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Replay 2000 Series --> DVD...anyone?

513 Views 15 Replies 8 Participants Last post by Jeff D, May 31, 2004

xwilliam

Discussion Starter · May 27, 2004

Hi everyone, I've been lurking around this forum for about 4 years, but don't post much. I acquired a RTV 2004 with dual drives back in 1999 when I was writing tech reviews for a now defunct Boston magazine. Needless to say I was hooked after the review and couldn't believe my luck when A&R Partners (the PR firm for Replay) completely forgot about my review unit. (It's actually pretty common that PR firms simply don't care if they get stuff like that back.) In 2001 I upgraded to an 80GB drive and have been happily watching RTV ever since, problem free. OK, a couple fo reboots here and there, but more or less this 5-year-old B-stock unit works like a champ and with free, lifetime activation, I just can't imagine forking out $400 for a new Replay. But now that both my PC and Mac have DVD drives I'm so itching to archive shows on DVD from my Replay. I easily rip RTV MPGs to my computers' hard drives and can watch them on the PC and Mac just by using Extract_RTV and double-clicking. I just can't seem to figure out how to *easily* get them on a video DVD.

"Easily" is the important word here.

QUESTION: Is *anyone* out there using these old units to burn DVDs without going through a major process? I'm happy to have the commercials in there. I just want to rip the files and burn to DVD. Nothing fancy. I just want to do it in the most painless way possible. Can anyone help?

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xstrym

· #2 · May 27, 2004

Well Mr. Lurker... great story on the acquisition of the RTV!

Wish I had that kinda luck!

First, nothing tops networking in the new boxes... 'free' lifetime or not. So as for the $400, you are getting a deal when you throw in DVA, and the host of other third party tools that are developed from members right here in this community. 'nuff said.

As for the DVD stuff, if you lurk, you know that it has been discussed many a time. Try a search for your series / model and other keywords that might elicit a response... if that fails to turn up anything decent, you've started this thread and someone may have some info for you by the time you get done searching.

I personally have not delved into it yet, but there's Womble (MPEG-VCR) and that seems to have the attention of many around here... some others are trying other tools like DVD Movie Factory, TMPGEnc, etc.

Personally, I have heard that Mac's are superior to making DVDs than any standard PC, so I would go that route and look for tools for that platform before going the PC way. I don't own a Mac, but I've heard the stories from co-workers regarding the quality of DVDs that are turned out by either... and they say that the difference is astounding.

Good luck!

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Jeff D

· #3 · May 27, 2004

Good news on the "deal" you got! But... there's nothing simple about what you want to do, it can be done but not really. There are a couple of things that are sticking points...

1) Audio format isn't DVD compatible, you can try your luck with any authoring package, but there mostly likely will be sync issues. You can try but there's a lot of PC issues which could crop up.

I did this by hand a lot back in the 3k days and it's a lot of work. But, if something is important enough you can get it done, just not easily.

TimSH

· #4 · May 27, 2004

There is an alternative... it's not free, but it could be cheaper than the $400 it would cost for a new Replay.

Try one of the cheap standalone DVD recorders out there. You should be able to find one for around 200 to 250. They're not big on features, but they tend to get the basic job done.

gambit

· #5 · May 27, 2004

The absolute easiest way is to get a DVD player that can play the raw MPEGs:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...ghlight=aspire

or, you could:

make sure video was recorded at medium quality

edit and reencode audio using Womble

use DVD authoring package of your choice to create menus/video_ts files

burn to DVD using Nero

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xwilliam

Discussion Starter · #6 · May 27, 2004

OK, the DVD player idea is great. The AD-1100 seems to be hard to find right now, but the AD-1000 can be had at Buy.com for about $41. Does anyone know if this will work?

As far as the Womble thing goes, if I don't care to edit anything, how long and difficult is that process (not including the burning time)?

I was just thinking about all this and maybe the answer is right under my nose. If I simply burn these videos to data DVD, I can always watch them from my PC (which has a video out to TV, if I feel like hooking that up). In the future when the world of video is more user-friendly, I can revisit converting all these MPEG2 files, right? For now, I should just burn to data DVDs and know that if I ever want to mess with them later, they are all still in a pristine, permanent form, just waiting to be converted.

I really would like to get my hands on one of those AD-1100's for $35. Oh well.

If anyone has any other ideas, I'm still reading...

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rm -rf .

· #7 · May 27, 2004

Try Costco.com for the DVD player - they used to have one of the Aspree models (I don't recall what model # exactly, AD-something...) at a fairly low price.

Jeff D

· #8 · May 27, 2004

The key issue which I stated before holds true for those DVD players too... It's not an issue for 4k or 5k users because SB switched to 48k audio, the original replay audio was 32k and NOT a dvd standard. If it works, great, but you are getting a surprise if it does.

I'd really like to hear from an owner of one of these players who's actually tried a 32k audio replay mpeg before running out and buying one. I can tell you this... the apex A-600 wouldn't do it, that I know for a fact.

gambit

· #9 · May 28, 2004

I have a Showstopper and an Aspire AD-1100. The Aspire will play an MPEG extracted from the Showstopper and written directly to a DVD. However, I have only tested this once and the video was a little jumpy and out of sync with the audio. I'm not sure if that is attributed to the way I burned it, not fixing the time coding on the extracted MPG, or the player itself.

I haven't gone back to test this any more than that as my preference has been to edit the raw MPG's (cut the commercials) and go through the steps of creating an actual DVD with menus and chapters.

Robert Simandl

· #10 · May 28, 2004

After extracting the files with extract_rtv, I use the Womble Stream Converter and GOP Fixer (both included with the Womble MPEG2VCR editing program), to fix GOP errors and fix the always-screwed-up MPEG headers that Replays seems to generate.

Then I use Womble MPEG2VCR to edit commercials. When I'm about to save the final file, I change the audio sampling from 32khz to 48khz.

Then I use TMPGEnc DVD Author to make the final DVD. DVD MovieFactory is also an excellent choice here.

This process gives me excellent results from my ancient Showstopper and my even more ancient Replay 2004.

Mr. Rotund

· #11 · May 29, 2004

Reading the postings sort of worries me- I have a Panny PV-HS 1000, with a beefed-up 120 hr drive. There's about eighteen movies I've saved on the drive, with an eye to burning them to disk. It seems the old SS's can't do that very well, if I read the postings correctly.

Is the way around this to perhaps buy a Panasonic DVD recorder, like the ones I read about on that forum? Would copying to the recorder hd, then burning to disk avoid the sync problems?

Thanks...

Jeff D

· #12 · May 29, 2004

Mr. Rotud, yes the extra hardware would remove the problem.

This problem is more because of the problems with a PC and the way the PC filters and authoring packages deal with the streams. It's really quite sad it's as difficult as it is, but... oh well.

It can be done but it's not easy.

Robert Simandl

· #13 · May 30, 2004

Hey Jeff,

Ever since I switched to the Womble stream converter instead of the GOP Fixer before my actual editing, I've not had ONE sync issue.

I do still use the GOP fixer on mpegs from my Showstopper and Replay 2004, but only AFTER I've used the stream converter (that way the GOP Fixer will only deal with GOP size errors, which it fixes with no problem).

Jeff D

· #14 · May 30, 2004

Robert, interesting I talked to chang about the issue with the GOP fixer and the audio PTS errors detected. I don't trust the GOP fixer anymore. Chang seems to be working on dvdwizard because he hasn't addressed the problem I described to him.

I'm curious if the wizard's technique is the same as womble's. I hope not, but it sounds like it may be different.

Mr. Rotund

· #15 · May 31, 2004

Jeff D,

Thanks for the reply-

Basically, I can transfer from the SS hd to the (name of dvd recorder here) hd and burn to disc?

In all honesty, my technoskills have not advanced beyond mastering the RPTV remote, so I suffer from SS to PC to Editing Software to Finalizing to Burning to Chronosynclastic Re-Alteration to Watching anxiety. It seems simpler to do the SS to recorder sequence. Or am I just naive?

Thanks-

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Jeff D

· #16 · May 31, 2004

Mr. Rotund... the strangest thing about your idea is that if you do that the replayTV isn't really going to do much for you. Most DVD Recorders do the same (although with a bad interface) of recording live TV.... so, you'll have two systems that do the same thing.

But, yes SS->DVD Recorder will do the same thing. Just set up the replay to the input on the recorder and then do the "save to vcr" and tell the recorder to record.

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