[Chim Bubba]

Hello all I saw this posted on the newsgroups and thought that it should be posted here. I am curious as to the responses since like this user I also am curious about the Panasonic DMR-HS2. So here it is......


First off hello to all. I am new to this but I have been recently thinking

about buying a dvd recorder. I think I have narrowed it down to the

Panasonic DMR-E30 or the DMR-HS2. More than likely I will go with the HS2

for the 40GB harddrive. Questions I have are:


Which mode or speed is best for archiving vhs tapes?

I have at the very least maybe over 200 vhs tapes that I would like to get

rid of and put all on dvd. Some of the movies on vhs are very old. As far

back as even 1979 or 1980 on up. Now most of my tapes have movies on them

that were recorded with SLP which is the slowest mode on a VCR. To my eye

this mode was not bad. Nevertheless since they are already what we would

call poor quality. Would it make sense to copy these tapes to dvd with a

modebetter than the 6 hour mode offered by the Panasonic dvd recorders? I

mean would it really change the video and make it better to look at?

I would also like to hear from anyone who has purchased the Panasonic dvd

recorders and find out how they like the machine and if anyone out there is

trying to do the same thing as me when it comes to archiving all these many

vhs tapes.

In closing I would like to say thanks and as a newbie these groups have been

very helpful. Please forgive the crossposting but I really wanted to get as

many responses as possible.

Thanks, BGV

 

[trich]

I too have old vcr tapes of my kids from birth. Can I at least get the same

PQ as the svhs? I would love to hear from some one who has done this with old tapes and would be honest about the result.

 

[jbarm]

I have an E30 (same as H2 w/o hard drive). My old VHS tapes look about the same or better than the original on DVD-R. The time base correction and filtering really make a difference.


Plus, you know your DVD player isn't going to 'eat' your tape and the disc will last 50 years.


jb

 

[hob]

Just add a tad to JB, get yourself some macrovision busters as some of those tapes will have macrovision on them if they are pre-records. If your looking for a machine

already mod, I would recommend your reading this helpful URL.

http://www.steelindkerala.com/



When on hit DVD recorders it should be a dull peach background, scroll down price and mod are there tose not hidden; they have a free Tel: call.

 

[vferrari]

BGV,


As far archiving your old VHS video tapes: Even though you may have recorded the tapes in lower quality SLP mode, you may still want to record to DVD using the higher quality record modes (e.g., XP ( 1 Hr) or SP (2 Hr) in the case of the Panasonic recorders) for two reasons. First, the lower quality modes (e.g., LP (4 hr) and EP (6 hr)) are lower resolution (e.g., 352x240 for EP vs. 704x480 for XP/SP) than the high quality mode so they will likely further degrade even your low quality recordings. Second, the lower quality modes introduce lower average bitrates will introduce compression artifacts that will tend to further degrade your video. This degree of this degradation is exacerbated by the quality of source video, so if the source video quality is poor then more compression artifacts will be introduced versus a clean signal at the same bit rate and resolution. Digital compression artifacts are a function of the fact that the DVD disk capacity is always fixed at 4.7 GB per disk (as opposed to video tape where the length of the tape can vary so you can record upwards of 3 hours of SP quality analog video to a VHS cassette with enough linear feet of tape). So to get more video record time on a fixed disk capacity you have to introduce more digital compression. This is different than the degradation of analog generational loss when making copies of copies of analog video tapes. The fact is that even a DVD digital archive of an analog recording needs to do some sort of "compression" during the analog-to-digital conversion process and this always introduces some degree of degradation and digital artifacting.


The key is to get the best quality during the encoding (digital recording) process and that should make you lean towards the higher quality modes (XP, SP). With the Panasonic recorders you can use FR mode which allows you to record slightly more than two hours (around 2:15 or so) to a disk while maintaining the maximum resolution of SP (704X480). With reliable DVD-R media available for less than $1 per disk, there is no real financial drive to try to cram 6 hours of video onto a single disk. Storage space isn't a concern for DVD either.


The input filtering and time base correction provided by the Panasonic recorders mentioned by jb do a lot to clean up the analog recordings before they are actually encoded to mpeg2 video. Many people have reported that VHS converted to DVD using these recorders actually looks better than the original in many cases.


Bottom line, however, is that other than the specific resolution figures and bitrates, picture quality is subjective and is literally "in the eyes of the beholder". So what you need to do is get the recorder, run a few experiments with rewriteable media (e.g., DVD-RAM,-RW,+RW depending on the recorder brand) and judge with your own eyes which tradeoff of bitrate, resolution, and record length works best for your situation.


Hope this helped and Good luck,

Vic

 

[trich]

Thanks jbarm, hob, and vferrari. I may as well dive in.

 

[Chim Bubba]

vferrari

I just want to say that your response was probably the best and most informative I have seen in a while. Although I am not BGV I did post his question here. I would like to post your response to the newsgroups in which I first saw his question. My belief is that he is not a member on this group.

Again thanks so much you have been very helpful to me although I already own and HS2 and I am sure very helpful to a good many others.