That's interesting, be sure to let us know how it works. I just went to Pioneer's website and couldn't find a model DVR-210 in either the current or past product lineup.

pioneer doesn't list it
 

That's right, Pioneer's site does not list it. This is probably because it has been discontinued. I'll let you know how it works.

my report on how the DVR-210 works
 

I've tested several of the functions so far. I ordered the manual but while waiting I just studied the menus - don't know if the manual will offer any important new info.

The fw out direct to my hard drive gives very good quality. I tested it on a DVD I had burned myself from DVDsp via FCP and Compressor. Viewing on my NTSC from the TL in FCP I couldn't see any quality loss at all. Captured it just like I'd capture any other "non-controllable device" source.

FW out to DV, also simple to do and excellent results.

Now, the vhs to DVD . . . another story. I'll actually have to do more tests with higher quality source vhs & shorter runs to see what's the best quality I can get. But so far I've tried a couple things that were about 1 hr. 30 mins. vhs footage of old stuff I had recorded from the T.V. The original footage wasn't that good, recoded on a low end old vhs recorder.

I saw a row of artifacts across the top of the image for the first part, and fairly noisy resolution. I attribute a lot of it to the poor quality source, will do tests later on better source vhs.

A real downside of the tape to DVD is that there does not seem to be a way to avoid the ugly stock menu background that you can't avoid being recorded at the beginning - least I haven't found a way to avoid it. I didn't even try putting in a list of selectable chapters, though that's an option for some purposes despite the tacky look.

The tape to DVD quality I'd say is fine for some purposes - a less expensive way for the client who doesn't require the best resolution and doesn't mind the tacky menu.

For the various functions I'd say it's very much worth the $95 used price I paid.

Universal Remote Code for the Pioneer DVR-210
 

Has anyone figured out a Universal Remote Code for the DVR-210? The manual for the URC was no help. I suspect codes are differant for differant units but I'd like somewhere to start. I tried the search function on the universal remote with no success.

Transfer/edit old footage
 

I'm just getting back into video after several years. I have some old VHS "home movie" tapes and Panasonic VHS/DVD Recorder (that we needed anyway). The dub function works well to preserve the old tapes from a low end VHS-C camcorder, but I was thinking I could take the produced DVD and run it into Sony Vegas Movie Studio (that I have for my new camcorder projects) and edit some of the old footage that was too much trouble using the old methods I had available.

Given that the transfer to DVD format has been done, what is the best format to transfer to for Vegas Movie Studio to edit? Movie Studio won't touch the VOBs (even if I try to treat it as a "Camcorder DVD"), so I'm thinking I could use a tool to make it:
AVI (huge)
MPEG-2 (but would this be reencoded in the rip from DVD)
DivX (which claims to be high quality)

The source material wasn't great, but it's mainly about preserving it and making it more useful without losing significant quality or time.

If you use a DVD-RAM disc to record to you can use DVDLab to import the first VOB and this will then import and assemble the others. You can thenu use the video and ac3 audio file in a number of programs including the Ulead Moviefactory program to edit and author. I have Ulead Moviefactory 5 which will edit from the DVD directly, at least mine will from a DVD-RAM disc. Womble will also edit from a DVD too.

Ron Evans

Thanks Ron, but I'm not entirely sure I understand what that means. DVDLab gives me a number of options for output. I'm using PAL in Australia. If the content of the DVD is MPEG2, is that what I want DVDLab to output, or some other format?

I've been pretty happy with Pioneer DVD stand alone burners. One little glitch that I ran into with the Pioneer 633H-S model 160 gigabyte hard drive was that it will not burn 16x -R DVD's. The previous Pioneer models DO burn 16X, so it's kind of weird that the newer model does not, unless somehow the 160 gig harddrive is older even though I special ordered it a year after purchasing the 80 gig Pioneer DVD standalone burner.

I really like the 32 quality settings that Pioneer lets you choose from. The menu templates only come in 9 choices, they are ok but somewhat limiting, and one MUST use a remote to go to the menu page, it doesn't automatically come up, instead the DVD will just start playing when you insert it, but that's not necessarily a bad thing.

David, DVDlab is just one of many ways to extract the audio and video from the DVD as two files. DVDLab is an authoring program so unless you just want to reauthor the disk its only use is to get these two files. IF you recorded on the DVD recorder it is likely that the audio is Dolby AC3 which many of the editing frograms will not be able to use. However the consumer programs like Ulead Moviefactory can read the data from the DVD which you can then re-edit and create another DVD or just use in other programs. Yes in your case you would be PAL but all these programs are able to work in either PAL or NTSC. The easiest to work with would be Ulead Moviefactory or Womble. They will read the data from the DVD, which you can then re-edit and burn another DVD or save as mpeg files. You can download a trial of Ulead Moviefactory and Womble and they are not expensive programs to have around as they are very useful. I often use them instead of Vegas or Edius, which are my main programs, because the task you are describing is done much faster and better by these programs than the more expensive NLE's.

Ron Evans