Panasonic LF-D201U DVD-RAM drive

These days video pros who deal with the digital devil regularly workwith video files that soar into the gigabyte galaxy. Optical CD maxesout at about 650MB, so sometimes the media can only hold half of afile. What’s a digital content creator to do?

Enter a storage medium based on a proven technology that offers lotsof storage at a very reasonable price: DVD-RAM. Now, I’ve alwaysthought that a DVD is a DVD is a DVD. Wrong! Each sub-format has itsadvantages and disadvantages. DVD technology is in flux, to say theleast.

With a shelf life of over 30 years and a capacity eight times thatof CD-R/CD-RW, DVD-RAM is a technology whose time has come. Theiradvent pacing the arrival of HD, 5.1 surround sound, and the newDVD-Audio format, these little silver disks have created a digitaltidal wave that is leading to fundamental shifts in the way video,audio, and 3D animation content is archived and distributed. Here Ireview the new Panasonic LF-D201U DVD-RAM drive for Windows.(There’s also a new Mac version.)

I needed to back up some huge video files of concert footage for afuture music video, plus some large audio project files fromDigidesign’s Pro Tools. I looked at other storage media, butDVD-RAM has advantages over CD-R/CD-RW that include greater capacityand future compatibility.

Video is generally recognized to be going toward DVD anyway.DVD-RAM, primarily a medium for computer data storage, reads on acomputer drive similar to a CD-ROM drive. DVD-RAM drives somewhatsucceed the old dual-sided "PD-CD" storage technology that was popularduring the mid-1990s. Like that technology, DVD-RAM reads standardforms of CDs but also provides erase/rewrite capability,near-instantaneous random access, and a vast storage capacity of up to9.2GB on a double-sided disc.

The Panasonic DVD-RAM drive was almost too easy to install and use.The drive comes in a standard 5¾inch form for internalinstallation in a traditional CD-ROM device space. I simply opened myPC case, popped a front plate, and slipped in the DVD-RAM drive justbeneath the CD-ROM drive. The unit comes with a 50-pin SCSI cable and asound cable to link up to your internal sound card. Panasonicrecommends the Adaptec 2940AU and 2930U PCI bus SCSI interface boards.I had a 2940AU controller card installed already. I set the DIPswitches to the proper SCSI address. From a hardware standpoint, thingswere ready to go.

The software bundled with the LF-D201, useful but skimpy, makes theintention of the product clear. The manual is surprisinglystraightforward, and the CD-ROM had drivers and some bundled softwareapplications. Always check the manufacturer’s website for thelatest drivers.

The number-one utility for me was the MPEG-1 Coder compression andediting software that allows you to save and edit full-motion video inrealtime. A single 4.7GB DVD-RAM disk will hold about 4.5 hours ofacceptable quality MPEG-1 video in a 320x240 size format perfect for athe Web. The video looked good -- but not as good as some encoded withMedia Cleaner or the Sorensen codec. I was able to back up both my harddrive and the music video material in an afternoon. To know that I canaccess the files for the next quarter-century feels good.

In fact, this product shines as a backup solution. Both the FileSafeautomated-backup software and the MediaSafe utility, which allows youto hold data in the computer’s memory and transfer it from oneDVD-RAM to another, are handy indeed. Under the category of“Pretty Cool,” a Dust Check feature automatically checksblank disks to ensure a good recording. Handy. There’s also theunique DVD Agent that allows auto-launch of DVD-relatedapplications.

Even without any drivers installed, the drive works as a goodstandard CD-ROM under all operating systems that support standard SCSICD-ROM devices. It can also read DVD-ROM media in this state, butwithout a decoder board or software -- which is not included -- itdoes not play back DVDs. The LF-D201U will play just about everyother disk-based format, however: CD-ROM with XA support, DVD-R viadisk-at-once protocol, DVD-ROM, CD-DA, CD-Extra, and Video CD, to namea few.

The unit provides a headphone jack on the front panel and left/rightRCA audio jacks in the rear, producing audio quality that’s morethan acceptable.

Average write performance in my tests was about 600-700KBps. This isapproximately 4-6X CD speed, but considerably less than its ratedspeed. The documentation calls it a 2X mechanism, with a maximumtransfer rate of about 3000KBps. But on a 200Mhz system with notnecessarily the latest drivers or OS, I was happy with itsperformance.

The DVD-RAM drive seems to deal with large single files like ourconcert footage more effectively than with multiple files anddirectories. In one instance the system actually froze, with a hardreboot needed. In fact, the drive seemed to get confused when asked toback up a variety of files from different directories and on differentvolumes.

When recording a double-sided blank 9GB DVD, one must eject the diskand flip it over. I found this annoying. Another area for improvementis the DVD tray approach. The tray caddy is flimsy. I thought we hadsettled all this with the early CD-ROM drives. The LF-D201U currentlywill not work without it. You just know the first time you’re ondeadline, you won’t be able to find the disk caddy. I’msure that Panasonic could make it so the caddy/tray isn’t needed,which would make it much easier to insert blank media into theunit.

One thing to clarify: this is not the drive you need to beginauthoring DVDs. The main disadvantage of the LF-D201U drive is that itdoes not record onto general DVD-R media so the resultant diskwon’t play back in a standard DVD player ($600 MSRP). With theintroduction this summer of the new LF-D311SC combination DVD-RAM/DVD-Rdrive, pros now are able to create their own DVD disks for playback onvirtually any home DVD Player, plus use DVD-RAM for backup.

The Panasonic DVD-RAM drive is a very cost-effective storage mediumbut is not a DVD-R recorder. Some producers I spoke with, however, areusing DVD-RAM for pre-mastering during the authoring process. When itcomes time to burn the final DVD duplication master, the DVD-R formatis required. This will make the new combination DVD-RAM/ DVD-R drive aproduct DVD authors should be especially interested in.

But the new product will not replace the current generation ofDVD-RAM solutions like the LF-D201U because cost effective digitalstorage is always in demand. On a per-megabyte basis in the realm ofsilver disks, the DVD-RAM format with almost 10 gigs is a veryaffordable digital storage medium.

DVD-RAM as a storage medium has an enviable position in thehigh-capacity storage arena. It offers power users and videographers inparticular an opportunity to afford large-capacity, rewriteable,removable digital storage for the first time. Blank DVD-RAM media costsunder $50 for double-sided 9.4GB media, and $20 for a single-sided4.7GB disk. With the ideal mix of features at an affordable pricepoint, DVD-RAM is well-positioned to become the medium of choice forhigh-density storage and digital content exchange. Whether you are avideo or audio creator or a watcher of same, some how, some way, DVD isin your future.

Tom Patrick McAuliffe is a journalist, video professional, andsinger living in Northern California. Reach him at reelcom1@home.com.

Company: Panasonic Industrial

Milpitas, Calif.; 408-945-5600

Product: DVD-RAM drive model LF-D201U
Features: Records DVD-RAM at up to 3000KBps, andplays and records various other formats. Dual-laser, single-lensoptical head.

Price: MSRP: $549; street: $490 or lower
Website: www.panasonic.com/OEMdvd-ram