John's right about the Pioneers; my A03 still works flawlessly and since the only way I can get a decent price on DVD-Rs is to buy 2Xs 100 at a time, the A03 appears to have a long life expectancy here. Heard about some 1 CAD blanks if bought 300 at a time, may try them next but they are still 2X.

Peter

check http://dealnews.com/index.html for deals on dvd burners.

If you buy something other then a white box (OEM) you'll probably get some sort of software to handle the actual burning process & maybe some sort of authoring app. You might want to wait & see what's in the box with the DVD burner.

Otherwise the way it should work is you render your project using the VV3 (or 4) DVD template to mpeg2. Then import this into the authoring software to add whatever menus and stuff, then that creates the disc layout (vob files etc.). The authoring app might handle the actual burning as well, or most of the current crop of CD burning software also handle DVDs, often with a bit more control since that's their specialty.

Only bottleneck I'm aware of is that some authoring apps are finicky regarding the mpeg2 files they'll import without re-rendering everything. Again, something promising re: DVDA.

mike

I suggest you search this forum for posts on DVD recordable drives and the various software packages out there.

I'm happy with my Pioneer 104. I am UNhappy with Ulead's DVD Movie Factory 1.0, which is very crash prone on my system. After painstakingly setting chapter points and thumbnails, it tends to then crash and corrupt the project file, losing almost all my work (even after saving).

I'm trying to hang until I see the updgrade price for DVD architect, which I assume will be as great as SoFo's other products.

G