Hello AVS people, the season is over, so now I have to catchup with all the posts here :-)

I was trying to find a way to record the radio broadcast of the championship, and I didn't want to put it on half a dozen cassette tapes, so I decided to try to record it along with the game on the same DVD. So I got one of those Y cables (headphone-jack to RCA-audio) and I fed it to the DVD recorder. So one audio channel was the radio broadcast, the other one was the TV broadcast. It was so cool! (although there was a couple of seconds of time delay between the audio and video streams (Westwood One radio vs CBS cable TV signal)

With my dvd recorder/player (both Panasonics) I could select the audio playback channel with -RAM, but with -R I had to unplug/plug one of the two audio cables to get the audio I wanted since I couldn't select L or R audio. I assume the playback options may vary between different dvd recorders/players?

So then I came up with the idea of not only using the DVD recorder as a Radio DVR (just leave the radio on, or program the radio to start/stop at a specific time), but also recording two things at the same time on a single DVD! For example if your favorite radio show is 12-3pm, and your favorite TV show is 12-3pm, you can record the radio show on the left-audio channel and the tv show on the right-audio channel and the video :-) Obviously if you want stereo sound, or it's a concert or you want quality audio this may not be a good idea, but for talking-heads type of TV shows, this should be fine :-) You can also do the same thing with two different radio shows, and perhaps record a video signal from somewhere so if you are listening to them on TV it won't be blank/blue :-)

Granted a number of radio stations are broadcasting online and make their shows available for streaming/download, but not all of them do. And some of the ones who do, they have annual memberships or fee per download... There's also ways to do it with a PC/Mac, but not everyone wants to go that route...

I heard about people using VCRs to record the radio for a long time 'back in the day' (not so much lately); I've never really done much with it but people swore even on 6-hour mode that the audio quality on a VHS tape was much better than your average cassette.

DVD is probably a better idea since you can record in PCM audio...

I heard about people using VCRs to record the radio for a long time 'back in the day' (not so much lately); I've never really done much with it but people swore even on 6-hour mode that the audio quality on a VHS tape was much better than your average cassette.

DVD is probably a better idea since you can record in PCM audio...

I once recorded 6 hours of a radio broadcast by hooking up the analog stereo audio outputs of a receiver to the line in of a Panasonic DMR-E100 recorder. I got 6 hours of good quality audio......but......when I looked at the disc, it appeared to have burned only half of the disc! The disc read "full" on the dvd recorder, yet it appeared to still have considerable blank space left! Am I missing something?
It there some way to get additional time when recording audio only (the E-100 will not exceed 6 hours)?
Why did the disc appear to have only been burned 50%?

Also, does the quality of the audio rely on the bitrate or recording mode (XP vs. SP vs. LP vs. EP)?

Any ideas/suggestions? :confused:

I once recorded 6 hours of a radio broadcast by hooking up the analog stereo audio outputs of a receiver to the line in of a Panasonic DMR-E100 recorder. I got 6 hours of good quality audio......but......when I looked at the disc, it appeared to have burned only half of the disc! The disc read "full" on the dvd recorder, yet it appeared to still have considerable blank space left! Am I missing something?
It there some way to get additional time when recording audio only (the E-100 will not excede 6 hours)?
Why did the disc appear to have only been burned 50%?

Any ideas/suggestions? :confused:



I may be forgetting something, but I believe this is what worked for me a long time ago.

Not sure if this works with R/RW or not, but it worked with a Ram disk. I believe that if you record audio only onto the hard drive (i.e. video is a blank or blue screen) in say LP mode, then you can dub to a Ram disk and it will allow you to fill up the disk based upon the total file sizes (up to 4 gig) instead of being based upon recording total time.

The blank or blue screen video greatly reduces the file sizes and should allow you to fit mega audio onto one disk.

I do not believe this method will work the same if you record the audio in XP mode because in XP mode the Panny uses pretty much all of the available bit rate to produce highest quality LPCM audio. Thus, you do not save nearly as much on file sizes in XP mode --- even with blank screen video.

:)

[QUOTE=buster37862]I may be forgetting something, but I believe this is what worked for me a long time ago.

Not sure if this works with R/RW or not, but it worked with a Ram disk. I believe that if you record audio only onto the hard drive (i.e. video is a blank or blue screen) in say LP mode, then you can dub to a Ram disk and it will allow you to fill up the disk based upon the total file sizes (up to 4 gig) instead of being based upon recording total time.

The blank or blue screen video greatly reduces the file sizes and should allow you to fit mega audio onto one disk.

I do not believe this method will work the same if you record the audio in XP mode because in XP mode the Panny uses pretty much all of the available bit rate to produce highest quality LPCM audio. Thus, you do not save nearly as much on file sizes in XP mode --- even with blank screen video.


Thanks!
BTW, I did use a RAM disc for that recording. It would seem that a RAM disc should allow for greater capacity when recording audio, if (supposedly) th HD would.

That's the difference between recording and dubbing. When recording the limit is set by time (e.g., 6 hours), but when dubbing, the limit is set by file size.

I once recorded 6 hours of a radio broadcast by hooking up the analog stereo audio outputs of a receiver to the line in of a Panasonic DMR-E100 recorder. I got 6 hours of good quality audio......but......when I looked at the disc, it appeared to have burned only half of the disc! The disc read "full" on the dvd recorder, yet it appeared to still have considerable blank space left! Am I missing something?
It there some way to get additional time when recording audio only (the E-100 will not exceed 6 hours)?
Why did the disc appear to have only been burned 50%?

Also, does the quality of the audio rely on the bitrate or recording mode (XP vs. SP vs. LP vs. EP)?

Any ideas/suggestions? :confused:


Interesting! I haven't tried audio-only yet, so I don't have an answer, but instead I have questions:

Are the whole 6 hours of audio recorded on the DVD? Perhaps the recorder stopped at some point and restarted? or perhaps it was smart enough to realize the picture wasn't changing?

I have a few VHS Tapes (Audio Only) that I made from a radio broadcast of a station that played 24 hours straight of Christmas music on Christmas Eve (each tape was done in 6-Hour SLP Mode).

I have tried doing this, in the exact same way that I did it using my VCR, with my DVD Recorder and for some reason I can't get it to record Audio Only.

I have a Toshiba DVD Recorder (no HDD) where it wouldn't work, maybe I should try it with my Pioneer 640 and see if I can get the music on the HDD with a blue screen.

I have a few VHS Tapes (Audio Only) that I made from a radio broadcast of a station that played 24 hours straight of Christmas music on Christmas Eve (each tape was done in 6-Hour SLP Mode).

I have tried doing this, in the exact same way that I did it using my VCR, with my DVD Recorder and for some reason I can't get it to record Audio Only.

I have a Toshiba DVD Recorder (no HDD) where it wouldn't work, maybe I should try it with my Pioneer 640 and see if I can get the music on the HDD with a blue screen.
Here's a thread that might help with the 640 (Link to Post #28 with specific results (http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?p=8885598&&#post8885598)).

I found no notable diff. between the rec. modes and sound quality. My wife couldn't either except maybe very slightly better at XP/LPCM after many replays...I couldn't hear any diff. even there.

I have a few VHS Tapes (Audio Only) that I made from a radio broadcast of a station that played 24 hours straight of Christmas music on Christmas Eve (each tape was done in 6-Hour SLP Mode).

I have tried doing this, in the exact same way that I did it using my VCR, with my DVD Recorder and for some reason I can't get it to record Audio Only.

I have a Toshiba DVD Recorder (no HDD) where it wouldn't work, maybe I should try it with my Pioneer 640 and see if I can get the music on the HDD with a blue screen.

What I was thinking of doing was to use one of my JPEG picture DVDs as a video slideshow loop since I would be doing it directly to DVD and wouldn't be able to benefit from a smaller file size. (Also some of the cable systems (eg Comcast) have HD screen saver galleries that could be used to feed the video input)...

What I was thinking of doing was to use one of my JPEG picture DVDs as a video slideshow loop since I would be doing it directly to DVD and wouldn't be able to benefit from a smaller file size. (Also some of the cable systems (eg Comcast) have HD screen saver galleries that could be used to feed the video input)...


Not sure about cable, but with Directv you can simply go to a channel that you do not subscribe to.

Very little of the available bit rate is used up for video when it displays only a text message telling you that you are a cheap #@&^%!* who hasn't paid the bucks to receive that channel.

:)

Not sure about cable, but with Directv you can simply go to a channel that you do not subscribe to.

Very little of the available bit rate is used up for video when it displays only a text message telling you that you are a cheap #@&^%!* who hasn't paid the bucks to receive that channel.

:)

Oh that's a great idea. It should be the same thing with the bitrate on cable. It would be silly of them to waste bandwidth on just a blue screen and a subscribe-now message!

And it can be programmed to go to that channel at a specific time!