Any DVD recorders with custom options?

[pannayar]

Are there any DVD recorders which in addition to (or instead of) the SP/LP/EP modes, have modes where you can specify your own desired resolution/bitrates etc?

[FulciLives]

Pioneer is about the only *new* DVD recorder that offers this ... other models like Toshiba did but not any of the new models.

Of course to get a Pioneer you have to either buy a Canadian model or import one from Asia.

For the Asian models look at: http://www.220-electronics.com/

The DVR-340H looks like a great model ... if only I had the money.

Anyway that is my suggestion.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

P.S.
The DVR-550H is really the way to go but the price is a bit rich for me!

[guns1inger]

The only way to get that type of control is to capture and encode yourself.

Even the Pioneers don't give you total control. Yes, they allow for 5 minute increments in the capacity settings on which bitrates are based (very handy if you record episodic TV - set it for 90 minutes and you get two episodes to a disc without re-encoding), but the recorder still sets the threshold for cutting over to half-D1 or VCD resolution.

I cap OTA digital streams and do my own encoding for anything that needs finessing, and use the recorder mostly as a PVR now.

[CDan]

Panasonics offer "Flex-Recording", where the bitrate is set according to the custom time entered, and the selected recording mode. For instance, if you set it for XP mode and enter a custom time of 1:30, you get a bitrate between XP and SP. It's backwards from selecting a custom bitrate, but the result is the same. People report very good results in SP mode for recordings up to 3 hours.

Personally, I record everything in XP mode, then re-author on PC and use DVDShrink to get it down to size. This produces a variable bitrate and PQ that exceeds the above rates.

[pannayar]

That brings me another question: which of this approach would generally yield better results

1) Recording two videos (2 hours each) in LP mode OR
2) Recording each in SP mode and shrinking it using dvdshrink?

Or should they be almost same since the final bitrate should be similar? And the resolution is also same (720x480) for both modes.

How about the choice between recording in EP mode (6 hours) OR recording in LP and then shrinking in dvdshrink? In this case the resolutions will be different (352x240 for EP and 720x480 for LP).

[samijubal]

With quality discs 25 cents each, why would you want to use LP or DVD Shrink? Why not just use SP?

[pannayar]

because I wont be there sometimes to change the disc and most of the programs that I record run for about 4 hours...

[orsetto]

Well, this is why a DVD recorder with a hard drive is worth $100 more than a DVD recorder without one. A hard drive recorder like a current Pioneer or the Magnavox 2160/Phillips 3576 will let you record up to a six hour long program on its hard drive at any speed you like. Once recorded, you can edit out the commercials and split the recording across two or three DVDs without having to bother with LP or SLP signal degradation. (Of course, if you want the whole thing on one DVD you would still have to use the LP speed.)

[lordsmurf]

With quality discs 25 cents each, why would you want to use LP or DVD Shrink? Why not just use SP?

"SP" doesn't actually mean anything.
Most machines do 5000-5500k at 720x480 or 704x480, which is a fairly sucky bitrate for high quality, especially considering it is CVBR or 1-pass VBR (small buffer). That's a lot of compression, and not much bitrate before you fall in low PQ.

DVD Shrink on SP mode would be a double-rape, in terms of quality. It's a transcode on homemade barely-passable bitrate. Yikes!

Did somebody say 6-hour mode?
And 3 hour at 720x480?
I'd rather not watch tv that watch something that crappy.
Even Youtube can be better quality.

[samijubal]

You may not be as picky about quality, I consider LP unwatchable.
I still don't understand recording in SP and using Shrink. If the programs are over 2 hours or you want to do two 2 hour programs but aren't going to be there to swap discs then I don't see where SP and Shrink come in. It sounded like you just wanted to use less discs.

[lordsmurf]

SP and LP are pretty much identical in terms of image quality.

On a good machine:
LP = 352x480, at 2500k
SP = 704x480 or 720x480 at 5000-5500k
Visually the same bits per pixel.
Unless you've got DV tape source, the "sharpness" is perpetually the same.

One a crappy machine:
LP = 704x480 or 720x480 at 2500k
SP = 704x480 or 720x480 at 5000-5500k
And I'd fully agree with you that LP sucks. Panasonic is guilty for this stupid quality setting on LP.

[pannayar]

My source is TV (dish satellite non HD programs) and I assume it is not of very high quality to begin with. I am not looking for videophile quality, but just something that looks as close to the original picture (on my 32" tube TV). Would prefer to use less discs since I am recording very often... I am looking to fit about 4h 30m on a disc.

With that said, lordsmurf just talked about what I have been curious about recently, the good/crappy machines... with panasonic using 720x480 instead of 352x480 for LP mode. I have the panasonic DMR-EA18 (purchased recently) and compared it to the toshiba DR410 (which I returned eventually favoring the pana's PQ). Pana does LP at 720x480 at about 2.5Mbps and Toshiba does LP at 352x480.

Yes the pana mode seems to halves the available bits/pixel... but cnet reviews of the pana are "best in class LP mode" with the pana beating the tosh in all battery of tests.... How many bits are normally used per pixel? The higher it is, more drastic the fall in the representation of it I assume. For example going from 10 bits to 5 means you go from a scale of 1024 to 32, I am just guessing this is how it will be, donno for sure. Btw, I noticed that with the pana, if 320x480 is what you prefer for longer recordings, set a FR (flex mode) for just over 4 hours.

For my target of around 4H 30M, my bit budget would be 2.5 * (4/4.5) = 2.2 Mbps approx. At this rate, is it better to choose 720x480 or 352x480? okay I hear you saying "both are crap!" but which one is better in theory? Or are there too many other factors like how much motion in the picture etc...? It seems that if there is not too much fast movements, 720x480 gives a sharper image.

So if you are on a budget, is (A) the number of sampling points (pixels/resolution) important or (B) the degree of accuracy (bits per pixel) with which you can specify each sample point.

[samijubal]

4 1/2 hours on one disc from DN will look like terrible on any recorder. 2 hours from DN isn't very good. Discs are cheap, about $20/100 for Verbatims on sale. It's not worth the loss in quality unless you just can't afford the $20. No matter what Smurf says, the difference between SP and LP is night and day. He's either got lousy sources or he needs glasses or both.

[orsetto]

All the objective data in the world will not sway the subjective impression of your own eyes, which are easily fooled by pre-conceived notions, marketing, and personal visual cues. There is one reason and one reason only why Panasonic started this "hi-res" LP bullsh*t: to sell more Panasonic LCD and Plasma displays. The average consumer who just looks quickly at things in Circuit City will perceive the "hi res" Panasonic LP speed to "look better" on a large screen. Large flat-panel screens basically suck so hard at presenting standard-def recordings, they should be used to clean oil spills. So if you aren't too critical, Panasonic's LP variant can appear superficially more "in sync" and "clear" within the rigid formatting of the flat panels. If you ARE critical, you may gasp at the beautifully-delineated macroblocking a Panasonic LP recording will reveal. Its all relative to what you prefer as an artifact: the "older" LP standard of lower-res and higher bit-rate will have less blocks and smoother motion at the possible expense of a little sharpness loss. I prefer that compromise and use an old JVC for any seriously long recordings such as a 3-4 hour movie. Others think my LP recordings look like mush and will prefer the more "modern" Panasonic LP.

Its a very personal call, although in today's marketplace the point is really moot. Nine out of ten current machines have adopted the debatable "hi res" Panasonic LP standard: you really don't have a choice anymore. SP will still give the most reliably good results on most units, if you can afford a machine with FR-variable speeds you can get up to 140 mins with reasonable quality. Beyond that, it depends on how low you're willing to go and still view the result without a migraine. There are a number of posters here who swear they have no problem recording everything at SLP/6hr on their DVD recorders: I may think they're blind, but its their own business.

[robjv1]

It's funny, I think everyone gets really hung up on the idea that they want ONE disc to hold whatever length of program recorded for a period of time after they get a DVD recorder / start recording video. I think it's just that people feel that they should be able to record 6 hours of material to a disc the same way you could record 6 hours onto a VHS. I recorded a lot of sports and "sports entertainment" and you just need bitrate for that material and have to accept that you will need to split it up. That's what makes FR recorders so great -- I record a lot of my 2 hr 40m tapes at FR80 (split basically right down the middle) on my recorder and it looks great.

I'm sure that if the DVD format was ever intended to replace VHS recording that they would have picked a standard that could record something comparable to 6 hours of MPEG2 video on at a 9000 bitrate. People would have been more likely to jump onto that bandwagon (not withstanding the confusion of the DVD-R/+R aspect, or how confusing the concept of finalization is for people). It's funny that DVD-R discs have ended up being so cheap though --- it might cost you about $2 for a good 6 hour blank videotape and for about the same price you could probably pick up Taiyo Uden 6 DVD-R discs and record to them in 1hr mode.

[TBoneit]

Dishnetwork SD is 544 by 480 with +/- 1 gb space used per hour approx. Some programs run higher and some are 700 to 800 meg an hour as broadcast. Some have said 480 by 480, I have never seen that one and I used to also see 640 by 480 on some movie channels.

That's what I've observed using Dishnetwork DVRs. YMMV.

[lordsmurf]

Dishnetwork SD is 544 by 480 with +/- 1 gb space used per hour approx. Some programs run higher and some are 700 to 800 meg an hour as broadcast. Some have said 480 by 480, I have never seen that one and I used to also see 640 by 480 on some movie channels. That's what I've observed using Dishnetwork DVRs. YMMV.

Using dedicated hardware encoders from pristine quality sources. That alone makes a difference. But even then, people can clearly see blocks and artifacts on dish and cable. As they stuff more transponders, lower bitrate, up resolution, more and more people notice.

You can't fight science. The MPEG-2 compression scheme needs adequate bitrate to avoid artifacts.

As orsetto said, Panasonic pushed LP Full D1 simply because they started to lose their ass in the DVD recorder market, and that was the latest scheme to attract buyers back to their crap. People were dumb enough to buy it, so other companies followed the money. PQ suffered as a result.

Personally, I don't want my video to look like Lego.

[robjv1]

I agree. I don't mind a LITTLE noise in my video, but nothing drives me more crazy then really apparent MPEG2 artifacts. I have never got used to them, they just distract me so much from what I'm trying to watch. It is too bad that PCs are generally unreliable as capture devices, because it would be a dream to have the types of filters available in DVD recorders on the PC in addition to so much control over the encoding process, especially given the dwindling supply of good DVD recorders.

My good friend bought like a 70" 16:9 projection TV in 2002 before there was even a high definition signal to feed it and boy was that thing an UGLY mess of blockiness. I remember them having to take the frame around their door off just to get the TV in and it filled up practically their whole living room -- but it was big! I remember watching Pearl Harbor on DVD over there and realizing they had it hooked up with composite RCA jacks to their Playstation 2 DVD player. They stretched the image to compensate of course.

[highvolumeJP]

No matter if you use XP or SP I find that lately on many recorders the video gets softened too much ! The cheap, crap mpeg encoders used on those recorders like soft video - so even in XP, you will notice considerable degradation if you compare - compared to say, use a high quality encoder on your PC or an old, quality DVD recorder. Before going through the MPEG encoder, the video is first converted to a full frame digital frame and stored in memory - the signal goes through pre-filtering, which, depending on the DVD recorder, involves noise reduction and softening of the video - this filtering is often too strong and USELESS for certain sources - since you cannot turn it off, it will affect your recording - you DON'T want ALL sources to be filtered - certain high quality, CLEAN sources don't require it, and you are only degrading for nothing - in that regard, DVD recorders are guilty of excessive filtering and crap quality when recording from a S-VHS, Hi8 or DV source ! You are better off using your PC and a dedicated capture device you will get much better quality ! My ADS Instant DVD 2.0 rivals any DVD recorder I tried on the market including the most expensive one - it produces some of the cleanest, sharpest video even at low bitrates, and you have FULL control over filtering and chroma/hue/brightness and sharpness levels - but like all good things in life, these products are no longer made -

[lordsmurf]

No matter if you use XP or SP I find that lately on many recorders the video gets softened too much ! The cheap, crap mpeg encoders used on those recorders like soft video - so even in XP, you will notice considerable degradation if you compare - compared to say, use a high quality encoder on your PC or an old, quality DVD recorder. Before going through the MPEG encoder, the video is first converted to a full frame digital frame and stored in memory - the signal goes through pre-filtering, which, depending on the DVD recorder, involves noise reduction and softening of the video - this filtering is often too strong and USELESS for certain sources - since you cannot turn it off, it will affect your recording - you DON'T want ALL sources to be filtered - certain high quality, CLEAN sources don't require it, and you are only degrading for nothing - in that regard, DVD recorders are guilty of excessive filtering and crap quality when recording from a S-VHS, Hi8 or DV source ! You are better off using your PC and a dedicated capture device you will get much better quality ! My ADS Instant DVD 2.0 rivals any DVD recorder I tried on the market including the most expensive one - it produces some of the cleanest, sharpest video even at low bitrates, and you have FULL control over filtering and chroma/hue/brightness and sharpness levels - but like all good things in life, these products are no longer made -

Crap MPEG encoders? Many of the better-grade encoders -- such as the ones from LSI Logic, Zoran, etc -- are consumer versions of the same chips that are used in the broadcast industry. Computer capture cards, on the other hand, are using what would be considered "no name" chips in the video world.

The worst MPEG encoder chips found in DVD recorders are Panasonic and Cirrus.

MPEG by its very nature is also "soft" because of the structure of the block-grid used to compress video.

Sadly, yes, you actually DO need to clean most sources. Analog is "dirty" -- even consumer-delivered digital (satellite, digital cable) is "dirty" -- filled with noise and other signal issues that would make MPEG encoding look like a Lego-land playset.

I'm glad you like your ADS device, but I was very unimpressed by that particular piece of equipment in years past. The video it outputs is as noisy as the video it inputs. Sometimes "detail" is nothing more than noise, and I fail to understand why anybody would want to watch it.

[FulciLives]

No matter if you use XP or SP I find that lately on many recorders the video gets softened too much ! The cheap, crap mpeg encoders used on those recorders like soft video - so even in XP, you will notice considerable degradation if you compare - compared to say, use a high quality encoder on your PC or an old, quality DVD recorder. Before going through the MPEG encoder, the video is first converted to a full frame digital frame and stored in memory - the signal goes through pre-filtering, which, depending on the DVD recorder, involves noise reduction and softening of the video - this filtering is often too strong and USELESS for certain sources - since you cannot turn it off, it will affect your recording - you DON'T want ALL sources to be filtered - certain high quality, CLEAN sources don't require it, and you are only degrading for nothing - in that regard, DVD recorders are guilty of excessive filtering and crap quality when recording from a S-VHS, Hi8 or DV source ! You are better off using your PC and a dedicated capture device you will get much better quality ! My ADS Instant DVD 2.0 rivals any DVD recorder I tried on the market including the most expensive one - it produces some of the cleanest, sharpest video even at low bitrates, and you have FULL control over filtering and chroma/hue/brightness and sharpness levels - but like all good things in life, these products are no longer made -

I had bought the ADS Instant DVD 2.0 from Circuit City and used it for a week or so but then I returned it. At the time I wanted to use it as a DVR if you will but there was no way to do more than 1 scheduled recording so if you wanted to record two things at different times you couldn't do it.

I was very pleased with the quality for the most part. I did think it made the image a bit "soft" though but I'd rather have a slightly soft image with no MPEG-2 artifacts than a sharp image with MPEG-2 artifacts. The only thing I didn't like about it was that sometimes I got this strange "oddity" on the right hand side of the image. Sort of like a green glow coming from the right hand side. Sometimes it wasn't there at all ... sometimes it was just barely there but outside TV OVERSCAN but sometimes it was very "thick" and enough that you could see it on a TV even with TV OVERSCAN covering it up. It was weird. I have an old post somewhere with some screen caps I did (loaded the capture into VirtualDubMod and did screen caps) and you can see the "green fuzzy line" I'm talking about in one of the images. Here is that link ---> CLICK HERE

Look at the image with a close up of a snake head and then the image right below that. These are subtle but you can see the discolorization I am talking about on the right hand side of the image. Often it was "green" but sometimes it would be the color of the video that was near the right hand edge margin.

If it wasn't for that I might have kept it despite having issues using it for unscheduled recordings.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[highvolumeJP]

DVD recorders offering custom options would be GREAT - What makes me mad is that the MPEG encoder chipsets found on most recorders are powerful and support many functions including video enhancments, noise reduction, sharpness, proc amps and much more - Unfortunately all the parameters are hard coded by the manufacturer and are not always good for all types of videos - I think it is very bad for companies not to offer manual adjustment of bitrates - If I have a 2h30 video, on most new recorders I have to use 4 hour recording mode, and it looks f*cking ugly, especially when those idiots use 720x480 ! I'm surprised nobody has modded the BIOS of any dvd recorder to enable custom bitrates or 3h recording mode. The only recorders that offer SOME level of custom options are those ridiculously expensive DVD/HDD recorders.

[lordsmurf]

I agree with you, but the problem is Joe Customer is too stupid to even set a clock, much less learn about bitrates. I wish at least one pro model from JVC or Toshiba would offer more flexible settings.

[samijubal]

What more settings do you need than what the XS series Toshibas have?

[lordsmurf]

Tweak GOP type, tweak resolution, etc.

[FulciLives]

What more settings do you need than what the XS series Toshibas have?

I know there was a thread lately about picking these up via eBay but really this "series" from Toshiba is really long gone and anyone today wanting something new ain't gonna get a new one.

As I've said before if you want new and want bitrate control (for the most part) then you have to go Pioneer. My only complaint is that they switch to Half D1 very "late in the game" but if you keep the recording time to something normal (like 2 hours to 2.5 hours tops) then it should look fine.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[samijubal]

Sorry, you're wrong. I just got a new XS35 two months ago and the seller had at least one more at the time. I've seen other new ones on ebay too. They may be rare but new ones are still around.

[highvolumeJP]

Yeah those TOshibas are long gone - and as I specified in a thread, I have the Toshiba DR-4 and DR-5, no custom option there - but at least they both have 3h mode and it does a good job for VHS - unlike the Samsung R155/160 which does a shitty job at ALL bitrates.

So just because some idiots can't set clocks does it mean that companies have to punish us all ? They could set PRESETS and ADVANCED options.
The chipsets they use are exploited only at 40% of what they are capable of FFS !

[highvolumeJP]

UPDATE - Ok there is a NEW DVD recorder from Samsung - I see it in stock at a store for $168 CDN - Model Samsung DVD-R175XAC, strange thing is that it's not listed on Samsung's site ! The good news is the bitrates this MF supports.

1h, 1h30, 2h, 2h30, 3h, 4h, 6h and Flexible recording - I haven't tried it yet but it seems someone is listening - I have a Samsung DVD-R155 and it is CRAP - I'm sure they must have changed the chipsets on the R175 - I will go get one at that price

it also records from a DV source too.