Newbie Dvd Recorder Question

[Chim Bubba]

Hello all I saw this posted on the newsgroups and thought that it should be posted here. I am curious as to the responses since like this user I also am curious about the Panasonic DMR-HS2. So here it is......

First off hello to all. I am new to this but I have been recently thinking
about buying a dvd recorder. I think I have narrowed it down to the
Panasonic DMR-E30 or the DMR-HS2. More than likely I will go with the HS2
for the 40GB harddrive. Questions I have are:

Which mode or speed is best for archiving vhs tapes?
I have at the very least maybe over 200 vhs tapes that I would like to get
rid of and put all on dvd. Some of the movies on vhs are very old. As far
back as even 1979 or 1980 on up. Now most of my tapes have movies on them
that were recorded with SLP which is the slowest mode on a VCR. To my eye
this mode was not bad. Nevertheless since they are already what we would
call poor quality. Would it make sense to copy these tapes to dvd with a
modebetter than the 6 hour mode offered by the Panasonic dvd recorders? I
mean would it really change the video and make it better to look at?
I would also like to hear from anyone who has purchased the Panasonic dvd
recorders and find out how they like the machine and if anyone out there is
trying to do the same thing as me when it comes to archiving all these many
vhs tapes.
In closing I would like to say thanks and as a newbie these groups have been
very helpful. Please forgive the crossposting but I really wanted to get as
many responses as possible.
Thanks, BGV

[ghoster]

i have tried to convert my vhs over to dvd but the results aren't that good(vcd quality). so what i did was read up on copying dvds. then i went out and rented the dvd of the movies i have on vhs. most of the older movies that are now are dvd are dvd5. so they are real easy to copy. the results are much better that way.

[ktnwin]

I have tried with Panasonic DVD recorder and found the followings:
1) copy from VHS tape to DVD yield about VCD quality. I am using the SP mode,
2) copy from digital 8 tape to DVD yield excellent quality (again in SP mode = 2 hour).
3) poor quality VHS (real old) tape recorded on DVD:
a) low quality loss (i.e. not much poorer) in SP mode
b) high quality loss if use 4 or 6 hour mode

From what I understand and learned (after two years making X/SVCD and now DVD), high bit rate preserve quality better and low bit rate cause significant quality loss.
The keyword here is "quality loss" involving when choosing different mode.

[nle1]

We haven't done a LOT of VHS recording using the Panasonic DMR-HS2 yet. However, the one tape we DID do, while testing to see what it could do was quite interesting. It was an ANCIENT VHS of "Best little Whorehouse in Texas" that looked really really bad on our bigscreen !! We recorded it to the HD using XP. When it played back, it came back better than the original tape. Whether this was due to the progressive player (I'm told that, or something associated with it, can improve the output) I don't know. But the beauty of the machine is you can record your tape all different ways and see how they play back. As they say in the manual, by using a HIGHER resolution, it may not make it look better, but less likely to LOSE any res.

NLE

[ktnwin]

The panasonic DMR-HS2 and E30 both have video enhancer circuitry (incl noise filtering), that's why VHS tapes to DVD look decent.
The progressive scan TV/DVD player combo also help.

[pan-dmre30s]

My panasonic DMR-e30s setup works very well although almost all of my tapes are in SP mode.

I use a JVC SVHS VCR for the source.
(Be sure to use the S Video connector).

record the movie on DVD-R using FR (Flex record)
Pad the time with about 5 extra minutes longer than the movie.

Video Settings I use
3-D Y/C Seperation - on
Hybrid VBR Resolution - Auto

Audio settings I use
D.Range Compression: off
Audio Mode for XP recording: Dolby Digital

It will be the best way you could ever copy the tape.
Much better than copying it to another VHS tape.

The video stabilization circuitry in the unit does improve some tapes when recorded.

However any major Video or sound glitches on your origanl source tape will still be in the final

Also note fast action quickly changing scenes are harder for the unit to encode and may contain artifacts or appear somewhat jerky.

Also be careful that you test your final recording and keep the source tape.

I have had 2 issues with recordings:

1- Movies which do not play past a certain chapter due to read errors on a defective DVD-R. (Finalization step worked fine however)

2- Also some movies which record and read back from disc fine however they were encoded with glitches in the MPEG video stream.

These glitches cause blockiness and audio unsycnhronization which you can see in the recording.

You will want to re-record these failed attempts.

This has happend to me about 5 times out of 70 tapes.

I have several movies which are not available anywhere anymore.
Not everything will be ported to the DVD format.
I would consider backing them up a good idea which I am actively doing.

[vferrari]

Video Settings I use
3-D Y/C Seperation - on

FYI - If you use the S-video vice composite input to dub SVHS or VHS, you won't benefit from the 3D Y/C separation circuitry setting above. 3D Y/C separation only works on the composite input. Some users have reported superior results dubbing from even S-VHS using the composite vice S-video input. YMMV