HDD XP to DVD SP - Is there any point in recording in XP

jackpot

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Hi all
i taped aload of stuff onto the hard drive in XP mode.
After editing out all the rubbish it is just under 2 hrs long.

Q1. If a DVD can hold 2 hrs of SP recording, can I transfer the XP recording onto a DVD in SP mode.

Q2. If i was to do this, was there any point in recording in XP in the first place?

thanks
 
jackpot said:
Hi all
i taped aload of stuff onto the hard drive in XP mode.
After editing out all the rubbish it is just under 2 hrs long.

Q1. If a DVD can hold 2 hrs of SP recording, can I transfer the XP recording onto a DVD in SP mode.

Depends on what recorder you have. I know you can change the output recorded mode from XP to SP etc (transcoding) on the Panasonic range of machines not sure about other makes though.


jackpot said:
Q2. If i was to do this, was there any point in recording in XP in the first place?

It all depends....

If you know in advance you were going to stick two hours worth on a DVD then not really worth recording in XP mode then.

However if you have an hour and a half programme that you can possibly edit down to an hour then then that would possibly be worth recording in XP mode.

Hope that helps.
 
XP recording will only fit 1 hr onto a DVD.
If you want to keep that quality you need to put it onto 2 DVD's.
Otherwise degrade to fit onto 1 DVD.
If you are going to fit 2hrs onto 1 DVD it makes sense to record at SP onto the harddisk to start with,or you are decoding twice, which is likely to be inferior to decoding once.
Most people find SP is fine for normal recordings, just use XP for those Special ones.

Regards
knotpc
 
jackpot said:
Hi all
i taped aload of stuff onto the hard drive in XP mode.
After editing out all the rubbish it is just under 2 hrs long.

Q1. If a DVD can hold 2 hrs of SP recording, can I transfer the XP recording onto a DVD in SP mode.

Q2. If i was to do this, was there any point in recording in XP in the first place?

thanks

In short

Q1 - Yes

Q2 - No
 
knotpc said:
If you are going to fit 2hrs onto 1 DVD it makes sense to record at SP onto the harddisk to start with,or you are decoding twice, which is likely to be inferior to decoding once.

Please could you explain where the 2 lots of decoding occur as all this is a mystery to me and i'm still learning.
Many thanks
 
I record in XP when I know the recording will be over two hours with ads taken out. I then FR it to disc.

If it ends at 2 hours after ads then I do the recording in SP.
 
jackpot said:
Please could you explain where the 2 lots of decoding occur as all this is a mystery to me and i'm still learning.
Many thanks

jackpot,
When you first make a recording your recorder converts the video into data files on your hard drive or DVD, which I suppose technically is coding (and not decoding) at a certain bitrate.
If you now wish to lower the bitrate to fit 2hrs on a 1hr DVD, the machine has to recode the original data recorded.
When you playback the data it is decoded into video.
Hope this makes sense.

Regards
knotpc
 
knotpc said:
jackpot,
When you first make a recording your recorder converts the video into data files on your hard drive or DVD, which I suppose technically is coding (and not decoding) at a certain bitrate.
If you now wish to lower the bitrate to fit 2hrs on a 1hr DVD, the machine has to recode the original data recorded.
When you playback the data it is decoded into video.
Hope this makes sense.

I think so. Basically i think your saying that whatever the quality its been recorded onto the hard drive then keep the same quality when copying onto a DVD which will avoid any decoding ?
Thank you

nwgarratt said:
I record in XP when I know the recording will be over two hours with ads taken out. I then FR it to disc.

If it ends at 2 hours after ads then I do the recording in SP.

This is what i was hoping to do when i recorded V festival at the weekend. However, it wont let me FR a playlist and as i understand it, creating a playlist is the only way i can move chapters around which i need to do to get the songs of each group together

thanks again all
 
jackpot said:
This is what i was hoping to do when i recorded V festival at the weekend. However, it wont let me FR a playlist and as i understand it, creating a playlist is the only way i can move chapters around which i need to do to get the songs of each group together

thanks again all

Its encoding when recording/dubbing not decoding.

I can FR a playlist with my panasonic HS2. I just select the playlists in the dubbing screen. It does say it cannot dub playlists in high speed mode but I can select all the quality setting including FR.
 
jackpot said:
I think so. Basically i think your saying that whatever the quality its been recorded onto the hard drive then keep the same quality when copying onto a DVD which will avoid any decoding ?

No - You don't have it quite right yet.
The ideal to aim for, if it can be achieved, is never to encode more than once.

I know this is not an option in this particular case - but read on .

Encoding is always a loss-making process.
Obviously, the loss is least at XP [ but still a loss] and most at LP or EP speeds.
Everytime you encode you will introduce a loss. You cannot make things better by transferring at a 'better speed' but you CAN minimise the loss.
In other words, it IS worth transferring a recording that was recorded initially at, say SP, at XP speed in order to minimise your loss at the next encoding.

Given the constraints of your original problem that would not suit in this case because of your programme length as others have explained above.

As far as I can see you have not specified your DVDR type so I do not know if it supports Highspeed Copying.

In future you should consider this if your machine supports it, because once you have made your recording to HDD, at whatever quality you choose, you can then copy to disk LOSSLESSLY. A straight digital copy is made ... and more conveniently at a high speed so the whole process is much quicker and convenient.
Most importantly, as there has been only one encoding process, you do not suffer from cumulative multi-encoding losses.
 
Encoding twice is no beig deal. It doesn't create poor results unless you cram to much on the disc (several hours). I can't see any difference between XP at 1 hour and 3 hours FR. It is just down to the persons eyes and preference.

XP is higher bitrate than something such as Freeview. The bitrate of Freview on some channels such as Channel 5 isn't even SP quality occasionally.
 
nwgarratt said:
I can FR a playlist with my panasonic HS2. I just select the playlists in the dubbing screen. It does say it cannot dub playlists in high speed mode but I can select all the quality setting including FR.

I have a panasonic 85. Slightly different but i've found it and the options are as you describe so thanks for that.
So i have 1hr 20mins on the hardrive recorded in XP
so my question now is
1. Is it better quality wise, to record this onto a dvd in FR bearing in mind it wont do it in high speed or
2. Should I have copied it originally to the hard drive in SP which then have allowed me to dub it in high speed and so avoid the need to for it to be encoded again

Sorry if i seem thick but i appreciate yours and everyones help on here
 
FR will be higher bitrate as there will be less to copy over. As soon as you change to a lower quality then the bitrate will be lower and lower quality.

If you record in SP then dub in SP. The quality will be the same. It applies to all the modes.

To fill the disc and maximise bitrate, I always record first onto hard disk then remove the ads and then dub to disc. If you record straight to disc and then edit it. It will end up lower bitrate compared to filling the disc as there will now be space left on the disc.
 
jackpot said:
I have a panasonic 85. Slightly different but i've found it and the options are as you describe so thanks for that.
So i have 1hr 20mins on the hardrive recorded in XP
so my question now is
1. Is it better quality wise, to record this onto a dvd in FR bearing in mind it wont do it in high speed or
2. Should I have copied it originally to the hard drive in SP which then have allowed me to dub it in high speed and so avoid the need to for it to be encoded again

1. Yes.
2. Yes. or in FR, see below.

If you know how long the recording is going to be before hand can you not set up the bitrate accordingly to fit on a DVD later? you can on my Pioneer and my old Toshiba 32RDSX.

Regards
knotpc
 
nwgarratt said:
Encoding twice is no beig deal. It doesn't create poor results unless you cram to much on the disc (several hours). I can't see any difference between XP at 1 hour and 3 hours FR. It is just down to the persons eyes and preference.

I agree entirely it is down to a persons preference. It is why I would encourage all to experiment to test what results suit them.
However you seem to be in denial of the encoding issue.

I am astonished that you find no difference between the two examples you cited. You are blessed.

nwgarratt said:
XP is higher bitrate than something such as Freeview. The bitrate of Freview on some channels such as Channel 5 isn't even SP quality occasionally.

MPEG encoding is more complex than being simply about bitrate. Even at XP, although the loss will be small, it IS a loss.
 
nwgarratt said:
If you record in SP then dub in SP. The quality will be the same. It applies to all the modes.

I'm sorry . I just cannot let that one go. That is just untrue.

The first encoding at SP incurrs a loss. The second encoding at SP also incurrs a cumulative loss.
The quality will not be the same... in any mode.
 
Gavtech said:
I'm sorry . I just cannot let that one go. That is just untrue.

The first encoding at SP incurrs a loss. The second encoding at SP also incurrs a cumulative loss.
The quality will not be the same... in any mode.

Of course it is the same. If the recording is SP on the hard disk and then high speed dubbed. It is stil SP on the disc. High speed dub is 1:1. It is only a loss when dubbing at a lower quality mode or fitting longer using FR.
 
nwgarratt said:
Of course it is the same. If the recording is SP on the hard disk and then high speed dubbed. It is stil SP on the disc. High speed dub is 1:1.

Yes, THAT is true, but it is not what you were asserting earlier. You may have meant it but you did not specify that you were meaning high speed dub which is simply direct digital copying.

nwgarratt said:
It is only a loss when dubbing at a lower quality mode or fitting longer using FR.

This is the part I'm having difficulty getting you to accept. The qualities are irrelevant. If you do any other kind of dub, other than high speed, then you will be re-encoding previously encoded material and there will be more loss.

MPEG encoding is compessive and lossy.

If you dont believe me, keep bouncing a realtime dub and see the results you get.

The OP is obviously concerned with quality issues so it is important that he should be made aware of this point.
 
I always try and avoid re-encoding as I found that it quite often lip synch problems on my machine. These days I mainly just stick to SP for all recordings.
 
Maybe one Day the'll have lossless encoding for DVD recording like Audio has (ape and flac files).
Where the files are small enough for practical use for recording and playback.

Regards
knotpc
 
While on the subject of recording quality, can someone in the know tell us if when the recoding is peformed on a DVD recorder is it straight digital to digital or does it convert digital to video back to digital?
I ask this because if you re encode on a PC the result is not in real time, whereas on a DVD recorder it is!

Regards
knotpc
 
knotpc said:
Maybe one Day the'll have lossless encoding for DVD recording like Audio has (ape and flac files).
Where the files are small enough for practical use for recording and playback.

Regards
knotpc

Lossless recording for video does exist, problem is the size of the resulting files. Are too big for current disc storage, including Blu-Ray and HD-DVD.

Compare the size of a flac file to the same song in mp3, flac equivalent is much bigger, not much smaller than the wav file in fact.

Hope that helps.
 
knotpc said:
While on the subject of recording quality, can someone in the know tell us if when the recoding is peformed on a DVD recorder is it straight digital to digital or does it convert digital to video back to digital?
I ask this because if you re encode on a PC the result is not in real time, whereas on a DVD recorder it is!

Regards
knotpc

I assume you mean when transfering from XP to SP for example.

Basically, if it is showing the picture it is re-encoding via the hardware mpeg encoder in real time.

Do you mean a PC is faster or slower? As it all boils down to the processing power of the PC when re-encoding via a software encoder.
 

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