[Tig] Daily Tk transfer to DVD

[gold at duplicorp.com]

The best stand alone DVD recorders are the new home recorders from
Panasonic. Panasonic has always had excelent MPEG encoders and the latest
ones are incredibly good for a deck costing under $500. They only have y/c
inputs, but they beat hands down $5k Pioneers, which are the only ones with
analogue component in. Panasonics also have FireWire in, but they work best
with a y/c input coming from an SDI converter. The result compares to
BetaSP approx.
DVD-R is usually more compatible than +R, but they can record both. DVD-RAM
is useless as distribution media, very good for in-house archival.
Panasonics DMR-EH55S for example have a HDD. Always record your session to
the HDD, if a disk fails to close you'll just get to record another from
the HDD.
The best media is Taiyo Yuden, both for recording and for archival
purposes. Mitsui are also great, but they were purchased by an Italian
company, they are now called MOMA and difficult to get in Japan. They are
still excellent though. Professional grade DVDs from giant Ritek are good
also. Regular brands are deceptive because they come from various
manufacturers and vary from batch to batch.
A few caveats:
This is too well known, but worth repeating NEVER stick any kind of label
on a DVD.
Don't encode in XP, many DVD players will choke on the bandwith and with
the new encoders SP (approx 5-6 mb/s, 2 hours per disk) gives excellent
results and playability.
Mail your DVDs in the best CD jewell cases you can buy, don't use Amaray
type DVD boxes for shipping.
Be sure both your SDI to y/c and DVD recorder are Japanese standard, or
you'll have DVDs encoded with setup, which are all wrong.
Encourage your DOPs to screen on video monitors, it is easy to slip a DVD
in a tray on your desk computer, but most personal computers are totally
unsuitable for watching video.
We encode and author DVDs for HBOLatinAmerica, E! and many local producers.
We burn some 5.000 DVDs per month and always use DVD-R.
AVCs are coming strong in the near future, but don't forget that Sony chose
MPEG2 for their first HD release (Charlie's Angels II in Bluray). A cinic
could say they have other reasons for that choice, but Sony say that
encoding into MPEG2 is something they have ample experience in, and they
wanted to be sure of the best quality in their early releases.

Daniel Goldschlager
Duplicorp, Caracas, Venezuela



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