Help needed with Panasonic E20 and Toshiba SD-M1612

[shaunyboy]

I've just bought myself a Toshiba SD-M1612 to enable me to transfer stuff recorded on dvd-ram with my Panasonic DMR-E20 to my pc for editing.
Installation of the drive was not a problem but when I put a dvd-ram disc in it doesn't show any files on the disc.
Does anyone have any idea why this might be ?
I am using Windows 98 - would this cause problems ?
Also my drive letters have changed from D: and E: to F: and G: - any idea why ?
Thanks

[Eug]

For DVD-RAM, the E20 records DVD-VR discs, not standard DVD Video. DVD-VR discs use UDF 2.0. AFAIK, Windows 98 does not understand UDF 2.0.

If not, you might try installing Panasonic's UDF drivers, or if possible at least part of them. I dunno if this will work, but who knows, it might. Don't blame me if you hose your system though. :P If you do install the drivers, back up first. Actually, I don't even know if the drivers will install without a Panasonic drive. I couldn't find a Toshiba device driver for UDF 2.

Panasonic drivers

If it ends up working, please tell us here. A good site for this stuff is www.dv-info.net so tell us there too.

(BTW, in case you're wondering, the M1612 indeed does support DVD-RAM. It will read UDF 1.5 DVD-RAM discs in my NT 4 system, without any extra drivers.)

Also, you might wanna know that the DVD-VR disc has .vro files. I've never used these (since my E30 has not yet arrived), but they can be renamed to .mpg files for use in programs like DVD Workshop 1.2.

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If you partition a drive into 3 partitions, it will become C,D,E.

However, if you install a new drive, your first drive's main partition will remain C, but the new drive will become D. The other partitions will be come E and F. I dunno why yours have become F and G. Did you install another drive too?

[shaunyboy]

Thanks for the info.

Would it help if I installed Windows XP ? Does this understand UDF 2.0 ?

[Eug]

Thanks for the info.

Would it help if I installed Windows XP ? Does this understand UDF 2.0 ?

No.