Help with transferring from Camcorder to DVD

[left210]

I have a Panasonic Camcorder and am trying to transfer video from mini DV to a JVC DVD recorder. Needless to say their manual is not very helpful. It appears we have it connected correctly but it tells me we have to choose either video or S-video but it doesnt tell me where or how to tell the DVD recorder which one we are using. I think that is the problem with it but not really for sure. It also says to keep pressing the record button over and over to tell it we want to record and then press play. Why would you have to keep pressing it over and over vs. just one time. Anyway, it is still not working. I have my sons preschool Xmas program and graduation I am trying to put on DVD for the parents and teachers before the school year is out and my time is running out. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

 

[Kelly Grannell]

I'm basing my advice on they way my DVD recorders (Panasonic DMR-E50 and Pioneer DVR-633H) are set.

1. Choose input (video 1/2/3)
2. go to setup menu (or initial setup, or something to that effect) and set the corresponding input to S-video or composite or DV, if available. If not available, usually it's an automatic selection
3. connect your miniDV accordingly
4. press play on the miniDV
5. press record on your DVD recorder (certain player requires record and play button pressed together).

Hope it helps. Try with re-writable media first for practice.

 

[LordAthens]

Does your JVC DVD recorder have a firewire port? If so, you should certainly be using firewire, as you're losing some quality by transfering over analog.

 

[Kelly Grannell]

Actually, it's a misconception that digital transfer is better than analog. If the codec the same, then it's correct, there's no degradation.

However, miniDV uses Motion JPEG compression and DVD uses MPEG-2 compression, so the degradation is there too.

 

[LordAthens]

I disagree. MiniDV uses DV25 compression (as does DVCPro and DVCAM) which is *extremely* light compression.

When you dump a DV tape to a computer, you're at about ~13gb per hour of footage and it's almost always dumped as "raw" AVI footage. Transferring over firewire from tape to PC has no quality loss, at all.

Now yes, I agree that compressing to MPEG2 (aka DVD format) you'll have some loss, but you're going to have that when the DVD recorder compresses it down. You still have the initial losses from the DAC on the camcorder converting the digital footage to analog, the loss over the analog cable and then additional loss from the ADC converter on the DVD recorder. I realize those losses may be slight, but they're there regardless.

 

[Kelly Grannell]

I disagree. MiniDV uses DV25 compression (as does DVCPro and DVCAM) which is *extremely* light compression.

When you dump a DV tape to a computer, you're at about ~13gb per hour of footage and it's almost always dumped as "raw" AVI footage. Transferring over firewire from tape to PC has no quality loss, at all.

Now yes, I agree that compressing to MPEG2 (aka DVD format) you'll have some loss, but you're going to have that when the DVD recorder compresses it down. You still have the initial losses from the DAC on the camcorder converting the digital footage to analog, the loss over the analog cable and then additional loss from the ADC converter on the DVD recorder. I realize those losses may be slight, but they're there regardless.

You are right about the miniDV using DV25 compression, which is a 5:1 ratio compression (equivalent to 3:1 Motion JPEG compression). Regardless, it is still a change of compression rate. DV25 compression runs at 25 Mbps and MPEG2 runs at the maximum of 10 Mbps. So the notion that using digital input will not create any signal degradation is false. When you recompress 25 Mbps data rate to 10 Mbps (max) data rate, especially using completely different codec than the source material, then signal degradation will happen.

The caveat of using DV-input you can't change the picture parameters when you're transferring the video (GIGO only). Whereas if you use the camcorder's analog out, you'll be able to change brightness, colour, tint, sharpness, black levels, and noise reduction.

 

[left210]

Well first of all I would like to thank all of you for your help. I was finally able to get my camcorder and DVD recorder hooked up and actually transfer/record the DVD but now I have another problem. It will only play back on the DVD that I recorded it on. I read the manual and followed the instructions to format the DVD for all players but it is still not working. Any suggestions? I was so excited to actually see it recording finally and then was so bummed when it wouldnt play elsewhere. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

 

[jfulcer]

Well first of all I would like to thank all of you for your help. I was finally able to get my camcorder and DVD recorder hooked up and actually transfer/record the DVD but now I have another problem. It will only play back on the DVD that I recorded it on. I read the manual and followed the instructions to format the DVD for all players but it is still not working. Any suggestions? I was so excited to actually see it recording finally and then was so bummed when it wouldnt play elsewhere. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

First, I would check to make sure that you didn't record it as a SVCD or VCD. You need to make sure you tell your software you want it as a DVD.

It's also possible that your other DVD players cannot play the DVD disc you used. You can purchase DVD-R and DVD+R. Some players play only one or the other. Some players will play both. Most older DVD players only play one style disc. If you purchased DVD+RW or DVD-RW, the same issue exists.

DVD-R are going to be the most compatible type of discs you can make.

http://www.osta.org/technology/dvdqa/dvdqa5.htm

http://www.cdrinfo.com/Sections/DVDMediaFormats/

 

[Charade]

(in regards to the compression discussion...)

IMO, if you are outputting analog from the mini-DV recorder, it's analog. Period. It's being decompressed by the internals of that camcorder. If you then feed that into the DVD camcorder, that camcorder is going to recompress to the DVD format. You will get degradation. How much? Hard to tell. It's all based on each camcoders internals.

What type of file is transfered to the PC (using firewire or USB) from the mini-DV camcorder? Can that file be played on a DVD player? If it needs to be converted, I would think that doing a digital conversion to another digital format would be better than going from digital-to-analog-to-digital (in the way the OP has them connected).

 

[left210]

First, I would check to make sure that you didn't record it as a SVCD or VCD. You need to make sure you tell your software you want it as a DVD.

What software? I am not using any that I am aware of. I am just transferring directly into DVD recorder. Is there something I need to check or change to make sure it knows I want a DVD?

 

[Charade]

Is that DVD recorder a standalone (not another camcorder) unit?

If so, and you can record TV on to it and play those back, you shouldn't have any problems playing something you transfered from the mini-dv camcorder.

 

[Kelly Grannell]

(in regards to the compression discussion...)

IMO, if you are outputting analog from the mini-DV recorder, it's analog. Period. It's being decompressed by the internals of that camcorder. If you then feed that into the DVD camcorder, that camcorder is going to recompress to the DVD format. You will get degradation. How much? Hard to tell. It's all based on each camcoders internals.

1st I think when your wrote "DVD camcorder" you meant "standalone DVD recorder".

2nd you may be right AND wrong (re digital-to-digital recompression). Belive it or not, some standalone DVD recorder convert digital input to analog then immediately reconvert to MPEG2. Don't ask me why. I'm surprised about this too. That's why, to be on the safe side, I might as well use analog input (s-video) so at least I can tweak the colour and noise-reduction parameters while the video is being recorded. Once you use digital input, it'll bypass the video processing. So you can't colour correct or noise-reduce your video.

 

[jfulcer]

What software? I am not using any that I am aware of. I am just transferring directly into DVD recorder. Is there something I need to check or change to make sure it knows I want a DVD?

If this is a stand-alone DVD recorder (meaning it's not your computer and hooked up to your stereo system in some way) then I would check your media - what did you record on? DVD-R, DVD+R, DVD+RW or DVD-RW ???

 

[left210]

THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU. With all of your help I finally did it and was able to transfer from camcorder to a DVD. Now I need to make 18 copies of the DVD I made. What suggestions do you have for the quickest way to now duplicate the DVD? Hook up a DVD player to the recorder? or on the computer? Also, any recommendations for adding titles, menus, etc. to the DVD to make it better? I guess I would need special software for this?

 

[Kelly Grannell]

You need a DVD Recorder on your PC, use a copying program such as Nero, choose DVD Copy, choose 18 copies, recording speed no faster than 6x to ensure compatibility and insert the source disc to the drive, when the data from the disc have been extracted, then you start putting the blank DVD-R one by one.

That'll be the fastest way to do it.