Panasonic DMR-E80H (80 GB) DVD Recorder

You can edit anything you have on the hard drive, although I usually would just edit out commercials. As others have noted, with the E-80, you should try to make your edits when there is a black interval or there will be a freeze frame at the edit point. If there is audio, you will lose a fraction of a second of audio at the edit point. The E-80 does not do frame accurate edits but I have found it to a very easy unit to use to make deletions.

NO! NO! NO!

Let me tell you about my experience. A few years back, I recorded an episode of ER on my DMR-E80H. I missed the start of the show, but I happened to be recording the same channel on my new Zenith XBR413. In order to make a complete episode for archiving, I figured I would copy the start of the show to the hard drive of the DMR-E80H. So, I fired up my PC, imported the video that I recorded on the XBR413, and wrote it back out to DVD-RAM. (You cannot copy from DVD-R to the HDD on the E80). When I tried to copy the video to the E80's hard drive, it didn't work the first time. I should have taken the hint. After a few tries, it finally worked...sort of. Although the title showed up in direct navigator, it could not be played or copied. In fact, I couldn't even delete it! So now, 3 years later, I still have this corrupted title on my hard drive. It just sits there, taking up space. I suppose one of these days I'll get everything off the hard drive and reformat it.

When you "make a decrypted copy," you're re-encoding the movie on your computer. The DMR-E80H may or may not be able to handle the new bit rate/compression/whatever. If you try to put stuff on the HDD that was not recorded on that recorder (or similar), you could corrupt the hard drive or worse.

BOTTOM LINE: Don't do it! It's not worth the risk. Since you're importing the video into your computer anyway, why not do the editing there?

You can't make copies of commercial dvds on the e80, unless you use a dvd player connected to the recorder thru some kind of filter that removes the copy protection.

My original posting is correct. If you feed the signal of a DVDR with no copy protection (decrypted) from a DVD player to the video (preferably S-video) and audio inputs of the E-80, the E-80 will record that signal on the hard drive.

Yes, that would work. However, it's not clear if that's what the original poster was attempting to do. His post is open to interpretation. My interpretation was that he wanted to make a decrypted copy of the DVD on his computer, copy the content to the E80H hard drive (using the dubbing function), edit the content on the E80H, and then copy it back to DVD. If that's the case, it would be better to simply edit the decrypted copy on his PC. On the other hand, if he is using a video enhancer like Sima, your method would be easier. There is also a third option: clearplay.com .

Best of luck using a computer software program and video card to create a DVD.
As the owner of an E-80, you made the right decision not to buy a used one, they start having problems at the three year mark as parts wear out.

Question about the Panasonic DMR-E80H. When you finalize the dvd and play back does it have a title bar or thumb nail to click on the opening scene or does it start to play immediately? I know on the E-500 you have the option in th menu of doing one or the other but not sure about the E80.

Here's a page with several options for DVD players and recorders that can filter foul language, but the nude scenes....?

You get the Top Menu - no thumbnails, just text.