[Robe]

I want to start burning DVD - If I buy a DVD Burner, what software can I use? Will Toast work? Any hardware recommendations? Basically what I want to do is burn Movies etc...

Do I need to buy a new Mac just to get iDVD? May be a good excuse!!!!

[jcarr]

If you have a G4 tower, the after-market Pioneer DVD-R drive should work with iDVD. You'll need to purchase the 'free' iDVD 2 update from the AppleStore.

[cejones]

I recently purchased an external Pioneer DVD burner... you can use Toast to burn DVDs... If you want to burn your own home movies to DVD, you will need iDVD... but it only works with macs with an internal Pioneer drive... so if you have tower or an imac, eMac that you can replace the stock drive, with the DVD burner... you are set... if not, then you will need to buy the DVD Studio Pro in order to burn to an external DVD burner.

I hear there is a patch/hack that fixes iDVD to play properly with external DVD burners... but I haven't seen it...

Pretty shitty for Apple to place this software limitation on iDVD.

[mitchell_pgh]

Originally posted by cejones:
Pretty shitty for Apple to place this software limitation on iDVD.

Then why would people buy a superdrive from Apple? Apple spent a bunch of money to make iDVD. Not only that, but they have to pay for encoders etc. They get this money from selling superdrives and newer Macs...

[Robe]

I read that the Formac drive comes with software that looks similar to iDVD - does anyone have any real world experience with this - or at least read through the specs and see if it is true?

Here is the link:http://www.formac.com/p_bin/?cid=sol...rives_devideon

Thanks - Robe

[icruise]

Apparently the Formac software has improved a fair amount since I read about them last time. AT that point it was apparently little more than a Formac logo on a menu which lead to your video files -- not very impressive. I downloaded the trial version of the new Formac software, and it does look somewhat better, but it still isn't comparable to iDVD.

A better option might be the Capty DVD program that I refer to in this thread.

[k_munic]

external dvd writers are NOT supported by apple software, the patch from other world computing, dvd enabler, does NOT support MAC OSX.2. (just x.1 and lower)

formac has it's own dvd authering software, which is rated in test not bad; the trial version you can download is limited to 10min of video.

SIZZLE is a very early beta to burn dvds, but has no menus, chaperting a.s.o., so you can't compare it to idvd. same function with toast, no authoring just transfering muxxed datas as VIDEO_TS and AUDIO_TS on a dvd (or CD)

to make it simple: easiest way - buy a complete apple system. or be an enthusiast apple fanatic, use ffmpeg OSEx, sizzle and stuff like that.

[Eug]

Originally posted by k_munic:
external dvd writers are NOT supported by apple software, the patch from other world computing, dvd enabler, does NOT support MAC OSX.2. (just x.1 and lower)

Just to be picky, Apple's DVD Studio Pro, Disk Copy, and Disk Utility all support external DVD writers. Just iDVD doesn't.