Differences in E50 and E60

[AlfB]

I am investigating which recorder I would like to buy. I am currently looking at the E50 and E60. When viewing the demo of the machines on the panasonic website, I see that the remote on the E60 includes a button for frame advance and the E50 does not. One of the main things I want to do with this is record TV, edit out commercials and save to DVD. Obviously I could do the editing on a PC but thought that the editing capabilities on the set-top might be as good or better based on the demo. Do anyone have experience editing out things like this? If so, is the E50 or E60 better? Does the frame advance key on the remote really help? Am I fooling myself and should leave this type of editing to a PC?

[spiderman2k1]

I think you can puase but if I was you get the one with the hard drive.

[markjj]

This any help to you AlfB?

https://www.videohelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=176462&highlight=

[proxyx99]

You have hit the nail on a head. The question is not which model but how do you want to edit your movies. PC or PC-free. Then call Panasonic product info line and ask those guys the same question?
Then sit back and decide which way you wanna go 'cause these aren't cheap.

Panasonic way is like having 2 VCR's to edit, assemble the flick. With more ambitious projects you will find out that your options ale limited to few at best. Now, check what you can do with Vegas 4 for example.

Sit back and decide which way...

[thoots]

I am investigating which recorder I would like to buy. I am currently looking at the E50 and E60. When viewing the demo of the machines on the panasonic website, I see that the remote on the E60 includes a button for frame advance and the E50 does not. One of the main things I want to do with this is record TV, edit out commercials and save to DVD. Obviously I could do the editing on a PC but thought that the editing capabilities on the set-top might be as good or better based on the demo. Do anyone have experience editing out things like this? If so, is the E50 or E60 better? Does the frame advance key on the remote really help? Am I fooling myself and should leave this type of editing to a PC?

AlfB,

The E50 remote has "frame advance" (and reverse) buttons -- they are among a whole bunch of buttons that hide under a cover at the bottom of the remote.

Folks in this forum have plenty of experience editing stuff on these "stand alone" machines -- you can find tons of information by reading more of the messages here. Many of us came from trying to do this on a computer, and, thousands of dollars and thousands of hours wasted aside, we are now happily accomplishing stuff with our standalone recorders, rather than tearing our our hair, or waiting overnight for rendering and such as we did with the computers.

Bottom line, what you want to do can be done very well with a standalone recorder, with ease, without spending thousands of dollars for computer equipment, and without spending a couple of years on the 'net trying to learn every technical aspect of how DVD's work. Personally, my results with a computer were miserable -- "worse than the VHS slow speed" when all of the hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and hours of rendering and conversion and "transmuxing" and such were done. After I just hooked up a VCR to a Panasonic DMR-E50 and recorded onto a DVD-R, I put that into my "main system" DVD player, and very nearly broke down and cried, it was so easy, and the results were so excellent!

However, what you are describing (using the frame advance button to get to the point where you'd want to "edit" the video and cut out the commercials), would be something that you'd want one of the "hard drive" recorders to do, like the DMR-E80H. With a DMR-E50 or DMR-E60, you are just "recording live video," and you'll have to sit there and have a quick finger on the "pause" button in order to catch the commercials -- a pretty tough job. You could record onto DVD-RAM, and then edit the video there, where you can do the kind of editing you describe, but then you'd probably be wanting to get that video onto DVD-R. And, that would require something along the lines of getting a Panasonic DVD player that would play a DVD-RAM disc, and then record that through the DMR-E50 (or 60) onto DVD-R. Thus, you would be "encoding twice."

With a hard drive unit like the DMR-E80H, you could record the video onto the hard drive, then edit out the commercials, and then dub straight to DVD-R, with no "re-encoding." There are some details to this -- you have to set the machine to use the "DVD-R compatible" mode (no big deal), and you indeed can use the frame-advance button, along with every capability the machine has to move through video, to find your edit points. In other words, you can quickly zip to the point where the show "goes to black" prior to the commercial, start your edit, then get to the point where the last commercial "goes to black" before resuming the program, and set your second point, then delete that portion of the video. It works very well. Then, you can go through your video and hit the "marker" button at every point you want to make a "chapter point" that you could navigate to via the "next / back" buttons on your DVD player, and get that all set. Then, you just set the machine to dub from the HDD to DVD-R, and you'll get a fine, polished DVD-R with no "re-encoding" after the editing.

So, that's about how this stuff works -- check out especially any thread referring to "hard drive" or "E80H," and you'll find many more details than these.

Good luck!

thoots

[AlfB]

Thanks thoots and others that have answered. I am looking through other posts to get as much info as possible in order to make the best decision but what you have given me helps alot. It looks like I could do what I want using DVD-RAM but it will be easier to do with a hard drive machine. The biggest problem is that the E50 is already at my pain threshold in terms of money. I guess I need to decide if I want something like an E50 or wait to see if the hard drive machines will get into my price range. On a slightly different subject that pertains to this, has anyone use one of the LiteOn machines or the Apex? I have seen posts that indicate the video on the Apex is pretty good but that the machine is cheaply made. Are either of these a possible alternative to an E50. I do realize that I will be losing the ability to watch after the recording starts (timeslip I think its called).

Alfb