To get this to work, there are some factors that must be right:
Ensure that ...
Setup
Picture
Hybrid VBR Resolution
... is set to Fixed, otherwise video from the recorder may have multiple
resolutions which authoring programs on the PC may either refuse to read or split at the points of change.
You can correct existing recordings made with the wrong setting by correcting the setting and then dubbing choosing one of the FR, XP, SP, LP, EP formats that re-encode the file rather than High Speed which is just a file copy. However, reencoding may lead to some loss of quality.
You need to be able to read the DVD-RAMs at the PC hardware level, that is, a drive with the right laser and other hardware characteristics to read the patterns of digital 0s and 1s stored on it; for example, I have an LG GSA-4167B. If you're unsure as to whether yours can, but have Nero installed, the Info Tool should tell you on the Drive tab, otherwise, check the specifications in the drive's documentation or on the manufacturer's website.
The digital 0s and 1s read at the hardware level must be interpreted into the DVD-RAM's directory and file structure:
This is usually the role of a driver. DVD-RAM is a sub-specification of Universal Disk Format2 (UDF2), so in theory any UDF2-compatible drivers should be able to read the drive, but in practice it appears to be less clear cut than that.
In Linux, I had no problem reading from the drive with just the UDF File System installed, but then neither Samba nor a FAT32 drive would allow me to transfer files larger than 2GB to my Windows PC for authoring - the video file is commonly around 4GB. At the time, I didn't think of using ftp, which would probably have solved the problem, that is how I now get large files off my Dreambox.
In Windows, InCD, bundled with some drives, from version 4 should be able to read DVD-RAMs, and indeed on my PC (Windows 2000 SP4) v4.1.0.0 reads them with no problem. However, when I tried a later v4.x on this same hardware, same build, that didn't work, and I seem to recall others having a problem with the same version that works for me!
These Panasonic drivers ...
http://panasonic.net/pcc/support/drive/comb/kxlcb30a/download.html
... usually seem to work. (For a non-Panasonic drive like mine, the Panasonic-specific part of this
installation is disabled - one can only use KXLCB30A.EXE to install UDF2).
In general, in Windows, there does not seem to be a guaranteed way of getting this to work, but here are some tips for how to approach troubleshooting:
Some PC drives can only read DVD-RAM, and, as far as I know, those that can write to them cannot format a DVD-RAM in such a way that it is readable by Panasonic HD / DVD Recorders, so it seems DVD-RAM transfer can only be from recorder to PC, not the other way round.
You might be tempted to transfer by DVD-RAM more than one programme at a time, but I don't recommend it, because the resulting files on the PC can not be directly edited - you can only extract video from them. Depending on which extraction method you use, you may lose information such as the aspect ratio. To preserve this info you may then end up keeping a whole 4GB+ DVD-RAM file containing several programmes of which you are now interested in maybe one.
Whereas, if you reformat the DVD-RAM in the Panasonic DVD-R before each dub and only dub one programme at a time from HD to DVD-RAM, then the resulting files on the PC will each only be as big as the original programme file plus a little file-system overhead, so you can then store and manipulate the programmes individually, preserving the aspect ratio, etc, until you are ready to author them onto DVD±R(W).
Video can be extracted from the DVD_RTAV folder by programs such as Project X, PVAStrumento, TMPGEnc DVD Author, and Ulead DVD MovieFactory.
Some authoring software may work better from a copy on hard disk of the DVD_RTAV folder than from the original on the DVD-RAM. If, when working directly from the DVD-RAM, the resulting video is shorter than expected, extraction halts with an error, or there are blemishes in the result that didn't seem to be there when the programme was playing back on the recorder, try copying in the normal way DVD_RTAV from the DVD-RAM to a hard disk; if the copy succeeds, try working from the copied folder; if the copy fails, there may be a flaw on the DVD-RAM surface, to which they seem to be quite vulnerable, so try using another DVD-RAM disk to make the transfer.
Other video blemishes may originate in the source programme - glitches in the signal source, etc. Sometimes these can be got round on the recorder by re-recording the source, for example when dubbing from VCR, or if the programme is repeated, or by dubbing the video to the DVD-RAM in real-time, which re-encodes it, rather than in fast mode, which is simply a file copy, though re-encoding will usually entail some loss of quality.