XS32 Help Needed

[dpluxor]

Hi All,

Well after a week of deliberation, my XS32 came today and even after just 2 hours I am well impressed. I just have one problem (at the moment) ...

I have a 32ZP48 so have connected up the XS32 with component cables, analogue audio pair & digital coax. My Sky box is connected the the XS32 via a scart to AV2. I also actually have a cheap & nasty scart from Sky straight to the TV on Ext1 but rarely use it.

Please assume everything from now on is viewed using the Ext4 component input on the TV.

Watching DVD's looks & sounds amazing so no problems there, also the onscreen menus from the XS32 are rock solid so I'm sure the problem I have with the Sky picture stems from the Sky to XS32 link.
When viewing the typical sky menus using the AV2 input selection (blue text on yellow backgrounds), there is a shimmering blue checkerboard pattern right above each letter, added to this the whole picture is shimmering. You have to get close to really see the effect above the text but its there. Most annoyingly it doesnt show if I view the Sky directly on the TV using its scart.

I have the AV2 on the XS32 setup as video, as the S-video setting produces a black & white shimmering picture, and the RGB setting produces a black screen. I have messed with the Sky video output, trying PAL & RGB and neither helps the situation.

Can anyone help, I would have thought if is select RGB (which I assume would be the best picture) on both units, I should get something other than a black screen ??

Thanks

David

 

[SDHoward]

Can anyone help, I would have thought if is select RGB (which I assume would be the best picture) on both units, I should get something other than a black screen ??

Are both cables proper rgb cables?

 

[dpluxor]

Erm, pass, its a Scart, a medium grade one I suppose, a flat Profigold something.

Are there different types of Scart

David

 

[SDHoward]

Erm, pass, its a Scart, a medium grade one I suppose, a flat Profigold something.

Are there different types of Scart

David

You can get scarts that are just wired for composite and therefore won't pass an rgb signal, however the one you've got shouln't be a problem..hmm
All your inputs and outputs set to rgb ... pass

 

[calibos]

A common mistake is to assume that both scarts on the Sky box are RGB. They are not. The Scart labeled TV on the Sky box is RGB but the scart labeled Video is composite only. I assume you have the TV scart linked to EXT1 on the TV and the Video scart linked to AV2 on your Tosh. As you are going to watch sky thru your Tosh via component from now on and you don't need a direct RGB connection from the Sky box to the TV you can just connect the TV(RGB) scart of your sky box to the AV2 scart input on your Tosh.

The reason you get a black picture when you have RGB selected on both units is that no matter whether you set the Sky box to RGB or not it will only ever output composite on the Video scart. The 'video' setting in the toshs menu means composite and the artifacts on the menu's you describe are typical composite artifacts.

Like I said a common misconception.

 

[dpluxor]

Thanks Calibos, sorted, I pulled out the scart to the TV from the Tosh (after all whats the point of it now anyway). Set both to RGB and we are away, mint picture all round.

PS - On my old Philips DVDR80, editing a title was a doddle, pause the playing where you wanted to chop off then end, press Divide Title, and then delete the newly created end piece.

On the tosh, is it right I have to got the edit menu, create a new chapter, come out of that, go into edit playlist, copy just the first chapter from the title & create the new title.???

I did all that and when I deleted the orignal title, it also deleted the new one I had just created ?? Done something wrong I think

David

 

[calibos]

Were you asking me that editing question David?? Your asking the wrong guy as is demonstrated by my huge list of editing questions in my thread further down the page!! I haven't even tried to edit anything yet on my new Tosh until I have clarified a few things lest I screw up HDD recordings and/or make a load of useless unusable DVD-R's! I'm sure Ranzak or Redsox will be along shortly to answer yours....and my editing questions

From a few snippets I deciphered in the manual though, I think that what you did was make a playlist from the original title rather than another copy of the original title. A playlist isn't another physical copy of the title on the drive, it is merely a list of instructions on how to play the original title. So say you marked your ad breaks with chapters and made a playlist excluding the chapters that were just ads. When you play the playlist for example, the tosh is just following the intructions of the playlist and playing the selected chapters from the original title. So if you delete the original title then the playlist hasn't got the original recording to playback, is thus useless and so the Tosh deletes the icon for the playlist too.

What I gather from reading the various threads and the few snippets I have deciphered in the manual is that if you intend to delete a recording from the hard drive as soon as you have edited it and burned it to DVD-R, then you can forego all this second copy of the title, playlist lark etc, ie. Once you have marked your ad breaks using chapters you can just delete those chapters and then burn to DVD-R. When finished you delete the original title leaving a largish contigous space on the HDD.

Where all this copies of original title and playlists of copies comes in, is to do with HDD fragmentation I gather. ie when you want to edit out the ad breaks on a recording, want to burn that recording to a DVD-R but also want to keep the adless recording on the HDD. If you just delete the chapters on the original title then you are left with a load of small blank spaces throughout the recording. The Tosh will fill those little spaces with bits of new recordings as you make them(because the Tosh (computer basically) doesn't want to waste any HDD space), so your next recording say, rather then being in one big section on the hardrive which can be read easily and quickly by the hard drives read heads is spread out all over your hard drive in all those little blank spaces. This means the hard drive read heads are having to zip all over the drive to read the bits of the recording which is inefficient and can mean pauses in playback. If you were deleting the whole title it wouldn't matter because you would be freeing up one big block of space meaning less fragmentation but if you want to keep it on the Hard drive too then this is where the second copies and playlists come in.

ie You make your recording
You mark your breaks with chapters
You create a playlist excluding the ad chapters
You burn the adless playlist/copy to your DVD-R
You also burn this adless playlist to your HDD making a new 'adless' original title copy(not sure how to do this yet, ie how to make a playlist into a new actual physical second adless copy)
Then you can delete the original recording (that still has the ads) giving you a big contigous lump of HDD space back.

I think!!!

 

[SDHoward]

You also burn this adless playlist to your HDD making a new 'adless' original title copy(not sure how to do this yet, ie how to make a playlist into a new actual physical second adless copy)


I think!!!

You can do a high speed dub HDD to HDD which will copy the bits of the playllist you want into a new title

 

[redsox_mark]

You guys have got it. There is no “divide” function on the XS32, so you do need to create chapters. Some of those chapters will be stuff you want to cut (adverts), some will be content to keep.

Then you have a choice. The recommended way (to minimise fragmentation) is to create a “Playlist”. Note a playlist doesn’t take up any additional space; it is just pointers to parts of the recording. (Also known as non-destructive editing). So I create a playlist with just the chapters I want to keep.

Now, don’t delete the original at this point! Remember the playlist is just pointers to your original, so if you delete the original it deletes the playlist as well! (Nothing to point to).

Now, what do you want to do next?

If you just want to watch the recording without adverts and then delete the whole thing, just watch the playlist. Afterwards, delete the original (and playlist will go to).

If you want to dub the recording to DVD, then dub the playlist to DVD. Once done again you can delete from HDD.

If you want to keep the edited version only on the HDD, then as SDHoward said, you do a high speed dub HDD to HDD which will copy the bits of the playlist you want into a new (original) title. You can then delete the old original title and playlist. You could also dub this to DVD later if you want.

Lastly, as an alternative to creating a playlist you could just delete the chapters you don’t want from the original, but this is less desirable due to fragmentation. Also note with a playlist you can have chapters from different titles, and in different order if you want, so it is more flexible.

You’ll find with many tasks on the XS32 there are multiple ways of doing things…

Mark

 

[calibos]

Lastly, as an alternative to creating a playlist you could just delete the chapters you don’t want from the original, but this is less desirable due to fragmentation.

But am I right in assuming that if I will be deleting the whole original after dubbing to DVD-R anyway, then this fragmentation won't be an issue, or is there another disadvantage, ie more noticable gaps at edit points etc Did a test last night with a chapter deletion and there was a bit of a pause, and flash of unwanted frame. Was this because of doing a chapter deletion rather than a playlist edit or was it just bad GOP frame editing on my part.

 

[redsox_mark]

You are right, but are you going to delete them right away?

For example, I record “The Simpsons”, and I put 5 episodes on a DVD. Over time, I’ll create a playlist for Episode 1, then the next day Episode 2… I skip some so it may take me a few weeks before I have 5 episodes ready.

If I deleted chapters as I went along, then new recordings may use these fragmented bits..

I guess if you save all your editing until the end, then delete the titles before you record anything else, then it is OK.

I don’t think it makes any difference to the pause – you will get a slight pause if you put together any 2 chapters which were not originally together… Nor the flash frame..

Mark

 

[calibos]

Thats what I would have been doing alright, editing all the eps for a certain disc at once and then deleting them. I've just been thinking though, wouldn't I need to create a playlist anyway to actually check the edit before I go and delete the chapter, so I should be creating a small playlist of the 3 chapters with the ad chapter in the middle anyway. I may as well do a full playlist so and not delete the original title till I'm sure I have all my ad edits nice and after I have burned the DVD-R.

I think I've got my head around it now! Thanks for your help here and in the other thread Mark.

 

[redsox_mark]

Yes, you've got it. That is another advantage of a playlist, it is non-destructive. If you got it wrong just change it. With the Original recording, ff you accidently delete the wrong chapter (i.e. delete your programme instead of the adverts) you are stuck.

My advice would be to use playlists, once you get used to it, it comes quite easy.

Mark