shonkc

How long does it take to complete a recording on a stand alone dvd recorder if its 1 hour of footage?

Does it go through a finalizing process, or will it take 1 hour to record 1 hour of footage.

Is it typically faster that a burner on a pc?

Brian Shannon

Although it is possible to burn "faster" I always burn in real time so 1 hour is 1 hour plus the time to finalize the disc.

shonkc

How long does it typicaly take to finalize?

Thanks for your input.

meritocracy

If you're recording on a DVDR standalone without a Hard Drive it must be a realtime recording each and every time. The advantage, among many, of HDD based recorders is High Speed Dubbing. Finalizing is only needed so that your discs will playback on other standalone units and typically takes about 4 minutes.

Steve Phillips

Finalization is only required on DVD-R and DVD+R (single use) discs.

DVD+RW (erasable) discs do not require finalization and will play in most current players immediately. Not that a couple of minutes is a big deal anyway.

shonkc

Is a recorder faster to complete the process than a burner on a pc?

Ergyu

You are kind of asking about 2 different things. The burners on PCs are indeed faster, but it depends on what you are recording on the stand alone player.

I would assume that if you were going from one dvd to another on a standalone player, you could go faster than real time, though I'm not clear on that. On a PC burner however, it's never real time. For instance, mine is 8x, so with 8x media it generally takes about 7 minutes to burn a complete DVD (4.7gb.)

If you are buying the standalone recorder for copying dvds, I'd say you would probably spend your money better just getting a DVDR for your computer as they are cheaper and faster and you also have the option to use it as a backup device and the like.

shonkc

Good advice, thanks.

Here is my situation....I need to convert 30 tapes to dvd, im NOTworried about editing, just straight to disk.

Will I get this done faster with a standalone or a burner for a pc?

I have a burner for my pc that is 4x, but I have to capture than author and burn.

I was wondering if the standalone would be faster, realtime record then a few minutes to finalize.

Any advice on a standalone -R for $400 or less?

Thanks for all your advice.

meritocracy

Shonkc

If your primary purpose is converting from vhs then I'd absolutely go the standalone route. The process will be far less time consuming and you won't have to fiddle with the capturing process, various encoding options etc. If you have no desire to edit, (mandatory caveat - once you own and understand the advantages inherent in having a HDD based DVD Recorder you'll never go back), you can probably find a nice deal at either Best Buy or Target on one of the discountinued Panasonic E-50 models. These are being cleared out to make way for the newly released E-55's which to be frank, don't add much. The E-50 has a built-in TBC to clear up vhs transfers and the output looks fantastic in either XP (1 hour) or SP modes (2 hour). You should be able to find one for around $250 if you look hard enough. Again, transferring from tape via either method MUST be realtime as it's recording what it sees (capturing). Still, it would be faster going the standalone route as you'll only have to do this once whereas after capturing on the PC you'd still have to burn the resulting file to disc. If you wanted to make additional copies of your footage this is where a HDD based recorder would come in handy as once the footage is on the unit you can then make multiple copies via a High Speed transfer.

shonkc

Awsome.

Thanks very much.

Hope I can contribute to this forum in the near future.