Help setting up DVDRAM drive

[Henman]

I've just got a Matshita LF D100 Dvd ram.I've installed it via a SCSI adapter.When I installed Write DVD the software associated with this drive it comes up as a removable disc D: and also G:Cd rom.I'm confused.Can someone tell me if this is right?Also can a DVDRAM record movies for DVD standalone,can it record DVDr?

[Eug]

I've just got a Matshita LF D100 Dvd ram.I've installed it via a SCSI adapter.When I installed Write DVD the software associated with this drive it comes up as a removable disc D: and also G:Cd rom.I'm confused.Can someone tell me if this is right?Also can a DVDRAM record movies for DVD standalone,can it record DVDr?

1) I'm not sure about your set up, but on some OSes it seems that some of the Panasonic drives get seen as two drives, one of which is DVD-RAM removable drive. I don't know about your specific drive, but it might be correct for your system.

2) Only specific DVD-RAM drives will burn DVD-R movies. DVD-R movies will play in most DVD players. Unfortunately, yours DVD-RAM drive does NOT burn DVD-R. Drives like the LF-D311 do burn DVD-R, however. Note that you CAN burn DVD-Video onto DVD-RAM discs with some software, but there are very few DVD players that can read movies on DVD-RAM. These would include players like the Panasonic RP91. I have used Roxio Toast on my Mac to burn DVD-Video movies onto DVD-RAM, and it plays fine in the RP91.

By the way, I'm wondering why you bought that drive. Was it just for price? It's kind of out of date, unless you bought it for very specific reasons.

[Henman]

I bought it as part of a job lot at a computer auction(very cheap)Only trouble is there was no software with it.I've downloaded Write Dvd and the instructions are in Japanese! Thanks for your reply.What are DVD RAMs for.....?

[dafoe]

I just got a LFD-311 about a month ago. I already had the DMR-E20 and wanted to edit recordings on my PC.

However, the PC drive wont read anything recorded (on RAM) by the DMR-E20 and vice versa. DVD-R works fine in both.

The whole point of buying the drive was so that I could record tv on rock solid name brand RAM discs and then transfer it to generic media and not lose the program if I get one bad DVD-R.

Has anybody had similar experiences? Should I try a different brand, or is my PC drive just junk?

[SyN]

Dafoe, with reference to your E20 LF-D311 problem. Power DVD XP 4.0 should be able to play the .VRO format back fine using the open files on drive option in Power DVD (Ctrl-O).

There is some software which is supposed to allow editing of the VRO format called DVD Movie Album which I think is Panasonics own but is under revision for PAL and English support. There is refernce to it on their Japansese site somewhere.

There is a work around for editing VRO which is to rename it to a VOB and run it through Flaskmpeg into an AVI file (make it a low compression codec not to lose too much quality) and then reauthor after you edit it.

Hopefully the movie album stuff will get finished or one of the other Video software companies will pick up the gap in the market.

[incognito]

henmann, that is correct-- windows will see a dvd-RAM drive as two
things-- a CD player and a hard drive. That's because the drive can
read cds and DVDs (so windows needs to be able to think about it like
a cd drive) but it can also hold a dvd-RAM, which looks like a removable
hard drive.

They are very handy for carting large ammounts of data around--
especially between two pc's when one doesn't have a fast network
connection. Newer dvd-rom drives can also read DVD-ram discs
(I bought the toshiba drive from newegg and that works fine).

I bet you could hack an apex or a sampo player with a newer dvd-rom
drive and play dvd-ram discs on it.