Real Time Recording onto External DVD from Camcorder

[Mike Altman]

Hello,

I haven't gotten a clear answer on this through video companies and reading discussion boards.

I need to be able to have a consumer digital video camera (either camcorder or high quality CCTV) record direct to an external DVD. The DVD would need to be able to be played in a region 1 DVD player. The length of the recordings will be around 2 hours (beyond the limit of most DVD camcorders)... I would use this set up for recording focus groups.

We want one, permanent wall mounted camera with video and audio captured to the DVD recording. The start up would be simple for unskilled employees to just press a couple of buttons and then eject the disk and pass on to the client, unedited and capable of playback in the majority of domestic players.

Is this possible? It seems that most camcorders need to record onto their own internals (either mini DVD, memory, tape etc) and then to be played back and re-recorded onto external medium. Another problem people are pointing out is the camcorder's standby mode that needs to be switched back on.

Right now we have an old VHS camcorder (without the tape inserted) running this set up to a VHS deck, but we would like to update our technology.

Thank you for your help!

[Robert M Wright]

There's no reason why you couldn't simply replace the VHS deck with a standalone DVD recorder. If you want to replace the camera with a digital camera too, some DVD recorders allow for DV input via firewire (or you can just connect a digital camera via analog output from the camera).

[Bill Davis]

Mike,

It's not a huge task - and there are plenty of DVD-burner "appliance" decks out there that would work for you.

Most of them take standard composite video inputs or S-video, or even IEEE 1394 feeds and encode it and burn it directly to a disc.

Unfortunately, making a playable DVD isn't as simple as burning the content to the disc. There MUST be at least rudimentary authoring involved so the playback machine knows what files to seek out and play (file naming) and where to find them (menus and authoring) on the surface of the disc.

On a typical DVD burner appliance, this means using a TV Style "remote control" to navigate and TYPE information. It's like a cel phone approach to text entry. And it's a PAIN IN THE BUTT.

Can it be done? You bet. Is it easy? Not so much. My DVD appliance can easily burn 2, 4 or even 8 hours of content in real-time - but it takes at LEAST 10-15 minutes of futzing around after the burn stabbing at the remote control and moving around the authoring menus in order to get it to burn and "FINALIZE" (dvd authoring machine speak for writing the MPEG-2 encoded content into the VOB files, while writing the results to disc.) before the disc pops out.

I'd MUCH rather create discs on my computer since I have full keyboard access and that makes it MUCH easier to name files and discs and do all the other necessary fudimentary authoring work.

In truth, NO DVD creation system will ever be totally "one button record" easy similar to VHS.

Good luck.

[Jim Andrada]

Well, my el cheapo Samsung VHS/DVD player recorder that my wife uses to dump her cooking shows to from the DVR has an easy DVD mode (or something like that) where it just records and if the disk is 30% or more full when you hit the eject button it automatically finalizes the DVD and spits it out - no menus, no titles etc, but might be good enough.

But I 175% agree that using the crappy remote controller to do ANYTHING is worse than eating soup with chopsticks.

(Side note - I used to live and work in Japan and we do indeed eat soup with chopsticks - but we cheat and actually drink from the bowl and just use the chopsticks to push solid stuff out of the bowl)

[Bill Davis]

Originally Posted by Jim Andrada

Well, my el cheapo Samsung VHS/DVD player recorder that my wife uses to dump her cooking shows to from the DVR has an easy DVD mode (or something like that) where it just records and if the disk is 30% or more full when you hit the eject button it automatically finalizes the DVD and spits it out - no menus, no titles etc, but might be good enough.

But I 175% agree that using the crappy remote controller to do ANYTHING is worse than eating soup with chopsticks.

(Side note - I used to live and work in Japan and we do indeed eat soup with chopsticks - but we cheat and actually drink from the bowl and just use the chopsticks to push solid stuff out of the bowl)

Jim,

Cool.

Clearly someone finally understood that what people really wanted is a simple pushbutton device that does this.

Next time I see the kind of dirt simple burner you describe, I'll probably buy one.

One time avoiding having to futz with authoring and the resulting time saved will more than pay for the gizmo.

Thanks.

[Jim Andrada]

Bill - If we can get stuff like this here in the wilds of Tucson, you must certainly be able to find it in Scottsdale:<)

[Brendan Marnell]

Originally Posted by Jim Andrada

Bill - If we can get stuff like this here in the wilds of Tucson, you must certainly be able to find it in Scottsdale

Gentlemen,

I'm looking for what you're looking for.

[Steve Richard]

This is my very first post of any kind.
I joined this forum to find a solution to a similar problem. We would like to mount a consumer mini dv camera on the wall at church and send the live feed to the nursery and other overflow rooms in the church.

Some of these solutions seem like they would work for us but we also would like to record as well.

As long as I'm dreaming couldn't we somehow get the analog audio/video (or firewire for that matter) out from the camera into a video card on the PC at the sound booth and distribute it on the cat5 network to PC's in those rooms live? I'm sure this is a hardware-software solution and or a ton of money. I like the Idea of the dvd deck and try to send it around analog.

Any thoughts?

There's a lot of wisdom on this site.

[Oren Arieli]

This might suit your needs: http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/cont...SOVRDMC5&Q=&O=