You need a copy of DVD Moviel Album SE & the DVD Movie Album Tools disc that comes packed with (retail) Panasonic drives (or look about, they're out there). They will let you extract individual programs from the RAM discs as VRO files. Womble Mpeg Video Wizard and Tmpgenc DVD Author 2.0 will accept the VRO files. They will also both import individual programs from the disc.
DO NOT use Movie Album to 'extract' MPG files. For reasons unknown to mortal man, they will convert the AC3 2.0 audio to MPEG audio. The Movie Album Copy tool will leave it as AC3 (again Womble and Tmpgenc will accept/edit these without complaint and leave it as AC3.
ONLY AT YOUR OWN RISK should you simply 'drag' the VRO file from the disc to to your HD and use it. It's a little long to explain here (but I will if necessary) but given the way DVD-RAM works, it is POSSIBLE to have NON-CONTINIOUS VIDEO in the VRO file...
short version.
- start with a BLANK, FRESHLY FORMATTED disc.
- record 60 minutes on the disc
- remove 20 commercials using the DVD-Recorder functions
- record 30 more minutes.
- drag it to your HD directly.
You'll find the last 30 minutes UNTERLEAVED in the 1st recorded program.
It's the way RAM works and it's what let's you 'reclaim' the edited space back to be recorded on.
Oh... sneaky tip #2
- format a RAM in the Panasonic recorder, you have 2:00 recording time
- record a short program (a minute or so)
- take the disc to a PC drive and load it up
- use the DVD-Movie Album program and DELETE the program you just recorded (MUST BE DONE ON THE PC WITH DVD-MA for this trick to work).
- take the disc back to the Panasonic recorder.
- you now have 2:07 recording time and will KEEP this even after deleting/recording on the Panny. It will keep the 2:07 until you reformat the disc.
I don't know why, but it just works.