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Outputting QT movies to “set-top” DVD recorders w/HDD — any experiences?
At our new tv station, I have been eyeing the new (and cheap) set-top DVD recorders with internal Hard Disc Drives (HDD) as an alternate archiving format. We do all our editing in Final Cut Pro, and until we get all our equipment, we will be airing our programming from either DVCAM tape or DVD (I know the latter is not ideal, but it is a technical limitation that we will overcome soon).
Sony, Toshiba, and Phillips all have units on the market now, and the latest one from JVC has a 160 gig HDD and can burn 32X, which means that a one-hour DVD can be burned in two minutes (!). I understand that these units are for TV-watching consumers, and they are not intended for professional editing.
However, they have Firewire ports, and so they beg the question: “What if I simply export a Quicktime movie into the recorder’s hard disk drive, and have it burn me a DVD at a fraction of the time it would take my FCP system to encode the MPEG-2 and blah, blah, blah…?”
Someone, I am sure, must have tried doing this. Or am I missing something here?
Can anyone lead me to resources where I can learn more? Any thoughts or experiences will be truly appreciated, as I need to make this purchase decision soon.
I have posted this thread in other forums because I am not sure where it belongs!
Thanks in advance.
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4 Replies
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Well, compressing them into MPEG2 and then using and reusing and recompressiong them will eventually, and in a pretty short eventually, give you generational-loss nightmares.
Other than that…
debe
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[Shah] “and can burn 32X, which means that a one-hour DVD can be burned in two minutes (!)”
Don’t count on THAT for some time to come.
Even if the BURNER (drive) can run at “32x” (puffery in advertising) the actual “compression” step into MPEG of the video will take much longer.About the best you can hope for (to maintain quality) is real-time (plus the “Finalize” step).
The set-top recorders are actually very good at burning DVDs.
I have two very inexpensive burners that I use to make make client dubs. (They have no internal HD).
If I set them to record in “One-Hour per disc” mode or “Two-Hours per disc” mode the quality is very fine.
(Virtually indistinguishable from the DV master.)One of my units burns “DVD-R” and the other burns “DVD+R”.
The “-R” takes over 10 minutes to Finalize a DVD with a single :30 commercial on it LESS time if it is “fuller”.
The “+R” takes only a couple of minutes to Finalize under the same :30 spot conditions.
BUT… the “-R” discs will play on many more consumer DVD players than the “+R” discs (in my own and others’ experience.)My technique is to output from FCP to DV tape via FW (no generation loss from FCP) and connect another deck or camcorder to the DVD recorder. Then burn it to a DVD in real-time while I continue to edit on the Mac.
Internal HD DVD recorders are mainly for “RAM TV recordings” (think TiVo) with the burner section used to “save” shows.
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Consider purchasing some hard drives. They are very inexpensive these days. Store all of your DVCAM footage & QT Movies on the drives. Quality should be your number one priority. Your DVD Recorder should be used to archive your shows.
G5 Dual 2.5 160GB System 400GB Media Drive ATI 9800 256MB 6 GB RAM
Dual Gig Quicksilver 1GB RAM 80 GB System drive (3) 250 GB internal media storage
15″ Al Powerbook 1.25 1GB RAM
OS 10.3.8 FCP 4.5, DVDSP 2, QT 6.5, Boris Red 3GL 2.45 TB External Stor -
We have two Panasonic rigs, E75 and E85, The 85 has a huge drive onboard, the 75 is a VHS-DVD dubber.
Both do basic recording however, be aware of two things: The marketing hype is nothing but lies and the interfaces for these machines are stupidly disgusting lapses of intelligence. Everything must be done via the remote control paddle including all text entry. It’s insane.
The image quality is tolerable at full speed but if you try to use the compression options to get more than 2 hours on a DVD the image is completely destroyed, useful only for archives. If you go to the 4 or 8 hour modes all you get is blocky mush. These products wastes of money if you expect them to do ANYTHING other than record live to DVD. Why people are buying them for their “advanced stupidity” features is a wonder. I’d wait for a stand-alone version of a DVD recorder that has a Firewire input and a computer interface.
The current crop of recorders in the $250-$1,000 range is one-trick crap.
bogiesan
This is my standard sigfile so do not take it personally: “For crying out loud, read the freakin’ manual.”
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