HSD vs RTD (RTD one step down)

Recording to the HDD in a speed that will HS dub using the maximum space available on a DVD will always give you your best picture quality because it avoids the re-encode that would be required when changing speeds.
That said your first method will give a better picture than say recording to the HDD in a speed longer than SP(say LP) and HS speed dubbing that to DVD but in your scenario I'd record in SP and HS dub that to DVD.

 

With your Mag 533 recording a digital/HD program on a digital channel at HQ rec mode, you can easily convert that to SP on a DVD with NO visible quality loss, as described here.

 

Otherwise, one reason to use HSD is that it retains all chapter marks, both auto-set and custom-set (edited), if that's a concern on a particular title. A real-time mode-conversion as described in the link sets new chapter marks according to your auto setting, losing any custom marks you might have set in the original..

XP is a “lossy” bit rate and even though some people won’t notice a quality drop re-encoding from XP to SP - it will drop down in quality. Whether you see the quality drop or not is subjective but the quality drop is there. That’s why codecs and bit rates are rated as lossless or lossy.

On the other hand HSD bit for bit is “lossless” and it won’t drop down in quality because no re-encoding is involved. So if your only concern is quality I’d have to agree with jjeff, 100%.

Even re-encoding XP tp XP would suffer a quality (generation) loss. Only uncompressed is a 100 percent lossless.
Edited by Super Eye - 1/23/13 at 4:29pm

I recommend the high speed dubbing option first, for picture quality. Like Super Eye said though, maybe you won't even notice it.

 

No, Wajo thinks that, if you have an existing HQ recording from a digital/HD channel, or if you like to VIEW at highest quality on a large screen, then don't worry about mode-converting that to SP for a DVD copy using a Mag 53x Series recorder... except for the chapter mark thing I noted above.

 

HQ has double the bit rate of SP and holds up extermely well in our Mags (as long as it's not from an analog source).

Edited by wajo - 1/23/13 at 5:32pm

Recoding is never a good idea. With a lossy codec it is like making a photo-copy of a photo-copy. Supereye explained it the best. And don't forget, a digital broadcast is already coming into the recorder's tuner as an MPEG-2 transport stream so the first thing the recorder does is recode it to lower resolution and lower bitrate. So you have your first generational loss just by recording it with a DVDR.

Bottom line, there is always a generational loss on a recode. Whether or not you can see it with your equipment is subjective. But what it really means is that recording in HQ then RTD recoding to SD can never be better than recording in SP then HSD to begin with and skipping an unnecessary recode. It can look close to the same but never better, so why bother doing it. I believe that is what you were asking in your first post.

If you want no loss from the original broadcast you have to record the MPEG-2 transport stream with something like a PC tuner or a TiVo.

If you are willing to get a PC involved there are many other options for you to maintain the highest PQ (a recording as close to the original broadcast as possible) while still using your DVD recorder. For example, you could record your movie to the HDD in HQ mode then split it on the DVDR into 1hr segments so you can burn off the segments onto -RW for transfer to a PC. On the PC you rejoin and edit the segments and burn the reconstituted title to higher capacity media such as DVD+DL or BD-R. If you want to stick with DVD-R/DL type media and the full title is too big to fit on a single +DL you can simply split the title across two disks. If you much prefer on having the movie fit on a single +DL a recode will be required to shrink it but you are in a much better position doing that on a PC where you can use a multi-pass encoder to fit it exactly to a +DL and optimize the VBR coding for a wide dynamic range -- something the single-pass time-of-flight encoders in a DVDR can't do. The generational loss will be minimized and the resulting title will be your own version of a "Super-Bit DVD" and look as good as if the original were recorded in that bit rate to begin with.

Do it at High Speed. Real-Time puts some artifacts in the image. In any case it won't be an 1 to 1 copy of the HDD record .