Panasonic mini-DVD Tips requested

[Hawseman]

I'm a digital 8 (TRV460) guy...experienced with Ulead, Premiere, winDV, firewire, dvd burning (4 burners, decrypter, Recordnow, Nero...etc.).

I've got 2 mini-dvd's that I'd like to get the A/V off for manipulation with Premiere (preferably AVI) with my PC hardware. These were recorded on a friend's Panasonic (model number not handy). One is a DVD-R and the other is a dual sided DVD-RAM. The dvd-r is unreadable on all my current PC hardware. Searching through this forum, I'm assuming that it's not finalized. None of my 4 burners support DVD-RAM read, but I'm prepared to purchase an LG 4163 for full RAM support (would be another nice toy too ).

I am trying to do all this without having to borrow his camcorder now or in any future projects.

Is there proprietary Panasonic packet writing software that will allow me to extract the A/V from the "un-finalized" DVD-R? What hardware/software combinations do I need to extract A/V from a dual sided DVD-RAM disk?

any hints would be much appreciated....

[GeorgeW]

out of curiosity, do they play in your set-top dvd player?

Not that it would be ideal (and probably a lossy approach), but if they played in your set-top dvd player, you might be able to feed them from a dvd player to your regular import video equipment? There could be quality issues going this route, as you are converting the video before even starting your editing process, but it might work based on the type of video and the quality expectations

of course, you would rather be able to import direct from disc for original quality and probably faster too...

[Hawseman]

I would like to avoid the digital-analog-digital approach if at all possible.