Welcome to the MacNN Forums.

SeSawaya · Dec 1, 2004, 02:30 PM

I have a PB G4 1.33 with superdrive and 768 megs of ram. Now its supposed to have a 4x burner in it. I used to have a 1 gighz imac 17" that had a 4x burner in it and it rocked. now my PB isREALLY slow and seems to be burning around 1.5x.

any suggestions or comments?

(using toast BTW)

MilkmanDan · Dec 2, 2004, 09:40 AM

Could be your media. Mine will do 4x with some media, and 2x with others. Depends on the quality. There are several threads on this issue.

madmacgames · Dec 2, 2004, 11:42 AM

yeah check the media is quality 4x. Also when you goto burn, if you have it set on "Maximum speed" or "best speed" or whatever it is labeled as -- I'm not sure with DVD -- but with CDs on this option for example it will burn at 4-8x instead of 16x if you are doing anything else. So I always force to the exact speed I want. Not sure if it does this with DVDs as well (I only have the 2x), but try forcing the speed to 4x.

SeSawaya · Dec 4, 2004, 08:39 AM

ok, so I tried the same media in my dads eMac yesterday. It works fine. burns at 4x no problem. Mine only dose 2x max. Should I call Apple on this? It supposed to have a 4x burner in it. how can I find out? the system profiler dosent say anything.

any suggestions?

thanks

hldan · Dec 4, 2004, 11:31 AM

Originally posted by SeSawaya:
ok, so I tried the same media in my dads eMac yesterday. It works fine. burns at 4x no problem. Mine only dose 2x max. Should I call Apple on this? It supposed to have a 4x burner in it. how can I find out? the system profiler dosent say anything.

any suggestions?

thanks

If you are using 4x Apple media then your drive in your Powerbook (assuming it's the 12" or 15" model otherwise you don't have don't have a 4x burner) should burn at 4x. If it's any other after market media then the drives in the eMac and the Powerbook may burn differently. The eMac superdrive is not the same drive as the one in your Powerbook so they may react differently with certain after market media as this is very typical.
More than likely this is the case and there's nothing wrong.

d.fine · Dec 4, 2004, 01:41 PM

I also have a similar problem. My G5 has a 8x SD drive, I got 8x media (DVD) and I can only get it to burn at 4x ... I don't get it . Updated Toast to 6.0.7 latest ver with no avail ...

hldan · Dec 5, 2004, 01:02 PM

Originally posted by d.fine:
I also have a similar problem. My G5 has a 8x SD drive, I got 8x media (DVD) and I can only get it to burn at 4x ... I don't get it . Updated Toast to 6.0.7 latest ver with no avail ...

Is the media that you are using made by Apple or an aftermarket? Again, if it's aftermarket then it may burn at lower speeds. This is a fact about Apple's superdrives, they are purposely crippled. I'm sure there is a great deal of media that will burn at the speeds they are designed for but you will have to experience trial and error.

crazeazn · Dec 5, 2004, 02:18 PM

Originally posted by hldan:
Is the media that you are using made by Apple or an aftermarket? Again, if it's aftermarket then it may burn at lower speeds. This is a fact about Apple's superdrives, they are purposely crippled. I'm sure there is a great deal of media that will burn at the speeds they are designed for but you will have to experience trial and error.

anyway around this crippling?

MilkmanDan · Dec 6, 2004, 08:19 AM

Its called BAD MEDIA. Try some better stuff. The cheap DVDs you get on sale at best buy don't always work too fine. Same thing happens with CDs. I don't believe its crippling. Try different media, or wait the extra 10 minutes.

SeSawaya · Dec 6, 2004, 08:41 AM

well I've never burned a DVD with a powerbook before so maybe your right. On the cheap media side of things, I've burned about 400 DVD-Rs with my old iMac all at 4x speed with NO problems. All differnet brands (& no name brands) without any problems what so ever. I'm currently burning about 90 DVDs for a video order from my school and its not a matter of waiting an extra 15 mins, its a matter of an extra 22 hours.

As far as Apple media, I dont believe apple actually stamps out their own media. There are only a few real manufactures in the world that actually produce media like that, so who do they buy it from?

The DVDs I am using right now look exactly like the Apple stuff, white tops, purple bottoms.

I want my iMac back.

amazing · Dec 8, 2004, 11:26 AM

For a project burning 90 DVDs, you need an external firewire DVD burner--very useful since you can move it from Mac to Mac. I've got a 16X Pioneer DVD-108 from newegg.com for about $72 and a Macally 5.25:" firewire 400 case (my Ti-400 doesn't need fw-800) and it's great. With good 8X DVD-R media (Prodisc or Ritek) it'll burn at 12X.

Check xlr8yourmac.com for details, but Patchburn is said to enable iDVD with the external burner. Toast works well for me.

For example, when I'm home I can burn from the 160 GB HD of an old beige G3 for a fw-400 card, so that I don't tie up my laptop. If I need to take it on the road, I figure the 12X speed vs a poky internal laptop superdrive is well worth it.

SeSawaya · Dec 8, 2004, 11:50 AM

wow thanks Amazing!

I never really thought about that. My biggest problem is usually making the 1st copy (using iDVD) so I had to have a powerbook. But if this is reconized by iDVD then I could really use anything. Then using toast to make the copies would be no problem at all.

I will look into this for future projects!

Eug Wanker · Dec 8, 2004, 12:12 PM

Originally posted by SeSawaya:
wow thanks Amazing!

I never really thought about that. My biggest problem is usually making the 1st copy (using iDVD) so I had to have a powerbook. But if this is reconized by iDVD then I could really use anything. Then using toast to make the copies would be no problem at all.

I will look into this for future projects!

iDVD works with external Firewire drives, if you install two little files.