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kent m · Jan 11, 2003, 05:11 PM

I'm using a new Lacie external dvd-rw, with 10.2.3.

On my first attempt to burn a dvd through the finder:

~I need over 5 gigs of free space for the finder to cache info, and it took almost an hour to 'copy' 4.5 gigs of info to this cache.

~it took just under an hour to 'burn' the dvd, which is, by the way, an apple brand dvd.

~the system then hung for almost two hours at the 'finishing' stage before I killed it by restarting the machine - pressing the 'stop' button on the dialogue brought up the spinning beachball for 10 minutes before I lost patience.

~ the resultant dvd, as expected, is useless.

I assume that this is not the intended system for creating a dvd. Any pointers or loose thoughts? What software is good to use? The software that comes with the dvd burner for some reason. (?) only burns cds.

thank-e-o,
kent

Mediaman_12 · Jan 11, 2003, 06:44 PM

I have used TOAST to sucessfully bunt quite a few 'data' DVD's. Doing through the Finder's built in job diden't even cross my mind.

Gul Banana · Jan 11, 2003, 08:44 PM

I've burnt DVDs with the Finder on a dual GHz Quicksilver; it did need the large cache, and it did take many minutes to copy to it, and the actual burning did take an hour, but when it was finished (the "finishing" stage took about 10 seconds) I had a working backup of 4.5 GB of important data. My assumption was that DVD burning is not yet a particularly convenient art, and that this (an hour and a half of doing other things while waiting for it to finish) was the price we paid for being able to do it at all. If anybody has different experiences, for example burning DVDs on PCs or with Toast, feel free to enlighten us.

kent m · Jan 12, 2003, 10:45 PM

The DVDs burn, but I seem to have a fail rate of about 30% or more. Is this normal?

Also, I'm supposing, but: it seems that the failure to burn is connected to the amount of data on the DVD. The closer to 'full' the more likely to fail it seems. Is this accurate?

k

tr · Jan 12, 2003, 11:01 PM

i've burned stuff in the finder, but it was such a pain, because you need at least 4.7GB free on your system drive to do it, and it takes forever. but all the discs i've burned in the finder seem to work fine, and i've had no problems, even using cheap media, with data pushing 4.3GB.

for data burning, i just use toast, because it doesn't waste time making the disc image to burn.

tr

Bobby · Jan 12, 2003, 11:09 PM

Just a quick note... I noticed people mentioning 5GB free space...

I do NOT have a DVD burner, nor have I EVER used one. This said the method the Finder uses to burn is to create a live disk image on the HD. As a result it needs the size of the maximum disk occupancy to do this.

This holds true for standard cd-r/w media as well...

edddeduck · Jan 13, 2003, 01:42 AM

You should not be getting such a large failure rate as 30% unless you are using very cheap media.

For burning DVD's (or CD's) get Toast it is twice as fast as you don't need to do the copy bit which apples built in app does.

It is alot I have found a lot more reliable too.

Edwin