E85 problems with corrupted recordings & dubbing to DVD-R

apreading

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I am on my second E85 now (after a HDD failure in the first) and both have had the same 'occasional' problem, so I wondered if anyone else had experienced similar.

Sometimes I get a title which just will not dub to DVD-R. It is nothing to do with the discs as it doesnt matter how many I try I get the same problem but other titles write to them fine. The only failures I have ever have are identical to this and seem to be the file rather than the disc.

These titles dub to DVD-RAM OK, but copying them back to the HDD and trying to dub the new file to DVD-R also fails.

So it appears there is some kind of corruption in the file which stops if from being copied to DVD-R.

The dub starts but then fails part way through.

On the older machine I would notice that in the middle of a title I might see a frame of another title flash past - indicating perhaps some kind of fragmentation issue? On the new machine it hapenned with the third title I wrote to the disc though, so surely fragmentation couldnt be the cause? I have been accumulating stuff for the kids on the HDD for a couple of months though and this title had been on there a long(ish) time so may not have been corrupt initially. I am now archiving stuff to disc so that I can reformat the disc and do some housekeeping. Out of 26 titles I wanted to put on disc last night, 3 failed. I restarted the dub omitting the failed titles and everything else wrote OK, so the DVD disc is fine.

Any ideas? With the first one I put it down as perhaps a symptom of the failing hard disc, but now with the second one I wonder if I have another duff HDD or if the problem is just bad software on the machines - in which case I would expect others to have seen similar?

cheers for any thoughts...
 
Am I right in thinking nobody else has seen this kind of issue? Am wondering whether to get the unit replaced again...
 
I haven't experienced this on my E100. I would suggest you reformat the HDD. If you get any further problems with new recordings then speak to Panasonic.
 
Seems like bad luck on your part. I've had my E85 since April with absolutely no problems whatsoever.
 
I was just about to post exactly the same problem. What you've just said is EXACTLY what happened with my this week. Certain titles, Other frames appearing etc etc.

I have just formated the HDD and hope that this is the solution. I have had it for about 6-7 months possibly longer and had no problems whatsoever until this week. At first thought it was the disc but after wasting 3 discs I discovered it was only certain titles.

Must be something to do with deleting certain titles which are then overwriten.

Lets see how things go now after a total format. Let me know if you have any other probs. Also what happened with your 1st machine??
 
That's interesting because I have a recording on my E85 that will not dub at high speed to DVD-R. The recording was made on the HDD in LP mode with the 'DVD-R rec for high speed mode' setting on. I have tried Panasonic and Ritec DVD-Rs. The dubbing always ends early with a 'Dubbing has failed' message displayed for a few seconds. It seems to happen at the same point - the disc capacity afterwards is always the same. I also tried high speed dubbing to DVD-RAM and that worked. I wondered if fragmentation was affecting the writing to DVD-R so I high speed dubbed the recording to DVD-RAM and back to the HDD and then tried to high speed dub this second copy to DVD-R. This dub failed too.

The DVD-Rs still seem to be usable except they have lost some of their capacity.

After an initial sinking feeling, I deduced from these experiments that the encoding process had produced a bit pattern at one point in the recording that is incompatible with DVD-R (but compatible with DVD-RAM). Should this have happened? I don't know. I have e-mailed Panasonic to find out. Hopefully it's rare. The workaround is to re-encode when it happens (by dubbing at normal speed).

Other high speed dubs to DVD-R I have made since have been ok.

I have not noticed the frames-from-other-titles effect you describe.
 
Southpaw, apreading - did re-formatting your HDDs solve this problem?

I have experienced exactly the same symptoms as you describe with respect to corrupted recording, flashes of another recording, and failure to copy to DVD-R.

I've had my E85 for about 4 months and initially had no such problems at all. Unfortunately in the past couple of weeks these problems have become quite frequent. I don't know whether this indicates that something is deteriorating, or maybe it's a cumulative effect after much recording/editing/dubbing to DVD.

I'm not certain, but I suspect that the recordings are becoming corrupted AFTER the initial recording. (But not as a consequence of editing the recordings because some of the corrupted recordings haven't been edited at all.)

Really interested in whether reformatting the HDD has improved this for you?

And just how common is this problem?
 
Hi MTK

So far no problems. I did a full format and have about 10 hours of new stuff on the HDD drive. Haven't noticed any probs yet maybe the answer is to do regular formats.

I will let you know if i notice any other probs.

Try a full format and see what happens. Also try burning onto a RAM disc then formatting the HDD. See if that helps.

But so far I'd definately recommend a full format of the HDD.
 
me on 26-11-04 said:
I have e-mailed Panasonic to find out.
I received a reply today. It looked like a typical call centre reply - a selection of standard paragraphs strung together to make a response. It suggested I should submit the 'product' to an 'authorised, Panasonic DVD recorder service agent'.

I've only seen the 'dubbing to dvd-r' problem so far, and only one example of it, so I think I will bide my time and see if it happens again. I don't relish the thought of clearing the HDD and then losing the machine for weeks, only to be told they can't find anything wrong with it.

I wonder if apreading has anything to report?
 
I've done the re-format so will see what happens over the couple of weeks.

I think there's a moral here: If there's a recording you want to archive, then it's best to burn it to DVD sooner rather than later, just in case...
 
This may be relevant to your problems.

There are three absolute limitations to High Speed Dubbing.

1. The bit rate throughout the whole Title or Playlist must be constant.
Thus:
a. The 'DVD-R rec for high speed mode' setting must be "on" for all recordings which form part of a Title or Playlist.
b. All items in a Playlist must be recorded at the same bit rate (i.e. all at XP or SP or LP or EP (but not FR)).
c. All items in a Playlist, if recorded in FR mode, must have originally had equal recording times.

2. Multiply edits of a Title to remove adverts, etc. must be done in a single session.
Thus:
When using "partial erase" in the "edit" "sub menu", to remove adverts etc., all editing must be completed in one session using "start", "end", "next" as often as necessary and only when all editing is finished should "exit" be selected. If "exit" is selected more than once or if a Title is edited in more than one session, then High Speed Dubbing will fail.

3. All audio types in a Playlist must be the same.
Thus:
Mixing Dolby Digital with LPCM etc. is not allowed.

See foot-note, page35 of manual.

Baj

My setup:
 

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Interesting to hear others with the same problems. It would seem a general issue in that case. Cheers for the info Baj, but it is nothing to do with setup because 2 recordings made on the same day with exactly the same settings and one dubs the other doesnt.

Havent been able to archive everything off to do the reformat yet, but it didnt cure it on my last machine so I dont hold out alot of hope. Just seems to be a bug somewhere...

As we have all conculded, the moral is to write the stuff to an external disk ASAP if it is important...
 
Baj said:
2. Multiple edits of a Title to remove adverts, etc. must be done in a single session.
Ah! That could easily be the reason my dub failed.

Many thanks Baj. I was not aware of this restriction. I've read the footnotes on page 35 (many times) but I had not twigged the full implication of the phrase "Titles that contain repeatedly erased segments". The word "repeatedly" implies something has been done many times.

I'm surprised Panasonic Customer Care didn't suggest this possibility when I described my 'problem' to them (they said I should send the recorder to a service centre). Surely they must know it can be a cause of the "Dubbing has failed" error message. (This error message is not listed in the E85 manual, by the way.)

I wonder if high speed dubbing always fails if you partially erase a recording in more than one session, or if it just introduces the possibility that it might fail (and the probability increases with more sessions). I feel a test coming on.

Anyway, I must get into the habit of using Divide to quickly remove the extra material when I've left the recorder running beyond the end of a programme.
 
Yes thanks from me too for clarifying this aspect of high speed dubbing - had puzzled me when I read the manual.

Adrian
 
Am I the only E85 user who prefers to create chapters and then erase them instead of using the Partial Erase feature?

I ask because I do this and have encountered no problems with high speed dubbing, even when erasing "chapters" at different times.
 
I also create chapters and then delete them - mainly because I can't be bothered to read the manual to learn how to do it the other way ;)
 
bigsby said:
Am I the only E85 user who prefers to create chapters and then erase them instead of using the Partial Erase feature?
An interesting question. It just seemed there was more than one way to achieve the same result. Until now I have only used Partial Erase because it was simple to use (and possibly because I tried it first). But I may be a bit wary of using it in future. The snag is there is no indication to alert you that you have already performed a partial erase on a title.

There is no indication in the footnote on page 35 that the restriction is confined to Partial Erase. It says "in the following cases transferring (dubbing) to DVD-R in high speed mode does not work", and the final case is "Titles that contain repeatedly erased segments". So does it apply to multiple erased chapters?
- Is the term "segment" defined anywhere?
- Is the restriction described more clearly in another Panasonic manual?
 
hanks for those notes, Baj. Worth thinking about, but unfortunately not applicable to my problem.

Some of the recordings which gave me problems were from camcorder tapes, I never edited them at all. There was one that dubbed OK to DVD-R originally but about a week later wouldn't dub to DVD-R. (I tried several disks, TDK, Sony & Mitsubishi.) Each time the dub would fail after a couple of minutes.

Reviewing the recording on HDD there was a point at which the picture froze momentarily then there were a couple of flashes from some other programme. Reviewing the first DVD-R I made, it was OK. Hence my comment earlier that the corruption appears to occur after the initial recording to HDD.

We do a lot of editing on our machine - to get rid of ads and neatly trim the start and end of recordings. (Like Bigsby we prefer to create chapters and then erase them instead of using the Partial Erase feature.) I can't help wondering whether, as the disk becomes fuller and somewhat fragmented, there is some minor file corruption issue that causes these problems.

However I have re-formatted the HDD and so far so good. (Actually I haven't used it much since.) Notwithstanding these problems, I am rapt with my E85. It's got graet picture quality, it's easy to use, and has almost all the faetures that I want.
 
A Month after switching to creating chapters and removing all ads etc in one go I have not seen the problem either - and it has had a real good work out over Xmas.

I never managed to completely clear the disk in order to do a reformat either.

I do write the stuff to DVD as soon as I get the chance though so recordings dont hang around on there as long as they used to.

Not sure what it is that has stopped the problem, possibly a combination of the reduced number of edits and writing to disk sooner.

Anyway I am glad it did not reoccur over Xmas!

Thanks for all the help.
 
Has anyone had a problem with FR mode dubbing? (E95 model) I've just tried to save 3 episode of DR Who to a samsung dvd-r (8X) and the 2nd episode on the disc freezes about 2 mins in and wont play, (even on my pc)
 
cdb, try using 4x discs or 1-8x speed discs. The E95 can have problems with true 8x DVD-R media.
 
I use the 'create chapter' and delete method exclusively with no problems.

Sure I read somewhere on these forums that there could be problems with multiple short partial erases - was it something to do with fragmentation or a 'freezing' problem that has been addressed in subsequent firmware?
 
Sure I read somewhere on these forums that there could be problems with multiple short partial erases
This only applies if you edit hundreds of clips without ever formatting the HDD.
 

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