Black Level setting in Panasonic E80/100

[humbled]

Thanks to the great info in the thread started by Thoots and expanded by others in "Visual Guide to Panny e80", I got the E100 last weekend and am loving it. Two questions so far (with many thanks for the help):

1. Black level: I have reduced input and output (composite and component, though I am using component at this time because my digital TV has the inputs for it) to lightest setting, but still have oversaturation of colors and a general darkness (that is, compared to original source material played direct to the same TV without passing through the Panny). I can compensate in the TV but it is a pain when switching inputs, and I am concerned about "correctness" of image I am recording in Panny. Am I interpreting the settings correctly? And exactly what is Black Level? I have read the post in another thread saying that the correct settings are default (darker) on the input and lighter on the output, but that appears to make the oversaturation problem worse.

2. I am still confused about how recording in DVD-R compatible mode works. I have a 3 hour program (on my digital Cox Cable DVDR, a Tivo like device) which I wanted to edit and transfer to DVD-R via the Panny. I set the Panny for SP, DVD-R compatible, and recorded to the Panny hard drive. I intended to edit it down to 2 hours (cutting commercials and some program fluff) and then high speed record (presumeably SP since I used that setting in recording to hard drive) to a DVD-R. All the discussion I have seen on other threads here seems to assume that if you use those settings for recording to the Panny hard drive you will get a two hour recording at that stage. I haven't measured the elapsed time it would take to play what I now have on the Panny hard drive, but to my eyes the very high visual quality is unchanged from the original source and so I assume that it is still 3 hours long. So, if I am right about that, can I edit the program down and high speed record to DVD-R, or will that disrupt some flags put in by the Panny? And if I can, what does the DVD-R compatible setting while recording to the hard drive really mean? It shouldn't mean something like FR, where it compresses on the fly, because it doesn't know how long the source material is. [In fact I recorded about 5 hours to the Panny hard drive in the process described above, not three, because I didn't get back to the machine in time to turn off the recorder at the end of 3 hours, obviously having not used a timer].

Thanks again to you Panasonic "pioneers" who have paved the way for the rest of us.

btw, the E100 has a seamless play feature that eliminates the pauses where you shorten segments. So at least when using the Panny as your playback deck, you avoid that problem. Don't know if it is on the E80, but
I haven't seen it mentioned here before so thought I would pass it along.

[shutterbug]

I'll try and answer most of #2.

What is DVD Compatible Mode: I don't know. Panasonic can't give me an answer to that question and all I see is speculation on this board. Although, it DOES need to be set to ON to be able to use High Speed mode.

Yes, your program is still 3 hrs after initially recording to your Panasonic.
When you record to your E-80's hard drive, in any mode (XP/SP/LP/EP), think of the mode more as resolution .... as opposed to just the amount of time. i.e. 2 hrs of recording, 4 hrs etc.

XP Mode= 704x480 and approximately 10Mbits/sec encoding rate
SP Mode= 704x480 and approximately 5Mbits/sec
LP Mode= 352x240 and approximately (I think 5mbits or less)
EP Mode= 352X240 and approximately (I think 2.5mbits or less)

You could record about 34 hrs. of programming on your hard drive in SP mode, but to High Speed dub the entire HDD to DVD, it would take 17 DVD discs @ 2 hrs each. You should know what you want as the end result for your finished DVD when you record a program to your hard drive. If you record 4 hrs of a program in SP Mode (which has a resolution of 704x480) and then edit out 2 hours of commercials, you know you can burn the program High Speed to a DVD. That would fill the 2 hours of space on the disc for SP mode--with no re-encoding.

If you don't edit the program and keep the entire 4 hours, you could still high speed dub the program by dividing it into 2, two hour programs and burning it to 2 DVD-R's. Basically, the *time* limitation of the different recording modes comes into play when burning to a DVD-R. Assuming you have plenty of free space on your HDD.

FR Mode: Varies the bit rate and resolution (depending on your settings) to fit your program into a pre-determined amount of time. But unless you know your end result of the time you need, and pause recording during commercials, it's not the best way to do it. FR mode calculates resolutions (i.e. 704x480 / 352x240) and encoding bit rate to give you the best quality in the amount of recording time you set.

Hope this helps.

[louthewiz]

Also to properly calibrate your tv (considering if its an HDTV) then to get the proper adjustment go pick up a setup dvd disc which is called AVIA home theater setup disc,or Discwasher dvd setup disc and finally the sound and vision home theater setup disc. Which you can find at best buy so you can get the best possible picture from your tv and set up a proper black level setting. And finally ALL televisions when they come from the factory are always set wrong and the test discs are the best tool to do this very sensitive tweak which will also prolong the life of your tv...

[humbled]

Thanks so much, Shutterbug. That makes perfect sense (other than the part about Panasonic not being able to explain DVD-R Compatibility . . . which isn't your fault). All the emphasis in other threads on using High Speed SP to record to hard drive only if your program was exactly 2 hours was what threw me, since there was no way the Panny would know the length of what you were about to throw at it. Your explanation illuminates all.

Thanks for the tweeking suggestions, Lou. I will go to Best Buy forthwith.

Still would like to hear advice from soneone on how to set Black level coming into the Panny, or explanation of what B.L. is.

As from my first visit to these forums, I remain

Humbled by what you folks know and the effort you make to share

[DaveS]

humbled - I'm not the black level expert but I'll give it a shot..basically, black level has to do with what numeric value the color black is assigned. Basically, the two choices are 0 and 7.5 (how the # 7.5 got picked is another story).

In the US, most NTSC equipment is IRE 7.5 (aka black level or setup).

What you want to do is make sure your recorder knows the correct black level that your VCR is sending it, as an example. If you get this wrong, you will 'corrupt' the picture, as you point out - the blacks will be interpreted incorrectly and your picture will be washed out or too dark. And, you don't want to use this to correct saturation problems as that's something different.

There is one post here that talks about the black level / setup on the pannys..if that's the one you found, it translates the labels that panny uses for 0 and 7.5 to how you should set them (wouldn't it have been easier if they used 0 and 7.5?).

The black level to your TV should be less of a problem.

There was a really good 5 min. flash overview of black level on the JVC web site, but it's not there any more - if I have time, I can email them and maybe we could post it here (if the servers had any room left).

Sorry for such brief info, but it's late...hopefully this helps a little - I'm sorry that I can't give you the 'answer' as to how to set the panny as I don't have one so I'm not sure how they label their settings, but maybe a bit of the background will help you figure it out (and my guess would be that lighter = 7.5 and darker =0, but I am really just guessing)...good luck!!

[godbeer]

Humbled:

I'm still trying to work out the black levels also - up till now I've been using the recommended settings from a thread on another board, which were:

Input = Darker
Video & SVideo Output = Lighter
Component Output = Normal


This seems to work fine when playing back through the recorder - everything looks just like the original. But I mainly use the recorder for recording, not playback. I have a Bravo D1 DVI player I use for playback, and when I play a disc in this player or on my PC, the discs look a little dark (mostly noticeable on white items - when played through the recorder they are a nice clean white - on other players they are grey). However, I have a toshiba player in my bedroom and when using this player everything appears to be correct. The picture also seems a little softer and I notice more artifacts when played in another player. I'm going to try to re-calibrate the dvi input on my tv to see if that is the problem. I've burned about 10 test discs so far, but have hundreds of VHS tapes I need to back up and I want to get this sorted out before I start. I don't want to end up in a few years with hundreds of discs that will only play correctly in the panasonic.

Regarding the component hookup, I had the same problem as you - the picture was oversaturated and way, way too dark. I have everything connected to the unit using s-video (except the VCR), so I just removed the component cable output and hooked it up using a s-video cable, and the picture looked fine - the same as before. As other mentioned, this probably could be corrected by re-calibrating when using the componenet connections - so I'll probably try that when I get some time.

One question for you guys regarding this - since the input is s-video, is anything gained by using component as the output? If I were using this as my main playback unit, I would definately use the component output. But in this case, where it's being used as a recorder only, I would think that using s-video for both input and output would provide a cleaner picture, by bypassing the s-video to component conversion. Or will the conversion actually improve the picture in some way (after everything is properly calibrated)?

Roy