Just put a Pioneer dvr-108 in my Quicksilver

[bbrelsford]

Hi everyone.
Just put a Pioneer DVR-108 in my G4 Quicksilver, and I must say this thing is great. I've upgraded my DVR-103 and so yes I really noticed a speed upgrade.
Patchwork III worked also like a charm, now all my apps can see this new drive.

One question, should I be able to read a DVD-RAM made from my Panasonic standalone recorder in this new drive in Mac OS X?
I tried last night to no avail. I've heard of ReadDVD that is supposed to mount UDF files (DVD-RAM)
Am I on the right track? Has anyone with a DVR-108 drive used ReadDVD or know another way to seeing files.
Toast 6.7 Titanium recognizes that there is a dvd-ram in drive, but that's about it.
Hope someone out there can answers some of these questions. Galactica ?
Thanks,
Brian

[galactica]

Well.... I have the same drive and never tried a dvd-ram so i cant tell you from personal experience.

Type of Drive: DVD+-RW Dual Layer Combination Drive 
 System Type: PC 
 Interface: IDE (ATA/EIDE/ATAPI) 
 Load Type: Tray 
 Internal/External: Internal 
 CD Write Speed: 32 X (CD,CD-R) 
 CD-ROM Read Speed: 40 X (CD,CD-R) 
 CD Rewrite Speed: 24 X (CD,CD-R) 
 DVD-ROM Read Speed: 16 X (DVD, DVD-R) 
 DVD+R Speed: 16 X (DVD, DVD-R) 
 DVD-RW Speed: 4 X (DVD, DVD-R) 
 DVD-R Speed: 16 X (DVD, DVD-R) 
 DVD+RW Speed: 4 X (DVD, DVD-R) 
 DVD+R DL Speed: 4 X (DVD, DVD-R) 
 Cache Size: 2 MB

but based on this, i would say no it cant

[bbrelsford]

Thanks Galactica -
I've seen those specs on my computer also.
Maybe the drive is only RAM compatible in a PC not Mac?
I could of sworn, that all specs when advertising the drive said it would do DVD-RAM.
Oh well, It's no big deal if it doesn't, I'm happy about it with write speeds anyway.

Brian

[decay]

checked this thread, inconclusive...
http://forums.macosxhints.com/archive/index.php/t-29950.html

i thought i recalled someone saying they bought some software that allowed them to read DVD-RAM created in a Panasonic stand-alone DVR. now i don't know where.

technically, the 108 can read DVD-RAM disks...

[galactica]

so what do you do? bust them out of the cartridge and put them in ?!?

im totally confused

[decay]

my Panasonic DVD recorder uses DVD-RAM discs that look much like a DVD-R; they're not in a cartridge.

[bbrelsford]

Mine too.

[JoachimS]

Late response, but I think my experience will be appreciated

SoftwareArchitecs offer DVDRead. At a first glimpse, it makes Mac OS X compatible with UDF2 and higher. Mac OS X supports only UDF 1.5 by default.

I have a Pioneer DVR-107 in my G4 800 Quicksilver, and in fact the DVD-RAMs mount.

My recorder is a Panasonic DMR-E85H.

I was able to copy a 20Minutes footage from DVD-RAM to my Harddisk. I could watch the file in VLC, convert it into anything else using ffmpegX and MPEG2Works.

A few days ago, I wanted to edit a 2:15 hrs long movie which was recorded in 4:3 aspect ratio instead of 16:9 (reason: AV-input, no auto-detection). To save DVD-R madia, I wrote it DVD-RAM.

Strangely enough, on my Mac the movie file had a size of 10.4MB (VLC played 8 seconds) instead of more than 4GB.

SA's support responded quickly stating that the file is larger than 4GB. They did not say specifically that this is the reason for the wrong file size. I can only guess that there is a file size limit on UDF 2.x?

The solution to my 4:3/16:9 problem can be found here:

https://www.videohelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=251060

However, I had to sacrifice one DVD-R.

Cheers,

JoachimS

[Spoffo]

I contacted Software Architects, and after finding out that they have a 30 day money-back deal, I downloaded their product Read!DVD.

Good news and bad news:

Good: After installing it, I can indeed see and read DVD-RAM disks on my essentially stock Mac (1.8 Mhz Dual G-5 with factory Pioneer 108/"117" drive, Mac OS 10.3.7.) One oddity, I can now see RAM disks in Finder, but they don't show up in PathFinder, which is what I normally use. Just a minor inconvenience.

The Bad news: Video files on RAM discs are .VRO files, not .VOB. I can view them beautifuly in VLC (which seems to read every video format on the planet) but I don't know how to turn them into .VOBs, so I can burn them into a standard DVD-R.

I'm going to start experimenting, but does anybody have any ideas?

[JoachimS]

You can convert them into DVDs by using MPEG2Works.

Be careful with the 4GB file size restriction of the UDF file system.

Cheers,

JoachimS