Audio problems when editing out commercials on DMR-HS2

[gtrman]

I just got my DMR-HS2 and have been copying my VHS tapes to the hard drive and then editing out the commercials. I have also taped a show directly from the satellite to the hard drive and edited out the commercials from that. What I noticed when playing the edited programs is that right before where a commercial was cut out the audio is missing for a second or so. The video seems to be edited just as I planned, but the audio cuts out early.

In other words, right before the commercial break a show had a voice that said, "stay tuned for ... when we continue". I cut the commercial out and now it says "stay tuned for ... when we cont". The picture keeps going for about a second before the cut.

Has anyone else noticed this?

[mazinz]

yes it is a known issue of the machine and it really sucks

[gtrman]

Actually, someone who was not a member of this forum and therefore couldn't post, answered my question in a private e-mail.

All you have to do is go to set-up and turn seemless play "OFF".

When you do this, the playback of edits and playlists will have a tiny pause at the end of scenes, but there will be no audio loss. Even though this setting is essentially a playback option, due to the fact that the program actually plays as it records to the DVD this setting does, in fact, change the way the recorder puts the programs on the DVD.

If you are editing out commercials this pause is not a problem because the screen is probably black anyway.

I would love to take credit for this find, but I cannot.

On another note, I do find it strange that the only person willing to help me on this wasn't even a member of this forum.

Lenny

[mazinz]

but thats really not a slovent for the issue either. Now you are faced with another problem,

A: do you want precise edititng but with a second of sound loss

or
B: do you want small pauses at edit break

granted commercials are fine with option A, but if im lets say doing a homevideo choice A sucks and choice B is not a picnic either, espically if you are doing quite a number of edits. This keaves you with whatever you think the lesser of the two evils are.

With this in mind, at times like that i run the clips into my pc and then burn them onto dvd that way. As i can truly do real editing on the pc without any problems. Im sure if panasonic made a firmware update they could probably fix the issue.

[nle1]

Coupla q's:

I don't think I'd noticed the audio problem, because so far, I'd only edited commercials. I purposely stop and end everything on the "blackouts." But I admit as some of these stations get cutesier and cutesier, they seem to skip those sometimes. One thing I haven't been able to decide is exactly WHICH frame the cut occurs at. That is, on my PC editing system, it TELLS you, that the frame you "cut" at the beginning WILL be in the final clip and the frame shown as the cut site at the end will NOT. Nowhere have I found that kind of info. So those of you with the cutoff audio ... can you you clue me in??

Second ...

mazinz: Exactly HOW do you run the clips into your PC? Doubt I can do it any time soon (short of playing a burned DVD into the PC), since the 2 machines are on opposite ends of the house and my PC s/w doesn't suppport VBR (yet), but for future reference. Those crappy menus are starting to really bug me!

Thanks
NLE

[mazinz]

i use a dazzle 2 (dvc2) capture card (its an internal pc1 card). i just hook my video into that and capture. it cpautres in mpeg 2 format, and offers up to a 10 bitrate if needed. using that and my panasonic's tbc i have been making flawless dvds

[mazinz]

it cuts the audio right before your edit, so if the last frame is me walking, then the next frame is black, i cut it at the black,. Once done the audio right before my edit gets cut (actually less then a second but you know what i mean) and it will do the same for wherever i end the edit as well.

[Captain Satellite]

Actually, someone who was not a member of this forum and therefore couldn't post, answered my question in a private e-mail.

All you have to do is go to set-up and turn seemless play "OFF".

When you do this, the playback of edits and playlists will have a tiny pause at the end of scenes, but there will be no audio loss. Even though this setting is essentially a playback option, due to the fact that the program actually plays as it records to the DVD this setting does, in fact, change the way the recorder puts the programs on the DVD.

If you are editing out commercials this pause is not a problem because the screen is probably black anyway.

I would love to take credit for this find, but I cannot.

On another note, I do find it strange that the only person willing to help me on this wasn't even a member of this forum.

Lenny

Well Lenny, That was me who emailed you because I had to wait three days after signing up to post. What I find even stranger, dare I say rude, is that you never bothered to email me back with a quick 'thanks'.

[nle1]

). i just hook my video into that and capture.

I take it, you mean just as if it was a VCR? So then it wouldn't really be that different from playing the DVD-R made off it, I guess?

NLE

[gtrman]

Captain Satellite,

I really appreciated the info and did in fact email you to thank you on February 4th. I don't know why you never got it, but here it is:


Date: Tue, 04 Feb 2003 01:34:39 -0500
From: "Lenny Flack" <countrysinger@musician.org>
Subject: Re: HS2 audio drop
To: CptnStlite@aol.com


Sam,

Thanks for the info. That worked perfectly. I love it. I wonder
why they made the default with it on. It is much better off.

Again,
Thank you very much.
Lenny

[Captain Satellite]

You're welcome, Lenny. When I first edited and played it back, I had already decided to return it when I heard the results. I then 'RTFM' and have been digging it ever since. So Teles and the HS-2 for you as well, eh? 8)

[eeit232]

The innaccuracies in the editing are related to the GOP (Group Of Pictures) structure of the MPEG format. Each GOP is about 15 frames, and your edit point will actually be the closest end/start of a GOP rather than the frame you select, IIRC. So, at worst, edit points will be around 0.5 seconds out from the actual cut you made. Without seamless play, the last frame from the last GOP is repeated up to the edit point, giving the 'pause' effect of a still image. With seamless play switched on, some clever stuff must go on the avoid this, but not clever enough to deal with the audio correctly too. Short of offline editing, where the whole program is recreated after the editing, I dont think theres not much more that can be done about this. On the PC, the whole shebang is re-encoded after the editing, creating new GOP's, so this issue is avoided.

[Captain Satellite]

The innaccuracies in the editing are related to the GOP (Group Of Pictures) structure of the MPEG format. Each GOP is about 15 frames, and your edit point will actually be the closest end/start of a GOP rather than the frame you select, IIRC. So, at worst, edit points will be around 0.5 seconds out from the actual cut you made. Without seamless play, the last frame from the last GOP is repeated up to the edit point, giving the 'pause' effect of a still image. With seamless play switched on, some clever stuff must go on the avoid this, but not clever enough to deal with the audio correctly too. Short of offline editing, where the whole program is recreated after the editing, I dont think theres not much more that can be done about this. On the PC, the whole shebang is re-encoded after the editing, creating new GOP's, so this issue is avoided.

It's nowhere near that bad, the worst I've lost is one to two frames, usually on the dot. If it were 0.5 second, this unit would have been returned the same day I received it.

[eeit232]

At most you could lose 7 frames, which for PAL is 1/25*7 seconds, or 0.28 seconds, so my original guess of 0.5 was a bit rough. In my experience, its usually much less than this, and barely noticeable. What really bugs me is when some programming doesnt bother with fades to black before the adverts or channel logo, which makes it much harder to get a good edit point! It would be interesting to know exactly what goes on with 'Seamless play', not that anything short of a firmware patch is going to improve this situation

[Captain Satellite]

At most you could lose 7 frames, which for PAL is 1/25*7 seconds, or 0.28 seconds, so my original guess of 0.5 was a bit rough. In my experience, its usually much less than this, and barely noticeable. What really bugs me is when some programming doesnt bother with fades to black before the adverts or channel logo, which makes it much harder to get a good edit point! It would be interesting to know exactly what goes on with 'Seamless play', not that anything short of a firmware patch is going to improve this situation

I wouldn't mind a fix for a few of the shortcomings, the biggest to me being is not being able to insert chapter stops where you want. I'm in the USA with the NTSC standard.

[mazinz]

Hey NLE 1,
yes it would be differnt in the snese that instead of running it into your homdeck recorder, you run it into your pc and you can truly edit without any problems and it looks better. the homedeck machiens are very good but still not as good as using the pc. The panasonic still gives many artifacts and othet things i otherwise do not get when running in the same source to the pc instead.
So yes it would be different in that respect

[Captain Satellite]

Hey NLE 1,
yes it would be differnt in the snese that instead of running it into your homdeck recorder, you run it into your pc and you can truly edit without any problems and it looks better. the homedeck machiens are very good but still not as good as using the pc. The panasonic still gives many artifacts and othet things i otherwise do not get when running in the same source to the pc instead.
So yes it would be different in that respect

Nope. Which Panasonic do you own? Let me know if you live in the SF Bay Area, you can look for artifacts all day on my satellite to DVD transfers.

[mazinz]

firstly do not take this like am i yelling at you, i had a lengthy arguement with someone about this on another board. I have been into this for years and i trained my eyes to know what to look for.

i used to own the dmr-e20, i now have the dmr-hs2. Most of the time the machine would give very hard to see but apparent artifacts, from every source (dvd, laser, etc) i was making dvds on the pc first and then the homedeck machine. if you do not know what to look for, you will always think it is crystal and this is not the case. Even times when their is no apparent artifacting from the source sometimes inbetween scenes for like a micro of a second you would get what i call the "living mass" where it
looks like a mass of something is moving on the still pics of the background of the scene.
Again you have to look hard but the machine does give these and the pc way does not. trust i have looked into this time and time again, i know what i am talking about. thanks--

PS the machine will do things like this for about 98% of material it records, every now and then you do get somethings that go through fine

[Captain Satellite]

OK, you have to "look hard", "know what to look for", and you own the DMR-HS2, that's good enough for me!

[mazinz]

yes and it is obvious you do not know what to look for otherwise you would see some of things that i do.--thanks

And in all seriousness have you ever made a dvd using a computer or have you just used the homedeck machines? Using and owning both i see the benefits and faults of them. And i also see the difference in quality of capturing through the pc and recording the same item from the same source using a homedeck machine.

[Captain Satellite]

You should seek some treatment - quick.

[mazinz]

funny but you still havent given any valid reply to any questions i asked you, perhaps it is because you do not know and have nothing of merit to reply with-- well if you are satisfied with your results thats fine.

I own the homedeck machine for sake of convience 9and getting use of it's built in TBC if you know what that is) and it's results are good i was never saying they were horrible, but the PC still (or at least my capture card) gave better results than any homdeck machine i have tried out. have fun

[Captain Satellite]

Uh, gee, duh, no, I don't know what Time Base Correction is.

[mazinz]

im sure a simple search on here gave you the answer as you had not answered anything else.

[Captain Satellite]

Stop wasting my time and go count some pixels.

[mazinz]

look its ok to be in denial.....but maybe when or if you get a capture card and dvd burner for your pc you will see the differences that i and others do see between the two. have fun- being new to the hobby is fine, but you still have a lot to learn

[Captain Satellite]

I've got laser discs older than you.

[mazinz]

funny, i too have close to 300 if not more laserdisc, i also happen to be 30, im sure im a bit older then you---

[Captain Satellite]

Only if you were born before July 1957, young man.

[mazinz]

ok, i will give you that