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 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.