[saturnbill]

I have just upgraded from a iMac 600 to a G4 single 1.25 tower and I love it. I did not want to wait to order the dual and have it config with the Superdrive, so it has the Combo. What I need to know is what DVD/R/RW drives can you add to the second bay, and would I use iDVD or some other software to control it? I have heard that you cannot burn movies created in iMovie to a DVD with products like Toast. I want the ability to import a movie from my Canon ZR25, edit it iMovie and burn to DVD. Any suggestions?

[AssassyN]

I'd highly recommend using the same drive Apple ships and labels as their "SuperDrive" if you want to use Apple's own iDVD software to import DV, Edit, and record to a DVD-R. That model is the Pioneer A05. It can be had for a great price HERE.

BTW, CONGRATS on your new Mac! I'm anxiously awaiting my Dual 1.25 G4 PowerMac! And WELCOME to the MacNN Forums...you'll enjoy it here

[derekn]

If you do a search for "DVR-105" on Dealmac.com they have it listed for $153 from Esbuy.com.

Or if you'd prefer the next step, the new DVR-106 is out now too for $180 or so I believe. Same speeds as the 105 but has DVD+R/RW support which Toast does support. I read a report at Xlr8yourmac.com and it does boot an MDD but not sure on iDVD/iMovie support.

I have the same G4 BTW and if you want to take movies from iMovie to DVD you can do it through iDVD. It's not technically supposed to be there but it is. iMovie should just take a movie and give you the option of taking it to iDVD.

One last thing. If you're keeping both the combo and Superdrive in the 5.25" bays, you'll want to move the combo drive to the lower bay and the Superdrive to the top bay. The Superdrive puts out a good deal of heat and there aren't ventilation holes in the back of the metal plate for the lower bay.

EDIT: I just remembered something else too. Not sure if this is still an issue or not, but people were having trouble with the Superdrive being recognized if it was the slave (lower bay) on the IDE cable. Moving it to the top bay and making it the master (it uses cable select like the hard drives) solved the issues and DVD burning worked fine.

[saturnbill]

Thanks for the great information. I will buy the superdrive soon and make the bay switch's so the S-drive is on top. According to Apple, the single 1.25's were not supposed to have iDVD, but I saw the shortcut on the Dock of my computer. I guess I willl have to look to see if the program is installed? I wondered how I would get iDVD into my system, since the only downloads that I can find on the Apple site is the updaters? I have also been recommended to use an external firewire DVD drive that might be faster than the internal one. But once again, software use enters the picture. I would rather have the internal and not have to rely on an outside program to burn movies or archive data. Thanks again for your help. I also bought the 20" Cinema Display...what a wonderful piece of equipment!

[AssassyN]

Well it's not just the 1.25Ghz machine that doesn't come w/ iDVD, it's any Apple that DOESN'T come w/ a factory SuperDrive isn't supposed to come w/ iDVD, but that may have changed...

And yep, to be able to use iDVD you'll want an INTERNAL SuperDrive, not external. And nice pick on the 20" Cinema Display...it's a beauty, eh?

[BrunoBruin]

Originally posted by saturnbill:
According to Apple, the single 1.25's were not supposed to have iDVD, but I saw the shortcut on the Dock of my computer.

We got a couple of combo-drive towers in the office that also had the iDVD icon in the Dock. iDVD was not actually installed, however. You can get iDVD as part of the iLife package of apps. You must have the SuperDrive installed first for the iDVD installer to work. Congrats on your purchase!

[derekn]

Originally posted by saturnbill:
Thanks for the great information. I will buy the superdrive soon and make the bay switch's so the S-drive is on top. According to Apple, the single 1.25's were not supposed to have iDVD, but I saw the shortcut on the Dock of my computer. I guess I willl have to look to see if the program is installed? I wondered how I would get iDVD into my system, since the only downloads that I can find on the Apple site is the updaters?!

It's in your apps folder, I was a bit surprised to see it too. And saw why Apple didn't make it available for download, 1.69GB. LOL It's part of the iLife Suite ($50), but iLife is included with all new Macs now so it's on your System Restore DVD disc that came with the G4. You can run the Software Restore seperately I believe and reinstall iDVD if need be.

Originally posted by BrunoBruin:
We got a couple of combo-drive towers in the office that also had the iDVD icon in the Dock. iDVD was not actually installed, however. You can get iDVD as part of the iLife package of apps. You must have the SuperDrive installed first for the iDVD installer to work. Congrats on your purchase!

Ooops, maybe not. LOL I haven't actually had to restore iDVD so I'm not sure it works.

One thing with the new version BTW is that it now lets you run iDVD even if you don't have a Superdrive. You can, edit, create new projects etc, you just can't burn them. Before it would check for a Superdrive at startup, if there was none, it wouldn't launch. Not sure what the future implication of that is, maybe support for external DVD burners eventually but who knows.

[BrettOZ]

You might want to have a read of this from the Aple Support pages:

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.h...onID=anonymous

It then goes on to this article about the iDVD package:

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106451

Gives you all the info you need to get it going...

[saturnbill]

Well, I just checked my Applications folder and what do you know, iDVD is there! So I guess all I need is the Superdrive. I looked at the links on the Apple site and it seems that iDVD is already on the drive I guess as part of the iLife package. Probably easier to install all the same for every computer.

[G-mac]

I successfully restored iDVD with the Restore DVD that came with the MDD 1.25.