New Mac DVD authoring solution (LaCie)

[curtw]

I wasn't sure if this should go in 'News,' 'DVD Authoring,' or here, but I figure this is the safest place to start (moderators, please feel free to move it!). There may finally be a decent alternative to iDVD for people with external DVD-RW drives!

I was just about to plunk down the money for the Formac Devideon drive/software combo (http://www.formac.com/p_bin/?cid=solutions_drives_devideon) in order to do DVD authoring on my G3, when a brand new article on the Macworld UK site (http://www.macworld.co.uk/news/main_news.cfm?NewsID=5985) caught my eye. It says, essentially, that LaCie is about to offer a bundle of a Firewire-only version of their d2 DVD-RW drive (http://www.lacie.com/products/product.htm?id=10031) with (Pixela's?) CaptyDVD authoring program (http://www.lacie.com/products/product.htm?id=10064) for $379, or the software alone for $149.

I guess I have several questions for anyone who has used the existing version of CaptyDVD:

1. Will this work on a G3? The Formac has a demo software download, and I've confirmed that it actually works (although slowly) on a G3.

2. Assuming that it works on a G3, can you pause and resume encoding at will? The nice thing about the Formac software is that even though it'll take 60 hours to make a 1-hour DVD, you can quit and restart at any time, so you can set it up to run overnight without tying up the computer. I don't care that it might take a week or more to encode an MPEG, but I've read some negatives about formac's (lack of) tech support.

3. Will the CaptyDVD software accept a Quicktime exported from iMovie "for iDVD" as a basis for video files the way the Formac software will?

4. Assuming the answer to #2 is 'yes,' does CaptyDVD include a user-selectable MPEG bitrate (like Devideon), or does it pick its own based on running time (like iDVD)?

5. LaCie's sales department says that this should be out in 1-2 weeks. Their tech support knows absolutely nothing about it. Has anybody here been part of a beta test? Can you offer impressions without violating an NDA?

6. Was CaptyDVD ever available as a stand-alone program before, or was it always part of a package with ADS's USB Instant DVD?

Obviously, the ability to include chapters is a big plus, and I've had nothing but positive experience with previous LaCie products, so I'd like to get as much info as pssible to make an informed decision.

[curtw]

whoops. edit didn't work.