I've had a Panasonic DMR-EH50 for several years, and have had few problems, but I'm currently having a problem with high speed dubbing to DVD-R. This has occurred 3 times this week when I've attempted to dub 3 separate edited football games (3 hours LP speed) from the HDD to a DVD-R. However, I have found that if I divide the title, such as 1st half and 2nd half, they each seem to dub fine.

Anyone know what may be the reason for this occurring on the longer dubs?

The high speed dubbing from the HDD to DVD-RAM still works fine. The problem just concerns lengthy HDD to DVD-R high speed dubbing.

Thanks for any help.

Marv

What happens prior to your "dubbing failure"? That is do you hear any odd noises coming from your DVD drive, the room might need to be very quiet, example volume off on TV.

Your DVD drive may need a hub/spindle/lens cleaning especially if it has been used frequently, is used in a dusty or smoking environment, or DVDs are handled with a finger through the center hole.

If you have noticed unusual noises such as grinding or scrubbing during DVD read, write or finalizing that is an indication that cleaning is needed. Notice if failed discs have some scrubbing marks around the clear area around the center hole. That may occur when the DVD slips on the rubber hub due to a buildup of dust, debris or oily residue. If you notice loud clunking noises during read, write or finalizing that is an indication that the laser lens is dirty or has failed. The clunking comes from the laser assembly running up and down the rods hitting the stops.

The Saint Baz cleaning procedure takes around fifteen minutes with 2006 and newer Panasonics. Around thirty minutes should be allowed for the cleaning procedure with 2005 and older Panasonics. This is due to additional disassembly procedures.

Be sure to disconnect the power cord well in advance of opening the Panasonic case.

This and the following posts have advice (and photos) for opening the machine and the DVD drive lid, additional disassemby procedures for 2005 and older Panasonics, a link to the the hub/spindle/lens cleaning procedure, correct positioning of the roller/slider before closing the DVD drive lid and reassembly of the machine:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=14479898#post14479898

Thanks so much for your responses, jjeff and DigaDo. I am having much better luck this week with my dubbing. I seem to recall having a brief period (a week or so) of similar dubbing problems several months ago, and it hadn't occurred again until last week. Nice to have all that info on getting inside the machine and cleaning that area, although I think I'll have to get someone who knows what they're doing to handle it if it comes to that. I wouldn't dare risk screwing up a Pana HDD model by trying anything like that myself! Thanks again for all the info, it's great to always come here for answers!

^^ With my E85, I found out that if the hdd was too full, I would run into dubbing to dvd-r problems. Dubbing to RAM worked when the drive was,say 80% full, but I couldn't dub anything to dvd-r until I offloaded titles I wanted to keep to RAM, and started deleting other stuff...Once I cleared off some dead weight so to speak, I was then able to dub successfully to dvd-r.
How full is your hdd, and how did you perform the edits? Are you creating playlists to dub, or are you editting out the ads by chapter marking them and deleting that way?

Echoing Westly here, I've had few dubbing failures I've with my DMR-E85, and the ones I had seem to have been related to specific programs on the HDD rather than blank media issues. Seemed to hit programs that had been heavily edited and then allowed to sit on the drive for some days or weeks. And the drive might have been rather full. First time it happened, I thought, "Oh, bad media," and put in a different brand of disc. Same problem: the dub would seem to run slower than usual, at a certain point the DVD-R drive would run very fast for a long time, and finally the dub would simply abort.

I saved one program by doing an FR dub in real time.

Now, I don't let the HDD get fuller than 50% and don't edit programs until I'm ready to burn them to discs. Knock on wood, no failures since I implemented these rules.

Westly-C and doswonk1:

Thanks for weighing in on this. I also have a Pana E85, although I don't use it as much anymore. I recall having an occasional dubbing failure on that machine, but not many. I record on the LP speed a lot, so I prefer my EH50 for that, since the picture quality is so much better on that machine for LP.

My HDD is always nearly full, with only about 4-8 hours (LP) available. I do recall once reading about the possibility of a full HDD causing dubbing problems, as well as heavily edited titles not always dubbing properly.

I am having much better luck this week, but here is what I had trouble with last week:

3 separate football games transferred to the EH50 HDD from my Dish DVR. I did the editing as I went along, pausing the recording and eliminating the commercials. These titles ended up around 2:45 to 3:00 long at the LP speed. I then went over them and put chapter marks at the scoring plays. I did not have to do any editing (shortening) after the titles were recorded.

I had dubbing failures to DVD-R on high speed on ALL 3 of those games, but was able to successfully dub them by dividing the titles and dubbing the first and second half separately.

As I said, things seem to be going okay now, but this was really frustrating last week and I just wanted to see if anyone else had experienced a similar problem. I guess it would still be a good idea to free up some HDD space, however.

3 separate football games transferred to the EH50 HDD from my Dish DVR. I did the editing as I went along, pausing the recording and eliminating the commercials.

My condolences to your poor, poor thumbs! :D
Wow, I get tired just pausing on an hour long show to whack away the ads...:o

My HDD is always nearly full, with only about 4-8 hours (LP) available.

Yup, you've found the source of your problem. If you're just holding stuff on the drive until you have time to watch it, you might want to dump it onto DVD-RWs or DVD-RAMs to free up drive space. Heck, I've even dumped "temporary" stuff onto -R discs--at $.35 to $.50 a piece, it's no tragedy to toss them when you're done.

I look at it this way: if my HDD is full of stuff and suddenly dies, I either don't get to watch what I was time-shifting, or I've got a hole in my archive, especially annoying if you're picking up programs with on-going story arcs.