info on Burning DVD with older G4

[taronger]

Info for all with older G4s
started with 500Mhz G4 AGP - 256 MB RAM - DVD-RAM- 27GB HD
1) added internal 60GB Maxtor 7200RPM HD
2) increased RAM to 384MB
3) upgraded to OS9.2.1
4) upgraded to OSX10.2
5) upgraded to OSX10.2.3
6) replaced internal DVD-RAM with Pioneer's DVDR-105 (using Pioneer DVS-RP47BF disks- 1-4X speed) -(1-4X disks are now available from Apple)
7) increased RAM to 640MB
8) installed Ilife

-Was able to burn CDs and play DVD movies on first try without any problems.
-Once Imovie3 was installed, I was not able to export to my camcorder a movie created with IMovie2. Imported same raw footage from camcorder into Imovie3, edited it, and was able to export it back to camcorder.
-took same Imovie3 (56 minutes long-59minutes of DVD required), added 25 chapters, exported it to IDVD, IDVD created 4 sets of six chapters each and one set with one chapter, was unable to burn a DVD from this input.
-took a tape of a movie edited with Imovie2 (about same 56 minutes length) , imported it into IMovie3, did not define any chapters, exported it to IDVD, and was able to burn a DVD-R on first try.However, the process required almost three hours to complete.

I found that working with a 500Mhz machine and Imovie3 requires a lot of patience. there is a delay between a click of the mouse and an action being seen on the screen. One must resist the temptation to click the mouse an extra time. Apple claims this is due to a defective RAM. That is possible. I am inclined to think that one 500Mhz processor and PC100 RAM are not powerfull enough to support to support OSX10.2.3 and Ilife. I would be interested to know whether anyone else was able to burn a one hour movie with the same equpment in less than 3 hours.

I hope this info will be usefull to someone else, I had to go through a learning curve to get this far

[flaffer]

I have had nothing but trouble with my Pioneer DV105. I was finally able to get it to play a DVD but have not been able to get it to extract a DVD.

I've tried:
42
DVDBackup
mencoder
and two others whose names escape me right now.

I have not tried to burna anything yet, but I intend on doing a backup of my OS X partition. As soon as I can get a working extraction, I will then know whether I can burn it back!

Flaffer