external DVD drive

[ClassicBean]

I'm looking at getting an external DVD RW drive for my Mac. I've already been told that my best bet is to go for one that is +/-

I have a G3 400 iMac and a G3 500 iBook. Will external DVD drives work on these machines? I am looking to use it for backup, as well as possibly editing movies through iMovie (if possible) or other video editing software that may come with the drive.

I have seen an Iomega drive on theirsite, but it uses USB 2.0. I am looking for a firewire drive.

Does anyone know of a good one? I'm looking to spend about $250-300 Canadian (let's say $180 - 230 US, give or take).

Does anyone know if it would work fine on my either of my systems, or do i need a G4?

Thanks for your help.

 

[BrianKonarsMac]

LaCie http://www.LaCie.com

 

[Rod Rod]

a firewire DVD burner will work on your computers, and the limitation will not be the G3s, but rather OS X. if the drive is recognized by OS X you'll be good to go. I don't know where the list of supported burners is, but just from memory you'll be fine if you have a Pioneer 103/A03 up to a 107. there are probably some OS X-friendly Sonys too.

if a manufacturer advertises OS X compatibility, such as LaCie, you'll be fine also.

for video editing, iMovie will work great on your machines. DVD authoring is another issue, and that's where the G3s give up ground to G4s. I think Toast 6 has some rudimentary DVD authoring capabilities built-in which work with G3s. CaptyDVD is a DVD authoring program that works on G3s. It's almost like iDVD.

MPEG-2 encoding will take a long, long time... maybe 20 hours for a 90-minute DVD. burning will work fine though.

 

[Coolvirus007]

Talking about external DVD burners, I am looking for a way to back up my work frequently. Is is better to buy a DVD-RW burner and use the new double sided DVD-RW's or buy a iomega zip drive? I want to use it like a floppy disk and I wanted to know if its ok to constantly save and delete files on a DVD?