"Bob Noel" wrote in message
...
Well, AFAIK the video cards don't have anything to do with the
encoding/processing of converting DV into a video DVD.

You could use a little updating (but not much...this is relatively recent).

The latest and greatest video cards include support for "DXVA" (DirectX
Video Acceleration). It provides a way for applications other than 3D
acceleration to take advantage of the immense processing power present on
modern 3D accelerator cards.

The processors on the video cards aren't completely specialized, and it
turns out that they are suitable for handling a variety of computational
tasks, including transcoding video streams (such as is necessary to convert
digital video from one format to another, including when burning a DVD).

Regardless, I find the term "many" to be ambiguous enough to give "Gig"
whatever wiggle room he needs. It is certainly true that his Alienware
computer is at least twice as fast as anything Apple is offering so far
(though as they introduce more Intel-based Macs, that will cease to be
true), and one need not come anywhere close to 10 minutes to burn a 60
minute DVD to prove "many" times faster. I doubt any Apple can do a DVD in
better than real-time (and probably slower) so as long as "many" only means
"three", all he needs is to be able to burn a 60-minute DVD in 20 minutes,
probably not even that quickly (depending on actual Mac performance, of
course).

Now, can his PC burn a DVD in 20 minutes? Don't know. But especially if
it's using DXVA for the video transcoding, and he has a fast DVD burner,
it's not entirely out of the question. Even at 30 minutes, he'd still be
able to support "many" (assuming he goes with an odd definition like "two"
).

So, how fast can the fastest Mac burn a DVD anyway?

Pete