Editing video content
The ?510H offers a wealth of editing options for any video content that you've got stored on its hard drive. There are two basic editing modes — Original Content and Copy List. Original Content editing alters the hard drive recordings permanently. Copy List editing, on the other hand, lets you essentially create edited versions of hard drive titles that you can record to DVD, without changing the content of the titles on the hard drive. Say, for example, that you've transferred three hours of camcorder movies of your kids to your hard drive and you want to send a DVD of the highlights to their grandparents. Copy List editing lets you hand-pick which scenes you want to burn to DVD and which scenes to leave off, while leaving the original hard drive recording untouched. Later, if you want to create a more complete DVD version of these home movies for yourself, you can easily archive the entire set of movies on DVD, or re-edit a new version using a new Copy List.

Copy List editing gives you incredible flexibility in customizing the DVDs you burn. The edits you make only effect the contents of the DVD, leaving the original recordings on the hard drive untouched.

The ?510H also lets you edit material recorded on a DVD-RW disc in essentially the same ways described above. Original Content editing actually alters content of the titles on the DVD-RW. Play List editing alters the way the contents of the DVD play back without actually changing the titles themselves. Of course, you can go back and change a DVD-RW's Play List any time you want, so this option gives you rather amazing flexibility with archived material. Unfortunately, use of this Play List is only available if you burn the DVD-RW using a recording mode known as VR, and most DVD players cannot play such discs. (Of course, you?ll always be able to play VR discs on the '510H itself.)

Titles, chapters, and fine editing
Many of the ?510H?s editing capabilities revolve around the division of a title into a series of chapters. The division points that mark the beginnings and ends of chapters must be inserted by the user, which can be done during or after recording. Once a title is broken up into chapters, individual chapters can be deleted, or the running order of chapters can be rearranged as you see fit.

While the editing capabilities of the '510H would seem to offer almost limitless flexibility, I found that it wasn't really well-designed for large amounts of fine editing. When attempting to compile a video montage from several dozen short video clips, I found the '510H's editing interface both awkward to use and imprecise in making cuts. The video editing software commonly available on PCs far surpasses the ?510H in terms of precision editing and manipulating large numbers of short video clips. However, this isn't really a flaw in the '510H — it's simply not designed for this kind of work. There was one area, however, where more flexible editing capabilities would've offered a real practical advantage — editing out commercials.

The Chaper Edit menu represents each chapter of a recorded title with a separate thumbnail. You can rerrange the running order of chapters, delete chapters, and combine or divide chapters as you please — the options are almost unlimited!

Removing commercials
Unfortunately, the only way to delete commercials from a recorded program is to break each block of commercials into its own separate chapter, and then delete those chapters one at a time. If you wait to do the chapter breakout until after the recording, the process of removing commercials involves several different editing modes and quite a bit of your time. In general, the '510H's editing features are designed to make it very difficult to delete material accidentally. While this is probably a good thing on the whole, it can make editing out frequent commercial breaks a pain.

For shows that you've recorded to the hard drive with the intention of watching once or twice and then deleting, there?s no reason to bother with editing out commercials (unless the hard drive is very close to being full). The '510H offers several high-speed scan modes and a commercial skip button that jumps forward one minute in the title every time you press it.

However, if you're present during the recording of a program that you plan to archive on DVD in commercial-free form, I highly recommend setting chapter marks at the beginning and end of each commercial break (this painless process requires only one button-press on the remote). If you do this, it's actually pretty simple to go in later and delete the chapters that contain only commercials. Another option for editing out commercials is to use the remote's Pause button to halt recording during commercial breaks, which eliminates the need for any editing after the recording is made. However, unless you?re focused intently on the show, it can be easy to occasionally miss the return from a commercial and thus omit a portion of the program from your recording.

Putting it all together
After spending about 25 hours recording and editing video with the DVR-510H, I found that its pairing of a massive hard drive and a DVD burner not only gives you the best of both digital recording technologies, but also offers some fantastic synergies between the two. The hard drive gives you remarkable convenience and flexibility in recording from TV, with enough storage for dozens of programs and fast, easy access to everything you've recorded — even while a new recording is in progress! The easy-to-navigate menus make it a breeze to either play back a show once or twice and then delete it, or if it's a favorite, archive it to DVD. You also get a great way to compile camcorder movies or old VHS recordings, edit that material in any way you like, and then burn your customized videos to DVD. In short, the DVR-510H offers a truly comprehensive video recording solution. I'll never look at my old VCR the same way again.