With the creation of rewritable DVD formats, such as the DVD-RW mechanism found in LaCie's latest external DVD-RW SuperDrive, that dream is slowly becoming a reality.
LaCie's external FireWire DVD-RW SuperDrive carries a Pioneer DVR-A03 drive under the hood. Basically, what LaCie brings to the equation is a powered enclosure with a FireWire connection and a handful of bundled software. LaCie's implementation of Pioneer's DVD-RW is a significant improvement over its troubled DVD-RAM drive, but this fledgling format still has some rough edges that hold the drive back, such as shaky software and format compatibilities.
The dream of storing up to 4.7GB of data on a single, inexpensive disc that's compatible with nearly any computer has been around since the DVD format was first introduced. With the creation of rewritable DVD formats, such as the DVD-RW mechanism found in LaCie's latest external drive, that dream is slowly becoming a reality. Not only will this drive allow you to burn a movie that can be played in your living room DVD player, the product can also burn CD-R discs.
Slow is the first word that springs to mind about this drive, not only for the years that have passed since its format was announced, but also for the sheer investment of time required to burn a full DVD-RW disc. To burn large files a little more than 4GB, such as video clips, you need to devote at least an hour. And discs filled with smaller files, such as document backups, require far more time. The drive is rated a 1X DVD-RW burner and the burn times hearken back to 1X CD-R days.
The obvious advantage with DVD-RW is its additional space. At 4.7GB, a single DVD-RW disc replaces seven CD-R discs. With setup, disc swapping, and labeling, burning seven CD-R discs could conceivably take more than an hour. And backing up today's gigabyte drives is much easier with a multigigabyte format.
Unfortunately, LaCie doesn't bundle the drive with any backup software, and, at the time of this writing, not many vendors have released compatibility patches for the format. This adds up to the tedium of manual backup, which is all too often skipped over by the end user because it's such a pain. This omission is odd, because LaCie lists the drive under Archival at its Web site.
The cost of blank media makes regular backup with DVD-RW daunting as well. Whereas blank CD-R discs commonly sell for less than AU$2 each in volume, LaCie's online store sells blank DVD-RW discs for AU$25 a pop. A pack of 5 DVD-RW discs costs nearly as much as 50 blank CD-R ones. Thankfully, our testing didn't produce any bad burns that would have resulted in AU$25 coasters.
Included with the drive is PrimoDVD 2.0, Prassi's very capable burning software. With a simplified wizard and manual interfaces, burning scads of your files to DVD-RW is extremely intuitive. Included is Sonic Solution's less satisfying MyDVD mastering software. The idea is that anyone can select or import elements such as backdrops, buttons, and audio and video media files to create DVDs that can be played on practically any DVD player, with the navigation results of professional DVD movies.
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MyDVD's simple interface appears polished, but the engine underneath is rife with issues. Tools do not work in the manner most of us are accustomed to. The text tool doesn't allow you to simply click and start typing. Instead, you must drag a font specimen out from a list of all available fonts, select the text, and enter your words. Importing media clips is also problematic. Selected files are brought into a main library of clips, complete with a thumbnail of the first frame. But when the library starts to reach 10 or more clips, performance starts to crumble. A typical test project we generated had 25 separate clips, and from the Media tab, it took nearly five minutes to generate the list. Unacceptable. And when things go wrong in MyDVD, don't expect much help from the program and its cryptic error messages.
When we did manage to burn DVDs, the results were mixed. Some would play on our test devices, some wouldn't. The DVD playback from Sony's PlayStation 2 was particularly sketchy; many of the homemade discs weren't even recognised by the drive.
Under the blue plastic LaCie hood, the Pioneer DVR-A03 drive delivered CD-R burn times consistent with other external FireWire CD-R drives of its caliber (such as Iomega's 8X/4X/32X Predator drive on our Dell Dimension XPS B800r test-bed. Both drives burned a 623MB CD-R in less than 11 minutes, and the LaCie beat the Predator drive by more than a minute when burning 301MB to CD-RW. Since this is the first drive of its breed we've tested, we don't have comparable DVD-R and DVD-RW scores. We can say, however, that 500MB of large files required about 14 minutes to burn, and the same amount of smaller files required a minute more. As noted above, a full disc takes well over an hour to burn, depending on file sizes.
Like LaCie's DVD-RAM drive, performance fell apart in our read-time testing. The LaCie drive required well over 18 minutes to read 623MB from a CD-R disc, compared to just over 2 minutes logged by the Iomega Predator drive. The Iomega managed our 301MB CD-RW read test in exactly 2 minutes; the LaCie drive required nearly 18 minutes.
The LaCie DVD-RW drive connects via FireWire. So, obviously, you'll need a FireWire (IEEE-1394) card installed in your system. Besides Sony VAIOs and other high-end systems geared for content creation, few systems ship with FireWire support. Kits typically sell for around AU$150-AU$200. Since the FireWire cable doesn't transfer audio signals, you'll need to rig a jumper cable from the headphone jack to your sound card to listen to audio CDs through your system's speakers. And although FireWire devices are hot-swappable (meaning your can add or subtract devices without restarting your system), remember to go to your system tray to disengage any FireWire device before shutting it off. Of course, you may already be turned off by the LaCie DVD-RW drive's high price, AU$125 (pack of five) blank media, anemic mastering software, lack of backup software, and slow read times.
Yes, we're as excited about DVD-R as everyone else, but the LaCie DVD-RW solution doesn't bring anything substantially new to the table. Being a FireWire drive basically limits the people who would buy this thing to digital filmmakers already employing FireWire to capture and edit digital video. If you're a digital video filmmaker and you're looking to distribute your work onto a DVD that can be played on most new consumer DVD decks, then this drive (as long as you don't mind how slow it is) will probably do you well. If you're not a digital filmmaker, and you absolutely have to have a DVD-R right now, then we suggest you buy the internal Pioneer DVR-A03. If you absolutely have to have an external unit and you don't have a FireWire equipped computer, then we suggest you wait until LaCie comes out with a USB 1.0 or USB 2.0 version.
FireWire DVD-RW SuperDrive
Company:LaCie Australia
Ph: 02 9669 6900
Price: AU$2,199
Rating:
6%
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