pros and cons of high speed recording

[mammy]

all,
I have a Panasonic e85h which has a hard drive. wondering what the various pros and cons are of high speed recording. what am I getting/losing with the high speed option aside from the obvious faster dubbing? by dubbing at high speed am I gaining anything other than a faster dub time?

** essentially, if I want SP quality on the disc and overall quality is the primary concern rather than speed of dub, is it better to record to the hard drive at SP quality and high speed dub or is it better to record at XP quality and dub to SP?

pros:
I assume that the high speed recording doesn't re-encode the video so the quality might be better? ie. record in SP and high speed dub to disc may produce better quality than record to SP, dub to SP normal speed since a normal speed dub re-encodes the video?

cons:
there is less flexibility when encoding with high speed compatibility set to on. can't dub a video that's highly edited. can't high speed record multiple record modes, can't dub multiple audio sources.

dubbing normal speed I assume doesn't have these restrictions since it conforms any various modes/audio settings to one re-encoded stream.

- what else does turning on high speed compatibility do to the signal?
- if I dub normal speed shall I just leave high speed compatibility on for recording to HD or am I losing/risking anyting?

thx in advance.
Michael

[scustalow]

I have one of these drives too..would you be interested in sharing info on this?..

[mammy]

scustalow,
yes i would but no replies!

michael

[Frobozz]

High-speed copying is always preferable because it is bit-for-bit duplication. However, it isn't always possible which is why the real-time copying is an option. Real-time copying decodes and re-encodes the MPEG which is okay but not what's best for quality.