dvd players/recorders with dv capture to dvd in real time?

[nonsence]

i am looking into getting a dvd player that can also burn dvds and capture dv and convert into dvd.

some of the ones i saw claim that this can be done in real time..... ??

so basically if the dv tape is 1 hour long, the capture software on the dvd player reads and burns the dv tape and makes it into a dvd for me in 1 hour.

how is this possible?
on my home computer i use adobe premiere and a few other dvd editing tools, and they all take approx 3-6 hours to re-encode from dv avi format into a dvd, and then i still have to author the mpeg2 files into vob dvd files.

also i was told some of them have hard drives, others do not.

[ofbarea]

Please go to the DVD Recorders section of this forum and look for the features that you need.

DVD recorders can convert from DV to MPEG2 on the fly because they have hardware CODECs that can do the conversion job very quickly.

[lordsmurf]

These are called DVD RECORDERS.

[JAB285]

also i was told some of them have hard drives, others do not.

That is true. I have a unit that has a hard drive. One of the reasons I got the hard drive unit was it's ability to do high speed dubbing. I can download an hour of my son's football game onto the hard drive using firewire. I can then run off as many dvds as I want at 12 minutes each. Another minute or two to finalize the dvd and I'm finished. I can burn 4 dvds in an hour. It's a great timesaver if your giving dvds to family and friends.

[nonsence]

so can anyone provide me with some technical information as to how this can be done so fast on a dvd recorder?

and why wouldn't this be possible on a home pc with a high end amd64 or intel xeon cpu?

basically, is there no equivalent pc software that can match the speed for a straight dv to dvd conversion?

[Big_Bird]

so can anyone provide me with some technical information as to how this can be done so fast on a dvd recorder?

and why wouldn't this be possible on a home pc with a high end amd64 or intel xeon cpu?

basically, is there no equivalent pc software that can match the speed for a straight dv to dvd conversion?

I don't think you will be able to find anyone who can give you the technical info that you want. However, I hope so.

That being said, I have a Toshiba RD-XS34 that I bought to copy from my Sony HC42 camera via the Firewire (IEEE1394) connection. The XS34 has a 160 mb hard drive. After the camera is plugged in and turned on the DVD recorder remote is used to control the recording process. A 1 hr DV tape takes 1 hr to record to the hard drive. Then, you can dub the recording from the hard drive to a DVD-R in about 8 minutes. If you want to finalize the DVD-R so that it can be played in another player you can do this in a couple of more minutes or you can wait until the DVD-R gets full before finalizing. You can copy from the hard drive to DVD-RAM. The DVD-RAM requires no finalizing. JAB285 is correct, you can dub (burn,write) about 4 DVDs an hour at 8x high speed with 2 hr content each.

One thing that makes these new DVD recorders so versatile is the built in hard drive. One thing you have to remember about your high tech computer (I have one also) is that the DVD recorders are built only for one purpose and that's handling DVDs at high picture quality and high speed. Nothing else matters.

[nonsence]

hmm cool. thanks for the info so far.
i'm still looking up info on google to find out what aspect allows these dvd recorders to do these things so fast. still haven't found a name of the technology or information about what standards it would be using to do this. oh well, any more help would be nice.
as it stands i'm prolly gonna be getting an LG that has dv capture and plays divx. doesn't have a hard drive, but does support the real time dv to dvd burning

[lordsmurf]

A DVD recorder is nothing special. It's a computer that only has hardware that is needed, as well as software on chips.

An MPEG hardware chip captures the video/audio in realtime, and is no different than hardware MPEG cards found for computers.

Adobe Premiere and all those methods are software, not hardware. Software takes time, hardware is realtime.

Really simple stuff. Hope that answers it for you.

[ofbarea]

There are capture cards that allow you to capture directly from DV to MPEG2. Take a look: https://www.videohelp.com/capturecards.php?CaptureCard=&dv=1&mpeg2=1&searchconnection=A...earch&country=

[JAB285]

One thing that makes these new DVD recorders so versatile is the built in hard drive.

My sentiments exactly Big_Bird. I love the ability of the hard drive to be always ready. I hardly use my vcr for tv taping anymore. No more hunting for blank tapes and checking them to see what's on them. I simply press record and I'm done. Just have to make sure I always leave a couple hours of free space on my hard drive. Very versatile indeed.

[Mayer]

Ok,

All this seems great, I sit here with loads of VHS tapes and DV footage from a recent holiday.

First start, sent the DV tape to PC as DV avi, fanny around deleting what I do not need, switch my pc to meltdown mode whilst it converts the footage to mpeg, (takes all day for two hours) bitch around with menus before finally transfrring to DVD now, my question that I have been arguing with a collegue all day is what is the best route.

Copious amounts of cash on new hardware for the PC
Purchase a capture devide for "on the fly" recording
Or buy myself a nice DVD recorder.

I prefere the recorder route but I am getting negatives from my collegue that the quality is rubbish.

Can anyone confirm this????

My heads in a spin on how to approach this, especiaaly with the job of VHS transfer.

[JAB285]

I prefere the recorder route but I am getting negatives from my collegue that the quality is rubbish.

Can anyone confirm this????

My heads in a spin on how to approach this, especiaaly with the job of VHS transfer.

First of all the quality is not rubbish. My JVC M30 has great video quality at the XP(1hr) and SP(2hr) speeds.

Secondly, you can do simple editing on a dvd recorder. You can split your video into different clips and delete what you don't want. You can then arrange those clips in any order that you want and burn them to your dvd in real time. An hour of clips will take an hour to burn. Now if you want special effects and anything more than very basic editing, you are going to have to use your computer. One idea might be to dump your edited avi file back onto tape and then transfer the edited file to your dvd recorder. This would save you time as the transfer would be done in real time. In fact it would even save you more time if you had a dvd recorder with a hard drive, because you would then be able to make mutiple dvd copies using high speed dubbing.

You can simply run a line from your vcr to the dvd recorder to transfer your VHS tapes. Or you can use the pass through feature of your camcorder to transfer your VHS tapes to your computer and simply go from there.

The best advice is to try it for yourself. You'll be glad you did.

[Mayer]

Thanks for that....

Just need to look for a quality recorder now...

[hech54]

There will always be diehard "capturing" purists...I've come across several in the past few months. I then asked them what they thought of my first capture job. They told my it was exellent quality...wow...what a relief....I then told them that I had never captured/converted to DVD in my life....what they were watching was created with my old Philips DVD Recorder.
They then continued with their usual barrage of "Capturing is better" nonsense....sort of reminded me of the Dodo's on the movie Ice Age....

[Beavis]

Ok,

Copious amounts of cash on new hardware for the PC
Purchase a capture devide for "on the fly" recording
Or buy myself a nice DVD recorder.

I prefere the recorder route but I am getting negatives from my collegue that the quality is rubbish.

You don't really need copious amounts of cash to bring your PC up to what the DVD recorder can do. All you need is an average PC (can even be a few years old), hard drive space, a DVD burner, and a hardware-based MPEG capture card like the Hauppage WinTV PVR 250, etc.

In the end, the PC gives you more flexibility to edit, tweak, customize, etc. If you want your DVD's to have fancy custom backgrounds and stuff, you need the PC. If you want to do a lot of editing to your DV footage involving anything other than simple cuts and section deletes, you need the PC.

On the other hand, the stand-alone recorders with hard drives are amazingly convenient compared to PCs when it comes to their strengths. You can also do time-shifting and some other Tivo-like tricks with them. It will replace your VCR and you never even have to turn on the computer. I used to capture lots of TV shows on my PC, which meant setting the scheduler, leaving the PC on, the using the MPEG editor to take out the commercials, then using another package to author the DVD, then burning. With my stand-alone recorder, I set up a whole week's worth of recording using the free TV Guide on screen system, and whenever I want I can watch it, edit the commercials, and burn the DVD using only the remote control-- all while laying on the couch away from the computer.

For VHS captures, some of the DVD recorders have built-in time base correction, something you might need that an average capture card won't have.

I captured for years and absolutely love my stand-alone HDD recorder. The only time I do video work on the PC now is to make a fancier DVD or when I'm doing extensive editing and effects for a project I shoot with a DV cam.

As for quality, your friend is wrong. Sure, if you lower the bitrate on your recorder to try to fit 4-6 hours on one blank DVD it looks bad- but the same would be true on the PC also.

[Mayer]

Interesting.

As you say, mega editing is not something I usually do, wonder sometimes why I bought Premier Pro, I usually do simple projects like importing my dv tapes and creating simple menu's and thats it.

[hech54]

My favorite DV to DVD software was $5 on Ebay....Ulead Movie Factory 2SE. I've yet to find anything easier for me. MF2 is a bit slow and outdated but it's hard to beat the price.

[cbkilner]

The best feature of DV tapes is their compatibility with editing programs - with no interframe compression (like MPEG has), it allows frame-accurate editing. Also, many MiniDV cams allow VHS to be converted to DV.

The simplest DVD Recorders (those w/o hard drives) record in a format called DVD-VR (like DVD camcorders) and have crappy index-type menus.

More advanced DVD Recorders with hard drives allow simple editing on the HD. Some allow you to build a menu and produce a DVD-Video disc (not DVD-VR). These will get your DVDs a little bit closer to a computer-produced DVDs, but the interface is still clunky and limited.

As such, the two major choices are fast (real-time) MPEG encoding via specialized hardware - which also means limited and clunky editing and menus, or great editing and menus, but slow MPEG encoding by software on a computer.

A less-known (and often expensive) choice is a hardware encoder for use with your computer-edited DV - examples are the Lacie FastCoder (Mac) or Avid Mojo (PC/Mac).

[nonsence]

the one poster here mentioned the Hauppauge WinTv-PVR.
i'm looking at the Hauppauge WinTv-PVR 350 Personal Video Recorder White Box prices, but i don't see why it's so expensive compared to a much lower priced ATI tv capture card, which is less then 1/3 the price.

oh well. neither one do dv to mpeg2 in real time with a hardware codec, so they are no use to me. plus i have an ati capture card already....

but shouldn't there be a capture card that does real time dv to mpeg2 for a computer?

so my dad finally ended up getting this - http://www.onlybestrated.com/lra537-double-layer-recorder-with-divx-playback-p-51.html

for his home system. seems good. but i'm still very skeptical of it. i think he should have waited until i researched into this more and found other options or at least better recorders.
this one has no hard drive, and it only accepts one dvd disc. meaning that he needs to use his old dvd player as a way to input the dvd video to the LG before it can get burnt. which now gets me asking, will this be good quality? how long does it take to transfer the dvd? what cables does it need to connect to the LG recorder? etc etc

anyone know what the market competition for the LG LRA-537 is? lol