After taking up that woot.com offer posted here two months ago, and after a couple of free repairs, I am ready to start converting my videos to DVD. I have done already and I have a question for those have started converting to DVDs. After dubbing and entire video cassette to DVD, I have one title with the entire dubbed video on it. There are five different shows on that DVD, and I want to seperate the one title into five different titles for each of the shows. Did any of you ,when dubbing to DVD, created different titles, and if so how did you do it?

I'm afraid that each individual answer to that question depends on what equipment (or computer software) each individual uses. You should check the owner's manual of the DVD recorder you purchased to see how to make titles on your DVD. Or, at the very least, you need to let us know what machine you're using in case someone else might have the same model and can tell you how.

Be aware that some DVD recorders probably won't let you go back and cut your single recording into individual titles. You may be forced to record each show individually if that's what you want. In any case, it all depends on your machine, there's not one "right way" to do it that's universal.

Matt thanks for the help. After the outage, I decided to dub one episode stop and then restart dubbing on another episode. After the process, I have created a DVD with five seperate titles. If any of you got that woot.com DVD recorder, that is how you create seperate titles. Sorry to take up your time.

I haven't come across a sub-$200 DVD recorder yet that allows post-record editing...if anyone knows of a model that can make new titles after a record, I'd be interested to know.

Since the topic is up, allow me to add my two cents...

I started transferring my VHS to DVD about three years ago (no, I don't have that many tapes--I'm just slow...:) ) I went to a Best Buy store, looking to pick up a Pioneer DVD burner I'd found on their website. While there, I noticed an open-box buy for a Toshiba RD-XS32, which has the DVD burner plus an 80GB hard drive, for about $20 more. I went with that, and I honestly believe it's the best purchase I've made in the past 10 years. I can't imagine how much more difficult it would have been to transfer stuff without the hard drive.

My basic workflow for dubbing a tape is to record the program onto the hard drive, then go back and put chapter marks at the start and end of commercial breaks. After that, I can create a playlist that plays back only the program segments (eliminating commercials very cleanly), thus getting five "half-hour" programs on a single DVD (at approx. 23 min each without commercials).

Also nice: I can dub en masse to the hard drive, then go through and sort stuff easily afterward (i.e. if I've got five episodes of WML? on five different tapes, I'm not swapping tapes at the end of each episode--I just dub everything from one tape, then move on to the next tape, and so on; once everything is dubbed to the HD, then I go through and organize.) If something doesn't dub properly (i.e. the tracking on the VCR is out of whack), I haven't ruined space on a DVD by burning directly to disc; I just stop the recording and delete it.

And it works really well as a PVR without the restrictions and fees of Tivo; when I get home from work, I just fire it up and watch that night's Jeopardy! in about 20 minutes, skipping through each commercial break in about five seconds.

I was just looking on eBay the other day for another one of these units as a backup should mine give up the ghost (which it's not even close to doing); looks like they're going for under $200 on eBay. (A quick Google shows prices for new ones running $240-$360.) I don't mean this to turn into a commercial for the thing, but it's seriously the best piece of video equipment I've ever purchased.

Rebel, I am curious about your free repairs. Is it with your unit or am I misunderstanding you? I bought one as well off of Woot and have not had any problems with mine.

Thanks,
Don

The first repair was because there was a little screw up in the DVD board, and I got it repaired for free because of the 30-day warranty (save for the $7.00 shipping charge). Then the remote for the unit went dead, so I called Toshiba up and got them to send me a new remote for free (trust me, the remote is important). Maybe it was bad luck, but everything is up and running, and what I can trade has now tripled.

Thanks! :-)

It sounds like it.

It would be interesting to know if the hard drive is hackable; if you could replace that drive with a larger one. With 300GB hard drives under $100, it's a compelling upgrade.

I was just looking at that the other day; there's a fairly lengthy thread at AVS Forum that talks about replacing both the HD and the DVD drive. I haven't had time to read all the way through it, but I know someone got a 160GB drive to work in this model, and someone else was talking about running an external enclosure on their RD-XS52 with 2TB (!).

FWIW, I've got about six hours on my drive right now at SP (4.6Mbps) and it's about 15-20% full.