iMovie, burning DVDs advise needed

[gdimitog]

Greetings -
As a father to be (mid July) I am interested in using iMovie to make movies that I can write on DVD. I have two questions:

a) I have a G4 Powerbook with no DVD writer. Can I get an external DVD writer to do the job? If so, which one?
b) Can I write DVDs that are country/continent free? My folks live in Europe and I would like to be able to send them DVDs of the babies to watch.

Thank you
George

[Amani]

You can get an external DVD burner. I've heard that Lacie's are very good. But the burn time might be a lot longer than the internal DVD burner. If you decide to get a third party DVD burner, try to find one that provides DVD authoring also. I remember reading an article in MacAddict a while back that talked about third party DVD buners. Check MacAddict and do a search on their site.

As for the second question, I'm not sure, but think you would export your completed iMovie in a PAL (European) format--if that's even possible. Sorry I can't be of more help on this question.

[evil_santa]

I think that the dvds burnt by idvd or toast are regons free. Most DVD players in the UK will play pal & ntsc disks. idvd will only burn to an internal dvd drive, but there is an easter egg (http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=65437) to burn to an external disk. Or you can use toast to burn dvds from qt files. Though the menu are limited.

[redAPPLE]

you will have to configure iDvd to burn to PAL or NTSC. if the user who will use the dvd you burned has a "code-free" dvd player, then you should not have any problems, but i would not assume this. if you want to send a dvd to people (let us say) in europe, then burn PAL dvds.

because lacie is a well-known company it is almost sure that lacie drives are (almost always) supported.