I too just got a 1 Ghz iMac, but it has a pioneer drive. It seems to me that a majority of people posting here have pioneers. If Apple indeed has started installing sony drives in the new iMacs it comes as a suprise that they didn't make the full transition with the new line of iMacs. It could have been a major selling point to some people to be able to burn DVD's in all available formats. As an aside, does anyone know of an application that allows for backing up dvd movies? I have read about DVD X copy for windows, and I was wondering if there is a similar app for OSX.
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
Apple Adopts Sony Superdrive?
- Thread starter MacRumors
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Possible pioneer explanation...
Here is my following $ .02,
It is entirely possible that apple used up their supply of pioneer drives in early orders of the powermacs and since all new powermacs with the superdrive BTO are backordered with supply problems with one of the components. The transition seems to be on the way but if you have excess Pioneer drives you'll use them before you include a different drive. We shall see when I get my new Powermac what drive I get but Im not entirely sure it matters all that much.
A@ron
Here is my following $ .02,
It is entirely possible that apple used up their supply of pioneer drives in early orders of the powermacs and since all new powermacs with the superdrive BTO are backordered with supply problems with one of the components. The transition seems to be on the way but if you have excess Pioneer drives you'll use them before you include a different drive. We shall see when I get my new Powermac what drive I get but Im not entirely sure it matters all that much.
A@ron
Fully uncompressed?!?!? I don't think so.
Maybe low compression, but NTSC video, fully uncompressed would fill a 4.7 GB (Single layer) in less than 5 minutes!
Heck, MiniDV camcorders, which use DV25 compression, fill about 12GB per hour.
A quick Google search turns up this link as data to back up this claim: http://www.videotexsystems.com/videorate.htm
Originally posted by Dunepilot
yeah yeah
I have a standalone Philips DVD+RW recorder, and that records an hour on one DVD, fully uncompressed (which is supposed to be higher quality that commercial DVD movies). You can also chose to record at the same quality as prerecorded films (2hrs) and various longer-play settings also.
Way off subject, but I wanted to clarify that it is not uncompressed. Uncompressed video is about 1 minute per gigabyte! The DVD standards allow for 9.8 Kb/s of data per second. If your movie is maxed out at 9.8 at a constant bit rate, you can fit about an hour of video on a 4.7 GB disc. Hollywood movies usually squeeze about 90 minutes onto one side or about 3 hours onto a dual layered disc. They use a variable bit rate 2 pass encode to compress the data more. This method usually yeilds better results than a 1 pass constant bit rate since the analization algorythms (sp?) are so advanced. When a scene is complex it will use a higher bit rate, and when there is redundant data it is thrown out. Anyway, I hope this makes more sense to you now.
Originally posted by rDLr
Way off subject, but I wanted to clarify that it is not uncompressed. Uncompressed video is about 1 minute per gigabyte! The DVD standards allow for 9.8 Kb/s of data per second. If your movie is maxed out at 9.8 at a constant bit rate, you can fit about an hour of video on a 4.7 GB disc. Hollywood movies usually squeeze about 90 minutes onto one side or about 3 hours onto a dual layered disc. They use a variable bit rate 2 pass encode to compress the data more. This method usually yeilds better results than a 1 pass constant bit rate since the analization algorythms (sp?) are so advanced. When a scene is complex it will use a higher bit rate, and when there is redundant data it is thrown out. Anyway, I hope this makes more sense to you now.
Sorry for the double-post.
I just thought I'd add that you can really see the VBR on a computer monitor on a typical prerecorded DVD. they do suggest that you use the one-hour format for best results, when recording your own DVD+RWs on the Philips machine we have
iDVD and other formats
A little off topic, but cool...
In case you didn't know, iDVD will burn to a DVD-RW -- with a little coaxing
Click the Burn button in iDVD and put in a blank DVD-R disk when asked. After it verifies the disk and starts the "Rendering Menus..." process, hit "Eject" (or F-12) to eject the DVD-R. Replace it with a DVD-RW disk and iDVD will not know any better - it burns the DVD-RW just fine.
Whether or not your DVD player will read it is a separate issue though! (My 4 year old Sony does FWIW)
Then, if you like the results, you can copy the disk with Toast to DVD-R and use the DVD-RW again. It's a lot nicer to proof your work without making coasters!
Note: The DVD-RW must be erased (or brand new) before putting it in.
A little off topic, but cool...
In case you didn't know, iDVD will burn to a DVD-RW -- with a little coaxing
Click the Burn button in iDVD and put in a blank DVD-R disk when asked. After it verifies the disk and starts the "Rendering Menus..." process, hit "Eject" (or F-12) to eject the DVD-R. Replace it with a DVD-RW disk and iDVD will not know any better - it burns the DVD-RW just fine.
Whether or not your DVD player will read it is a separate issue though! (My 4 year old Sony does FWIW)
Then, if you like the results, you can copy the disk with Toast to DVD-R and use the DVD-RW again. It's a lot nicer to proof your work without making coasters!
Note: The DVD-RW must be erased (or brand new) before putting it in.
Don't mean to sound nit-pickey here, but do you really mean VBR? Variable Bit Rate encoding is what most Hollywood DVD's use to allow more to fit. iDVD and most low-end compression software doesn't support that. That's why they lock you to 60, 90 or 120 Mins. With true VBR, the amount of footage you can fit on the disk is unknown until you actually apply the compression as it compresses more or less based on how much it can "get away with." (The less on-screen movement, the more compression that piece of the movie gets)
I'd be surprised if a consumer DVD writer offered that level of compression sophistication.
You probaby meant you can more easily see compression artifacts on the computer - which is normal as a computer monitor would be a much sharper image than most televisions.
FWIW: I've read that some of the high end hardware VBR compressors actually compress at real-time (1:1) speed and then will go back through, comparing the uncompressed original to the compressesed version. When some threshold of difference is found between the two, it re-compresses that section to achive the best bit rate for every frame of the movie. (I also have heard that big budget DVD's have people that watch every frame of the DVD, looking for any degredation. Talk about a boring job!!! "Ohh - I see an artifact, right there by that tree!"
[edit] When I said real-time (1:1) speed, I meant that they can churn out VBR compressed data for 60 minutes of footage in 60 minutes. (I'd venture to bet there's uber-high end hardware that'll do it faster than real time too) [/edit]
Originally posted by eric_n_dfw
Don't mean to sound nit-pickey here, but do you really mean VBR? Variable Bit Rate encoding is what most Hollywood DVD's use to allow more to fit. iDVD and most low-end compression software doesn't support that. That's why they lock you to 60, 90 or 120 Mins. With true VBR, the amount of footage you can fit on the disk is unknown until you actually apply the compression as it compresses more or less based on how much it can "get away with." (The less on-screen movement, the more compression that piece of the movie gets)
I'd be surprised if a consumer DVD writer offered that level of compression sophistication.
You probaby meant you can more easily see compression artifacts on the computer - which is normal as a computer monitor would be a much sharper image than most televisions.
FWIW: I've read that some of the high end hardware VBR compressors actually compress at real-time (1:1) speed and then will go back through, comparing the uncompressed original to the compressesed version. When some threshold of difference is found between the two, it re-compresses that section to achive the best bit rate for every frame of the movie. (I also have heard that big budget DVD's have people that watch every frame of the DVD, looking for any degredation. Talk about a boring job!!! "Ohh - I see an artifact, right there by that tree!"
[edit] When I said real-time (1:1) speed, I meant that they can churn out VBR compressed data for 60 minutes of footage in 60 minutes. (I'd venture to bet there's uber-high end hardware that'll do it faster than real time too) [/edit]
Looks like I might learn something tonight...
When I was saying about the artifacts, I was referring specifically to prerecorded holywood DVDs, which, to be honest, look crap on my PowerMac and its 17" flat panel.
Are you saying then that the artifacts are not caused by VBR? I assumed it was VBR causing them, since they generally appear in areas of static colour (which tend to go really blocky and pixellated).
I wasn't trying to suggest that VBR was available to the consumer in my previous posts, but you've raised my interest in compression now! Does the encoding of a DVD by a superdrive work like compression of DV to Quicktime, using a patented codec (analagous to Sorenson or whatever), and does this mean that VBR isn't used in any sense?
I look forward to reading your replies tomorrow morning. I'm off to bed (zzzzzzzzzzzz)
God, I've helped take this one WAY off topic
I'm headed to bed too - take a look at this FAQ (which I found a while back while reading www.2-pop.com DVD authoring forums)
http://user850490.wx8.registeredsite.com/features/dvdfaq.asp
Drives
I always suspected Apple would switch to a more versatile drive at some point. DVD-RW is nice, and reasonably compatible with consumer players for video. DVD+RW, though, is better for data storage. It's been a while since I've read into it but I believe it supports full packet writing (so you can write to it directly like a zip disk instead of a one-off burn or sessions).
Then again, Apple just might be multi-sourcing, which is a very good idea. They may never, or not for a while, directly support DVD+RW. Maybe they just had a hard time getting the hot DVR-105's, or got a good deal from Sony.
FYI, this is NOT the first non-Pioneer SuperDrive. I believe the superdrives in powerbooks are made by Toshiba, as Pioneer never shipped a slot-loading model. There was some coverage of this at <http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/> .
I always suspected Apple would switch to a more versatile drive at some point. DVD-RW is nice, and reasonably compatible with consumer players for video. DVD+RW, though, is better for data storage. It's been a while since I've read into it but I believe it supports full packet writing (so you can write to it directly like a zip disk instead of a one-off burn or sessions).
Then again, Apple just might be multi-sourcing, which is a very good idea. They may never, or not for a while, directly support DVD+RW. Maybe they just had a hard time getting the hot DVR-105's, or got a good deal from Sony.
FYI, this is NOT the first non-Pioneer SuperDrive. I believe the superdrives in powerbooks are made by Toshiba, as Pioneer never shipped a slot-loading model. There was some coverage of this at <http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/> .
I've got one, too
Just got a 1 GHz Imac, too, and I have a Sony SuperDrive. Its "Product Identification" is "DVD RW DW-U1OA."
Just so you know
Just got a 1 GHz Imac, too, and I have a Sony SuperDrive. Its "Product Identification" is "DVD RW DW-U1OA."
Just so you know
My wife's new 1 gig iMac (17") has a Pioneer. It is not a BTO, rather a stock Apple Store machine. Could that have something to do with the somewhat random discrepancies? I've had a dual 1.42 G4 on order since they were announced. Still a 4-6 week delay. Or was it 6-8 weeks initially?
hhmm.
cheers kids!
-john
hhmm.
cheers kids!
-john
I wonder if Apple is trying to do this. If you are making a movie, use DVD-R media. And if you are saving data you have to use DVD+R/RW.
For example, if you were using iDVD, and click Burn, it would only accept DVD-R media. And if you are in Finder, it would only accept DVD+R/RW media.
For example, if you were using iDVD, and click Burn, it would only accept DVD-R media. And if you are in Finder, it would only accept DVD+R/RW media.
that's doubtful. the DVD+R's can be read in most dvd players too, its just a competing standard. it could just be a case of suppliers offering drives cheaper. and don't forget that apple has shipped most of their computers with DVD-R drives, I hope they wouldn't leave them out in the cold.