonic DMR E-85H. What follows is based on its operation so YMMV - Your Mileage May Vary - with another model or manufacturer. Note that typical of the breed, the Panasonic uses proprietary formats except for the finalized DVD-Video. Even then, the disc may not duplicate readily since it can appear to be larger than it is - and 7 MB larger than the nominal capacity of a DVD-5 disc.
The unit will write directly to DVD-R or DVD-RAM. Going to DVD-R it has the convenience but all the limitations of a recorder without a hard drive. Writing to DVD-RAM, it can be used as though a DVD-RW but has the added advantage of being able to write to the HD digitally; from DVD-R or DVD-Video, one can only dub to the HD in analogue.
Given the quality available on a DVD and the limitations of videotape, even an excellent tape may be recorded in four-hour mode (usually designated LP) without visible loss. Even six-hour (EP) does not entail much noticeable loss. Similarly, while each passage through analogue costs some quality, it is seldom noticed; of course, digital copies are identical with the original.
Once the program is on the HD, it can be split into distinct titles and each title can have many chapters. For example, you may want to convert a tape of a play into a title for each act and a chapter for each scene. A concert may be split into a title for each group and a chapter for each number. In switching from one title to the next, there is often a brief pause; between chapters, play is continuous.
Starting with such a tape, you begin by determining the full length you will want on the resulting DVD-R. The next step is to record it to the HD. By choosing the total length as the time to be recorded, the machine will set compression to fit the material onto a standard disc. In that way, you will get very nearly as good a transfer as possible; an alternative, say choosing LP (4 hours) for a 3-hour tape will cost some quality with no advantage. Besides, when copying from a tape in variable-speed mode the recording will automatically stop at the preset time, where it will keep going in one of the specified speeds.
Because you will start the recording before you want the disc to begin and end after the end you want, step two is to shorten the total recording. During editing, you will also want to shorten it to remove any interruptions such as ads, promotions, lead-in to the next act, interruptions in the signal. So scan through to see where you want to create fresh titles, noting along the way any shortening that's needed. If there is no shortening to be done in a title, the next step is to divide the full recording to split off the first title. Repeat for the second, shortening as needed. When all titles have been defined, it's time to enter chapter stops. You also want to set the thumbnail and enter the name for each title to make the menu attractive as well as useful.
A separate menu is provided for chapter work. In it, you can divide and rejoin chapters. That contrasts with dividing and shortening titles; modifying chapter stops does not alter the files and can be redone at this stage. In practice, you may well choose to make one disc with one set of chapters, another from the same capture with a different set.
At that point, you switch over to the disc-level menu; you've been working at title level so far. The first step here is to dub the program you want from the HD to the DVD-R which will become a DVD-Video. There are two fundamental ways to do that dubbing: at high speed or at a selected lower speed. At high speed, everything you did on title level is written to the disc; at a specified speed you lose chapters and thumbnails. For example, suppose you have a long program to record, one running over three hours and divided by an intermission. You might want to create one disc for the pre-intermission period and another post-intermission (shortening to remove the intermission itself). Then you might record the two parts separately at SP to get the highest quality for each part with separate chapters set for each scene or song. But for convenience, you might then put them all together as a continuous program at LP or at a set variable-speed. For that, you still have the separate titles, but need to set the thumbnails anew and take chapter stops dropped in about every six minutes.
When the dubbing is finished (real-time for a fixed speed, about a half hour for high speed), you can adjust thumbnails in title mode on the DVD-R; if you used high speed, that's not needed. Then in the disc mode, you choose the disc setting option to give the whole disc a name, select the background for the menu page, and choose whether to start playback with the menu screen or with the first title. On the Panasonic, whenever a title completes the next is begun; after the last title, you are sent to the menu. It would be nice to have an option to go to the menu after each title, but that's not offered and you need to use the menu button on your remote. Note that this unit permits only a single-level menu.
The last step is to finalize the disc, writing the menu information and chapter stops to the DVD-R or DVD-RAM. That short operation (2-3 minutes) makes the disc playable in most set-top machines and readable in a DVD-ROM. While the total time needed can run more than twice the running time of the program, your involvement in the process will take only a few minutes (depending on how many chapter stops you want to set and the amount of shortening needed). The result can be very professional indeed.
A final note is in order on media. Recordable DVDs, like recordable CDs, are less than perfectly reliable. With a hard-drive recorder, if the copy to DVD-Video fails, another is simple. Without the hard drive, you will have lost a broadcast and at best will have to repeat the work of transferring from another source. In addition, these recorders operate at low speed; even the Panasonic writes no faster than 4x. Therefore, high-speed media may be no better and are likely to be worse in these machines than those designed for lower speeds. Note, too, that the speed marked on the package may not correspond to that encoded on the disc. The situation is similar to that on CD-R, so verification of disc properties in a computer-based DVD writer is recommended before you commit to a quantity of blanks.
E-mail me at cdrecording@mrichter.com
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