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Best method for recording Dolphins Games?

DOLFANMIKE

DOLFANMIKE

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I'm about to make a move to get a read/write DVD for the upcoming season if it turns out to be a good situation. I was hoping if any of you are already doing it you'd share some of the plus and minus of recording Dolphins games on DVD vs VHS Tapes.

Questions:
- How many Dolphins games can go on a single DVD? How much do DVD's (Blank) go for? Is the DVD Digital Quality when recording games?

- Is a DVD recorder as easy to hook up as a VCR with Direct TV?

- Any other important items I should know about in regards to DVD and Dolphins games?

I have 3 Large boxes of Dolphins games on Tape going back to Troy Stradford's Rookie year, and am fast running out of storage space. Any help would be appreciated.
 
Originally posted by DOLFANMIKE
I'm about to make a move to get a read/write DVD for the upcoming season if it turns out to be a good situation. I was hoping if any of you are already doing it you'd share some of the plus and minus of recording Dolphins games on DVD vs VHS Tapes.

Questions:
- How many Dolphins games can go on a single DVD? How much do DVD's (Blank) go for? Is the DVD Digital Quality when recording games?

- Is a DVD recorder as easy to hook up as a VCR with Direct TV?

- Any other important items I should know about in regards to DVD and Dolphins games?

I have 3 Large boxes of Dolphins games on Tape going back to Troy Stradford's Rookie year, and am fast running out of storage space. Any help would be appreciated.
Click to expand...

This should help
http://www.consumer.philips.com/global/b2c/ce/catalog/assets/downloads/dvdr75_us_lft.pdf
 
Re: Re: Re: Best method for recording Dolphins Games?

Originally posted by dolfan06
do they make a DVD recorder that will copy a tape? sure would save me alot of space!;)
Click to expand...

They do. I'm about to go look those over too. i'm hearing around 600 bucks
 
Just capture the video on your computer, edit and convert to mpeg format. A game will fit on a regular cd.
 
How many Dolphins games can go on a single DVD? How much do DVD's (Blank) go for? Is the DVD Digital Quality when recording games?
Click to expand...

1 game will fit on a DVD. It will fit but not at full high quality. Technically the game will be about 2 1/2 hrs. without commercials and that will record to DVD at about 44% quality (about 3.7 Mbs when selecting mpeg audio) DVD's hold 4.7 gigs of video.

High quality DVD record time = 1hr.
Standard Quality DVD record time = 2hrs.
LP Quality = 4hrs
EP Quality = 6hrs (poor quality)

There are cheap DVD's out there, but I would not recommend them. I tried some recently and had 7 failures out of 25. I've had the best results w/ Maxell DVD's which cost about 3 $ per DVD. (note: that is for the DVD-R format...I don't know the cost for DVD+R or DVD+RW formats)

The video signal is converted to a Mpeg2 digital format and the quality is determined by the amount of Mbs. An original recording at standard quality is pretty good.

Is a DVD recorder as easy to hook up as a VCR with Direct TV?
Click to expand...

If it is a stand alone unit, it should hook up just like a VCR.

Any other important items I should know about in regards to DVD and Dolphins games?
Click to expand...

If you have the bugdet for it...get a DVD recorder that has a hard drive. The unit I have will record up to 9 hrs of high quality video. I can then assemble a play list, edit out commercials and burn it to DVD at the highest quality possible for that exact total running time.

Personally, I would stay far away from burning to regular CD's. The quality is only Mpeg1 video and not even meeting VHS standards. CD's hold only 700 mb of video information. I attempted to burn the Miami vs Denver game to CD just to see how it looked and my software relayed the message that CD's can only burn approximately 65 minutes. It was impractical so I didn't even give it a try.
 
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Re: Re: Re: Re: Best method for recording Dolphins Games?

Originally posted by DOLFANMIKE


They do. I'm about to go look those over too. i'm hearing around 600 bucks
Click to expand...
heck, its worth it, if i can cut down the size of my movie library. i don't have a whole lot of movies, maybe 100-200, but the quality would be preserved better!;)
 
cheapo method

The cheapo way is to use a video capture card (some newer video cards have VIVO capability) and record the game to your hard drive of your PC with Power VCR software.

Then you can cut it with TMPGEnc into 3 parts, and burn it to SVCD with Nero.

All on the cheap. SVCD's are compatible with Win DVD and lots of newer DVD players.
 
The biggest thing IMO (aside from video quality) is deciding what's important to you. For me, I don't need the whole game. I don't want it. All I want are the plays, replays, and perhaps a few drives (in their entirety) when things get dramatic.

A game averages about 2.5-3 hours. If you get rid of the commericals and inbetween plays, you're left with about roughly 25-40 minutes of plays, replays, and pre-snap formation. Hell, the ball is actually IN PLAY an average of only 8 minutes per game.

If you cut it all down, you can fit a game on 2 or 3 CD-R's (assuming you're recording in high quality).
 
The biggest thing IMO (aside from video quality) is deciding what's important to you.
Click to expand...

Very true Muck. You inspired me edit down a game to see what the quality of a VCD looked like.

I used the Miami vs Denver game as an example. I didn't yet have my DVD recorder, so the original recording was on VHS (slp).

The total game time with just the commercials removed was about 2 hrs. & 20 min. I burned it to DVD at about 45% quality. It maintained the VHS quality pretty good, but had some slight artifacts.

I then edited down the same footage and just left the formation at the line of scrimmage to the end of the play. I left in an occasional instant replay. The total running time was about 58 minutes of "pure football".

The bad part is that it took about 175 edits. That would drive me crazy on game day doing all that starting and stopping . The quality was lacking. It was noticably on the blurry side and the chroma (color) was bleeding in a bad way...but if you watched it from a distance it wasn't half bad. The tight shots looked pretty good.

If your happy with VHS (at the slow speed) and just want your games to be on disk it might be a valid and inexpensive option.
 
This is considered a little in the "grey" area when it comes to copyright laws etc.

But, what many people do for archiving video is use a Tivo and use extraction tools to get it to their computer and eventually to a DVD-Rom. There are many message boards out their with complete instruction on extracting video from a Tivo.

And, in my personal opinion game day would not be the same without a Tivo. Especially if you have a DirecTV receiver with an integrated Tivo recorder. They allow you to record two different channels at once, meaning you can record 2 games... or do like I do... set the Dolphins game to record... and flip between the other interesting games during commercials without the risk of missing anything. If you happen to get back and action has already resumed... just close your eyes, and rewind it. ;)

Quite often... I will set it to record the Dolphins game ahead of time... and start watching the recording about 15-20 minutes after kickoff. This allows me to skip through commercials, timeouts, pre-snap garbage time etc.

Sorry to go off in another direction... but the original point still stands. For all the other benefits of owning a Tivo it can also be a very usefull tool for archiving games to DVD.
 
Originally posted by PhinstiGator


Very true Muck. You inspired me edit down a game to see what the quality of a VCD looked like.

I used the Miami vs Denver game as an example. I didn't yet have my DVD recorder, so the original recording was on VHS (slp).

The total game time with just the commercials removed was about 2 hrs. & 20 min. I burned it to DVD at about 45% quality. It maintained the VHS quality pretty good, but had some slight artifacts.

I then edited down the same footage and just left the formation at the line of scrimmage to the end of the play. I left in an occasional instant replay. The total running time was about 58 minutes of "pure football".

The bad part is that it took about 175 edits. That would drive me crazy on game day doing all that starting and stopping . The quality was lacking. It was noticably on the blurry side and the chroma (color) was bleeding in a bad way...but if you watched it from a distance it wasn't half bad. The tight shots looked pretty good.

If your happy with VHS (at the slow speed) and just want your games to be on disk it might be a valid and inexpensive option.
Click to expand...

What did you use to import the VHS' onto your hard drive?? Did you use a TV tuner card?? Which one?? I just ordered a new card that supposedly records flawlessly from VHS. My current one is ok. But it's just not up to par with what we want to do.

I suppose 45% quality of MPEG1 might not be up to par (especially at the slow speed). Not for me anyway. I want at least MPEG2. Also, you can burn higher than MPEG1 to regular CDs. You can burn anything you want. Just a question of capacity.

I guess you just have to learn to deal with it if you want to avoid editing later (starting and stopping). I do it every week on the fly. It's second nature now. Most times I just do it without thinking. But that way I can rewatch the game right after. And that's a big plus. :)
 
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