Is this possible on a Panny eh55. I thought it was per the manual if the dvd was not finalized, but I have been unsuccessful. D00oes it depend on the media I dubbed to originally?

Thanks!

PatH

I'm confused by your description. Your title is about dubbing from the HDD yet it sounds like you are trying to dub from the DVD to the HDD. Which is it?

I'm with HealeyGuy in that I don't understand your question. The wording is inconsistent. What exactly are you trying to do?

The EH55 will high speed dub from the hard drive to most any media, at the rated speed of the drive, or the rated speed of that media, whichever is LOWER. It will also HS dub from a -RAM to the hard drive. I don't know about any other media to the hard drive. A finalized disk will only dub to the hard drive in real-time, and with a generation loss due to the requirement of going from digital (disk) to analog, and redigitizing that signal to be put on the hard drive. This process might not go all the way to analog, but the mpeg on the source disk is decompressed, and then recompressed to a second mpeg stream which is then saved. Either way, this reencoding, whether from analog or digital, is where the loss takes place. I have never tried to move content from an unfinalized disk to the hard drive.

HS dubbing does require a change in one of the default setup options. You must enable HS dubbing or it won't work. I don't know why this isn't the default out of the box.

Sorry for the lack of clarity, guys. I've been merrily HS dubbing from the HDD from the gitgo, taking more than I should from TCM. I've also been recording tv movies, which I intend to edit (commercials) before dubbing to DVD. But the HDD is filling up and I thought it would be nice to dump the tv movies to DVD unedited and then put them back on the HDD when I'm ready to edit. Hence the question about HS dubbing from DVD to HDD.

I'll check the settings in setup, but as I said, I've already been HS dubbing from the hard drive; it's HS dubbing to the HD that's eluded me.

Another solution would be a second DVR with another big HDD, and that is in the plans, but the TV I'm using only has two input sets and they're full with temporarily necessary components. ;)

PatH

I don't know about the E55, but my older E85 simply cannot dub in high-speed mode from DVD-R to HDD, even if the recording was made on the same machine, and regardless of whether the disc is finalized or not.

However, it can dub in high-speed mode from DVD-RAM to HDD. So, if I think I'm going to want to dub something back to HDD for future editing, I dub it to DVD-RAM instead of DVD-R.

jtbell has your answer. On the eh55 the high speed dvd-ram copy works in both directions between hdd and dvd. Cost is nil, because you can re-use the dvd-ram; I use type 4 for a lot of my temp storage (double-side in cartridge- fewer disks, no fingerprints- totalmedia.com).

Richard T:

What's type 4?

Thanks!

PatH

And, if they're in a cartridge, how do you play it ina DVR such as the Panny eh55?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVD-RAM

Type 4 RAM? Double-side, in cartridge. Manually turn over to record Side B.
Just set it (the cartridge) in the dvd tray, close and press PLAY (or Record). -RAM is much like a removeable hard drive, similar options, no disc name, no FINALIZE.

Note: Not all players that play dvd-ram can play -ram in the cartridge, not even the Panasonics.