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Partial Delete / Quality Loss (Panasonic EX-75)

1587 Views 9 Replies 5 Participants Last post by Church AV Guy, Jul 21, 2009

aheyn001

Discussion Starter · Jul 20, 2009

Hi All,

Have been reading this forum for ages but never posted until now - its a fantastic resource!

Anyway, I have a Panasonic DMR-EX75 DVD recorder and have been using it as normal for some time. Anyway now its almost full, and I have to get all the content off it - alot is more than the 1 hour a DVD-R can hold in XP (most are even longer than 2 hours, so even with a dual layer dvd it still won't hold it). How I wish I could just copy it to SD card, but thats for another time.

Anyway, there is a partial delete option. I've always been VERY skeptical about these sort of amateur editing features as they often degrade the quality of the recorded media. My question is, if I used this (say 5-10 times on one video to cut out adds etc), would it actually degrade the dvd video quality at all? (or does it edit without actually affecting the other parts?)

I'm thinking it might be along the lines of a JPG image, you open it - edit it - then if you save it as jpg again, you lose quality. Do that enough times and it will just be wrecked... so wondering if its the same sort of analogy, though hopefully not.

Thanks!

Andrew

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7558037

· #2 · Jul 20, 2009

Nothing's actually "deleted" when you edit/cut a commercial. The commercial's start and end point are just "marked" as a section to delete when playing back or dubbing to a disc. Won't affect quality one bit.

That;s why some DVDRs have a "Hide Chapter" feature... same marking scheme.

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aheyn001

Discussion Starter · #3 · Jul 20, 2009

Hi wajo - thanks... so even though after deleting parts from a title, and when playing back the title those parts don't appear at all - and also the time remaining left to record also goes up... nothing is deleted from the file itself - only at the point of being burnt to a dvd etc??

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7558037

· #4 · Jul 20, 2009

Yes, that's the way my Philips and Mag units work... can't say for absolute certainty other brands work the same way, but they should since our DVDR op system (OS) is sort of "single-purpose" and pretty simple. In fact, I think there are some foreign Philips machines that don't even mention *delete" for commercials... they have "Hide Chapter."

Also, that's why my Philips/Mag units have a menu option for "Make Edits Compatible" for +RW discs, which don't get playback instructions with a Finalize, so other machines will see deletion instructions and skip those sections on playback, etc.

The OS in my units see any spaces opened by "deleting" a commercial as recordable again. That's why some people run into problems after almost filling a HDD with lots of editing, which leaves lots of small spaces the OS has to use to "cram" not only the recorded User Data, but also all the rinky-dink editing instructions... can drive our simple OS crazy!

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Westly-C

· #5 · Jul 20, 2009

Quote:
Originally Posted by aheyn001 /forum/post/16854408

Hi wajo - thanks... so even though after deleting parts from a title, and when playing back the title those parts don't appear at all - and also the time remaining left to record also goes up... nothing is deleted from the file itself - only at the point of being burnt to a dvd etc??

Not familiar with the EX line-obviously, one of the international models, right? 'Partial delete' sounds cool, and from wajo's post, it sounds like a type of hide chapter function. Just to be on the safe side, choose something safe to test on, to make sure you're not permanently erasing material.

An alternative would be to create playlists of the shows you want saved, omitting the commercials. That way, you may be able to get some 2 hr XP mode recordings to a DL disc. Or transfer as much as you can to RAM discs.

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jjeff

· #6 · Jul 20, 2009

On Panasonics once you shorten a title the deleted part is gone forever. You do gain back time for each delete but don't lose any picture quality since you're not re encoding the video, just deleting parts. Funai + based machines may be different but with Panasonics delete is delete. You can as Westly suggested just use playlists which actually don't delete, personally I always delete and have never even used playlists.

You could also split your long titles into 2 or more shorter titles but that would require 2 or more discs/program, the choice is yours splitting the title also doesn't re encode the video so again no picture quality loss.

EX is a European format while the ES was used in the US and current international multisystem models.

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Church AV Guy

· #7 · Jul 20, 2009

Quote:
Originally Posted by jjeff /forum/post/16857459

On Panasonics once you shorten a title the deleted part is gone forever. You do gain back time for each delete but don't lose any picture quality... You can as Westly suggested just use playlists which actually don't delete, personally I always delete and have never even used playlists.

I use playlists all the time and highly recommend them. The number of times I have made a mistake and "deleted" material I wanted to keep from a playlist makes me glad I use them. Deleting material from a playlist does not delete it from the title it came from, so I can delete the playlist and start over with the entire title entact.

The manual for the EX75 shows the phrase save feature present on that model. Hmmm...

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aheyn001

Discussion Starter · #8 · Jul 21, 2009

Thanks to all, you've answered my question 100%. Basically I was worried that each edit would cause it to lose quality as in a JPEG image being re-saved (even though it wasnt fully being re encoded each time). Great to know it isnt... I reckon I can cut down most programs to 3/4 or less after removing the ads and start/finish overrun garbage lol.

Thanks again!

p.s. what OS does the panasonic players even use??? is it a standard that others use and change slightly etc? (like a 'dvd linux' of sorts).

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aheyn001

Discussion Starter · #9 · Jul 21, 2009

Quote:
Originally Posted by jjeff /forum/post/16857459

On Panasonics once you shorten a title the deleted part is gone forever. You do gain back time for each delete but don't lose any picture quality since you're not re encoding the video, just deleting parts. Funai + based machines may be different but with Panasonics delete is delete. You can as Westly suggested just use playlists which actually don't delete, personally I always delete and have never even used playlists.

You could also split your long titles into 2 or more shorter titles but that would require 2 or more discs/program, the choice is yours splitting the title also doesn't re encode the video so again no picture quality loss.

EX is a European format while the ES was used in the US and current international multisystem models.

If i split it, could I then join them back up on the comp so it would essentially be perfectly seamless??? (no changes to the video at the join point at all)

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Church AV Guy

· #10 · Jul 21, 2009

Quote:
Originally Posted by aheyn001 /forum/post/16859945

Thanks to all, you've answered my question 100%. Basically I was worried that each edit would cause it to lose quality as in a JPEG image being re-saved (even though it wasnt fully being re encoded each time). Great to know it isnt... I reckon I can cut down most programs to 3/4 or less after removing the ads and start/finish overrun garbage lol.

Thanks again!

p.s. what OS does the panasonic players even use??? is it a standard that others use and change slightly etc? (like a 'dvd linux' of sorts).

File editing on a Panasonic does not involve reencoding, so no quality loss, except at the specific break points of course. There is usually a momentary glitch.

The OS used by the file system on the HDDs in Panasonic machines is unique and proprietary. No one has actually figured out the file system. It is possible using a lot of effort to get data off the hard drive and into a PC, but it is a tedious and time consuming process. No one has figured out how to plug the drive into a PC and get a complete list of titles and download them as complete files.

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