Suggestions for DVD recorder to act like a VCR

[Lea724]

Hi, everyone,

I'm hoping somebody can help me here. I'm very much a newbie, so I may ask for translation on any technical terms thrown my way.

I currently have a cable box/DVR hooked to my television. I'd like to be able to record some of the TV shows saved on my DVR onto a DVD, preferably without commercials. I ended up buying a Panasonic DMR-E85H, but I think it's too much of a DVD recorder for what I need.

I had been thinking that I need to get a simpler DVD recorder that will act like a VCR where I can just transfer the TV shows onto disc, and then, if the recorder itself doesn't allow for editing out commercials, then I need to get it onto my computer to edit it.

At that point, I think I would need to buy editing software and a DVD burner (since I don't have either of those).

Am I right in my thinking? Is there an easier way to save TV shows (minus commercials) onto DVD?

I'm also not sure whether I need to/should have the final format be in .mpg or .avi or any of the movie formats found on PCs, or if I should leave it in the finished DVD format (I'm sorry, I don't know if there's a name for that) that that recorder would put on the disc.

I was also wondering if it's recommended, or even possible, to hook up my TV to my computer, so that I could capture directly, and then I wouldn't need a DVD recorder, and instead would only need the editing software, DVD burner, and capturing software. I'm almost not wanting to go that route, though, because I feel like I have so much stuff on my computer that trying to capture huge amounts of data from the TV would make the computer lag and run slowly. But I would do it if the overall concensus here recommended it.

I've been searching the forum for advice as I wait the two days before I can post this and the best advice I've found so far is from gshelley61 in this post https://www.videohelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=232604:

"You may also want to consider using a DVD recorder that does not have a HDD, but can record to re-writeable DVD's (DVD-RW's are preferable). If you have a decent computer with a reasonably good sized hard drive, you can edit your DVD-RW recordings with no quality loss using Womble MPEG-VCR or MPEG Video Wizard, then burn a final DVD with an authoring application like TMPGEnc DVD Author. This method offers you an easier to use, frame accurate editing process and more flexibility when creating your final DVD. Plus, the cost involved in setting up your computer to do this may be less than the price difference between a HDD and non-HDD DVD recorder."

It seems like gshelley61 had some good advice and it seems like it'd be really easy to do what I want. Is that true?

Thanks in advance for any advice anyone can give me.

Amanda

[Capmaster]

Firstly, you can edit with the E85. Look in the manual. It's fairly easy, though not very powerful. You may want to edit on your PC anyways. But you should try it first on the Panny. It may be all you need, and it would be a shame to find out later, after you buy all the other hardware and software, that it's overkill and the recorder was perfectly adequate.

If you do want to do it on the PC, look through the Capture cards lists to the left, read the reviews, and.choose from that. And you won't be hooking a capture card to your TV, you'll need to hook it to the source signal, whether it's cable, satellite, etc. If it's cable you might need to look at capture cards that have cable tuners built in.

Then you need to use the capture card's capture app and make an MPEG file. Then open it with an editor like VideoRedo, which is excellent for editing out commercials. It's what's called "frame-accurate" and lessens the chance of introducing sync errors.

Then you need to author it. Might I suggest Ulead DVD Movie Factory. Excellent, cheap, and rock-solid.

Then you want to burn the DVD. You could use the burning abilities of the authoring app, but I have always preferred to keep my functions separate and not rely on "all-in-one" apps. Nero Burning ROM is an excellent burning app.

[Bob W]

I just record the TV show I want to DVD+RW then I load the files into NeoDVD Plus to do any editing I want then let NeoDVD make the new DVD files which I then burn to DVDR.

[gshelley61]

Capmaster is right. Since you already own a DVD recorder with a HDD, you should be able to record to the drive, do some simple editing, then burn a finished DVD-R without too much trouble... you may have to read the instructions carefully to figure it out as they are not always very easy to understand.

[Lea724]

I want to thank everyone who responded. Part of the reason I was so quick to try and get a different player and maybe edit on my computer was because I couldn't figure out how to get the Panasonic to record, neither on the hard drive nor straight to disc.

After doing some playing with it, I managed to finally get it working and I managed to record some saved shows onto the hard drive and from there onto a disc (although I'm still playing with how to edit from the hard drive).

I have some more questions I hope some of you can answer, though.

In order for the recorder to "see" the video on the TV, I had to connect the two with an S-video cable and regular white and yellow cables (I'm sorry, I don't know what they're called), then use my TV remote to switch to S-video mode, and then I was able to record what was on the screen to the DVD recorder.

That's all fine and good, except the video that gets recorder onto the DVD recorder is bad quality. I'm heading out to Best Buy soon to buy component video cables (those are the green, blue, and red ones, right?) as recommended to me by an online friend, as he said that will make the video sharper when it's recorded.

Does anyone know if, once I buy the component video cables and hook up the recorder and TV with them, will I be able to be in regular TV mode to record, or will I still have to be in S-video or AV 1 or AV 2 mode?

Also, will there be anything else I can do after buying the cables to sharpen the picture when it transfers from the TV to the recorder?

Also, I currently have the cable box connected to the recorder, even though the recorder is set up to *not* use the cable box for its TV channels. Should I remove that link, and just let the component video cable between the TV and recorder be enough?

Thank you so much in advance for any help anyone can give me.

Amanda

[samijubal]

The video recorded with an s-video cable should be far better than coax if that's what you were using before. You need to have the RCA jacks connected to get stereo audio if using a cable box. Are you recording from the TV to the DVD recorder? You should be recording straight from the cable, not from the TV.

[Lea724]

The video recorded with an s-video cable should be far better than coax if that's what you were using before. You need to have the RCA jacks connected to get stereo audio if using a cable box. Are you recording from the TV to the DVD recorder? You should be recording straight from the cable, not from the TV.

I went to Best Buy and the guy who helped me told me to connect the cable box to the DVD recorder with S-video and white/red audio cables and the DVD recorder to the TV with S-video and white/red cables.

However, following his suggestion, I was unable to get a picture on the TV, so I then connected a cable cord from the cable box to the DVD recorder as well.

I'm not sure if that means I'm recording from the cable box or the TV.

Amanda

[presto]

The coax cable from your cable box carries all the channels and your DVD recorder would be used to tune to whatever channel you want to capture.

If your cable box has an S-Video out it will only carry one channel. You would have to set your DVD recorded to record from the S-Video and you would use your cable box to select the channel.

I don't know what kind of cable box you have and I don't have a DVD recorder so take my comments with a grain of salt. I just noticed that you might be confused about the fact that the Coax carries all the channels but S-Video or composite won't.

[samijubal]

The video recorded with an s-video cable should be far better than coax if that's what you were using before. You need to have the RCA jacks connected to get stereo audio if using a cable box. Are you recording from the TV to the DVD recorder? You should be recording straight from the cable, not from the TV.

I went to Best Buy and the guy who helped me told me to connect the cable box to the DVD recorder with S-video and white/red audio cables and the DVD recorder to the TV with S-video and white/red cables.

However, following his suggestion, I was unable to get a picture on the TV, so I then connected a cable cord from the cable box to the DVD recorder as well.

I'm not sure if that means I'm recording from the cable box or the TV.

Amanda

If the cable box has an s-video output then that's what you should be using along with the RCA jacks for audio. You need to set the DVD recorder on whatever input the s-video and RCA jacks are connected to. My older Panasonics picked up the s-video without having to do anything, but the JVC I use now I have to go into the menu and select s-video to use it, I don't know which way the new Panasonics are. When you connect the DVD to the TV make sure that the TV is on whatever input the DVD is connected to. You don't want to use the coax for recording, the picture won't be as good and if using a cable box the audio will be mono.