peterson Posted April 7, 2006 Report Share Posted April 7, 2006 Howdy - returning to location sound work, mostly documentary, after some years away and learning all I can about the new tools of the trade. Why the insistence upon DVD RAM as opposed to other DVD media? What prompted this particular question was an inquiry I saw on anther forum for good Mac-compatible DVD RAM drives and it made me wonder why not just use the internal DVD R/W drive already there? Please excuse the newbie nature of this inquiry, but thats the truth. thanks- peter Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeff Wexler Posted April 7, 2006 Report Share Posted April 7, 2006 Why the insistence upon DVD RAM as opposed to other DVD media? thanks- peter There are long answers to this and short answers. I am prepared to offer up both but I will stick with a short answer. The original Deva over 8 years ago started this necessary quest for a delivery medium to get our work to post. Every feasible medium available at the time was tried: Iomega Jazz disks, Castlewood Systems Orb disks, CD, DVD, and finally DVD-RAM disks. You have to remember that 8 years ago is a lifetime in computer years and we were dealing with SCSI drives mostly and this was way before the whole "rip and burn" craze was in full swing (where you can buy a multitude of various kinds of media in Wal-Mart now). DVD-RAM proved to be the best solution for a variety of reasons. Many people are unaware of the major differences amonst all the various optical disk formats and not just the media but the standards used that preside over the way data is written to the disk. Most people just find out, usually the hard way, that something is NOT compatible with THEIR system, or once the disk is made, playback is not possible because of driver incompatibilities and so on. The Deva was the only game in town for quite some time and then when Fostex came out with the DV-40 (essentially a studio machine that would be a testing platform for their as yet unreleased location recorder, the PD-6). The DV-40 was a DVD-RAM machine, period. When the PD-6 came out, DVD-RAM was the ONLY media used (and a somewhat non-standard media at that, the 8 cm "mini" DVD-RAM disk) as Fostex had put all their eggs in one basket (also claiming that DVD-RAM had proven itself as the "Industry standard format" something which Fostex had yet to have anything to do with). With the Deva and the PD-6 as the main production machines, the DV-40 as the main post-production machine, DVD-RAM did become the standard delivery format. There is a lot more to this and I guess this turned out not to be the short answer, but an answer nontheless. Regards, Jeff Wexler Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Noah Timan Posted April 7, 2006 Report Share Posted April 7, 2006 The DV-40 was a DVD-RAM machine, period. I think it has always had the ability to read and process CD-Rs as well. We had a long discussion about this on RAMPS about a year ago and Howy from Zaxcom explained the technical advantages of DVD-RAM over write-once optical media exceptionally well. http://groups.google.com/group/rec.arts.movies.production.sound/browse_frm/thread/1f8d24c63b61e123/a46c4be5d5c5a1ca?q=dvd-ram+howy+dvd-r+blocks&rnum=1#a46c4be5d5c5a1ca (Scroll down to message 120 in the thread) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeff Wexler Posted April 8, 2006 Report Share Posted April 8, 2006 We had a long discussion about this on RAMPS about a year ago and Howy from Zaxcom explained the technical advantages of DVD-RAM over write-once optical media exceptionally well. I did not bother to discuss the inherent advantages of DVD-RAM over other formats, I only mentioned that it is not a well understood thing when people start talking about "just burn them a disk, what's the big deal?". Thank you for posting the link to Howy's discussion. The information is available, you just have to want to look for it. Regards, Jeff Wexler Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Philip Perkins Posted April 8, 2006 Report Share Posted April 8, 2006 I did not bother to discuss the inherent advantages of DVD-RAM over other formats, I only mentioned that it is not a well understood thing when people start talking about "just burn them a disk, what's the big deal?". Thank you for posting the link to Howy's discussion. The information is available, you just have to want to look for it. Regards, Jeff Wexler Anymore, the LA telecine places I've been dealing with are fine with DVD-R, CD, DVD-RAM, both on Fostex and Aaton-InDaw equipment. For many years a lot of sound people just used CDRs since they always seemed to work. I'm too lazy to burn that many disks (re a 24 bit day), so I'm lucky that I waited long enough that DVD-R (as burned by a laptop) is ok now too. The main advantage to DVD-RAM nowadays is that it can be incrementally mirrored-to, like a hard drive. DVD-Rs you have to burn all at once. Philip Perkins Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
peterson Posted April 8, 2006 Author Report Share Posted April 8, 2006 Thank you all for the information & courtesy of a reply. So according to Philip, it appears that in many if not most instances my laptop's DVD-R should suffice. Regards, Peter Tooke Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Philip Perkins Posted April 8, 2006 Report Share Posted April 8, 2006 Thank you all for the information & courtesy of a reply. So according to Philip, it appears that in many if not most instances my laptop's DVD-R should suffice. Regards, Peter Tooke Always call ahead if you can, especially in the case of a classic film telecine. If you are using a newish recorder or new software sending in a test disk is always a good idea. But generally DVD-R seems to be ok with everyone now. For sending files to Avids and FCP directly it is ok to put labels on the DVDs, but for Fostex/In-Daw telecine don't. Philip Perkins Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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