Moving into DVD - help!!!

[Karl Hayden]

Hello everyone,

This may be a bit long but hope you can stay with me and offer any 
advice you may have.

Increasingly I am being asked for finished work on DVD. The programme I 
most often use to edit with is iMovie2 as the material usually consists 
of simple cuts, I gave up on iMovie3 as a bad joke. Mostly I would send 
out the finished material to someone to burn the DVD, but it is costly 
and can sometimes be more trouble that it is worth. The problem with 
trying to produce the DVDs myself is:-

1: I am using iDVD and that limits the amount of running time I can 
produce on a DVD-R 4.7Gb to less than 50mins.

2: Too often I have had my DVDs returned as they won't play on other 
machines.

3: The burning process often fails before the DVD is finished.

4: The amount of time it takes to burn a DVD ties up my computer for 
far too long.

I need to move up a gear and start producing the DVDs myself. With 
something more reliable than iMovie or iDVD. So this is where I need 
the voice of experience, ie: YOU.

As I understand it there are a number of options open to me.

1: I make more use of FinalCut Express, which I understand has a DVD 
facility to it, but I have never used.

2: I buy a copy of DVD Studio Pro to produce the DVDs after editing on 
FinalCut Express.

3: I upgrade my current iMac SuperDrive to a G5.

4: I buy an external DVD burner for faster burn time.

Or an alternative which has been suggested to me is to buy a DVD video 
recorder. I have one on trial at the moment, Panasonic DMR-HS2. It has 
a 40 GB hard drive, so if I need to produce multiple copies I can load 
that up and keep replacing the DVD-R for each copy. This alternative is 
OK(ish) but, the firewire connection does not work between the computer 
and the DVD video recorder, the firewire between camera (Canon XL1) 
does work,  but there are a lot of pixel drop-outs and other 
distortions which take away from the reason to have a DVD video 
recorder. I have tried using the composite connections, s-video 
connections and the composite to scart connection. But, that is just 
adigital signal converted to an analogue signal converted back to 
digital and I can see the difference between this and the firewire 
connection. AND one of the main reasons for DVD is to be able to create 
chapters and graphics to go with them but I can't do that with this 
machine.

So here I am..... am I expecting too much from a semi-professional 
set-up? Do I need to take out a mortgage to buy all new equipment and 
go state of the art?

Any help, advice or guidance anyone can offer would be very much 
appreciated at this point. Please don't suggest talking to an Apple 
agent, buying a magazine/book or to look up the internet. I need to 
hear from people with experience of DVD production and who have no 
particular affiliation to one product line or brand. This move 
represents a big financial investment for me and I want to get it right.

Many thanks in advance for your time.

Karl