[hudson1]

I know very little about digital video despite having read a few web pages and forums. Now that I have a digital camcorder, I'm trying to learn more and need some advice on my next purchase. I have an eMac with a CDRW drive and am looking for ideas on upgrading to DVD burning capability so to able to share and watch these on a television. Here are some question that I think the answers to will help me undertand. If I've asked the wrong questions or have left out important ones, I'm interested in your thoughts there, too.

1) In advance of getting DVD burning capability, what software can create Video CD's that I can play short clips with on my DVD player?

2) Is an external DVD burner a practical solution?

3) I've seen a couple of posts that outline how to shoehorn a Panasonic SuperDrive (presumably taken from a retail internal IDE drive) into an eMac. Is this foolish or a truly viable approach?

4) Assuming an external burner is the hardware solution, is it better to purchase iLife 4 (which would also upgrade iPhoto for me) and apply the workarounds to install iDVD or should I spend more and get Toast 6?

5) Lastly, some external burners are bundled with Toast Lite but I can't find any info on Roxio's website on this product. Does anyone know how this compares to Toast 6 Titanium and/or is Toast Lite adequate for just about anything I would want to do.

Thank for any info you can share!

[nate_02]

I'd go with an external firewire DVD burner and use iDVD. I'm not familiar with what software to use for VCDs.

Sorry, I'm not familiar with Toast lite.

[jac]

MMT-EZ should cover most of your needs until you get iLife (and will probably be useful then too).
Instructions: http://homepage.mac.com/rnc/MMT-EZ.html
Download: http://homepage.mac.com/rnc/.Public/MMT-EZ.zip

[cnelson87]

whoa jac, that's prety cool! i might be mistaken, but i think MMT-EZ is the only mac xvcd solution out there (short of actually really knowing what you're doing).