Software Architects announced the commercial release of WriteDVD!(TM) Pro v3.0 for MS Windows and Apple systems.

In addition to supporting standard DVD-RAM drives and media, Version 3.0 now supports "drag & drop" mastering to DVD-R disks. Using the world's first integrated UDF file system and driver architecture that supports both block addressable DVD-RAM and sequential recording DVD-R media, the software simplifies the operation of the new DVD-RAM/R combination drives supplied by Panasonic, and for power users running separate DVD-R and DVD-RAM drives on the same computer system.

SAI's integrated UDF architecture provides the user with a single, easy-to-use, "drag and drop" interface that reliably operates regardless of the type of disk inserted into the drive. This prevents driver conflicts and file system queuing problems that commonly occur when using different software programs to run DVD-R, DVD-RAM and CD-RW on the same computer system.

The software's UDF file system and drivers can mount, and write to DVD-R and DVD-RAM as well as read DVD-R, CD-R, CD-RW, and DVD-RAM discs in Panasonic and other "multi-read" disk drives made by a wide variety of manufacturers.

"Our integrated UDF architecture takes the confusion out of supporting various optical formats", said Robert Zollo, president of SAI. "Users have a simple, drive letter interface that they can drag & drop files to, from a single software program to use for both DVD-R mastering and writing to DVD-RAM discs. This eliminates the problems related to using different software products for overlapping usage."

Version 3.0 also adds support for advanced "Real Time Recording" functions used in new DVD-RAM disk based video camcorders made by Hitachi, and DVD-RAM disk based video recorders made by Panasonic. Real time recording optimizes reads and writes of video files to disk by emulating sequential recording on the random access, block addressable DVD-RAM media. This minimizes the optical head movement during playback, resulting in faster and smoother video reads from the disk.