Hi all,

I need some expert advice. Here's my situation. I work for a college and am sometimes required to record lectures for students who can't attend a class for various reasons.

Our current sollution is to place an RCA Autoshot VHS camcorder in the room. When the instructor is done, they hit eject, take the tape, and hand it off to the student when they return. No editing, no fuss, no delays, everyone is happy.

Now, here's the problem. VHS sucks... alot, and we are trying to phase it out completely. I need a similar solution that ends in DVD media. The classes are 1 to 2 hours, so I don't think any of the DVD cams with mini disks can handle it. Is there a cam that records to full 5" DVDs? Or maybe an external burner that can be paired up with a camera to have a playable DVD at the end of the recording time?

Thanks

Sony has a DVD burner that connects directly with all sorts of camcorders. It is the VRD-MC5. It burns to full size DVDs, and the interfaces are firewire, USB, S-Video and composite RCA. It can handle AVCHD-to-DVD. I haven't figured out how to get footage to it from an SR12 in AVCHD to record a standard DVD (not AVCHD), so I am not sure this can be done..maybe you need to record in Standard Def. It is worth finding out if you can record in HD and make standard def DVDs with it.
I just had another idea, keep your VHS camcorder and plug it directly in to that VRD-MC5 using composite, and record it live. You will need to set it to (LP) mode to fit 2 hours on to a DVD.