E80 reminder- Reformat

Since November I guess I've been lucky then? Roughly estimating, I've edited and burned at least 90 dvds x 3 eps each =270 (memorex 4x work very well for me. Plus I've put about 50 eps of a short series I watch on RAM and edited via the HD for about 25% of them. And I guess burning to RAM doesn't mean much but I have at least 40-50 full sitting around waiting to edit


keeping my fingers crossed.... and wish my tivo drive was as reliable

With the Toshibas, it's really easy to set chapter points around the show itself and then make playlists that can be burned to DVD (reducing fragmentation as you're not changing the huge video files, just making smaller playlist files). I've been trying to figure out if I can do the same on the E80 with marker points and playlists, is there a way?

Why not instead of shorten segment, just choose divide program?

Bingo! I try to minimize my use of "shorten segment" and substitute with "divide program" whenever possible (a divide/erase sequence can be a near perfect substitiute). I have had my E80 for 6 months and edited/burned about 300 discs so far. I have reformated 3 or 4 times as maintenance but none forced. Of course I am keeping my fingers crossed as I type this!

Does divide program leave the program intact, but with a chapter break? Or do you get a bunch of programs in the Navigator which you can then make a playlist to re-assemble the parts of the program that you want to keep?


(sorry if this is a really simple question; the E80 works incredibly differently than the Toshiba and I've been pretty lost trying to figure out the best way to use the E80.. Thanks for the tips!)

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That's exactly how it works.

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It's the latter. Once you divide a program, the original is broken forever (unless of course you put it back together as a playlist).

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I have never used a playlist and thank everyone for the explanation. However, to my inexperienced mind, it sounds like the playlist route is a pain in the ass for such long term projects as archiving 150 shows in a series (I'm thinking of rejoing like 7-8 breaks during my typical show). I guess I'll have to test this out if everyone is saying dividing is less wear on the HD.


the only thing I've used divide for is when 2 series are in a row, I tivo them together then divide the shows because it's easier to dump from tivo in a 2 hour 'batch'.

I very seldom use playlists myself. As you hint, they may be a pain, because they take longer to put together that program lists, and also because they cannot be highspeed-dubbed (at least with the E80). My basic archiving procedure is to use a mix of divide/shorten segment to create program lists in the HD, title them, and then highspeed dub them into DVD-R's. As to whether "divide" is less strenuous on the HD than "shorten segment," I am not sure there is a hard proof that that is the case. I have read comments to that effect on a couple of fora, but this seems to rely more on anecdotal evidence and intuition than on hard data.

When you say playlists can't be highspeed dubbed, does that mean they are re-encoded when you burn them?


I'm starting to get more and more happy I bought the Panasonic DVD-RAM drive for the computer to use with the E80's discs... does the MovieStudio software allow you to make cuts/edits/shorten segments without re-encoding? I am thinking I may just start recording everything to DVD-RAM and do commercial editing and the like on the PC.

I assume that if you dub a playlist from the HD to a DVD-R in its original speed, there is no re-encoding. Am I right? However, the E85 (and the E100) allow you to highspeed dub playlists....


As for Movie Studio, I have zero experiece with it.

Of course, my problem may just have been coincidence. I constanly used divide program to cut off the front and back ends of programs, and seemed to be trouble-free. It was only after doing a lot of shorten segment that my trouble arose. Also, in retrospect, it may have been more than two dozen programs, since I also did quite a bit of shorten segment work last week.

ALSO, the problem occured after a failed high-speed dub to a DVD-R. The machine went into recover, and that's when the front display said "UNFORMATTED" when I tried to access the HDD. Thus, perhaps something else was to blame. (power flucutations or those darned purple and silver gremlins). After a while, the online display said "Do you wish to reformat the hard disk?" with the "Yes" option selected and the "No" option impossible to select.

I'm now going to Walmart to get a few -RAMs to clear off my other E80.

I believe a rule should be established for when to format. I am using shorten segment on at least 8-10 programs a week and intend to try to do it every 2 weeks. Any comments?

The salient point about using divide program instead of shorten segment is to employ a method that avoids the problem of fragmented data caused by data that gets written to a hole.


You make your dubs from the assembled program lists you created with divide program.


- After you divide a program, DON'T delete segments you don't want just because you aren't going to dub them. That's how the hole gets created. Just let them reside until your dubs are done, then format the HDD in preparation for future tasks.

From what I understand, as long as you don't record anything on the HDD after doing a "shorten segment", you should be ok. Just immediatly dub the edited program to a DVD and erase from the HDD before recording anything new, that way nothing gets recorded into the holes, am I right??

If there's no holes to record anything into...without donuts, there are no holes.

Here is one rub in all this- I have 50 or more VHS tapes to dub(as do MANY people) and every one has commercials- no way you can use "divide". You must shorten segment. My take is if you do a 2- 3 hour program 2-3 times a week and delete 15-20 commercials(per program)- you damn sure better format every 21 days. Even more frequently if you do more programs a week. The one unknown to me is -Can you format a hard drive too much- does this have a limit?

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That's what I thought I was doing (in fact, that was why I considered myself safe). Deliberately saved the shorten segment chores for a time that I could get all of the programs off. Indeed, the forced reformat happened after I had taken all of the shorten segment stuff off, and had not yet recorded anything new; I was just in the process of transferring off the unedited stuff.

Would anyone recommend doing all shorten segment on the RAM discs themselves, then copy the edited files to HDD only for the final DVD-R dubs? While it's a little extra work, it might obviate the whole hole effect.

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But isn't it the case that when you copy an edited program from RAM to HDD, then you cannot highspeed dub that program from HDD to DVD-R? I believe I tried this in the past and that is exactly what happened. That's a real pain....