Playlist supposedly saves weear and tear on the hdd, and helps reduce fragmentation of the drive, which can cause problems that can lead to erasing the hdd and all the recordings you've made, in order to get it working glitch free again.
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Hard drive recorders - playlist versus shorten
What do most of you do to shorten and edit movies/shows you're burning to disc? Do you use the playlist function to edit and then burn to disc? (keeping the shows intact on the drive, less fragmenting etc.) Or do you edit the actual movies/shows by using shorten/erase?
1 - 20 of 33 Posts
Right, exactly. I never use playlists, but after replacing my hard drive recently, I'm thinking it's the better way to go. Previously I always used shorten because it just seemed easier and faster to get the recording the way I wanted it.
For those that use playlists, is it a lot more time consuming then using shorten/erase section? I took a quick look at it, (I've never used it before) and didn't quite understand how to use them. Maybe I'm just slow. lol.
For those that use playlists, is it a lot more time consuming then using shorten/erase section? I took a quick look at it, (I've never used it before) and didn't quite understand how to use them. Maybe I'm just slow. lol.
I use Shorten on my E80 so I can make a lossless copy by doing a high speed dub. Playlists can only be dubbed in real time, which involves a re-encoding and some loss of quality.
Do any of the more recent models allow you to high speed dub a Playlist?
Do any of the more recent models allow you to high speed dub a Playlist?
The Panasonic hdd models after the 80, allow for hi speed copying of playlists.
A little less time, as you're not stopping to erase the segments you're creating. What I do is ff thru the show adding chapter marks, then add the title to the playlist menu, and then delete those ad chapters. Then dub to disc.
Quote:
For those that use playlists, is it a lot more time consuming then using shorten/erase section? I took a quick look at it, (I've never used it before) and didn't quite understand how to use them. Maybe I'm just slow.
A little less time, as you're not stopping to erase the segments you're creating. What I do is ff thru the show adding chapter marks, then add the title to the playlist menu, and then delete those ad chapters. Then dub to disc.
I off-load them to RAM, and then edit and burn on my computer. Before I started doing this, I used Shorten Segment on my E80. If it could high-speed-dub play lists, I probably would've used them instead.
It sounds like you might use the Panasonic units.. if so, this might not apply.
But with the Toshiba (XS32 is what I have experience with, though from everything I've read, the later ones are essentially the same at least from a high level point of view), I would say they're almost the exact same amount of work, if not slightly faster from a playlist point of view.
With playlist
1) record content
2) make chapters (while you're recording or afterwards)
3) go into playlist mode
4) select specific chapters of recording
5) complete playlist
6) dub (either to DVD or back to the hard drive)
7) delete the original recording
with shorten segment
1) record content
2) make chapters (while recording or afterwards)
3) go into the chapter list for the program
4++) manually delete EACH item, or do a 'delete selected items' and pick each chapter
5) if you're going to dub, dub to DVD
6) delete the original recording
While it looks like one less step, I actually think that you're probably jumping around more doing the shorten segment...
I still think the fragmentation argument is probably somewhat bogus, but with the flakiness of these things, I'm semi-superstitiously using the playlist most of the time.. (once in a while, when I want to remove a chunk out of an existing recording to make space for a new recording NOW, I will remove a segment).
Quote:
Originally Posted by luckylisp /forum/post/0
For those that use playlists, is it a lot more time consuming then using shorten/erase section? I took a quick look at it, (I've never used it before) and didn't quite understand how to use them. Maybe I'm just slow. lol.
It sounds like you might use the Panasonic units.. if so, this might not apply.
But with the Toshiba (XS32 is what I have experience with, though from everything I've read, the later ones are essentially the same at least from a high level point of view), I would say they're almost the exact same amount of work, if not slightly faster from a playlist point of view.
With playlist
1) record content
2) make chapters (while you're recording or afterwards)
3) go into playlist mode
4) select specific chapters of recording
5) complete playlist
6) dub (either to DVD or back to the hard drive)
7) delete the original recording
with shorten segment
1) record content
2) make chapters (while recording or afterwards)
3) go into the chapter list for the program
4++) manually delete EACH item, or do a 'delete selected items' and pick each chapter
5) if you're going to dub, dub to DVD
6) delete the original recording
While it looks like one less step, I actually think that you're probably jumping around more doing the shorten segment...
I still think the fragmentation argument is probably somewhat bogus, but with the flakiness of these things, I'm semi-superstitiously using the playlist most of the time.. (once in a while, when I want to remove a chunk out of an existing recording to make space for a new recording NOW, I will remove a segment).
I have only used Shorten/Scene Delete type of functions. While I don't want to reformat, I try to stay as up to date as possible in editing and burning Keeper material to DVD. I usually make 2 DVD copies, and also 1-2 Computer HDD backups depending on how important the recordings are and how difficult it would be to re-obtain them if they were lost. So usually I wouldn't completely lose a ton of stuff if I have to reformat the DVDR HDD. Still hope I won't have to do that though.
I use playlists myself (on a Panasonic EH75V and before that on an E85), partly because of the disk-fragmentation issue, and partly because it gives me more flexibility. I can "undo" editing mistakes, and I can combine chapters from two or more titles into one playlist provided that they've been recorded at the same speed.
I don't use my DVDR for pure timeshifting, because I have a couple of HD DVRs for that. I use the DVDR's HDD only as a staging area for material dubbed from the DVRs that I want to edit and then archive to DVD. I let the HDD fill up, then re-format it (did it just today in fact, after archiving the last few items on it).
I don't use my DVDR for pure timeshifting, because I have a couple of HD DVRs for that. I use the DVDR's HDD only as a staging area for material dubbed from the DVRs that I want to edit and then archive to DVD. I let the HDD fill up, then re-format it (did it just today in fact, after archiving the last few items on it).
Thanks very much for your responses everyone. Very helpful. I actually thought you edited the show once you were in the playlist menu which is what initially confused me. I see now that you add the chapter marks before going into playlist and then just add the parts you want into the playlist. Very simple.
I thought it might be bogus too, but I had a bunch of shows on my hard drive (3 year old Panny E85 which has been a workhorse for me) that had an excessive amount of commercials, literally every few minutes it seemed. After making all those shortens to about 10 shows and then deleting the items it was then my hard drive started behaving badly.
Granted, the hard drive received tons of daily use and I used shorten a lot, but that last batch of excessive shortens seemed to do it in. When I tried to reformat it kept going into self check mode. I finally got it reformatted after many tries, but the drive just didn't work properly after that. Constant freezes and stopped recordings, self check loop etc. I'm betting if I had used playlists from the start the hard drive would have lasted longer. Thankfully the drives are cheap and easy to replace yourself.
Quote:
Originally Posted by mattack /forum/post/0
I still think the fragmentation argument is probably somewhat bogus, but with the flakiness of these things, I'm semi-superstitiously using the playlist most of the time..
I thought it might be bogus too, but I had a bunch of shows on my hard drive (3 year old Panny E85 which has been a workhorse for me) that had an excessive amount of commercials, literally every few minutes it seemed. After making all those shortens to about 10 shows and then deleting the items it was then my hard drive started behaving badly.
Granted, the hard drive received tons of daily use and I used shorten a lot, but that last batch of excessive shortens seemed to do it in. When I tried to reformat it kept going into self check mode. I finally got it reformatted after many tries, but the drive just didn't work properly after that. Constant freezes and stopped recordings, self check loop etc. I'm betting if I had used playlists from the start the hard drive would have lasted longer. Thankfully the drives are cheap and easy to replace yourself.
I agree that using the playlist function is more practical than simply shortening a segment, since, if you make a mistake or want to get a more perfect edit, playlists give you that option. If you blow it while shortening the segment......you're screwed!......
However, I find it confusing and messy to use playlists on the later generation Pannys. I have an E-100 on which I consistantly use the playlists function. It is a simple, straightforward process and very user friendly, unlike the later models.
I don't see any real advantages to the newer interface (at least as far as playlist editing is concerned). I don't like it!
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Quote:
Originally Posted by jtbell /forum/post/0
I use playlists myself (on a Panasonic EH75V and before that on an E85), partly because of the disk-fragmentation issue, and partly because it gives me more flexibility. I can "undo" editing mistakes, and I can combine chapters from two or more titles into one playlist provided that they've been recorded at the same speed.
I don't use my DVDR for pure timeshifting, because I have a couple of HD DVRs for that. I use the DVDR's HDD only as a staging area for material dubbed from the DVRs that I want to edit and then archive to DVD. I let the HDD fill up, then re-format it (did it just today in fact, after archiving the last few items on it).
I agree that using the playlist function is more practical than simply shortening a segment, since, if you make a mistake or want to get a more perfect edit, playlists give you that option. If you blow it while shortening the segment......you're screwed!......
However, I find it confusing and messy to use playlists on the later generation Pannys. I have an E-100 on which I consistantly use the playlists function. It is a simple, straightforward process and very user friendly, unlike the later models.
I don't see any real advantages to the newer interface (at least as far as playlist editing is concerned). I don't like it!
Not so on the Panasonic E100, E85, or EH55. On these, high speed copy retains the chapter points and thumbnails, but results in about one-second "freeze" at each edit point. Real time copy yields seamless playback, but loses the chapter points (inserts its own), and thumbnails must be reset before finalizing.
"Playlist" may not have the same meaning among different brands of recorders, and poster has not indicated his (or her) equipment.
On the Panasonic, playlist is only a set of reference points to scenes from one or more titles on the hdd and takes up very little space on the hdd. And YOU ARE FINISHED with the playlist before deleting any of the titles referenced in the playlist (whether you intended to be or not).
Playlists give a lot of flexibility in selecting and sequencing scenes from whatever titles you wish. Want to combine six titles into one? Just select the six titles, or any parts of them, in one playlist, in the order you want them, and copy (dub). The name on the playlist becomes the title name on the dvd. Want to use the same scene more than once for different purposes in different playlists? You can.
I use playlists exclusively; have never used the Shorten Segment becuase of the fragmentation issue, and because I often edit to a specific time content, I often have to go back and pick up a few seconds, a task far simpler on the E100 than on the others.
Quote:
Originally Posted by JMas /forum/post/0
I use Shorten on my E80 so I can make a lossless copy by doing a high speed dub. Playlists can only be dubbed in real time, which involves a re-encoding and some loss of quality.
Do any of the more recent models allow you to high speed dub a Playlist?
Not so on the Panasonic E100, E85, or EH55. On these, high speed copy retains the chapter points and thumbnails, but results in about one-second "freeze" at each edit point. Real time copy yields seamless playback, but loses the chapter points (inserts its own), and thumbnails must be reset before finalizing.
"Playlist" may not have the same meaning among different brands of recorders, and poster has not indicated his (or her) equipment.
On the Panasonic, playlist is only a set of reference points to scenes from one or more titles on the hdd and takes up very little space on the hdd. And YOU ARE FINISHED with the playlist before deleting any of the titles referenced in the playlist (whether you intended to be or not).
Playlists give a lot of flexibility in selecting and sequencing scenes from whatever titles you wish. Want to combine six titles into one? Just select the six titles, or any parts of them, in one playlist, in the order you want them, and copy (dub). The name on the playlist becomes the title name on the dvd. Want to use the same scene more than once for different purposes in different playlists? You can.
I use playlists exclusively; have never used the Shorten Segment becuase of the fragmentation issue, and because I often edit to a specific time content, I often have to go back and pick up a few seconds, a task far simpler on the E100 than on the others.
I have used shorten and playlist and find shorten easiest to use so that is my preference. However, I try to minimize fragmentation by first making sure the disk is no more than half full and second by shortening, dubing and erasing before recording again.
I have 3 recorders, but mainly use my Panasonic's - an E85 and an EH50. (And I'm a her.
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Thanks for your informative post, Richard. I wasn't aware the using playlists causes a one second freeze at each chapter point. That doesn't sound too good.
Quote:
Originally Posted by RichardT /forum/post/0
and poster has not indicated his (or her) equipment.
I have 3 recorders, but mainly use my Panasonic's - an E85 and an EH50. (And I'm a her.
Thanks for your informative post, Richard. I wasn't aware the using playlists causes a one second freeze at each chapter point. That doesn't sound too good.
How objectionable the freeze is depends on where you put the chapter breaks. I edit mainly to remove commercials, and they almost always occur at natural pauses in the program action, with some blank frames before and after. I leave the blank frames at the beginning and end of each chapter, and the transition just makes the blank pause a little bit longer. It doesn't seem to be anywhere nearly as long as a second for me, on both the Panasonic E85 and EH75V.
My experience with playlist editing on the E-100 has been no freezes or pauses.
It appears to be seamless.
I avoid playlist edits on the later models. Dissatified with the newer interface!
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Quote:
Originally Posted by jtbell /forum/post/0
How objectionable the freeze is depends on where you put the chapter breaks. I edit mainly to remove commercials, and they almost always occur at natural pauses in the program action, with some blank frames before and after. I leave the blank frames at the beginning and end of each chapter, and the transition just makes the blank pause a little bit longer. It doesn't seem to be anywhere nearly as long as a second for me, on both the Panasonic E85 and EH75V.
My experience with playlist editing on the E-100 has been no freezes or pauses.
It appears to be seamless.
I avoid playlist edits on the later models. Dissatified with the newer interface!
Thank you lucky, for your kind words.
Just a point of clarification- I am not sure the freezes occur at all chapter points, just at edit points. You can mark chapters without deleting, and I don't think the freeze would occur in that case. And I'm not sure it is caused by the Playlist; it may well occur with the Shorten Segment.
Consider why the freeze occurs. Simplified, the movie is stored at 30 frames per second. But not 30 complete frames; the first frame is complete, an "index" frame, followed by 9 or 14 frames which store only the changes from the previous frame, then another index frame and a series of partial frames. So, if you start an edit at, say frame 5, the machine has nothing upon which to base its changes until it gets to an index frame again.
Nearly all of my work is recording performances, childrens' programs, church services, and such, and some home video, so I'm not taking out commercials, I'm putting them in! Titles, credits, and so on.
Unlike slprp1's experience, my experience is that there definitely is a "freeze" at edit points on the E100, E85, and EH55 if high-speed copied. The work around is to set "seamless playback" in the Setup, and do a realtime copy.
And slprp1, YES, I much prefer the E100 START and END scene selection to the "chapter"s (ugh) of the later machines, especially when I get much over 75 chapters and/or need to trim or add a few seconds here or there.
Quote:
Originally Posted by luckylisp /forum/post/0
Thanks for your informative post, Richard. I wasn't aware the using playlists causes a one second freeze at each chapter point. That doesn't sound too good.
Thank you lucky, for your kind words.
Just a point of clarification- I am not sure the freezes occur at all chapter points, just at edit points. You can mark chapters without deleting, and I don't think the freeze would occur in that case. And I'm not sure it is caused by the Playlist; it may well occur with the Shorten Segment.
Consider why the freeze occurs. Simplified, the movie is stored at 30 frames per second. But not 30 complete frames; the first frame is complete, an "index" frame, followed by 9 or 14 frames which store only the changes from the previous frame, then another index frame and a series of partial frames. So, if you start an edit at, say frame 5, the machine has nothing upon which to base its changes until it gets to an index frame again.
Nearly all of my work is recording performances, childrens' programs, church services, and such, and some home video, so I'm not taking out commercials, I'm putting them in! Titles, credits, and so on.
Unlike slprp1's experience, my experience is that there definitely is a "freeze" at edit points on the E100, E85, and EH55 if high-speed copied. The work around is to set "seamless playback" in the Setup, and do a realtime copy.
And slprp1, YES, I much prefer the E100 START and END scene selection to the "chapter"s (ugh) of the later machines, especially when I get much over 75 chapters and/or need to trim or add a few seconds here or there.
From my time with an e85, an eh50 and an eh75, I can say the following with several years and at least two thousand disks burned of experience.
The pause that happens at edit points is variable, and is not at chapter marks, but only where some material has been removed or added. One whole second during a program is quite a bit of time, and saying the pauses are that long is a bit of an exaggeration. There is usually an I frame in the mpeg 2 stream every half second or so, so the longest pause would be around that duration, with the average a bit less. It pauses on the last frame at the cut until it sees an I frame again. It is not related to anything except the interruption of the mpeg-2 stream, content being deleted or added, so it will occur whenever that happens. Realtime dubbing recreates the stream, so the pauses disappear.
I find it hard to believe that some people here STILL say that the fragmentation issue is bogus. There have been many of us here that have reported it happening to them, and still people don't believe it's real. If some people around you get the flu, but you don't, I would hardly expect you to claim that the flu doesn't exist. I have been caught by the disk file system corruption issue. After an edit, all of my titles disappeared from the titles page. The disk looked like it was clean, but there was lots of space used. I reformatted the drive and the problem went away. Since then no longer use shorten or divide, only playlists for editing, and the problem has never come up again. I also reformat my drives at least once every three months. -RAM disks are your friend!
I don't believe that any DVD recorder that just chops out content can do high speed frame accurate editing. It would require a two directional recreation of the mpeg-2 stream, which computers can do, but that these machines don't do. There are some machines that "fake" frame accurate editing by only allowing the user to place edit points on I-frames, but that isn't the same thing, at least, not in my opinion. Like has been mentioned, if you can make your edit points on black frames between program content segments (fade to black between the commercials and the program) the breaks are unnoticeable.
The pause that happens at edit points is variable, and is not at chapter marks, but only where some material has been removed or added. One whole second during a program is quite a bit of time, and saying the pauses are that long is a bit of an exaggeration. There is usually an I frame in the mpeg 2 stream every half second or so, so the longest pause would be around that duration, with the average a bit less. It pauses on the last frame at the cut until it sees an I frame again. It is not related to anything except the interruption of the mpeg-2 stream, content being deleted or added, so it will occur whenever that happens. Realtime dubbing recreates the stream, so the pauses disappear.
I find it hard to believe that some people here STILL say that the fragmentation issue is bogus. There have been many of us here that have reported it happening to them, and still people don't believe it's real. If some people around you get the flu, but you don't, I would hardly expect you to claim that the flu doesn't exist. I have been caught by the disk file system corruption issue. After an edit, all of my titles disappeared from the titles page. The disk looked like it was clean, but there was lots of space used. I reformatted the drive and the problem went away. Since then no longer use shorten or divide, only playlists for editing, and the problem has never come up again. I also reformat my drives at least once every three months. -RAM disks are your friend!
I don't believe that any DVD recorder that just chops out content can do high speed frame accurate editing. It would require a two directional recreation of the mpeg-2 stream, which computers can do, but that these machines don't do. There are some machines that "fake" frame accurate editing by only allowing the user to place edit points on I-frames, but that isn't the same thing, at least, not in my opinion. Like has been mentioned, if you can make your edit points on black frames between program content segments (fade to black between the commercials and the program) the breaks are unnoticeable.
I have only used shorten in the past and I have actually never noticed a freeze (definitely nothing that would be a full second) at the points where a show as been shortened. Maybe I'm just not very observant, I'm not sure. :confused.
Quote:
Originally Posted by RichardT /forum/post/0
Thank you lucky, for your kind words.
Just a point of clarification- I am not sure the freezes occur at all chapter points, just at edit points. You can mark chapters without deleting, and I don't think the freeze would occur in that case. And I'm not sure it is caused by the Playlist; it may well occur with the Shorten Segment.
I have only used shorten in the past and I have actually never noticed a freeze (definitely nothing that would be a full second) at the points where a show as been shortened. Maybe I'm just not very observant, I'm not sure. :confused.
I agree wholeheartedly. I learned the hard way and had to replace my hard drive in my Panny E85, but thankfully I was able to easily do this myself. I see now that playlists are definitely the way to go along with formatting the drive every few months.
Any thoughts on the best process to delete items off the hard drive? I used to delete each show after watching, but might it be better to wait and delete them in batches?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Church AV Guy /forum/post/0
I find it hard to believe that some people here STILL say that the fragmentation issue is bogus. There have been many of us here that have reported it happening to them, and still people don't believe it's real. If some people around you get the flu, but you don't, I would hardly expect you to claim that the flu doesn't exist. I have been caught by the disk file system corruption issue. After an edit, all of my titles disappeared from the titles page. The disk looked like it was clean, but there was lots of space used. I reformatted the drive and the problem went away. Since then no longer use shorten or divide, only playlists for editing, and the problem has never come up again. I also reformat my drives at least once every three months. -RAM disks are your friend!
I agree wholeheartedly. I learned the hard way and had to replace my hard drive in my Panny E85, but thankfully I was able to easily do this myself. I see now that playlists are definitely the way to go along with formatting the drive every few months.
Any thoughts on the best process to delete items off the hard drive? I used to delete each show after watching, but might it be better to wait and delete them in batches?
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