detail information

Editing content:

While it is quite straight forward to keep appending recordings to a VHS tape so long as he tape is wound to the end of the last recording, it can be quite a tedious task to prepare to overwrite an existing recording, never mind trying to overwrite one if the following recording is important.  Well, this DVD recorder helps out here as it offers the ability to specify which existing recordings can be overwritten as well as ones that must not be overwritten.  Unfortunately unlike some other DVD recorders, this recorder does not offer the ability to split or merge recordings, hide chapters, edit chapter marks or change the menu thumbnail in an existing recording. 

DVD Menu

The DVD menu screen allows the user to browse though existing recordings, select a recording for editing or view info about existing recordings.  This menu looks similar to what the DVD menu would look like if played in a DVD player:

In the above screen shot, we made a couple of quick recordings to show an example of a disc containing multiple recordings.  The thumbnails are automatically created by the recorder based on the beginning of the recording.  The pencil indicates where the next recording will take place, in this case the free spare.  If the pencil mark appears below an existing recording, that recording will be overwritten during the next recording and potentially anything after it unless it has a lock icon. 

Edit Menu

The edit menu can be accessed by selecting the recording to edit and pressing the 'Edit' button on the remote:

In the above case, we selected the fourth title.  The main edit options include Rename, Protect, Overwrite and Erase.  Even though the thumbnail is shown, unfortunately this cannot be changed.

Renaming a Title

Unlike recordings on a VHS tape, it is possible to name each recording to make it easier to identify recordings later on.  The Recorder automatically time stamps each recording, so the only thing the user may want to add is the event name.  Once the 'Rename' option is chosen in the Edit menu, the following screen appears:

While most text editors on VCRs and other DVD recorders use a tedious letter selection method where the user must navigate up or down through the alphabet to select each letter, this recorder makes text entry quite straight forward with a 2D letter entry table, including lowercase, symbols and international characters. The recorder is quite sluggish at navigating about the screen, moving at most 2 steps in any direction per second no matter how quickly one repetitively presses a navigation key.  The numbers along the top allows the user to key in letters using the remote's numeric keys, much like keying in text on a mobile phone, with the exception that the enter button needs to be pressed to enter the highlighted letter.  The stop button moves the cursor over to the right menu.  The two following screens shows the symbol and international character selection tables:

Symbol selection

International character selection

Protecting a Title

While VHS tapes can be protected by breaking off the write-protect tab, it is not possible to protect individual recordings for accidental overwriting.  DVD+R and DVD-R discs cannot be overwritten, so this is not an issue with these.  However, when overwriting an existing recording on a DVD+RW or DVD-RW, any recordings after this will in turn be overwritten if the new recording is longer than the existing recording being overwritten or if the edit marker is not moved to the end.  So to prevent an accidental overwriting of an important recording, this is where the 'Protect' feature comes in.  When this option is turned on, all other editing features are also greyed out until the protection is removed later:

The following screen shows the lock symbol indicating that the recording is protected:

Overwriting a Title

Like a VHS tape, it is possible to being overwriting from a certain point on with a rewritable DVD.  When a title is marked for overwriting, the recorder will keep overwriting each title in sequence unless it meets one that is protected or until the user moves the edit marker back to the end. 

In the following screen, we have enabled overwriting for the 2^nd title, which can be seen by the new pencil mark being moved to below Title 02:

We performed a 10 second recording such that the full recording will fit within the space the original 2^nd Title took.  Going by the recorder, we could have recorded up to about 1 minute 6 seconds worth of recording, since it would have overwritten Title 03 if we let it.  Now, when we bring back up the menu, we can see that the original 2^nd title is gone and that the other titles have remained intact.  As no other title was marked for overwriting, the pencil (new recording mark) has been moved back to the empty position:

To show the effect of the protect feature, we marked the 3^rd title for overwriting, set the play mode to standard play and started a recording.  Even though we expected the recorder to fit double the original time the 3^rd title took up as it showed 1 minute 21 seconds of recording time available, it only recorded for 49 seconds.  Then again, chances are that it done this as a precautionary measure to prevent it colliding with the 4^th title:

Finally, we lifted the protection off the 4^th Title and rerecorded over the 3^rd title to show the effect if we let it record beyond the original length of the 3^rd track:

As we can see, the 4^th title has been lost.  In fact, if we left the recording continue, the 5^th title would have been overwritten also once the space originally occupied by the 4^th title would have been consumed by new recording.  Unfortunately, unlike a VHS tape, there is no way to recover an overwritten recording, even if it was partially overwritten (at least without specialised PC tools).

Erasing a Title

Erasing a title works much like overwriting one, with the exception that the title is immediately lost, unlike overwriting where the title is not lost until the next recording takes place.  When the erase option is chosen for a title, the recorder will give a final warning before the title is erased:

Once the title is erased, a blank thumbnail now appears where the title use to be:

While it may seem unusual to not have the following thumbnails moved back to fill in the gap left by the deleted title, this deleted thumbnail is left there on purpose such that it can be overwritten if necessary.  The time indicated below the thumbnail is the amount of recording time available there.  As the recorder will automatically overwrite following titles if a new recording extends beyond this, we strongly suggest protecting any title following a deleted title to avoid accidental overwriting of important titles.

Overwriting an erased title is straight forward by simply enabling the 'Overwrite' option on it, like marking an existing title for overwriting: