Digital Video Recorders
Hard-disk DVR's are both cool and useful for quick work. They also offer a simple editing (cutting out commercials, setting chapter points, joining and formatting DVD menu). Yes I used the word simple, but DVR's are far from simple devices inside. They work with mpeg2 format, they are able to split or join mpeg2 and they do it in real-time and with a good quality. You can do these things on PC, that's correct, but with DVR you don't need to reboot it, it, remove 3 pounds of spyware from it every night, download drivers or breath very quietly near it when it does capture video in fear of drop frames.
Even if you do all editing on computer, these things can be a great time saver for quick work. Except they are all consumer devices and so the word hip and cool overshadow the word ergonomic. They rather put a mirror faceplate than a jog shuttle even that the production cost in China for both is about the same. But what do I expect? For $5000 more I can probably get a big-square-model with large buttons, jog-shuttle, joystick and everything to make editing easier. And maybe even a mirror faceplate for thousand extra.
I have a love-hate situation at home with Panasonic DMR-E85. I like the fact that it can produce great mpeg2 quality, all in real time, partially thanks to the real time temporal NR which allows for much better compression than a software under the same bitrate. But I am always struggling with the remote.
There is a quite capable MPEG editor inside with frame cutting, but this is far from no cozy editing with a mouse. This is not even editing with a keyboard. This is a true punishment for all our TV recording sins. Don't get me wrong, as remotes go, this is actually a pretty good one.
For example to cut out part of recording like commercial is an exercise worth a game console fanatic. I have to hit Fast forward to quickly find the approximate start, then press Play, hit Forward back to find the exact start of it, eventually hit pause and slow forward or Play or back to get to the spot then hit OK to set Mark In. Oh, good, I've got it. Wait a minute! That's just the In mark. I have to do all this finger-circus for the Mark out!. And again and again - all with small packed buttons on remote where my finger easily covers two of them. I have to do it constantly looking at TV with one eye and looking down on remote with the other to see if I'm not pressing something I would regret.
Of course what I really need is called Jog-Shuttle. Sadly Panasonic doesn't offer any alternative remote with jog-shuttle. It is a consumer product. Jog yourself.
There are some more reasonable universal remote controls and few specialized for video editing even offers a shuttle-like control such as JVC JX-ED11 . Unfortunately you can't really train a shuttle on a device that doesn't support it so you end up with a controller that is more cumbersome than normal buttons.
On the following pages I will describe step by step how I created the home-brew editing controller for the Panasonic E85 DVD video recorder. It of course apply to any other recorder.
