Ok, I know this might not be the best place but you guys seem pretty knowledgable. Ok so I have a g4 and I am getting a dvd-r for it. I was looking around and the extrior ones talk about firewire and was wondering if that port is to import through firewire to the comp or from the comp into the drive. If thats the case I would need a firewire card with mulitple ports correct? One to go from the camera into the comp and one to go from the comp into the dvd-r drive?
Thanks for your help.

Give me a dollar I'll give you a film!

there are people more knowledgable than me here, but i'll try.

the firewire drive connects via one of the fire wire ports on your computer. if you have only one you'll need to unplug the camera and than hook up the drive when you need it.

to make a dvd you need to capture video off the camera onto the hard drive, use fcp or iMovie. than you edit your video if you want and then export to a dvd burning program like iDvd or DVD studio pro. then you plug in the dvd drive (unless you have two firewire ports, than it'd be plugged in all the time) and burn your movie onto a blank dvd-r.

Stirling | Dueling the Fates @ Zomp

FireWire ports handle both input and output in the same port. You don't need to worry about that. If your computer only has one FW port, then you'll need a drive that supports what is called daisy chaining; which means that the drive has two FW ports on the back; one goes from the drive to the comp, and the other from the cam to the drive. The second port on the drive just acts like a second port on the computer.

Hope that helps.

_________________________
http://www.jswfilms.com/

By the way, to add on to titanium donut's post, you will need DVD Studio Pro to export movies as DVD's. iDVD a very simple program not capable of creating DVD's you can use on a home DVD player.

quote:

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Originally posted by LiQuId:
By the way, to add on to titanium donut's post, you will need DVD Studio Pro to export movies as DVD's. iDVD a very simple program not capable of creating DVD's you can use on a home DVD player.

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This is not true at all. I use iDVD every day to create DVD's that can be played anywhere.

But, you're right that he'll need DVD Studio Pro, but for a different reason. For marketing purposes, Apple made iDVD only compatible with the DVD-RW drives that Apple installs into the machine. You need a different program to burn on a 3rd party drive.

_________________________
http://www.jswfilms.com/

wow! you scared me LiQuId, as i havn't yet TRIED making a dvd with it. good thing jw said it aint so

Stirling | Dueling the Fates @ Zomp

The G4 comes standard with 2 firewire ports already built in. These ports are located on the back of the computer, usaully right near the usb ports. As far as daisy chaining devices together, the firewire IEEE spec can technically support up to 60,000 devices in one chain (give it up for the boys at apple).
However, IDVD does support a large number of external DVD-R/RW drives, if you are going to go with the external burner, try manufacturers like QUE. I am currently using an Apple SuperDrive with CD-R and DVD-R support. 90% of all DVD-R drives write on DVD-R discs. Be careful though, there are two types of DVD writers and Discs, these types differ by giving a -R/-RW or +R / +RW at the end of the DVD prefix. To my knowledge, the DVD+R spec was deleoped by Sony for mostly stand-alone burners.
P.S. DVD-R is the most widely accepted standard which will play in 98% of all home players, even playstaion 2!
If you have any more questions, feel free to drope me an email at soundmahn@yahoo.com

Blast! You guys have mostly beaten me to it!

As for DVD formats, this is where things get confusing. DVD-R (e.g. Apple's Superdrive) is pretty much compatible with stand alone DVD players ... as long as they are new.

DVD-R comes in two flavours ... General and Authoring. You can spot the difference by looking at the discs ... you'll see a thin ring near the centre of the cd.

This is done so that General discs cannot have any form of region encoding burnt onto them so pirates would have a hard time copying discs (HA! In their dreams!).

Authoring discs don't have this ring and are three times the price. Authoring discs also need authoring burners.

You can't burn general discs in an authoring burner and vise-versa. So, while you can make your project in DVD Studio, unless you can export to a DLT drive or burn to an external authoring drive you can pretty much forget mass duplication unless the lack of region code and CSS encryption doesn't bother you.

DVD+R seems to be an odd one. It's slightly less compatible with DVD players (even though you can still master onto them) but you can't store quite as much as DVD-R.

What everyone else has said is pretty correct ... you'll have to be more specific about what you need before I can suggest anything.

Richard Purves
Living Film
http://www.livingfilm.co.uk/

JW, you must tell me how to export movies I have made to a DVD using iDVD. I tried, but was unsuccesful [obviously]. Hit me up on AIM o0liquidblue0oo
or email me:
liquidflo@comcast.net
I've got a G5 with the Super-Drive so I'm sure if what you say is true, I should be able to burn DVD's. Thanx.

FWIW, I too have burned DVDs with imovie--it's a simple point and click operation. And, I've had general DVDs with region codes on them (unintentionally). I think you can also have CSS on general disks, Richard. Most any player that plays a -r will also play a +r. And playstations should be able to play everything, including -/+RWs (because it's a DVD-ROM). Samsungs are one of the few major brands that still have compatibility problems.

As per the original Q, most has been covered, but I'll add you're G4 should already have a two firewire ports on it. An it is best if you use the two ports rather than daisy chaining the two devices. Only the latest DVD studio pro supports an external drive, I believe. So make sure if you do decide to go external, your app supports your device.

I answered my own question. For some reason when I tried iDVD the first time, I remember having trouble, and looking in the help section and it said something about needing DVD Studio Pro to burn DVD's for home players and such. Maybe it was a previous version? Iono, newayz, thanx guys.

Nope, you can't have CSS encryption on a DVD-R general disc because the CSS key is stored in the same section where the Region coding is stored.

Besides, I'll bet you don't have a CSS licence from the DVD-Forum either! :-)

Richard Purves
Living Film
http://www.livingfilm.co.uk/

I'm curius where you get your information? After checking again, I found neither authoring nor general disks can carry css material. With general disks, it is imosible to do a bit-for-bit copy of css encoded data. I got this info from pioneer directly. And I personally have made a general dvd-r with specific region codes (I designated the wrong one and couldn't play it on my region one player). This was with DVDSP, on my A-04 using general, brand name DVD-Rs.

Thanks guys you've been a lot of help I appreicate it. Had another question for you. I have a DVD player in the g4 already. Should I get the external burner? Im assuming this would help with making copies of my dvd once Im done but I wanted to make sure. Also are there differences in burners for macs and pcs or are they mostly all workable in both....as well as in G4s i seem to be having trouble finding info on them at store sites so im thinking they just generally work in both.

Give me a dollar I'll give you a film!

anopther question. Burners that are say -r/-rw and +r/+rw will work with any of those dvds correct? and depending on which I decide to use will determine the probability of it working on a specific player correct?
Also someone said earlier that unless i have the newest version of dvdsp I wont be able to burn from a external burner. So should I then get an internal burner and take my dvd player and stick that on the outside with a external port?

Give me a dollar I'll give you a film!