Any good alternatives to DVD burning? VCD? S-VHS?

Question

I am totally disillusioned with the time it takes to encode and burn a DVD with my PB. AppleCare acknowledges that it takes 8x - 10x source material for successful burning & if you look on these (amazingly honest & helpful)forums you soon learn that DVD burning on any Mac can be very intimidating and problematic.
I am wondering if there is info readily available for alternatives:
1. VCD burning. I have a ton of small clips and could trim down larger clips to burn onto cds. Are there crazy problems with this as with DVDs?
2. This PB has an S-VHS output & I got a stereo audio cord for output. Will videos created like this be viewable? I suppose it depends on the quality of original material & how do I find this info?
My PB is loaded with every imaginable video and audio pro & standard app. including ToastTitanium7, FinalCutPro, CinemaTools, DVD-StudioPro, QuickTimePro7 etc.
I was praying that DVD burning was a lot simpler than my experiences with Windows based machines. There one needed to have a stand alone powerhouse & Re-Install Windows every couple dozen burns to get rid of all the corruption but not even doing that with a Mac seems to make the process as easy as Advertised. Live & learn.
thanks,
frank

Answer 1

I can only speak from my experience, but I've not found creating and burning DVDs to be at all intimidating and certainly not problematic. Every video DVD I've created has gone smoothly; your mileage may vary, of course. Please note that these forums are for people who are having problems; the many, many people who use their systems with no trouble at all have little incentive to post in a troubleshooting forum.
I notice that you list a number of pro apps including DVD Studio Pro; DVDSP is not intended for consumer use and has a very steep learning curve (although DVDSP 4 has a mode with a simplified interface that's easier, but it still takes some learning). If you want simple, you should be using iDVD; that's Apple's consumer application for creating video DVDs, and the latest versions of iDVD and iMovie (part of iLife '06) make it, in my experience, about as easy as it can get. You can get results with DVD Studio Pro that you cannot with iDVD, but it's going to take work, just as working with FInal Cut Pro will involve more learning time than working with iMovie.
As to creation time for the disk, that's strictly a function of how fast your system can process. Compressing to MPEG-2 (which is the format video DVDs use and which is what takes the majority of the time involved in burning the DVD) takes a lot of processor horsepower, and a single-processor PowerBook isn't going to be as fast as a dual-processor G4 and much less so than a G5. If you're encoding and burning DVDs regularly, you might want to consider moving to a system with higher processing power. To optimize compression time on your PB in the meanwhile, make sure that no other application is running when you're processing the DVD and that your system has plenty of available hard drive space (for the temporary files that will be created).
As to alternatives, that depends on your needs. If you need playback in a DVD player, then burning a DVD will be your best route. Very few players can play a VCD, and as MacNoel said, quality isn't stellar. Whether or not VHS would be an acceptable alternative only you can say.
Regards.
Message was edited by: Dave Sawyer