NTSC Mini DV Camcorder - How to record on to PAL LG DVD Recorder

Just to fill in the gaps for anyone interested.

The seller refused to accept the Camcorder back.

Another one I'll have to put down to experience (long line of poor Ebay
sellers including a string of non-working items and a lens that froze up
as soon as I got it out of the box).

Ebay Buyers beware.

 

Presuambly somewhere he added the rider "without sacrificing quality
compared to the best that DVD can handle".

The above is just useless information, you can keep on piling more in and
the quality keeps on falling. You should try one of those Superbit DVDs and
see what happens to quality when you devote all of a double layered DVD to a
sub 2 hour movie and forgo all the 'special features'.

If you say so... I am new to this.

 

Nope, never said any such thing. Just keeps insisting it's not possible
to put more than one hour without recompressing. Which is absolutely
not the case with several commercial DVDs that can be put onto a 4.7Gb
disc without any further compression, because they were always small
enough to fit - 'Madagascar' being just the latest example. 'Jurassic
Park 3' being another good example, conveniently ignored by Tony.

But I agree completely with you that it's perfectly possible to vary
the compression ratios to meet just about any size you want. What Tony
refused, and still refuses to accept, as far as I know, is that there
are many examples of commercial movies that have been mastered down to
a level where they will fit a 4.7Gb blank with no compression on the
users part at all. He's fixated on the 1 hour barrier, completely
ignoring the fact that Hollywood does not use the cheap an' cheerful
MPEG compressors we use, and they can take days doing it if they choose,
giving more than enough quality at lower compression rates. Hence they
have the ability if they want to put 'Madagascar', an 86 min film, into
just 3.22GB. I haven't heard anyone complaining about the visual quality
of this DVD, yet according to Tony it can't exist in his little world.

No, it's the facts of the case. I make no claims about these discs other
than they exist, they're perfectly good DVD quality, and Tony denies
their existence. That's all I ever claimed. There are commercial DVDs
that can be put on 4.7GB disc with no user recompression required. That
is the long and the short of it. That is what Tony insists can't happen,
in spite of irrefutable proof being rubbed in his face.

No argument, from me. It's just the matter that it is, and has, been
done several times with some commercial releases. Yet they are still
good enough for commercial release. Something Tony refuses to take on
board.

Hold it right there... Superbit is a marketing scam, and if you actually
looked at the bit rates used for many of the so-called 'Superbit' DVDs
you'd see they are in fact no greater than many other 'ordinary' DVDs,
and in some cases even slightly less. In short, 'Superbit' is snake oil,
nothing more. No denying they're good discs, but they're nothing above
and beyond, other than they try and charge more for folks who don't know
any better.

Trouble is Tony isn't, he's just arrogant and ignorant. A powerful
combination guaranteed to piss people off.

Regards

Mark

 

Oh. :-(

Despite your 'No' I think we are saying the same thing, I just didn't see
the point of the examples, it seemed a statement of the obvious which I
attempted to take further.

I have no means of measuring the bit rate but I have been able to compare
one Superbit with the standard issue and apart from Superbit having DTS when
the standard issues sometimes don't (which appeals to me) I can see an
obvious improvement on a 50" screen. OTOH I concede that a friend who has
compared more issues says on some the improvement is fairly marginal. They
seem to be disappearing now, presumably to make HD-DVD look better.

I've never paid more than £7.99 for one so snake oil or not I have no reason
to complain.

Sooner or later, yes he does unfortunately.

 

Is the ebay item still "live" (they delete listings after 90 days)? What's
the number?

(I only ask so we can all have a "whew, glad it wasn't me" and pass
judgement about whether it's obvious.)

 

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/MULTI-STANDAR...ryZ14968QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

Don't send him to ebay again!

;o)

 

It would be nice to be able to get my LG DVD recorder to accept the NTSC

I know you've already stated your preference and been given a "black box"
solution by "Dontwalk", so this is irrelevant really, but (to be honest) I
think I'd go for the PC editing solution as it's going to cost about as much
as the cheapest alternative - and you get the option to edit your video too!

Firewire card, cable, tax & carriage - £15
Canopus Procoder Express - £42 + VAT + carriage
DVD burner inc VAT - £35 + carriage

Canopus will do the best job of converting your video. I would capture and
edit in NTSC DV using Windows Movie Maker (or a better editor, if you
already have one - WMM is "good enough" and is free). When you've finished
editing, save it as a NTSC DV file and use Procoder to convert it to PAL DVD
in one operation.

If you can replace the camera with a PAL one, great - but in your situation
I'd do the above. And just because I know what NTSC means, it doesn't mean I
wouldn't ever be in your position. I bought a job lot of halogen bulbs on
eBay because the picture showed they looked identical to mine. when they
arrived, they were, but they were half the size. The listing quite openly
gave their dimensions - I had no argument.

 

It's not just you or Mark, far to many people have stopped posting to
this group because of his 'attitude problem'.

 

I have no means of measuring the bit rate...

Put the DVD in your computer DVD ROM and navigate Windows Explorer to the
VIDEO_TS folder.
Sort by name and there will be a sequential series of VOB files, the largest
sequence of which collectively make up the feature film.
Select this subset of files (not including the one that ends with a zero),
right click and select "properties".
Divide the total size of the files by 125, then divide by the duration in
seconds, and you'll get the combined audio/video/subtitle bitrate in kbps

For example "Mrs Brown" (Judi Dench/Billy Connoly) has the
files VTS_01_1.VOB to ...4.VOB
These total 4,199,014,400 bytes.

The film lasts 1:40:45

so the bitrate is (4199014400 / 125) / 6045
which is 5,557kbps

If you want to further break it down into stream bitrates (for example, just
the video) you'll need to do something a bit more advanced, but this gives
you a rough enough idea for quality comparison purposes.

 

Argh - just replaced my GPSIII with an i3 (still got the GPSIII if anyone
wants a GPS for trail-making, walking etc) based on the recommendation of a
bunch of land rover owners. Absolutely the worst people to trust, as they
are more interested in off-road driving than on-road.

Anyway - I was lucky. It's a fantastic little unit if you're wanting a route
planner, and less than a hundred quid, too!

(It was £175 in November!)

 

OK, I never thought of that, I never use my PC for viewing DVDs

And mine is 6485510144...

....which I divide by 125 to account for bytes and kilobits and 6100 its
running time in seconds. Which is a number too big for my calculator but I
think comes out around 8506kbits.sec.

So no wonder that Superbit disc looks far better than the standard version.


But thanks for the tip, obviously I should take a course in sideways
thinnking!

 

It will be inflated with a DTS soundtrack, possibly even two or more,
depending on the language options. I can assure you that many Superbit
DVDs do not have a higher VIDEO bit-rate than many other non-superbit
DVDs. They are mastered to a high degree, but not exceptionally, nor
uniquely so. The word 'Superbit' is really just marketing fluff, though
you could argue you won't get a duff Superbit disc, so in that sense
it's valid, I guess.

Regards

Mark

 

I can only speak as I find, in just one case have I been able to do a side
by side comparison and the Superbit won quite easily. Other Superbits I
would rate at as very good rather than exceptional and I wouldn't argue that
some 'ordinary' DVDs are not just as good. However as I said you always get
DTS with them which may not be obtainable by other means.

Last week I loaned a Superbit to someone who has recently bought a HD ready
32" screen, not because it was Superbit but because of the content. However
they did remark on the visual quality when they returned it. OK, it's a
sample of one disc and a sample of at best three people so one cannot draw
any firm conclusions - but at under £8 a disc I don't really care.

Are you going to be just as negative about HD when it comes? ;-)

 

I'm not negative, just aware of the marketing hype. Like I said, they're
fine DVDs. Just not uniquely so, is all.

As for HD, hardly! I have both a HD-Ready 52" RPTV and a HD-Ready front
projector with an electic 103" drop down screen all raring to go as soon
as Blu-Ray (or HD-DVD) and Sky get their collective acts together.
Though I get something reasonably close already with my Lumagen video
processor, so it won't be a huge step up that it might be for some
folks.

Regards

Mark

 

I don't disagree and I shall check out the bit rate on a few other Superbit
issues and the best of the bog standard ones. However my example was 50%
better than your example.

I'm pretty much ready too.

Ahh, upscaling no doubt. Since I only got into 'home cinema' last month and
with HD discs just around the corner I think I shall give it a miss and hope
the HD players include decent upscaling from SD.

 

Thanks for the help - just haven't got the time or patience to mess
about with downloading the video to PC.

Cheers

ps Now relisted the camera - item number 7584625269 and looking for a
PAL version (also some way of getting the 15 minutes of recording off
the tape in it and on to a DVD)

 

I use GPS in one of my jobs (timing high speed train runs).

I had a Garmin GPS III myself but unfortunately the receiver isn't
accurate enough to lock on to a signal inside new trains with their
coated windows).

A new Sirfstar III chipset receiver does the trick - amazing reception
if anyone is looking for a new GPS. I chose a Mio A201 PDA with a
Sirfstar III chipset.

Coupled this with TomTom 5 and GPS Dash software (on the recommendation
of the helpful types on the GPS Newsgroup).

Sorry for rambling on, and (off topic too!).

 

To be pedantic, the downloading to the PC and downloading to the DVD
recorder are both real-time operations so you have to do them anyway. It's
the transcode to DVD format (which happens simultaneously during the DVD
record) that is the "extra step" on the PC.

Mine all happen when I go to bed. I'm just about to get a batch going.

 

nighty-night

 

As already stated, Tony, it's the way you tell 'em. You've been
criticised for the same things since God was a small boy and you were
pretending to know everything about being a web designer. You see, some
people have realised that just because you get on your high horse every
time someone questions the crap that you spout, it doesn't actually mean
that you know more than them. It just means that you're a loud mouthed
bully who hasn't actually got the wit to win an argument based on your
intelligence alone.

Yawn, yawn, yawn. Another stock answer from Morgan the Organ. I seem
to remember that one being used in the freeserve.web.authoring newsgroup
in 1998 (and probably many times since in one guise or another)

I don't know why you suggest things you've demonstrated you can't use
yourself. Many's the time you <plonked> people when you were failing in
your web design career only to retaliate unimaginatively to a later post
of their's.

If you really believe you have something to offer then do it with good
grace based on your experience rather than what you can get from Google
(reminds me of David Brent in the Dostoevsky episode of the office).
There's two ways you can look like an expert, Tony:

1. Learn your craft and teach others
2. Don't learn your craft and try and rise above others by pointing out
their weaknesses.

Until you can do 1 then shut the f*ck up because most people will find
you out if you do 2 and you're going to end up looking like more of a
loser than you do now.

Just my 2p worth.

A