[MAlan]

1. How many GB will 1 hour of video take up?
2. Has anyone used CaptyDVD? Do you like it?
3. How long should it take to burn 1 hour of video to a DVD with my 4x2x12x DVD burner from Lacie?

4. What are the pro's and cons of DVD -rw vs. DVD +rw?

Thanks.

[willab]

1. DV takes about 12 gigabytes per hour.
2. I did not like Capty DVD, but I have heard that some people like it.
3. The actual burning will take about 25 minutes for an hour of video, but encoding takes much longer and depends on the software used and your computer's speed.
4. -r is more compatible with older players, +r is sometimes cheaper. I would buy whatever you get the best deal on.

[MAlan]

thanks for the response.

As for the encoding part how long should that take on a 400 MHz G3 for 1 hr video? CaptyDVD has a check box that says something like 'yield to speed' that is suppossed to be optimized for the vector unit in the G4. I know you might not be able to answer my question in terms of hours but what about as a fraction of the G4 speed. i.e. the G4 would be x times faster at encoding for DVD than the G3. Also make a guess as to G5 would be x times faster than my G3. (can you tell I'm trying to justify buying a new computer)

As for software would you expect Toast 6 to be faster than Capty DVD?

It sound like when I go to make a dvd the first time it may take all night. But if I want to make copies then I can use something like this DVDimager http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/19456 and then I would be able to make the copy in 25 min. Is that correct?

[Uncle Skeleton]

the g4 will be roughly 5-10x faster than a g3 of the same mhz, for things like encoding and decoding video. G3s are not suited to video encoding at all. Is your machine's processor upgradable?

[MAlan]

Processor may be upgradeable but there is no way I'm doing that. I can get a new computer for practically the price of an upgrade.