Panasonic DMR-E80HS high-speed quality question

[Tony Tower]

Hi, gang -

I bought the Panasonic DMR-E80HS and am loving it, but have been confused by the High Speed recording setting.

If I understand correctly, when dubbing from the HD to a DVDR at High Speed, the DVDR must be recorded at the same resolution/speed/quality (XP/SP/LP/EP) that the HD recording was made, with no other option. Some posts I've seen on this board seem to indicate that High Speed dubbing is superior to realtime dubbing since the programs are not "re-encoded" in the process.

If I've decided that LP recordings (4 hours) are an acceptible compromise quality for television programs, which will yield me the better picture?:

* record to the HD at XP, dub to DVDR at LP in real time
* record to the HD at LP, dub to DVDR at LP with high-speed dubbing

For that matter, if I have a 2 and a half hour movie, my first impulse would be to record it with Flexible Recording (giving me a part-SP, part-LP recording). But does the re-encoding diminish the picture enough that it'd be better to do a High Speed LP dub?

Advice is much appreciated,

Tony Tower

[donpedro]

* record to the HD at XP, dub to DVDR at LP in real time

It would make it even more bad. Additional conversion.

* record to the HD at LP, dub to DVDR at LP with high-speed dubbing

No additional loss (at least I think)

[doxtorRay]

The advantage to recording at LP on the HDD and then high-speed dubbing to DVD is that it will only take 56 minutes as opposed to four hours (for four hours of content) if you do it real time.

FR sets the resolution and average bitrate based on the amount of time you assign to the recording. Any FR under 2:10 will be assigned the SP/XP resolution, but the average bitrate will be assigned to fill a DVD. A FR set to 2:11 or more will be given the LP resolution (about S-VHS quality), but the average bitrate will be higher than it would be for an LP recording, if the FR is set to less than 4 hours.
If you have a 2:30 movie recorded in FR, you will get an LP resolution recording at nearly twice the average bitrate of an LP recording.

[Tony Tower]

Okay, I guess I misspoke on how FR recordingn works. Thanks for the clarification.

I'm still wondering though, does the increased bitrate on an FR dub outweigh the quality loss due to re-encoding? For a 2:20 movie going to DVD-R, will an LP recording encoded once look better than an FR recording encoded twice?

- Tony Tower

[donpedro]

Okay, I guess I misspoke on how FR recordingn works. Thanks for the clarification.

I'm still wondering though, does the increased bitrate on an FR dub outweigh the quality loss due to re-encoding? For a 2:20 movie going to DVD-R, will an LP recording encoded once look better than an FR recording encoded twice?

- Tony Tower

The best way how to find out is if you try it Please let us know your results.

[Tony Tower]

The best way how to find out is if you try it Please let us know your results.

I will probably test it myself. and will report back. But has anyone who has had the unit a while reached any conclusions?

Best,

Tony

[doxtorRay]

Tony:
Why not record to the HDD in FR mode in the first place? You will avoid the re-encoding, and still end up with a file that you can high-speed dub to the DVD. If the recording time is anything less than 4 hours, the quality will be better than LP would be.
Do I understand what you were thinking of doing? Were you wanting to compare (1) recording at LP and high-speed dub to DVD with (2) XP recording with real-time dub at FR to DVD? I think the result would depend on how long the ultimate recording that you would transfer to DVD would be. If the content is close to 4 hours, I bet (1) is better, but if it is closer to 2 hours, (2) would be superior.

However, I think recording on the HDD at FR and high-speed dubbing is the best of both worlds, although you must know how long the final recording is in order to set up FR.

[Tony Tower]

Tony:
Why not record to the HDD in FR mode in the first place? You will avoid the re-encoding, and still end up with a file that you can high-speed dub to the DVD. If the recording time is anything less than 4 hours, the quality will be better than LP would be.

From what I've gathered, recording in FR to the HD with a pre-set out time will encode the video to maximize quality on a later DVD recording, right? (i.e. up to 4.7 GB or so). So, yes, this method would be perfect for, say, an HBO recording of a single film to a single DVDR.

The hitch is that most of my recordings are going to be TV shows (5 separate programs, each recorded on different days). So FR doesn't help me there, as far as I can see. If I record each day's show at FR, each show would be "ideal-sized" to fill a DVD-R by itself.

And the theoretical movies I'm doing are probably backups of my laserdiscs where side changes are an issue. Can one pause an FR recording? If not, I'll probably try doing an FR recording of the laserdisc by setting the time to "running time plus 10 minutes" to accomodate side changes and then edit th dead space out after the fact. I wouldn't get the absolute maximum bitrate, but close enough.

Has anyone tried this? I plan to soon, and will report back. But just wondering what others have done when recording laserdiscs. . .

Best,

Tony Tower

[Tony Tower]

The best way how to find out is if you try it Please let us know your results.

I will probably test it myself. and will report back. But has anyone who has had the unit a while reached any conclusions?

Best,

Tony

Okay, I've played around a bit more.

For my money, the quality is slightly better doing a LP on HD highspeed dub to DVDR than doing a realtime LP dub of a XP recording on the HD (enough initials there for eveyone? ).

The downside is that I got used to watching the shows on XP first and then archiving them at LP, so I sort of miss seeing "new" shows all crisp and clean. The upsides are (a) quicker dubbing time and (b) my HD now holds quadruple the number of hours (since my initial records are now at LP instead of XP).

I guess I can always watch new shows live. . .

- Tony

[donpedro]

That is another coffee. To capture couple of episodes during couple of weeks, edit out commercials and then burn it on DVD ??? I would go with XP on HD and then burn is quality that I need. I don't know how it would look like but it sounds best to me.

You are going to be pioneer with this test

[houtx67]

a few answers and comments:

However, I think recording on the HDD at FR and high-speed dubbing is the best of both worlds, although you must know how long the final recording is in order to set up FR.

I don't think you can record in FR mode and and utilize high-speed dubbing (at least according to my e100h manual). Also, FR mode on the HD will be based on a 4.7 GB disk and not what is left on your HD. Commercials that will be edited later will take away from you potential bitrate/resolution as the HD considers them, too. However, XP mode on a HD will result in an XP quality original to re-dub regardless of length (provided you have the space on your HD). Also, my e100h will only non-stop timer record up to 6 hours before pausing to begin a new session. I'm assuming this is because of the above 4.7 gb consideration built in the programming. It will continue recording as a new title after a brief pause. But if the pause falls in the middle of a show, it will still play continuously if you dub them back to back, but with this very slight pause (akin to using the "Divide Program" function). It will also show as 2 titles on the menu.

Can one pause an FR recording? If not, I'll probably try doing an FR recording of the laserdisc by setting the time to "running time plus 10 minutes" to accomodate side changes and then edit th dead space out after the fact.

You can use pause in FR mode on the e30 models and higher. Though you can record in XP mode on the HD and re-dub you laserdiscs in FR mode. This will allow you to more precisley edit out your pauses when changing sides (vs only manually pausing, an assuming your LD movie is over 1 hr in length so quality shouldn't really be affected by the re-dub vs straight non-re-dubbed XP).

To capture couple of episodes during couple of weeks, edit out commercials and then burn it on DVD ??? I would go with XP on HD and then burn is quality that I need. I don't know how it would look like but it sounds best to me.

By editing out commercials while waiting for enough shows to put on disk, you can reclaim 15-18 minutes of HD space (provided you use the "Shorten Segment" function and not just create a playlist).

[bnbhoha]

REad my new guide here:
https://www.videohelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=184722

The best way in my opinon to do it is, that you know a typical show is around 42-43 minutes after cutting out comercials. You should know how many minutes the program is once you edit out the commercials. Add the minutes up and either record in FR mode or use the LP mode. For example. Four 43 min shows = 172min= 2 hours and 52. I believe LP mode is upto 4 hours, so in this case I would record in FR because I should get a better result; there's still an hour and 8 minutes left, so you could record 1 more program if you use lp mode, if you don't then it's a waste of space because the space is not going to be used so that is why you use FR mode to use the whole space. Even go over a few minutes if you have to. Look at my guide and good luck. (I'm still fine tuning it)

[Tony Tower]

Well, I recorded a 3 hour,five minute program to the HD using FR mode. I then highspeed dubbed the program to a DVD-R, and it seemed to work swimmingly - used up the entirety of the disc space. If it had been an LP recording, there should have been some leftover space.

Looks good for now.

- Tony