New Pioneer ... DVR-530H , DVR-555H and DVR-RT7H

[Wender]

Does anyone know if the FireWire in/out was a featured capability on the 520 or did someone just find out? Regarding the in/out or just in DV port, the pioneer.co.uk says this on the list of features: IN

http://www.pioneer.co.uk/uk/product_detail.jsp?product_id=10728&taxonomy_id=42-125

...but clicking on the DV link it says:

"DV Terminal

Dubbing from digital sources to the Hard Disk Drive or DVD discs is a simple matter of connecting a camcorder to the DV IN/OUT connector on the front of the DVD recorder. The user-friendly remote — combined with Pioneer's easy-to-use GUI — controls both machines for dubbing, playback, pause, fast forward, and rewind. To temporarily restore homemade DVDs to the camcorder, you just plug into the DV IN/OUT connector. One DV cable inputs/outputs A/V data and control signals. The DV IN/OUT can also be connected to a DV deck."

...so I guess my Mac would recognise the Pioneer as a DV unit anyway and let me transfer the DV stream to iMovie?

[donpedro]

Does anyone know if the FireWire in/out was a featured capability on the 520 or did someone just find out? Regarding the in/out or just in DV port, the pioneer.co.uk says this on the list of features: IN

Link that you are providing is for 530 (IN only {not verified}). 520 and older models were IN/OUT.

[Wender]

Yes, I know. My point was this: Was the DV port advertised as IN/OUT on the 520 or did someone just figure out they could transfer DV to a computer using the port?

Seems like you can transfer DV out to a camcorder with the 530 according to the above link, so is it actually changed or not? The 520 specs are not on the site anymore so I don't know how that feature was advertised on that machine. It may not have been changed at all...

[donpedro]

Was the DV port advertised as IN/OUT on the 520 ?

Yes.

Seems like you can transfer DV out to a camcorder with the 530 according to the above link...

Not TO camcorder... FROM camcorder to DVD Recorder.

[Wender]

Read this again OK?

"DV Terminal

Dubbing from digital sources to the Hard Disk Drive or DVD discs is a simple matter of connecting a camcorder to the DV IN/OUT connector on the front of the DVD recorder. The user-friendly remote — combined with Pioneer's easy-to-use GUI — controls both machines for dubbing, playback, pause, fast forward, and rewind. To temporarily restore homemade DVDs to the camcorder, you just plug into the DV IN/OUT connector. One DV cable inputs/outputs A/V data and control signals. The DV IN/OUT can also be connected to a DV deck."

This is for the 530. Multiple times "IN/OUT connector" in the text. Also:

"To temporarily restore homemade DVDs _TO_ the camcorder, you just plug into the DV IN/OUT connector"

It says TO the camcorder...

[Frobozz]

Wender,

You can download the DVR-530's manual from the support page on that Pioneer site. Page 115 states "The DV In jack is an input only. There is no output functionality." The same section in my DVR-510's manual consistently refers to this as a DV in/out jack. I'm certain from reading this that the output capability has been removed. On the other hand, you can easily copy to a DVD-RW and convert the video to DV using various Mac applications.

[donpedro]

edit

[donpedro]

Does anyone know if the FireWire in/out was a featured capability on the 520 or did someone just find out? Regarding the in/out or just in DV port, the pioneer.co.uk says this on the list of features: IN

http://www.pioneer.co.uk/uk/product_detail.jsp?product_id=10728&taxonomy_id=42-125

...but clicking on the DV link it says:

"DV Terminal

Dubbing from digital sources to the Hard Disk Drive or DVD discs is a simple matter of connecting a camcorder to the DV IN/OUT connector on the front of the DVD recorder. The user-friendly remote — combined with Pioneer's easy-to-use GUI — controls both machines for dubbing, playback, pause, fast forward, and rewind. To temporarily restore homemade DVDs to the camcorder, you just plug into the DV IN/OUT connector. One DV cable inputs/outputs A/V data and control signals. The DV IN/OUT can also be connected to a DV deck."

...so I guess my Mac would recognise the Pioneer as a DV unit anyway and let me transfer the DV stream to iMovie?

Now I see what you are asking again and again... Manual is what you should read and not quick link on web that defines "DV Terminal (IEEE1394)". That information is not correct for 530. And for information about 520, read manual for 520.

[donpedro]

This is from 520 manual

Recording from the DV output
You can record non-copy-protected material from the
hard disk drive or from a DVD to a camcorder connected
to the DV IN/OUT jack.
1 Connect the camcorder to the DV IN/OUT jack ofthis recorder.
2 Select the HDD or DVD for playback.
3 Find the place you want to start recording from.
4 Start recording on the camcorder.
5 Play the source material.

[Wender]

Alright. Thanks for all the input. Pretty frustrating there's no way of getting the Hard drive contents from the 530 over to a PC or Mac hard drive. I can't see why they dropped this feature.

[donpedro]

I can't see why they dropped this feature.

Could it be cost savings ?

[Frobozz]

I can't see why they dropped this feature.

Could it be cost savings ?

Could be, but I think the real reason is because they are using a new MPEG encoder. The cost savings is in the effort it would have taken to get the new encoder to work with converting video to DV for export. Also, my guess is any research they did about what features people value and use found that very few people ever used the DV out. After a year I finally used it for the first time this month. And I could have accomplished the same thing another way if it weren't available.

[Wender]

I can't see why they dropped this feature.

Could it be cost savings ?

After a year I finally used it for the first time this month. And I could have accomplished the same thing another way if it weren't available.

How? Any other way than copying to a DVD-R or -RW?

I'm about to buy a 530, I do some authoring on my Mac and I would love to have the maximum quality to start out with. If the 530 can record at 15kbps bitrate on the hard drive - I'm still wondering if this can be exported in ANY way. I know the DV is just IN now, but is there ANY way to transfer to my Mac?

[Frobozz]

How? Any other way than copying to a DVD-R or -RW?

I'm about to buy a 530, I do some authoring on my Mac and I would love to have the maximum quality to start out with. If the 530 can record at 15kbps bitrate on the hard drive - I'm still wondering if this can be exported in ANY way. I know the DV is just IN now, but is there ANY way to transfer to my Mac?

The only way I can think of to export the XP+ video is to connect a DV camcorder or Canopus-like ADVC to one of the analog video outputs. Although there is a digital-to-analog-to-digital conversion going on, this still might be better than what I can get from my Pioneer's DV port with XP video. Of course, if you have a DV camcorder or ADVC you can capture directly to DV without the Pioneer being involved.

Your other option is to record in LPCM or XP mode and copy to a DVD-RW (I hate wasting DVD-Rs). If the program is longer than 1 hour, split the Title and burn it to multiple DVD-RW discs. Then use Cinematize, MPEG Streamclip, Toast 6 or some other application on the Mac to convert to DV.

[Wender]

Yep. Just what I thought of - the DVD-RW solution is probably what I'll be doing anyway - and one hour per disc will be fine.

Thanks for all the help and putting up with all my questions. I was actually thinking about trying to get a 520 instead because of the DV export feature, but I've come to the conclusion the 530 is a better buy anyways.

[Gray1]

I ordered my 530 today. (below 500euro) [/url]

[Synergy]

You can record on the HD in low quality and the screenparameters are also saved on the HD, so when you put it on dvd it is possible to increase the quality.

I think you probably misunderstood what was said in the manual. The new Pioneer HDD-based models will maintain info when XP+/MN32-12 or (16) was used to record to HDD, and these steps are high quality rec modes, not low quality as you implied. When the recordings on HDD are later re-encoded in real time to DVD discs, the previously saved info would help improve the rec quality. This is sometimes called two-pass process and Sony has implemented similar feature on their HDD models as well.

[donpedro]

I just installed new Pioneer DVR-630H-S in my living room