Reading DVD-VR Mode DVD-RW discs

[maetel99]

I am interested in playing around with DVD-VR mode DVD-RW discs produced by my Pioneer recorder. While these discs didn't mount at all under Mac OS X 10.3, I noticed that under 10.4 Tiger they now mount.

On the other hand, although the discs mount, so far I haven't been able to read anything off of them. I can drag and copy over the .IFO file, but every time I try to copy over the .VRO file I get an error -50. Even trying from the command line fails.

Does anyone have any idea what is going on and how I can access files on these discs?

[macuser25]

yes, they mount in tiger... but the OS has no clue what to do with them. you can't play the video or import into imovie or idvd.

you need toast 7.

with it you can import individual titles and chapters from these so you can burn to a std DVD or export to DV for editing.

[chikanakan]

Buy Toast 7. It works great with DVD-VR.

[maetel99]

How does Toast 7 compare with something like ReadDVD? Does Toast 7 actually install some kind of driver so the DVD-VR discs mount correctly on the desktop, or can you only use those discs from within Toast?

[chikanakan]

Well, ReadDVD is pretty bad so I don't even consider it a product and the fact that it requires a kext file means I just won't use it.

Toast 7 doesn't install any drivers. When Toast 7 is launched and the media browser is selected, Toast will then read and load the discs. If the disc is a standard DVD, it will read the IFO files and load all the titles and chapters. You can still use it in the Finder though.

Toast doesn't mount DVD-VR in the Finder, it just allows access to the files on the disc and allows you to see all the video files. In 10.4, the finder mounts DVD-VR, but since they can't be accessed correctly, Toast will unmount the disc and use access the drive. You can extract Disc, Title and Chapter.

Another cool things is if you mouse over a title in the media browser, Toast will display the video info. MPEG type, Aspect Ratio, Size, Audio, etc.

If you have multiple images or discs mounted, Toast will see all of them in the browser also.

I've tried about 30 DVD-VR disc including DVD-R, DVD-RW, DVD+R, DVD+RW, and DVD-RAM from set-top and camcorders and they all work great in Toast so far.

I highly recommend Toast 7 for VR.