Is It Possible to Edit a recorded Program

[yyyiiikes]

By edit I mean be able to mark a selection of the program to save only that part.

Thanks!

[Radio Enginerd]

By edit I mean be able to mark a selection of the program to save only that part.

Thanks!

Easy answer = NO

If I understand your question right, you can not mark and save a portion of a program. Every once in awhile I see something on the Today show I want to share with my wife. When the segment get's close, I change the channel (to clear the buffer), then return to the channel I want to record, press record... I press stop when I want to stop. It's not exactly what you're asking for but works for recording segment.

[yyyiiikes]

Thanks for the sharing the work around... typically I want to edit after recording. But this will be handy to know when watching live TV.

[armophob]

Thanks for the sharing the work around... typically I want to edit after recording. But this will be handy to know when watching live TV.

Yes, wouldn't we all. I can imagine deleting the commercial breaks of my favorite programs in advance and then restarting them and watching straight through without having the remote in my hand the whole time. :D Could be why they don't offer it. Imagine how up in arms the Networks would be then.

[n3ntj]

I made this suggestion last spring here and I think it was added to the Wish List. I don't know if its there anymore. You can record 2 hrs of a show and want to keep just 2 minutes in the middle or the last 15 minutes, there is no way to currently do this without saving the whole program.

Can someone please verify that my original idea is still on the Wish List for the HR20/HR21 series? If not, can it be re-added please? Thanks.

[davring]

I think it would be very hard to implement as the data is stored on the drive in a compressed state as one block of data. I don't think it would be possible to index it by time without decompressing it first.

[Canis Lupus]

You can also use bookmarks :)

On any recorded program (does not work on live), pause it at the point you want to begin, then press the Green button.

To jump to a bookmark, Press Yellow, "Jump to a Bookmark".

Or use the Skip to Tick feature to jump to bookmarks.

;)

[cartrivision]

I think it would be very hard to implement as the data is stored on the drive in a compressed state as one block of data. I don't think it would be possible to index it by time without decompressing it first.

The compressed state it's stored in is the MPEG2 or MPEG4 compression that the data is already in as it's streamed off the satellite tuners, and as bookmarks demonstrate there is no problem finding accurate index marks within that stored data. The only decompression that ever has to be done on the data is the MPEG decoding to watch it.

The bottom line is that a save segment function is very doable. It's just a matter copying the correct segment of the program data from one segment of the disk to another and setting up the appropriate entries in the playlist data structures for the copied segment.

[Tom Robertson]

As I understand some things, there are interesting legal ramifications depending upon how far this is taken.

If you were to edit (using DIRECTV equipment, which is their concern) there is some potential liability for "unauthorized editing of a copyprotected product". A recent variation on this was the "clean versions" of movies that were edited and resold, even tho the copyright holder was paid for the original work. The mere fact it had been edited was the issue.

Now, if a UI could be created so that the original work was unedited but an "edit list" was created by the user and applied at the display time, that might strangely enough get around the issue. You aren't altering the original, just changing it at display time (just as if you had used trickplay anyway.)

More likely, we might first see some means to "identify the real start and stop point" so the rest could be "trimmed" perhaps. Depends on how the lawyers weight in on these matters.

So if you're looking to chop out things to save space, that isn't very likely right now--aside from perhaps a start/stop bookmark/trim.

Remember, I'm just the messenger of my understanding of some strange wrinkles in the law. Not the defender. :)

Cheers,
Tom

[cartrivision]

As I understand some things, there are interesting legal ramifications depending upon how far this is taken.

If you were to edit (using DIRECTV equipment, which is their concern) there is some potential liability for "unauthorized editing of a copyprotected product". A recent variation on this was the "clean versions" of movies that were edited and resold, even tho the copyright holder was paid for the original work. The mere fact it had been edited was the issue.

Now, if a UI could be created so that the original work was unedited but an "edit list" was created by the user and applied at the display time, that might strangely enough get around the issue. You aren't altering the original, just changing it at display time (just as if you had used trickplay anyway.)

More likely, we might first see some means to "identify the real start and stop point" so the rest could be "trimmed" perhaps. Depends on how the lawyers weight in on these matters.

So if you're looking to chop out things to save space, that isn't very likely right now--aside from perhaps a start/stop bookmark/trim.

Remember, I'm just the messenger of my understanding of some strange wrinkles in the law. Not the defender. :)

Cheers,
Tom


I think that most people would be happy to be able to just save a program segment marked by a start and stop point into a separate program.

[Steve]

Can someone please verify that my original idea is still on the Wish List for the HR20/HR21 series? If not, can it be re-added please? Thanks."The ability to 'truncate' or 'clip' a recording (change the start/stop points) in order to free some disk space" was on the Wish List for a long time and was eventually "back-burnered" due to lack of voter support. It won't go back on because the list is too long as it is, which is why low-scoring items are eventually removed. By comparison, the TiVo and VIP wish lists each have less than 30 items on them. We currently have over 75 new feature requests on a platform that is arguably more full-featured than either one of those.

There is an alternative, if you feel like moving your recording activity to a PC instead of an HR2x. The open-source MythTV (http://mythtv.org/modules.php?name=MythFeatures) platform offers basic video editing functionality and will automatically detect and remove commercial segments from your recordings! /steve

[Tom Robertson]

I think that most people would be happy to be able to just save a program segment marked by a start and stop point into a separate program.
That is my hope. I pad everything by default, which gets strange with movies. Especially when some of the premium channels decides to follow a G rated movie with an explicit TV-MA movie... (Not cool for the kids.)

Cheers,
Tom