best ways to duplicate your title's?

[tim1]

I'm interested in being able to duplicate the title's i already have in order to get title's i still want, but i'm confused as to the best way of doing this.
I'm based in the UK, so any VHS duplication would be PAL thus ruling out most American trades, so that leaves dvd, do you think it's best to copy through a computer based dvd copier or a standalone copier (that sits under the tv)? Eg. is it just a case of hooking up a video player to a standalone copier? Also how would you make a dvd copy of a dvd?

[Welles Fan]

All my transfers from VHS or laserdisc to DVD-R have been via a Panasonic stand-alone recorder. Considering that all my video "stuff" is all together there, it makes it relatively simple to plug them all into the recorder. I even record from my satellite dish (with DVR) with it.

When I bought the recorder a year ago, it was around $399. Had I decided to go the computer route, I would have needed a video capture card (and good ones seem to run around $199), and DVD burner, and software to do it with. This would have run at least as high in $ as the option I chose, and would have required a lot of hard drive space. Also, the processing time to convert the captured video to the type of mpeg used in DVDs is very time-consuming as well. Since I primarily use my home computer for online WW2 flight simming, I did not want to have it tied up with video projects all the time.

The stand-alone recorders work like VCRs, in that you can record in SP (2 hrs), LP (4 hrs) or EP (6 hrs) mode. With a VCR, this refers to the speed of the tape. with a DVD-R recorder, it means you will use a higher or lower bitrate for the recording. It also has a feature called "flexible recording". This allows you to set up the recorder for a specific running time, and the recorder will use the best possible bitrate to make it fit. This is good for movies that run at, say 130 minutes, to keep it on one disc. Limitations of the stand-alone include the simplistic menu structure. You can title the over-all disc, and title individual titles on the disc, but that is all. The recorder automatically inserts chapter stops every 5 minutes or so. Another limitation is the inability to capture separate audio streams, like audio commentaries from a laserdisc. You have the option to record the regular movie sound, or the commentary, but you cannot record them all at once.

[mteal]

Wellesfan,
Interesting that you mention the $399 Panasonic, because lately I've been sniffing around Panasonic's $599 standalone DVD recorder, which has a 80 Gigabyte harddrive with special editing features and enough space for about 100 hours of programming. I was impressed by the DVDr that you sent me not long ago, so I may take the plunge one of these days. It's still confusing tho, what with the battle of DVD+ vs. DVD- vs. DVDram. But I think that once DVD recorders become more common and affordable, trading stuff will be much more convenient and much less expensive. And unlike the online resource-sharing set-up proposed in the other thread, it would not be such a sitting target for copyright holders out there, who might think an online pool of copyrighted material was a bit much. Of course, they may not care too.

[Welles Fan]

mteal: Because I upgraded my DiSH Network receiver to one with a hard drive that records up to 100 hours, I did not feel the need for a DVD recorder to have such a harddrive. Since I would mainly have used the HD for recording off of Fox, TCM, etc, I can already do that with the Dish DVR receiver. However, if you can edit with the Panasonic model you mention, that could be pretty cool.

The Panasonics only record DVD-R, but I have a burner in my computer that can burn to + or -. I believe the one I sent you was a +. My players seem to play either equally well. I originally bought both types, because the + discs are a tad cheaper, and usually burn faster. However, I would find I needed a - for the Panasonic and would often only have +'s, so I just started buying - discs for convenience. The results are the same.