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Sometime in the recent past, I'm guessing since I upgraded to 10.3.3, DVDPlayer no longer recognizes my external FW DVD-R drive (Pioneer 105 in a Lacie case). This worked in Panther previously after I reinstalled DVDPlayer 4. (The original Panther install didn't do this for some reason, so I used Pacifist and reinstalled and it then worked, per this thread.) I get error -70012 ("A valid DVD player could not be found"). I tried reinstalling DVDPlayer again, and that did not work this time.

This is really pissing me off. Why does Apple refuse to work with these drives?

Can someone please help me out here? I've got a backlog of DVD-R related tasks I need to perform.

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[bump] Come on, folks - no one else has seen this problem?

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Here's some more info, in case it helps.

I downloaded PatchburnII, which fixed a problem I was having with my internal Sony CD-RW drive, and it told me that I already had the driver installed for my Pioneer drive.

Then I ran Apple System Profiler. It saw the FW drive and said it "Apple supported/shipped" under the "Disc Burning" category. It falsely reported the drive type, however, as "LaCie 1394-CDROM Drive"... well, hell, here's the complete info:

Manufacturer: Lacie GROUP SA
Model: LaCie 1394-CDROM Drive
Drive Type: CD-RW/DVD-RW
Disc Burning: Apple Supported/Shipped
Removable Media: Yes
Detachable Drive: Yes
Speed: 400 Mb/sec Speed
Unit Spec Id: 24734
Unit Software Version: 10483
Firmware Revision: 1.30

But again, when I run the Apple DVD Player (4.0), it gives me the -70012 error ("A valid DVD drive could not be found").

I'm telling you, folks, this worked recently. I think the 10.3.3 update killed it. What's going on? How can I fix this, short of reinstalling everything?? (I do NOT want to do that.)

When I put in a DVD, DVDPlayer starts to launch (it sees the disc), and then gives the error. However, the disk mounts on the desktop.

If I run DVDBackup, I can drag the disc to it and it reads the contents. I can start the processing, but it throws a "File System Error" on the VOB files. (I seem to recall that this utility wouldn't work unless you at least started to play it with DVDPlayer at least once.)

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Well, after getting nothing here, I finally found something using Google. This was from MacFixIt, but I think it was also posted on xlr8yourmac, though I couldn't find it.

Michael Chang
I was able to fix the -70012 problem (and blocky artifact problem) [Mar. 17] I was experiencing with a stock DVD drive moved to an the external FW enclosure by reinstalling DVD Player 4.0 from the 10.3 CD. Instructions are below:

Download and install Pacifist.
Insert Mac OS 10.3 CD in drive.
Select Open Mac OS X Install Packages button in Pacifist. It will ask you to swap out all three 10.3 install disks.

Click the Find button and type "DVD". A long list should show up.
The important files/folders to replace are:

-AppleAltiVecDVDDriver.bundle
-ATIRadeon8500DVDDriver (if graphics card is installed)
-ATIRadeon9700DVDDriver (if graphics card is installed)
-ATIRadeonDVDDriver.bundle
-ATIRage128DVDDriver.bundle (if graphics card is installed)
-DVDPlayback.framework
-DVD.framework
-rtadvd

**There are many duplicates of the files/folders above in other languages. I only chose to install English.

Select each or all and click Install.
Choose to replace all existing files.
Restart. Repair permissions.
Your (external) DVD player should be back and be operational -- without blocky artifacts, too.

I installed the bold items above, restarted and repaired permissions, and voila - it worked. What a pain in the ass.