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Spoffo · Mar 23, 2005, 09:32 PM

People who use a Mac for burning DVDs and also own a Panasonic stand-alone DVD recorder (by far the most widely-owned brand) have a problem: The only re-writable format the Panasonic recorders support is DVD-RAM. Macs out of the box can't even read RAM discs, and when you get past that barrier, trying to convert the .VRO files on RAM discs to the .VOB files used on DVDs is fraught with difficulties - especially a tendency for the converted files to have audio out of sync. Most of us would love to be able to do this, since discs burned with something like the Pioneer burner in modern Macs seem to be much more reliable than those burned on the Panny. Also, the Panasonics can't produce a widescreen disc with the 16:9 flag set right.

After an inordinate amount of time rooting around this forum and VideoHelp.com, I've sorted it out. There is actually a simple, quick, lossless process for taking programs on DVD-RAM discs from a Panasonic recorder and burning them into a standard DVD on the Mac. I've posted a detailed step-by-step at http://www.videohelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=262974. The three keys to the process are:

a) Knowing that you must set the VBR resolution on your Panasonic to "fixed" rather than "Auto" (which is the factory default.)

b) Finding a little $25 piece of software called ReadDVD! that allows the Mac to read RAM discs

c) Discovering that Toast is perfectly happy working with .VRO files, and will convert them into standard VIDEO_TS/VOB format without any tedious encoding. (It sure ain't documented anywhere.)

So, RAM disc users unite! and enjoy the fruits of my research (While you ponder the fact that Panasonic has just - finally - started shipping recorders that support DVD-RW, making the whole RAM Fandango unecessary.)

Eug Wanker · Mar 23, 2005, 10:03 PM

Thanks for the useful info.

I've just generally taken to recording stuff on DVD-R directly on my Panasonic lately though.

Who knows... Maybe Tiger will include UDF 2 read support. It'd also be nice if the new DVD Player.app supports .vro.

Spoffo · Mar 24, 2005, 12:55 PM

"It'd also be nice if the new DVD Player.app supports .vro"

Easy solution. Get VLC. It's free and open source.

VLC plays .VRO files beautifully, right off the RAM disc. It also plays commercial discs from any region regardless of the region setting of your drive. It plays PAL as easily as NTSC, AND it allows you to de-interlace video. The Apple player has never included deinterlacing for 30 fps video, and the result is terrible combing on home video recordings and many featurettes on commercial discs. The only weakness of VLC is that it doesn't read the aspect ratio flag, so you have set the aspect ratio manually in preferences.

(Actually, Quicktime Pro also plays .VRO files if you've installed the MPEG upgrade. Just change the extension from .VRO to .MPG)

Spoffo · Mar 27, 2005, 05:11 PM

Turns out there's one complication: If you have trimmed the beginning of the program on the Panasonic, the original simple process of just dragging the.VRO file to Toast won't work. The sound in the converted file will be out of sync.

The fix turns out to be simple: Using MPEG Streamclip (Freeware), demux the .VRO file to m2v and AIFF (lossless, 5 minutes or so). Then use these files in Toast. If you're a bit mystified by the alphabit soup of demuxing and remuxing (as I was) I've posted detailed step-by-step over at VideoHelp. Just follow the link in my first post above.

Eug Wanker · Mar 28, 2005, 10:20 AM

Originally posted by Spoffo:
Turns out there's one complication: If you have trimmed the beginning of the program on the Panasonic, the original simple process of just dragging the.VRO file to Toast won't work. The sound in the converted file will be out of sync.

The fix turns out to be simple: Using MPEG Streamclip (Freeware), demux the .VRO file to m2v and AIFF (lossless, 5 minutes or so). Then use these files in Toast. If you're a bit mystified by the alphabit soup of demuxing and remuxing (as I was) I've posted detailed step-by-step over at VideoHelp. Just follow the link in my first post above.

That's why I made the comment about .vro support. I'd like to see it Just Work natively in DVD Player.app.

However, I think the priority for DVD Player.app is proper de-interlacing.

One of the problems I have had with some demuxed stuff is audio sync when I tried to reimport the stuff into iMovie. I haven't tried it with the latest demuxers or in iMovie 5 though.

mromberg · Apr 14, 2005, 07:56 PM

First of all, thanks for the info both here and at VideoHelp. I just installed a new Pioneer DVR-109 into my iMac G4, installed ReadDVD, and now I can read my RAM discs off my Panasonic DVD recorder.

Is there any way you can burn a DVD-R version of a DVD-RAM, complete with chapters/titles? My stand-alone recorder has a lot of functionality with regard to writing a DVD-RAM, including editing chapters, titles, etc. I was hoping I could keep the work already done on the recorder and transfer the DVD-RAM "image" to a DVD-R disk without losing everything.

Thanks again for all your hard work.

grovberg · Apr 15, 2005, 03:42 PM

Originally Posted by Spoffo

Macs out of the box can't even read RAM discs,

While I have nothing of use to add to the real discussion, I thought I would point out that this is definitely not true. In fact, Apple was one of the first companies to ship a Mac with a DVD-RAM drive. I bought one sadly, only to swap it out for a SuperDrive years later.

I don't know if there's a formating thing that would prevent it from reading from the Panasonic drive, but the RAM standard is definitely supported.

Spoffo · Apr 16, 2005, 08:24 PM

Mromberg -

I don't know any way to burn a DVD-R from a RAM and keep functioning menus and such from the RAM. Then again, it's not an issue for me, because the RAM disks that come form my Panasonic stand-alone have no menus worthy of the name. They just have a directory listing of the programs on the disk that is the same as what the Panny recorder shows for its hard disk.

If you pull the files from a RAM on your Mac, you can generate a decent basic menu, including thumbnail frames, as part of the "Video" section of Toast.

Spoffo · Apr 16, 2005, 08:48 PM

Grovberg -

Yeah. I've heard that there were a number of Macs that could read RAM discs, at least Pre-OS X. The problem is all with Panther (and I assume earlier versions of X.) The Drives (at least the Pioneer ones used in desktop G5s) read RAMs just fine, but the OS doesn't support the data format used on RAMs. The ReadDVD! patch, which allows a Mac to read RAMs from any drive that is physically compatable with them, is published by a company that seems to be in the business of promoting the UDF format, and their main business seems to be UDF tools for drive makers, authoring services and the like.