My apologies

[MrWitch]

Perhaps it was the tone in which the messages were delivered that 
offended me. In any case, I apologize.

The $30 discs were possibly DVD-RAM discs. Or perhaps they were for 
"authouring". I don't remember. All I remember is that they were so 
expensive, it turned me off from using DVD recordable formats until 
things got realistic. If these discs are now $3 and under, this makes me 
think about reconsidering this format. It still isn't as cheap as 
CD-R/RW, or even VHS, but it is now realistic.

I realise that the Canopus device is the same price, PC or Mac. What I 
was referring to was the plethora of PC PCI solutions that are less than 
$100 (or even $50) that work fine. This is what I meant about drivers. 
Since OS X is so similar to BSD and Linux, surely the manufacturers (or 
the Open Source community) could write some drivers for these things for 
Mac systems.

As far as the camera thing goes: I will never be so broke as to return a 
perfectly good item like this just to save money. My sense of honour 
will never allow me to do something like this. I understand why it was 
said, but I will never consider it. Enough said.

As far as hardware goes now...  I guess this is what I'm going to do. A 
B&W G3 w/ a G4 ZIF upgrade or a Sawtooth G4, using something for 
capture. Whether this is a FireWire device, or a cheap 85/95/9600 
PowerMac, remains to be seen. Depends on what I can get for how much, if 
the older Mac passes the right tests, and what further research finds.


What I was really concerned about though was software. I have searched 
and searched the Web, and can find little about S/VCD authoring on Macs. 
  What there is is tersely written and difficult for a Mac newbie to 
follow. It is amazing to me (correct me if I'm wrong) that Final Cut 
Pro, Final Cut Express, iMovie, iDVD... all Apple apps... and none of 
them support S/VCD. None. Is there an all-in-one app for Mac OS 9 or OS 
X that does? I'm looking for edit, encoding, rendering, and creation of 
the disc image or burning to disc. Capture would be nice too, but not 
essential. What is essential is the final output be useable across all 
platforms and set-top DVD players that support such things.

If there is not an all-in-one proggie, what Mac proggies are needed? I 
am looking for ease of use, ease of installation, stability, and 
compliant output of the discs without problems like out of sync sound, 
menus and chapters that don't work, and the like. These are all common 
problems with the PC software I have tried before.

A little note: as far as PC software goes (for those who may care) I 
tried almost everything for capture and editing. Premiere, Ulead, all 
except Avid software (couldn't get a copy). Amazingly, the commercial 
stuff stunk! Unstable, bad captures, difficult to use, bad editing 
features, you name it. What did work, though, surprised me. Two little 
apps called VIrtualDub (I used it for editing, the capture feature 
didn't work on my system due to incompatible driver models - it used VxD 
and I had WDM), and a little app called Virtual VCR. Both are freeware! 
Both work...  just work. Stable, simple, but powerful and 
feature-filled. Amazing how a free application can beat a $500 app, eh?

M.