DVD Burner
 

I have a laptop Macintosh G4 with medium processing power (I believe around 500) and 512 MB of Ram. I just got IDVD and want to burn a master DVD so I can duplicate it and send it out. My laptop does not have a DVD burner. What do I need to do? Buy a seperate burner and connect it to my computer to burn.

If so:

What's the best burner to buy (quality and good price)?

And will my computer be fast enough to burn a DVD?

Thanks

If your computer was able to install iDVD and meets the minimum req's then, it should be able to author DVDs. Beware encode times! Encoding a full DVD worth of video to MPEG2 on a 500MHz G4 will be an overnight (or two day long) job. As for the burner, LaCie (www.lacie.com) makes good DVD burners, up to 16x I believe, and some are DL. Other companies make good ones too, just look for specs and a price that suits you. You should be able to get one for ~120+. Good luck!

Has Apple changed iDVD? It only used to work on Macs that were factory equipped with SuperDrives http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthrea...threadid=16587

I couldn't find anything definitive on Apple's website, but the requirements seem to say you need a superdrive. Unfortunately they also say you need a faster processor than 500mhz

Boyd, I believe iDVD5 allows you to burn a disk image of your project. Supposably you can burn this on another Mac that has a superdrive, but I believe you can also use Toast and other apps to burn the disc.

I have purchased an external burner called the Plextor to use with my Powerbook G4 laptop. But I only have a 550 processor and it won't let me burn. It's not fast enough.

I do have acess to a PC and can use the burner with that. How do I create an IDVD 5 project with my Mac and then convert it so I can transfer the project to the PC and burn it to the burner.

My main goal is to create DVD's with about 40 minutes of media on them. Is this somthing I can do or should I just return the burner?

are you sure that your mac can't handle dvd burning?? it doesn't take much h.p. to use an external burner, the files just spool off of the hard drive.

the smartest thing you could do is to encode the mpeg2 files on the pc, then transfer 'em across the network to the mac for dvd authoring, if idvd is what you must use.

the reason for that is because the best mpeg encoders are on the pc side of the fence, although i believe that the latest version of sorenson comes with the mainconcept encoder(?)... it might be really slow running on mac, tho, be sure and check that out.

Dan,

How do I transfer my files into MPEG 2? I have been putting a DV stream quicktime file in as my media.

i don't know anything about idvd, but it sounds like the program is converting your dv file into an mpeg2 file... dvd's must use the mpeg2 video format.

the road to learning the details of dvd authoring is a rather long and painful one... as many here will attest to, lol, including myself... and the learning never really stops.

what you need to do at this point is to figure out just what idvd is doing, and how you can tweak it's settings to improve the quality and flexability of the dvd's you create... things like altering the bitrate, and how it affects picture quality are a real good place to start.

you might also find the plextor forum and see what they say about the minimum computer requirements to burn dvd's to their drives... plextor has been around for a long time, and they have a solid reputation.