DVD Recorders

A few weeks ago, we got a DVD recorder. This one, in fact:

(Obviously not that particular one, given that's a GIF pinched off the Lite-On website, but you get the idea.) It's a Lite-On LVW-5005, cost us £175... and now you can pick them up in Index for £150. Hey ho.

Anyway, it's brilliant. It can write to all DVD formats bar DVD-RAM, and if you use DVD+RW discs it uses a different DVD format which most DVD players can play without you having to finalise the disc first (which can be a pain). As a result, we can record something on to one DVD+RW, play it in our regular DVD player and record something else at the same time - rather handy. We did, for a while, have some peculiar ghosting on screen which confused me somewhat, but it turns out that taking the picture from the 'TV' SCART output on our Sky digibox instead of the 'Video' one got rid of that. I suspect there's some feedback going on with the TV sending its image back up to the digibox and interfering with the 'Video' output because recording with the TV off didn't result in this; that'll teach me to buy expensive SCART leads!

One of the deciding factors for buying this particular model was that it can write VCDs and SVCDs as well. Now that I've got it, I can't help but feel that this is entirely superfluous... it can also record audio CDs which is a little more use. I've noticed that the SVCDs it makes aren't actually the format normally associated with SVCD (480x576, interlaced MPEG2) but a slightly different format known as CVD (China Video Disc) which is 352x576, interlaced MPEG2. Having been a VCD and SVCD bore for a while now, I can tell you that the good thing about this is 352x576 is a DVD standard resolution, so the same files created for CVD can be used for DVDs, and funnily enough one of the DVD recording settings - a 4 hour record setting - is at this exact same resolution and data rate. I realise you've fallen asleep by now, but the vertical resolution is far more important than the horizontal one for video, so the difference between 352 and 480 really isn't that much of a problem.

To go with the DVD recorder, I bought a DVD writer for the PC. This one, in fact:

(Obviously not that particular one, given that's a JPEG pinched off the eBuyer website, but you get the idea.) It's an NEC ND-3500, was a shade over £40, and it rocks. It can write to all DVD formats bar DVD-RAM... sounds familiar!

So, with all this kit, we've been recording Green Wing. We got the recorder in time to record the 7th episode onward (and luckily the whole series is being repeated on E4, late on Friday nights). Without adverts each episode is about 52 minutes, 9 episodes in the series, so I figured with a bit of work I could get three episodes per DVD in good quality.

We recorded each episode at the normal 2 hour setting (2 hours on a 4.7Gb DVD) which is exactly the same (as far as my eyes can tell) as the quality it's broadcast at on Sky digital. Each one went onto a DVD+RW with adverts intact. Then, over to the PC, and I extracted the MPEG2 streams with TMPGEnc MPEG Editor and cut away all the adverts - to the very frame they appeared and disappeared. Saved them all. These files then went into TMPGEnc DVD Author where chapters were added - at the start of each episode, and at the start of each part (ie. where the adverts once were). Basic menus were added (to be honest, it doesn't do much more than basic menus, but they work fine), and the DVD file structure was created.

However, the DVD file structure was bigger than a blank DVD+R (why use +RWs when a +R is about 40p, eh?). No problem. Fired up DVD 'backup' (*cough*) utility, DVD Shrink, which is ace. What it does is take a DVD as source, analyses what it contains, and then lets you cut bits out and apply more compression until a big, dual-layer DVD's data fits on a smaller, single-layer DVD. So, I fed in my Green Wing structure and it worked out it needed an extra 3% compression to fit, and over the next hour it did just that - first analysing in depth, and then recompressing.

The result - an immaculate recording of the last third of the series, with no adverts. Stunning. Given the tiny amount of extra compression that needed doing, the drop in quality isn't noticeable at all. I can firmly recommend all the kit used. The DVD recorder itself is excellent (and even better value for money now) and the software side of things did a great job of manipulating the data the DVD recorder created. Top stuff.