DVD recorder + PC editing/authoring

[Dawgsfan]

Happy new year!

Yesterday I recorded a football game from my DirecTV HD DVR on my Panasonic DMR-EZ28 in XP mode. I filled about four DVD+RW discs. My plan was to capture the game in the highest possible quality on my DVD recorder, then remove commercials in TMPGEnc Authoring Works 6 and have the program shrink the resulting output to fit on a DVD+R DL disc.

In terms of picture quality, would I have been better off capturing the game in SP mode, editing out the commercials in TMPGEnc AW6, and then just merging all the clips together without re-encoding? This might not completely fill the disk, but it would be close.

I guess the general question is whether it is best to capture in the highest quality possible, then compress a little bit more via software, or to capture at a slightly lower quality and avoid having to compress via software.

Thanks.

[Swedaniel]

I guess the general question is whether it is best to capture in the highest quality possible, then compress a little bit more via software, or to capture at a slightly lower quality and avoid having to compress via software.

Thanks.

Yeah it is probably best to use as high quality as possible to get best results after editing / removing commercials to then allso encode the video to an format+codec more suited to acctually play the video in basicly any video player there is, which the result very often is an smaller file size allso! Atleast since im guessing the format and or the codec is the one that come from the recorder which is maybe not fully encoded or compressed just yet and is still some sort of raw format/codec or similar! But if it is allready the format and codec you want and you can get rid of the commercials without re-encoding i guess it could work out fine this way allso with a lil bit lower quality from the beginning!

Edit: Im not really sure what this XP and SP mode is when im answering this!

[Subtitles]

I guess the general question is whether it is best to capture in the highest quality possible, then compress a little bit more via software, or to capture at a slightly lower quality and avoid having to compress via software.

Thanks.

Yeah it is probably best to use as high quality as possible to get best results after editing / removing commercials to then allso encode the video to an format+codec more suited to acctually play the video in basicly any video player there is, which the result very often is an smaller file size allso! Atleast since im guessing the format and or the codec is the one that come from the recorder which is maybe not fully encoded or compressed just yet and is still some sort of raw format/codec or similar! But if it is allready the format and codec you want and you can get rid of the commercials without re-encoding i guess it could work out fine this way allso with a lil bit lower quality from the beginning!

Edit: Im not really sure what this XP and SP mode is when im answering this!

Recording quality.
XP
– High quality setting, gives about
one hour of recording time on a DVD
disc.

SP
(Standard Play) – Default quality,
used for most applications, gives about
two hours of recording time on a DVD.

[usually_quiet]

Happy new year!

Yesterday I recorded a football game from my DirecTV HD DVR on my Panasonic DMR-EZ28 in XP mode. I filled about four DVD+RW discs. My plan was to capture the game in the highest possible quality on my DVD recorder, then remove commercials in TMPGEnc Authoring Works 6 and have the program shrink the resulting output to fit on a DVD+R DL disc.

In terms of picture quality, would I have been better off capturing the game in SP mode, editing out the commercials in TMPGEnc AW6, and then just merging all the clips together without re-encoding? This might not completely fill the disk, but it would be close.

I guess the general question is whether it is best to capture in the highest quality possible, then compress a little bit more via software, or to capture at a slightly lower quality and avoid having to compress via software.

Thanks.

Before I had an HTPC, I used to record a lot of TV using a DVD recorder. IMO, if you want the entire game on one DVD disc you would be better off capturing in SP mode, removing the commercials with TMPGEnc Authoring Works 6, and authoring a DVD on DVD+R DL media, assuming the edited and merged video will fit.

If you have a Blu-ray burner and you want a higher-quality recording, you could record the game in XP mode and save the edited file from TMPGEnc Authoring Works 6 (without authoring it) on a BD-R (recordable single-layer 25GB Blu-ray disc). Blu-ray players can play an unauthored DVD-quality video file from burned Blu-ray media. I rarely author anything these days. Instead, I copy my recorded TV files to Blu-ray to have a backup copy.

[usually_quiet]

I guess the general question is whether it is best to capture in the highest quality possible, then compress a little bit more via software, or to capture at a slightly lower quality and avoid having to compress via software.

Thanks.

Yeah it is probably best to use as high quality as possible to get best results after editing / removing commercials to then allso encode the video to an format+codec more suited to acctually play the video in basicly any video player there is, which the result very often is an smaller file size allso! Atleast since im guessing the format and or the codec is the one that come from the recorder which is maybe not fully encoded or compressed just yet and is still some sort of raw format/codec or similar! But if it is allready the format and codec you want and you can get rid of the commercials without re-encoding i guess it could work out fine this way allso with a lil bit lower quality from the beginning!

Edit: Im not really sure what this XP and SP mode is when im answering this!

As I recall, TMPGEnc Authoring Works 6 is capable of editing using "smart encoding", meaning only the GOPs on either side of a cut are re-encoded and the rest of the GOPs in the file will simply be copied. In that case, the quality loss from editing is minimal.

If Dawgsfan plans to author a DVD from his edited file using TMPGEnc Authoring Works 6 there is no reason to re-encode his edited video to a more efficient codec. If he doesn't want to author a DVD from his edited file and merely wants to store a file on a DVD-R then he could record in XP mode, then reencode with a more efficient codec to make the re-encoded file small enough to fit on a DVD-R or DVD+R DL. ...but at the cost of losing some quality. Will the quality loss be noticeable? That is hard to say.