DVD Recorder (DMRE20) RAM on PC DVD RAM (LF-D311) drive

[wellsi]

Is it possible to record a DVD-RAM disc on a standalone DVD Recorder (ie Panasonic DMR E20), then play back on a PC DVD-RAM drive (ie LF-D311)?
If you can, is it then possible to convert the RAM disc contents to a DVD-R for playback on other DVD Players?

When I have tried to play a DVD-RAM on the PC, it assigns a new drive letter making it impossible to select the drive in the Power DVD player software......

Any thoughts?

Cheers

[Tachyon]

Is it possible to record a DVD-RAM disc on a standalone DVD Recorder (ie Panasonic DMR E20), then play back on a PC DVD-RAM drive (ie LF-D311)?
If you can, is it then possible to convert the RAM disc contents to a DVD-R for playback on other DVD Players?

When I have tried to play a DVD-RAM on the PC, it assigns a new drive letter making it impossible to select the drive in the Power DVD player software......

Any thoughts?

Cheers

Yep, I do this all teh time on a DMR-E20. The VRO file on the DVD-RAM disc is basically a VOB with another name. Check www.kvcd.net and visit the Video Conversion area of the forums - you'll find a lot of talk about this, including Kwag's mini-guide on how to do it.

ATB, Tachyon.

[wellsi]

Thanks for that Tachyon,

What a nightmare though...
I'd kind of hoped I could simply copy the files to the Hard drive, then use them to burn straight onto DVD-R.
From what I read, there's a major bit of converting, and opening in notepad and stripping away #trim lines...
And, being in Europe, we're PAL not NTSC; Kwags guide states it's for NTSC only.

Am I being a bit simplistic by hoping to hook up the DMR to the PC Drive; playing the RAM back on the DMR and using somehting like VCRll to record it 'live' onto the PC dvd-r? I appreciate there is the digital - analogue - digital degree of signal loss, but surely the multiple file convertion covered in the mini-guide can't be too enhancing?

Or is there a simple way to play back DMR ram discs on the PC drive and re-record on the DMR via firewire linkup? (European DMRE20's have a firewire input)

Any thoughts?

Cheers,

[Tachyon]

Ian,

I'm in the UK as well, so don't worry about the NTSC stuff, you can work with PAL recordings perfectly. For what it's worth, my method of recording on the DMR-E20 and then burning to DVD-R without re-encoding is simple. Copy the VRO file to hard drive (or rename it to whatever.VOB on the DVD-RAM, as long as you name it back again later). Open this new VOB with a program like VOBrator, and demux the file to two streams. You should now have an MPEG-2 video stream on disc and a Dolby Digital 2.0 audio stream.

If you use an authoring package which can cope with DD audio, that's all you need to do - simply add both video and audio stream to your project and burn. I use Pinnacle Impression, so it's just a case of dragging and dropping both files to the timeline and burning.

If you can't burn DD audio, you'll need to convert to MPEG audio, and you can find some great guides on using BeSweet and Azid to do this on this very site

Burning these files to DVD-R works fine for me, and they play perfectly on the DMR-E20, but I cannot claim that they work on other players, since I haven't tested it.

Ian, if you need any more help on this, feel free to mail me privately.

ATB, Tachyon.

[Tachyon]

Ian,

As for your firewire questions, I don't know - but I doubt it. The DMR-E20 manual states that the firewire input works with camcorders and decks only which have device control, and it explicitly says it doesn't accept input from a PC. Besides which, you'd still have to re-encode the MPEG-2 footage from the disc as DV-compliant AVI footage

ATB, Tachyon.

[wellsi]

Thanks for that Tachyon,

What you say makes sense, so I'll give it a go over the next few days and see how I go.
Should be a lot easier when the new E30 comes out...

Cheers