In article <AAXKd.2867$>,
"Scott Blair" <> wrote:
> I am contemplating in the next few months getting a VCR/DVD recorder combo.
> I have tons of VHS stuff I want transferred to DVD.
>
> My question is in the creating of the chapter breaks (I think thats what
> they call it). If I have a tape that I am transferring to DVD I dont have
> to sit through the entire tape while its recording and add the chapter
> breaks where I want to as I go along do I? Can I just let it record, go do
> other things, and when its done go back and add the chapter breaks where I
> want them? TIA for any help
>
> Scott
This should answer most questions you have Scott.
Credit:
http://news.com.com/Videotape+to+DVD...3-5554991.html
Videotape to DVD, Made Easy
By 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.
--
"Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we.
They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people,
and neither do we." - George Dumbya Bush
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