External DVD burner to Mac

I need to burn a very long Final Cut sequence from my G4 onto a DVD, and my lack of HD memory combined with old iDVD software have made it impossible for me to burn anything this long using my own computer.

I was told by a pro video dealer that I could hook up the Sony VRD-MC5 to my Mac by firewire and then print to tape, and that the media will burn to a DVD as long as source material is DV. I called tech support at Sony to confirm but they said that the VRD-MC5 will not hook up to a Mac. Is there an external DVD burner compatible with a G4 that will enable me to burn a DVD without having to compress the file first using DVD Studio Pro (which I don't have), iDVD, etc.?

I didn't see a price, but that thing looks expensive.

Any DVD recorder (standalone, think settop style) with a DV (firewire) input will record a standard-def sequence from FCP. Just hook it up like you would hook up a camera to record back from FCP.

The downside is no authoring, but at least you'll be able to see your work on DVD. :-)

You?re trying to take an extremely difficult route to accomplish a rather simple task. Now, If you?re under (lets say) 6 GB of HD space its going to be critical no matter what. It is unlikely you are able to print to tape without dropped frames. Also, external DVD burners cost money and lack some of the adjustments you might need. Try borrowing an external FW HD instead.

If you?re on Mac, use Roxio Toast to burn the DVD. It?ll make one straight from a video file (in your case: QT Reference). No need to use IDVD at all.

So I shouldn't save the original sequence as self-contained FCP movie, but leave that box unchecked. Is that right?

That is correct. To save even more space, you can export directly to Compressor and create a MPEG stream there