I just purchased this and am working on a transfer of old home movies to DVD from VHS. This unit has a hard drive. I recorded about an hour from VHS, inserting chapter marks myself along the way. Playing back from the hard drive, the chapters work. When I burn the title to the DVD, it has no chapters. There is a mention in the manual about if you don't use the high speed copy, it will not copy the chapter marks, but it should put in its own automatic chapters. I am using the high speed copy, but I get no chapters at all on the DVD. Anyone have any experience with this?
Since posting the first message, I have successfully burned to DVD with chapters. This first time, I had gone back and edited in the chapters. I have found they only seem to burn to the DVD if you put them there initially, when you first record it to the hard drive. I also just last night cut about 3 seconds off the front of something I had recorded. So the answer to metaldudes question is yes.
I just got that recorder and recorded a few of my old VHS-C tapes to the HD and there are no chapters at all. I was under the impression that chapters would be automatically generated every 10 minutes. At least that's what I have setup in the main menu. Could be a bug?
Also I don't seem to be able to un-finalize DVD-RW discs as per the instructions.
If you record what you've got on the hard drive to DVD using one of the real time modes, it will generate automatic chapters at a minimum of 10 minutes apart. If you use high speed copy, it will copy exactly as it is on the hard drive, with no chapters. If you want to use high speed copy, then when you record it to the hard drive, you have to sit there with your remote and manually insert chapters. I use a digital timer set for 4 or 5 minutes and sit there with my remote, hitting the insert chapter button every time the timer goes off, resetting the timer and the cycle continues. If you record directly to DVD instead of the hard drive, it should insert the automatic chapters.
I've never tried to unfinalize anything. Don't know about that, but my previous post has been my experience with this unit. It does the job, but I have to do some work to get it the way I want it to be.
I'm here reading this not-so-well-organized manual right now and I could swear it says the chapters should be generated every 10 minuste even when recording from a external source to the HD. I'm looking for it now. Is this a pretty new model? Maybe Pioneer will come up with firmware upgrades for any known issues.
I haven't used this unit a lot, but my experience has been that in recording to the hard drive, I get no chapters, unless I manually put them in. I went back once and edited them in, and they then worked on the hard drive, but I copied to the DVD using high speed, and they didn't transfer to the DVD, only how it was originally recorded to the hard drive is what went to the DVD. So since I prefer chapters every 5 minutes anyway, I just do them myself. Hope this helps somehow. If you find a better way, please post it.
Well that stinks. I'll probably just have to do without chapters if that is the case. Thanks for the input. I'll definitely post if I come across any other info for this unit.
