External DVD writer confusion

J

jrbehm

Registered
Well, as usually happens when I try to save a buck (as in "didn't get the Superdrive"), I need an external DVD burner now.

Talk about confusing! On DPReview's Professional Photographer forum, I got so many conflicting recommendations that I'm worse off than before. It's not even clear from them whether I have to buy burners that say "Mac compatible" on their specs. Some say no. I have trouble believing that although, of course Samsung or Pioneer 16X writers are like $40 and the LaCie that my local Mac Outfitters sells costs around $90. Retrofitting a Superdrive in my 12" G4 Powerbook is $190...

So...here I am, asking Mac folks who'll know. I kind of think I'd like to be able to use Toast, just because I'm used to it, but maybe that's not in the cards. I'm a photographer who wants to upgrade the digital product delivered to brides and other clients, as well as archive images for the studio. I don't make home movies and have no interest in copying existing films. But making a DVD that a bride could plop in her home system and watch on TV does appeal.

Thank in advance
Jeff
 
Well... Those Samsung and Pioneer drives are _internal_ at 40 USD, I guess. If they ARE external: Take a Pioneer, since Apple's using Pioneer drives as Superdrives. I'd certainly forego the 190 USD internal Superdrive update. Probably the best way would be to get

a) an external FW/USB-2 case for optical drives &
b) a Pioneer "Superdrive" (one of those internal ones).

Then, you might have to use the free PatchBurn [ http://www.macupdate.com/info.php/id/16466 ] to enable iLife/Finder support for the drive. That's all. This way, I've managed to make a no-name external drive which had a NEC-2500 DVD writer inside compatible with my iApps and the Finder. Toast had support for it even without it.

Why forego the internal solution? Because the external one gives you the option to _sell_ the Pioneer drive anytime and replace it (cheaply so) with a better drive - even a BluRay or HD DVD writer, come the time.
 
Excellent! Thank you. I gather my concerns about specs not stating "Mac compatible" are unfounded then? Great!

Thanks
 
Yeah. Usually companies who have "Mac compatible" stickers or similar are asking for more money, knowing full well that customers might be insecure and rather pay a bit more for guaranteed compatibility. Look at particular models (Pioneer, Matsushita) and find reports on successful Mac using of that model online.
 
fryke,

I downloaded Patchburn and it immediately solved the lack of recognition problem I was having until then (Sony DRX-810URL). I imported the Quicktime movie I wanted to test with, started the burn process and early into the actual iDVD burn, it kicked out the disk with an "Error in multiplexing or burning" warning. Any ideas? Since I'm not using the Sony software, and not using Apple hardware, I'm fairly lost now.

Suggestions welcomed.
 
I've never personally used iDVD, so... No idea. Care to test whether it works fine in iTunes or Finder etc.?
 
Hmmm... If only the "Help" section of iDVD could even find "Multiplexing error"! Whatever it is, it doesn't like it. So, considering I'm a complete babe in the woods at this DVD burning stuff, and we both use Macs, what are you burning with? Toast?
 
You can search Apple's board for Multiplexing Error and find a load of people with this problem;

http://discussions.apple.com/search

Make sure you have plenty of free space on your drive and try setting for Best performance, but read through what you find on Apple's boards and try the suggestions mentioned.
 
The tips from Bob and Fryke are paying off - slowly, but yes!

In a weird aside, Toast 5.2.3 is burning DVDs great - something I don't see listed on its features. iDVD is continuing to be a complete pill, as I see it is for many others on the Apple forums. I've burned a couple of archive DVD's in Toast with no problems whatever. I then created a sample iMovie with 460 images from iPhoto. Upon completion, iDVD hung up about 10% of the way through.

I just got the completed DVD from Toast, but it's in Quicktime, and DVD Player did'nt recognize it, so it's probably not the NTSC format I'd selected.

Maybe I'll just continue to make Quicktime movies out of iPhoto and deliver those. This is getting very frustrating, especially on very little sleep.

Help! I mean, what's the advantage of DVD over a couple of CD's when you get right down to it?
 
The DVD you got from Toast was probably a data DVD, not a video DVD. Toast would have to re-encode the whole movie before burning the DVD, so you'd certainly notice it by looking at what Toast's doing. (My guess: It just burned the QT movie to the DVD.) I'm not sure anymore whether Toast 5 had such features as to create a video DVD out of QT movies...
 
Fryke,

Given that I just got this Sony DVD writer yesterday, I could take it back if there was a point to doing so. We're so limited for hands-on before buying, but there's a LaCie that comes bundled with Toast 7 Lite about 40 miles away. I've never even seen LaCie mentioned as a DVD burner, couldn't find it in the top rated lists, etc., so passed on it for the Sony that comes with Nero for Windows. That seemingly is part of the adjustment - non-integrated software.

As for your observation re: just burning QT , I think you're right although there was a long process that was entitled "Encoding" before it was ready to burn.

Toast 5 has DVD under the "Other" menu, and is geared toward Video_TS or recording a disk image - things that don't mean anything to me.

But on the Apple Support forum for iDVD, I was given this URL :

http://www.kenstone.net/fcp_homepage/idvd_5_stone.html

which is more helpful than the stuff Apple published.

I'll appreciate any feedback on the Sony vs. LaCie question, and thank all for their input here.
 
I have a question regarding this topic. I hope someone can help me. I am currently in studying abroad in Japan and I am unable to view region 2 DVDs. I looked up my DVD-RW model/maker to find that I am unable to patch it to be region free. My question is, can I buy a USB DVD-RW drive here in Japan and then use patchburn and install the region free patch for the new drive and be able to watch and or copy region 2 DVDs? Hope you guys can help, thanks!
 
I'm not sure whether the patches work for USB-connected drives, but it might be worth a try. Then again: You could use the external one for region 2 and the internal for another region without problems. Or simply use VLC for region-free DVD entertainment. :)
 
thanks, what if the USB DVD-RW does not list mac as compatible? That means I have a 50/50 chance that it will work, right? So i have to use patch burn right?
 
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