Quickish Pioneer DVR-460-H-K thoughts: Yay importing

[Seeker47]

So, as Mick Jagger sang in one of his infamous songs, "Oh Don' Do Dat !"

Midnight Rambler, right?

Yup. I never really liked the Stones much (maybe a few songs here or there -- "Tumbling Dice" comes to mind), but even I have to admit that "Let It Bleed" was one of the all-time greatest Rock albums.

[samijubal]

You were doing something wrong if the edits weren't right is all I can say. I get edits exactly where I make them.

Well, I always chose GOP mode on the Toshiba as I do now on the Pioneer, so I don't see what I could have been doing wrong then.

You have to edit each thumbnail manually after selecting GOP by using the frame advance forward/back remote keys, the recorder doesn't do it by itself. After editing in GOP mode the edits are exactly where they are made.

[orsetto]

Wait, are we talking about copy lists or play lists? Now I'm even more confused...

Perhaps I've been misunderstanding the phrasing of your question. The Pioneers do not have a "Play List" function per se, which would allow you to mix and match bits and pieces and play them in whatever order you want *as a normal playback function*. Maybe the Toshibas have this as an option, so you are asking in those terms based on your Toshiba experience: if so, the answer is no, Pioneers do not have a playback-oriented "play list" option.

The Pioneer "play list" function is reserved for the copy menu which manages transfers between DVD and HDD, so Pioneer refers to it as a "copy list". Once you set up a "copy list", you can indeed use it as a "play list" to play back the edited segments without going thru with an actual re-recording, but you have to start play from the copying interface (not the Navigator) and playback is limited to one title at a time (you can play one title that you have created by joining multiple segments, but playback will stop at the end of that composite title). If you like what you see, you can load a blank disc and burn to DVD-Video or DVD-VR.

I'm going to assume from your earlier posts that you have figured out how to get into Copy List mode, and add titles you want in your "Play List" or for joining (joining titles can't be done in the normal edit mode thru the navigator interface). Once you have your list of titles in the copy list window, the "right arrow to engage edit mode" operation used in the navigator screen does not work (a stupid design inconsistency, but it does make clear you aren't in the similar nav screen). Say you have two titles in your Copy List, and want to join them to create one single title. The steps would be:

1) Get the titles in the playback order you want, the first being at the top with succeeding titles below it. If you did not originally add the separate titles to the copy list in the order you wanted, highlight a title thats in the wrong place and click the enter button. An edit menu will pop up to the right, among the options is "move". Highlight "move" and then use the up-down arrows to reposition the title in the copy list. Press enter when satisfied.

2) Join the individual titles, one by one, to create the single composite title that you wanted. To do this, highlight the first title, press enter to pop up the edit menu, and arrow all the way down past "cancel" until the menu scrolls to a second set of options. Highlight "combine", and the edit menu will disappear, leaving the first title in the list with a dark border and the title just below it highlighted. Press"enter", and you will get a confirmation alert saying "OK to combine titles 1 and 2?". Select "yes" and click enter. You will now see only one title in the copy list instead of two. If you started with more than two titles, the first two will be combined into one, with title three being renumbered as two and so forth down the remaining list. You can continue combining titles one after the other until they all disappear leaving a single combined title in the list. Any combination titles will have the name and thumbnail of the original first title (you can change the name and thumbnail, or make other edits like chapter positions and erasing segments, by clicking "enter" to pop-up the edit menu for the combined title). Note you cannot delete the chapter mark indicating where the two separate titles were joined into one: that is permanent.

3) when you are satisfied with this new joined title, you can play it in normal full-screen view by clicking enter to pop up the edit menu and selecting "preview". Pressing the stop button will return you to the copy list window. You can exit the copy list, and the recorder will save the joined title for later repeat playback or burning to DVD.

The original separate titles remain untouched in the recorders main Navigation window. If you make any direct edits to these, the joined titles in the copy list will disappear and you will have to start from scratch using the newly-edited separate titles. Since many people fear making a mistake during direct editing, they use the Copy List function for all editing until the final desired titles are burned to DVD (the copy list does not touch the original recordings, it just creates a set of editing references used within its own window and for burning). And of course you can join more than one title, you can add as many as you want to play around with. As long as the total composite hard disk space used for the Copy List will fit onto a DVD (4.4GB), the recorder will permit high-speed lossless copying to DVD. If the Copy List contents are too big to fit a DVD, the recorder will drop into real time copy mode, and re-encode the entire copy list to fit it onto a DVD. This is usually not desirable, and you can work around it by deleting some titles from the list or by trimming segments within the titles.

To check the total size of your copy list, go thru the motions of burning a disc (click the next button until you get to the burn confirmation screen or alerts). The recorder will indicate when the copy list is too large for a DVD, by showing an alert telling you it needs to compress the video during burn in real-time mode and asking you to confirm that mode. If you say yes, it will begin re-encoding and burning in real time. If you say no, the alert will change to a reminder the copy list is too large for DVD and ask if you want to proceed anyway. Click yes, and it will show the copy list with a total size in red at the bottom of the screen. If you see it shows the total as 4.7 GB, that means you need to trim a few minutes here and there to get the total to slightly under 4.4 GB (confirmed by the bar graph changing from red to white and the record mode display switching from real time to high speed). Dual-layer discs will nearly double the capacity you can burn to each DVD (about 8.5 GB). Note under certain conditions, the recorder will not permit joining of titles and/or high speed copying: this usually only occurs when there is an odd glitch in the original recordings that triggers an aspect ratio conflict in the recorder. Either edit around the spot the recorder doesn't like, or use real-time re-encode mode.

Hope this helps a little .

[Bix]

That's what I was looking to do and I'll try it out later. Thanks!