VHS to DVDRW recording with Samsung VR330

ecc · Member Joined: 24 Jul 2005 Location: california

I've done three VHS to DVDRW recordings with a Samsung VR330 at work (I've got three Tivo Units hooked up to DVD recorders (the other two are Panasonics transferring news broadcasts to disc) and the first two came out nicely at SP mode. The first was mono hi-fi and the second was hi-fi stereo (both Japanese subtitled English langauge ex-rental tapes).

The third one, however, was an American tape. It was also in hi-fi stereo (the film was in Dolby Stereo), however, the audio on this recording has a crackling sound throughout and but it gets louder in the right channel every once in a while. I took a bit of the ac3 file and converted it to wav and opened it in Kristal and can see the right channel spiking well above the left one every once in a while. I wanted to know if this was the original factory-manufactured tape (I couldn't hear it when I played the tape on my VCR) or is there an issue with the VR330 (as mentioned, the other tapes did not have this problem)? If its the recorder, are there any DVD recorders that allow you to set audio recording levels?

robjv1 · Member Joined: 10 Aug 2005 Location: Oregon, USA

For whatever reason I've noticed that most tapes with that "crackling" hi-fi sound do it in the right channel. I don't know why you wouldn't hear it from the VCR though. What you could do is record the audio on another VCR (a lot of times it's the VCR and it's tracking range and not the tape) or you could try recording a version of just the video in the best possible quality and then dialing in the hi-fi audio, even if the picture is less then pristine and use that for the audio. I do this all the time and then use MPEG Video Wizard to synch them up, works like a charm.

ecc · Member Joined: 24 Jul 2005 Location: california

I'll give it a try.

ecc · Member Joined: 24 Jul 2005 Location: california

Still have not gotten back to that other tape but I've had two tapes that stopped during recording to DVDR. Other tapes have recorded fine but when I tried recording both of these tapes to DVDR again, they stopped in their respective exact same places. It seems to have to do with tape damage. Other VCRs have no trouble playing past these rough patches but the VCR on the Samsung seems to give up. Are the playback heads more sensitive or something?