Request for DVD/video copying advice

[Guest]

I've just read the article I'll post below. I have several hundred video tapes and want to transfer them to DVDs. The article helped me understand what I'm looking for but I wonder if anyone here has other recommendations.

Thanks, Perdita

 

[Guest]

NY Times article

STATE OF THE ART - Videotape to DVD, Made Easy - DAVID POGUE

WHOEVER said "technology marches on" must have been kidding. Technology doesn't march; it sprints, dashes and zooms.

That relentless pace renders our storage media obsolete with appalling speed:5¼-inch floppies, Zip disks or whatever. And with the debut of each new storage format, millions of important files, photos, music and video have to be rescued from the last one.

At the moment, the most urgent conversion concerns videotape, whose signal begins to deteriorate in as little as 15 years. Rescuing tapes by copying them to fresh ones isn't an option, because you lose half the picture quality with each generation. You could play them into a computer for editing and DVD burning, but that's a months-long project. You could pay a company to transfer them to DVD, if you can stomach the cost and the possibility that something might happen to your precious tapes in the mail.

There is, fortunately, a safe, automated and relatively inexpensive solution to this problem: the combo VHS-DVD recorder. It looks like a VCR, but it can play or record both VHS tapes and blank DVD discs, and copy from one to the other, in either direction. Pressing a couple of buttons begins the process of copying a VHS tape to a DVD, with very little quality loss. (You can't duplicate copy-protected tapes or DVD's, of course; only tapes and discs you've recorded yourself.)

And if your movies are on some other format, like 8-millimeter cassettes, you can plug the old camcorder into the back of this machine, hit Play, and walk away as the video is transferred to a DVD.

(Of course, now you have to worry about the longevity of recordable DVD's. Fortunately, a DVD's movie files are stored as digital signals, not analog, so you won't lose any quality when you copy them onto whatever video format is popular in 2025. Video contact lenses, perhaps?)

As a bonus, a combo VCR-DVD player-recorder can eliminate one machine stacked under the TV, one remote control and, in most cases, one set of cables to your TV. (None of this makes it simple, however. All of these machines are far more complex than, say, a stand-alone DVD player.)

I sampled four of these combo boxes: the Panasonic DMR-E75V, the RCA DRC8300N, GoVideo's VR2940, and the JVC DR-MV1S. (Who makes up these model names, anyway - drunken Scrabble players?) All are available online for $285 to $350. As it turns out, shopping for a combo recorder is an exercise in compromise. Here are some of the trade-offs you have to look forward to.

JACKS Each recorder has a dazzling array of jacks on the front and back panels, for ease in connecting to your other home-entertainment gear. For example, each has so-called component video outputs for a superior picture on recent TV sets. JVC and GoVideo even included a front-panel FireWire input, which lets you dump footage from a digital camcorder directly onto a DVD.

Unfortunately, the GoVideo deck lacks an S-video input, a high-quality connection to many camcorder models. And a note to videophiles: The RCA, JVC and GoVideo decks can play both VCR and DVD signals through the same set of component video cables, so you don't have to switch TV inputs to get the best quality. DISC FORMAT Thanks to a foolhardy war between electronics companies, there are two incompatible formats for blank DVD's, confusingly called DVD-R and DVD+R. Recorded discs of either type will play in most recent DVD players, but you have to be careful to buy the right kind of blanks for your recorder, and many stores carry only one type.

The RCA and GoVideo decks require DVD+R (and their more expensive, erase-and-reuse variant, DVD+RW). The Panasonic and JVC players take DVD-R discs (and the erasable DVD-RW). A disc of either format must be "finalized" (a 2- to 15-minute electronic shrink-wrapping) before it will play in other DVD players.

As a bonus, the Panasonic and JVC models also accept a third format called DVD-RAM, which doesn't play in most everyday DVD players. But if you just leave it in your recorder, you can use it pretty much like a hard drive, adding and deleting recordings at will, slicing out commercials, watching the beginning of a show whose ending is still being recorded, and so on.

Frankly, understanding the differences between all of these formats makes most people's brains hurt. At the outset, you might want to consider just buying straight-ahead, ordinary blanks (either DVD-R or DVD+R) and treating them as burn-once-and-forget-it DVD's.

COPY QUALITY The quality of the copy depends on the speed setting you choose. The one- and two-hour DVD settings, for example, are nearly indistinguishable from the original VHS tape. Remember, of course, that VHS quality isn't so great to begin with. The four- to eight-hour modes look pretty terrible. The JVC and Panasonic decks also offer in-between settings that maximize quality based on the length of the recording, as long as you know the length ahead of time.

VCR FEATURES Only the JVC and Panasonic models offer VCR Plus+, the shortcut system that programs your recorder to record a show when you copy its code out of the newspaper TV listings. This feature applies to recordings made on either a tape or a disc, so a better name might be VCR Plus+ Plus DVD Plus+.

REMOTE CONTROL None of the remotes are fully illuminated, although the JVC's primary playback controls glow. Most require you to press a DVD or a VCR button before pressing Play, Pause or whatever; only the RCA is smart enough to play whatever is in the machine (a disc or a tape) - or, if one of each is inside, to ask which you want. The buttons on GoVideo's remote are especially poorly designed; they're all alike, all tiny, all the time.

DVD FEATURES All four of these decks work fine as DVD players, but the GoVideo's AutoPlay feature can skip all the ads, movie trailers, FBI warnings and so on at the beginning of a DVD movie, and just start playing the movie itself. DVDelicious!

Speaking of smart, the JVC, Panasonic and RCA decks offer a 30-second skip button that works on both discs and tapes; the JVC and RCA also offer a 7-second replay button that's great for catching mumbled dialogue.

CHAPTER MARKERS Each deck creates a new "chapter" of your DVD for each new recording you copy to it. But within a long recording, the Panasonic, RCA and JVC models just put a chapter marker every few minutes.

The GoVideo offers two more sophisticated features. One, an option called YesVideo, produces a handsome main menu featuring thumbnail images of the chapter breaks - an infinite improvement over the invisible markers of its rivals. (GoVideo's ads imply that these breaks are intelligently placed at scene breaks, but usually they're just spaced at regular intervals.) Better yet, if you pop the finished disc into a Windows PC, you can print out a DVD jewel-case insert depicting those thumbnail images, so you can see what's on the disc without having to put it into a player. Very cool.

YesVideo is available only if there's just one recording on a disc. Even without this feature, though, GoVideo still lets you place chapter markers manually during playback, complete with thumbnail images.

SUPPORT GoVideo should take pride in the fact that it prominently displays its toll-free tech-support number right on the box, part of what it calls its "widely heralded White Glove Customer Care."

It should be ashamed, however, of the fact that White Glove Customer Care turns out to be keeping you on hold for an hour, waiting for an agent - until a recording tells you that everyone's busy and hangs up on you. I never did get through.

Panasonic's player has a jaw-dropping list of features, including an amazing one-minute full-tape rewind speed, picture-in-picture, and so on - but its manual reads like a bad translation of the Japanese income-tax form. (Writing sample: "The title is irretrievably erased when you use this procedure and cannot be retrieved.")

On the other hand, RCA's manual offers standard high-school English-class writing - which means that, among electronics manuals, it's practically Shakespeare.

MAKING A CHOICE The GoVideo is the least expensive deck ($285 at shopping.com), its DVD preview-skipping feature is almost irresistible, and that YesVideo chapter thumbnail thing is a worthy exclusive. Its reliability is worrisome, though. My review unit froze several times during testing, and after a few days refused to burn any more DVD's. A replacement unit occasionally stopped burning discs until it was unplugged and plugged in again, earning it the household nickname Don'tGoVideo.(GoVideo's buyer reviews online are similarly discouraging.) The RCA ($346) and Panasonic ($342) are fine machines, but they can't touch the JVC ($312) for good looks, price or genuinely useful features. For example, only the JVC has two tuners, so that it can record two things at once (one on tape, one on DVD). And only JVC offers an infrared blaster (when you send in your registration card), which changes the channel on your cable or satellite box for a scheduled recording. VCR Plus+, a full complement of jacks and the glowing remote only sweeten the deal.

In any case, the arrival of the combo VCR-DVD recorder is a welcome moment in format-turnover history. Now all we need is an equally automated machine that rescues our vinyl records, Apple II floppies and 8-track tapes.

 

[Guest]

I wonder if anyone here has other recommendations.

Thanks, Perdita

Get a real life with me, instead?

 

[Guest]

Re: Re: Request for DVD/video copying advice

Get a real life with me, instead?

Only if you live in Yorkshire. P.

 

[yui]

I've just read the article I'll post below. I have several hundred video tapes and want to transfer them to DVDs. The article helped me understand what I'm looking for but I wonder if anyone here has other recommendations.

Thanks, Perdita

Are the tapes that you want to transfer "homemade" or are they retail copies of movies and such? You will not be able to copy pre-recorded retail tapes because the copy protection (macrovision) will distort the image from VCR to DVD (or DVD to VCR). However, copying homemade tapes to DVD isn't a problem.

The only brand that I don't recommend in the DVD recorder is Philips. They have had major problems with their DVD recorders. I had one less than a year when I started getting a "disc error" everytime I tried to record. I hated it. I replaced it with a Sony and I have been much, much happier.

If it were me, I would try the JVC because it offers a wide variety of features; including two tuners, and it records onto DVD-R (or DVD-RW) which is, I think, the cheapest DVD medium right now. You can buy 30 Memorex DVD-R discs from Walmart for about $15. I don't personally use DVD-RAM, but the JVC supports it and from the article, it sounds like I need to be using it.

If you buy the recorder from someplace like Sears (or any place with a flexible return policy) if you get it and hate it, you can always box it back up and return it. You might get a better price online, but shipping and restocking fees (if you decide to return it) can be problematic.

DVD recorders record in real-time, so you will need to either "babysit" or set the timer while you are recording to avoid wasted space on the DVD.

I love my DVD recorder. Now if I just had Tivo…

Luck,

Yui

 

[hotchkiss]

Re: Re: Re: Request for DVD/video copying advice

Only if you live in Yorkshire. P.

Oi P! whats with all this Yorkshire business, If you get ever the chance take some time out here to explore some other wonderful areas in the U.K. Cumbria, the Scottish Highlands and Islands, Northumberland, Wales, Cornwall etc etc, they knock spots off Yorkshire!

Puttin My Tin Helmet on now and ducking swiftly!!!!

 

[Guest]

Thanks, Yui. I have lots of commercial videos that were made before the 'coding to keep from copying', the rest are homemade (films, docs., etc.) P.

 

[Guest]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Request for DVD/video copying advice

Oi P! whats with all this Yorkshire business,

Mr. Kiss,

I do want to see more of the U.K., esp. more of the north. Yorkshire's all I know at the moment.

Thanks, Perdita

 

[hotchkiss]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Request for DVD/video copying advice

Mr. Kiss,

I do want to see more of the U.K., esp. more of the north. Yorkshire's all I know at the moment.

Thanks, Perdita

You wont be disappointed believe me, but be quick before some filthy developer builds houses all over it!

 

[Lisa Denton]

Say Mum, I burn dvd's all the time. Of course I don't do it cause its illegal but my program has decoders and descramblers so I can burn any movie. I have done it, uh, just to test it of course and then I destroyed the illegal copy. Macrovision no problem.

My brother burned his video collection to dvd, all he needed was a good video card with capture capability in his computer. His video player went LINE IN into his video card to capture. The program captures the video and burns it to dvd easy, its confusing to set up but once set up is as simple as what you are talking about.

You may want to check prices on the capture capable video card if you don't have, and a good dvd burning program, there is lots, and see if it will save you some money.

 

[Guest]

My brother burned his video collection to dvd, all he needed was a good video card with capture capability in his computer. His video player went LINE IN into his video card to capture. The program captures the video and burns it to dvd easy, its confusing to set up but once set up is as simple as what you are talking about.

Trying to get this, hon. So I don't need a dvd copy machine? If I get this vid card for my laptop it will suck in the video and transfer it to a dvd (I do have the dvd player attachment.) Is that it?

And who is this brother? Did I produce him? Yikes.

Mum

 

[Lisa Denton]

Trying to get this, hon. So I don't need a dvd copy machine? If I get this vid card for my laptop it will suck in the video and transfer it to a dvd (I do have the dvd player attachment.) Is that it?

And who is this brother? Did I produce him? Yikes.

Mum

You only have a laptop? Don't you have a real computer around someplace, I have two in this room, networked.

I don't think your laptop will suck in anything, but if it does can I play with it.

I thought you had a COMPUTER and dvd burner for backing up files and stuff. I will trade you an old computer for your laptop, I was thinkin about getting one for postin in bed.

You prolly don't remember my many siblings cause I was the only one you breastfed.

 

[Guest]

Lisa, my laptop can burn dvds and read CDroms, etc. Are you sure it won't do the sucky thing? I'll ask a tekkie at work tomw. I have a 'real' computer there but I couldn't do the sucky stuff in the office.

Mum

 

[Whisky7up]

I note the article quoted US prices.
Are these machines available in the UK?
The format for VHS and DVD differs...that's fine if there is a UK machine.
Unfortunately my problem involves hundreds of UK VHS which are useless here in Canada...so unless there's a machine that will transfer UK VHS to US DVD I'm missing all those movies etc.

Any suggestions?

 

[yui]

I note the article quoted US prices.
Are these machines available in the UK?
The format for VHS and DVD differs...that's fine if there is a UK machine.
Unfortunately my problem involves hundreds of UK VHS which are useless here in Canada...so unless there's a machine that will transfer UK VHS to US DVD I'm missing all those movies etc.

Any suggestions?

You can use a converter to convert PAL to NTSC format. The converter cleans the copy-protection in the conversion process. TenLab makes an excellent converter (I have the TR-21 model, but it is about 5 years old).

You will need a PAL VCR (or a worldwide VCR). Some of the worldwide VCRs have the converter built-in, but I don't know if these models will clean the macrovision. I have read in the past that you get a better conversion with a stand-alone converter, but be aware that there is some quality lost in conversion, but going to a digital source you would not loose clarity like you would going to another analogue source.

Luck,

Yui

 

[Lisa Denton]

Lisa, my laptop can burn dvds and read CDroms, etc. Are you sure it won't do the sucky thing? I'll ask a tekkie at work tomw. I have a 'real' computer there but I couldn't do the sucky stuff in the office.

Mum

Instead of askin the techie if your laptop will do the sucky thing, you might want to say video capture. I was under the impression, though I don't have one, that laptops have made leaps and bounds but video capture just wasn't here yet. Maybe I'm wrong, which is possible, but that is scary. Hold me Mum!!!

 

[Guest]

Maybe I'm wrong, which is possible, but that is scary. Hold me Mum!!!

There, there.

Mummy

p.s. I was not going to ask the tek-guy (whose name is Thor, really) about the "sucky" thing. I'm Ms. Professional at work.

 

[Seattle Zack]

I have the Panasonic model mentioned in the article, Perdita, and regardless of the instruction manual (it is, truly incomprehensible) it's as easy as three buttons to transfer your tapes to DVD. Just be sure you buy the right DVDs ... DVD-Rs, (minus Rs [DVD-R], not plus Rs [DVD+R], which won't work).

The only reason I picked Panasonic over the others is they have the Firewire input for my DV camera, so I can transfer the Digital Video from my camcorder without any loss of quality.

Copy protection is problematic, if you plan to market pirated copies of "Shrek 2" on the street corner, but as far as transferring your home made porn tapes to DVDs for posterity, you'll have no problems with the Panasonic model.

 

[Lisa Denton]

but as far as transferring your home made porn tapes to DVDs for posterity, you'll have no problems

Mum was talkin about homemade porn tapes?

 

[neonlyte]

Re: Re: Re: Request for DVD/video copying advice

Only if you live in Yorkshire. P.

Can't advise on the video/dvd front, but I did hear last week that Yorkshire is thinking of banning 'outsiders' from moving into the county. It's the 70's all over again - when they tried to declare a Republic.

(It's the price of houses, 'foreigners' are driving up the prices. Of course this wouldn't apply to you, I think you were adopted.)

neon

I'll reply to your PM as soon as I've unpacked.

neon

 

[Guest]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Request for DVD/video copying advice

Can't advise on the video/dvd front, but I did hear last week that Yorkshire is thinking of banning 'outsiders' from moving into the county.

O, but I have connections now. Shall make inquiries re. funds needed to marry for visa.

Look forward to hearing from you, W.

Perdita


p.s. to Zack: thanks, and thanks alot!

p.s. to Lisa: my videos are all classic or artsy-fartsy films, documentaries on cute animals and other educational things, Shakespeare plays, ballet and grand opera. (Just a few home-movie type stuff .