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juusan · Feb 12, 2006, 03:13 PM

I'm having issues burning dvds on my new intel imac. the matshita superdrive they come with appears to be not so good. in toast, the dvds I'm using (memorex) burn at MAX 2x speed. what the hell? I didn't buy this thing so that I had to wait 30+ minutes to burn a dvd.

on the apple forums I found that others are having this problem as well. is anyone here? what media are you using?
thoughts on the matter?

hopefully this crappy drive is something that apple will replace at some point under apple care.

harrisjamieh · Feb 12, 2006, 03:20 PM

The drive in my Core Duo is great, burns at the full 8X on DVDs, and burns about 4 gig within 6-9 minutes, very impressive. Sounds like you have a faulty drive.

uicandrew · Feb 12, 2006, 03:44 PM

Originally Posted by harrisjamieh

The drive in my Core Duo is great, burns at the full 8X on DVDs, and burns about 4 gig within 6-9 minutes, very impressive. Sounds like you have a faulty drive.

what kind of media are you using and what program are you using to burn stuff? (toast or the "burn folder" built into Tiger)?

Eug Wanker · Feb 12, 2006, 03:54 PM

Buy Taiyo Yuden or Apple media (among others), and your problems will likely go away.

JKT · Feb 12, 2006, 04:14 PM

What speed do your discs burn at if you use the Finder? Maybe the problem is with Toast. Is it even a Universal Binary yet?

mduell · Feb 12, 2006, 04:22 PM

Look up the DVD burner model at VideoHelp to find out what media works and what doesn't.

Eug Wanker · Feb 12, 2006, 05:25 PM

Originally Posted by JKT

What speed do your discs burn at if you use the Finder? Maybe the problem is with Toast. Is it even a Universal Binary yet?

It is not completely universal, but apparently the parts that need to be are already universal, and apparently the rest of it works fine on Intel Macs thru Rosetta. I don't have an Intel Mac though, so I can't confirm myself.

Anyways, it's a common issue with some of these drives. The don't do well with off-brand or even cheaper name-brand discs. If it doesn't recognize the specific disc type, it may just default to 2X. Sometimes some of these issues are corrected with firmware updates, but Apple doesn't issue them very often.

However, 98% of the time the issue can simply be resolved by buying common good quality media, hence my recommendation for Apple and Taiyo Yuden media. (Beware though, since there is a fair amount of fake Taiyo Yuden media out there.)

It's true that Apple should update firmwares more often to help with the lower quality media, but in truth, burn quality still sucks on lower quality media regardless of the firmware in my experience with several different drives. In fact, with the lower quality media, much of the time you're better off burning at slower speed anyway: 4X for 8X media, or 2X for 4X media. Even then the quality is suspect, but at least there's a better chance of it burning and verifying OK, with reliable playback on 3rd party machines.

juusan · Feb 12, 2006, 05:25 PM

I was using memorex printable dvds. it was through toast - I tried burning a dvd in finder, but the machine crashed. I'll give it a another try and report back.

Eug Wanker · Feb 12, 2006, 06:20 PM

I find Memorex DVDs to be amongst the worst quality of the major name brands.

harrisjamieh · Feb 12, 2006, 06:52 PM

Originally Posted by uicandrew

what kind of media are you using and what program are you using to burn stuff? (toast or the "burn folder" built into Tiger)?

I was using El cheapo media, i think form CD-Rmedia.com or something like that, and I was not using an app, just the finder to burn a DVD

demibob · Feb 12, 2006, 07:04 PM

i read somewhere the intel imacs only burn cd's at 4 times the speed max
the old ones went up to eight times
not sure about that so il check in a minuit

demibob · Feb 12, 2006, 07:08 PM

my bad

hickey · Feb 12, 2006, 10:24 PM

havent there been other reports of matshita drives not being very good in other machines? ie powerbooks?

harrisjamieh · Feb 13, 2006, 05:03 AM

Originally Posted by demibob

i read somewhere the intel imacs only burn cd's at 4 times the speed max
the old ones went up to eight times
not sure about that so il check in a minuit

The superdrives in the MBPs burn DVDs at 4x, but the drive in the iMac burn DVDs at 8x and CDs at 24x

juusan · Feb 13, 2006, 01:26 PM

the imac just locked up during the burning of a CD... with the error message that it was copyright protected. the original disk was most certainly NOT copyrighted.

DoGoodDrugs · Feb 13, 2006, 02:03 PM

well im not too sure about the DVD burning on my 17" since ive only burnt one DVD disk and i thought it went pretty fast but im not sure how fast that was since it was my first ever DVD burn and i wasnt paying too much attention.

the other day though i was taking all of my movies on CD and copying them over to my hard drives... in order to get this done faster i hooked up my old fire wire CD-RW from ezquest. i noticed that it copied the CD about 3 times faster than my internal on my imac 17". Some of the movies went to an external firewire hard drive some went to the internal... is this normal? why is it that the internal drive was slower at copying than the external? does this have anything to do with this topic, if not whatever.

Skeptik · 08:39 AM

Using a Sony (AccuCORE) DVD-RW and it only was able to burn at 2X using just the Apple normal drag&drop burner. It took quite a while and I only had a small folder.

juusan · Feb 24, 2006, 09:09 PM

possible fix... this says that the problem occurs on a G5 after upgrading to panther, but the genius bar told me to try it anyways.

I'm not hopeful.

bradoesch · 01:24 PM

Originally Posted by DoGoodDrugs

the other day though i was taking all of my movies on CD and copying them over to my hard drives... in order to get this done faster i hooked up my old fire wire CD-RW from ezquest. i noticed that it copied the CD about 3 times faster than my internal on my imac 17". Some of the movies went to an external firewire hard drive some went to the internal... is this normal? why is it that the internal drive was slower at copying than the external? does this have anything to do with this topic, if not whatever.

It's normal. The internal drive is a laptop drive which is much slower than the full size external drive.

macwayne · Feb 24, 2006, 10:49 PM

How can you tell if you are using Taiyo Yuden brand discs?
I've never seen that name on any branded DVDs or CDs.
I've heard alot about these but where do you buy them?

Skaar · Feb 24, 2006, 11:38 PM

I've been using Taiyo Yuden for a while now, and have burnt hundreds of discs with 0 coasters, and won't use anything else. I used to use Ritek, but the Taiyo Yuden are so much better and worth the small difference in price. My 17" Intel iMac burns them at 8x. I have half a spindle of memorex DVD's left, most of them were coasters. I'll never buy memorex again, what a waste.

juusan · Feb 25, 2006, 12:38 AM

Originally Posted by bradoesch

It's normal. The internal drive is a laptop drive which is much slower than the full size external drive.

er.... if that's normal, why do they market it as a 8x?

Steve Yun · Feb 25, 2006, 12:48 AM

What version of Toast are you using?

I used to have a problem with Toast 6.0 reporting that it was burning at 4x when it was really burning at 2x. I upgraded to Toast 6.1 and the problem was fixed.

hickey · Feb 25, 2006, 12:52 AM

i agree with macwayne, how do you tell if its a Taiyo Yuden? I've never heard of them.

bradoesch · Feb 25, 2006, 01:25 PM

Originally Posted by juusan

er.... if that's normal, why do they market it as a 8x?

I was comparing the speed of copying from the interal drive vs. his external FireWire. That is what always seems slower on internal laptop drives. I don't mean to dispute it's ability to burn at 8X.

haulin oats · Feb 25, 2006, 02:07 PM

I have the same problem with some Fuji Film DVD-Rs on my G5 iMac. Once I'm done with these, I'll get Taiyo Yudens.

Mister Elf · Feb 25, 2006, 05:07 PM

Originally Posted by bradoesch

I was comparing the speed of copying from the interal drive vs. his external FireWire. That is what always seems slower on internal laptop drives. I don't mean to dispute it's ability to burn at 8X.

An internal laptop-size optical drive, on an ATA bus, at 8x, is exactly the same speed as an internal desktop-size drive, on the equivalent ATA bus, at 8x.

You may be thinking of laptop hard drives, most of which are slower than their desktop counterparts.

bradoesch · Feb 25, 2006, 11:43 PM

Originally Posted by Mister Elf

An internal laptop-size optical drive, on an ATA bus, at 8x, is exactly the same speed as an internal desktop-size drive, on the equivalent ATA bus, at 8x.

You may be thinking of laptop hard drives, most of which are slower than their desktop counterparts.

Right. I worded my post a little funny I guess. I'm agreeing with DoGoodDrugs that copying files from the internal laptop optical drive is slower than his external full size FireWire drive.

Eriamjh · Mar 4, 2006, 07:18 PM

This is crap.. The drive should burn at 8X. If Apple has crippled it, they sould say 2X (I'm burning an 8X DVD at 2-F*cking-X right now).

Class Action lawsuit time...

juusan · Mar 4, 2006, 07:46 PM

that's about the point that I'm at right now.

nJm · Mar 4, 2006, 08:40 PM

Media does play a huge part. One spindle of TKD DVD-R's I had would burn at 8x and the next spindle (looked identical) would only burn at 4x.

aristotles · Mar 4, 2006, 08:54 PM

Originally Posted by Eriamjh

This is crap.. The drive should burn at 8X. If Apple has crippled it, they sould say 2X (I'm burning an 8X DVD at 2-F*cking-X right now).

Class Action lawsuit time...

Try some better media and stop hitting your head against the wall.

Eriamjh · Mar 7, 2006, 08:52 PM

Originally Posted by aristotles

Try some better media and stop hitting your head against the wall.

Better media? How do you define BETTER? Unnecessarily expense? It is most likely Apple's limited the drive to only recognize Apple media instead of a host of other perfectly acceptable media that burns at 8X in MANY other drives!

I hit my head because it SHOULD work. Apple makes it all but impossible to use media that is widely available. I shouldn't have to pay the Apple premium for EVERYTHING I use.

sledsbehave · Mar 7, 2006, 10:28 PM

Originally Posted by Eug Wanker

I find Memorex DVDs to be amongst the worst quality of the major name brands.

i agree with this...

i use verbatim for all blank media.

Cory Bauer · Mar 7, 2006, 11:22 PM

Eriamjh, do yourself a tremendous favor and order up some Taiyo Yuden 8x DVD-Rs. I found them at very good prices here: http://www.supermediastore.com/taiyo...d-r-media.html
I've burned several-hundred of these over the last three years from a PowerMac G5, and have never had a bad disc. They burn at full speed, and are a great price. You don't have to pay the Apple premium for it to work, you just have to buy good stuff. Please report back once you've ordered and burned some.

discotronic · Mar 8, 2006, 12:27 AM

Originally Posted by Cory Bauer

Eriamjh, do yourself a tremendous favor and order up some Taiyo Yuden 8x DVD-Rs. I found them at very good prices here: http://www.supermediastore.com/taiyo...d-r-media.html
I've burned several-hundred of these over the last three years from a PowerMac G5, and have never had a bad disc. They burn at full speed, and are a great price. You don't have to pay the Apple premium for it to work, you just have to buy good stuff. Please report back once you've ordered and burned some.

That is a good price. Thanks for the link.

Laurence · Mar 8, 2006, 01:17 AM

It doesn't matter that Apple doesn't issue firmware updates often. You can always go to forum.rpc1.org and get firmware for almost any drive made. Often these firmware are hacked to be region free, burn faster, rip faster, etc. I've done this with literally 30-40 DVD burners of varying brands and never had any issues and if you ever do have problems, and the drive stops working you can always flash it back to the factory original, and if not, just take it to an apple store and tell them the drive just died.

Eriamjh · Mar 8, 2006, 08:17 AM

Originally Posted by Cory Bauer

Eriamjh, do yourself a tremendous favor and order up some Taiyo Yuden 8x DVD-Rs. I found them at very good prices here: http://www.supermediastore.com/taiyo...d-r-media.html
I've burned several-hundred of these over the last three years from a PowerMac G5, and have never had a bad disc. They burn at full speed, and are a great price. You don't have to pay the Apple premium for it to work, you just have to buy good stuff. Please report back once you've ordered and burned some.

I could do that, except I have a stack of previously purchased DVDs that will take me a while to burn through (no pun intended). They burn fine in my other devices at 8X. Why can't they burn at 8x in Apple's 8X advertized burner?

This just burns me up!

(But only at 2x!)

toddtmw · Mar 8, 2006, 11:11 AM

Originally Posted by Eriamjh

Better media? How do you define BETTER? Unnecessarily expense? It is most likely Apple's limited the drive to only recognize Apple media instead of a host of other perfectly acceptable media that burns at 8X in MANY other drives!

I hit my head because it SHOULD work. Apple makes it all but impossible to use media that is widely available. I shouldn't have to pay the Apple premium for EVERYTHING I use.

This isn't an Apple issue. My PC DVD-burners also have differnt luck wuth different brands (and even different packs of the same brand) of media. Sometimes the burn fails, but works if I select a slower speed. Sometimes the burn works, but the resulting disk is unusable. I've burned hundreds of disks on my Windows box using 3 different burners and the results are VERY inconsistent.

I haven't burned many DVD's on my iMac yet, but I put a Pioneer drive (that looks to the OS like a superdive) in my G4/400 tower and have had no trouble burning anything to that drive. (It tops out at 4x, though...) It DID seem that my G4/400 burned disks slower than they should be (even accounting for the 4x speed limit) compared to my windows burns, but I'd rather have a working burn even at 2x, than three or four failed burns at 8x or 16x.

The three DVD's I've burned using my iMac burned fine, but I didn't pay attention to how long they took to burn.

I'll have to watch that in the future.

-Todd

toddtmw · Mar 8, 2006, 11:16 AM

Originally Posted by Eriamjh

I could do that, except I have a stack of previously purchased DVDs that will take me a while to burn through (no pun intended). They burn fine in my other devices at 8X. Why can't they burn at 8x in Apple's 8X advertized burner?

This just burns me up!

(But only at 2x!)

I've got enought "Name Brand" disks that are pretty much useless to me to cover the walls in my den. I've gone through all the different brands looking for something that works. I'm going to order some of the Taiyo's. The price is almost as good as the "Deals" I've gotten on the disks I've bought locally. (I can usually find disk for 25 cents or less...) If these work, they'll be worth twice what this site is charging.

Eug Wanker · Mar 8, 2006, 11:28 AM

Originally Posted by Eriamjh

I could do that, except I have a stack of previously purchased DVDs that will take me a while to burn through (no pun intended). They burn fine in my other devices at 8X. Why can't they burn at 8x in Apple's 8X advertized burner?

This just burns me up!

(But only at 2x!)

It's probably a firmware issue, A lot of older drives will not recognize the latest media so it defaults to a slower speed. This is by design, just to be safe. However, if it's low end 8X media, you probably shouldn't burn them at 8X anyway.

BTW, I've had (very) few problems with some drives at 8X even with 8X Taiyo Yuden media, but it's not perfect, whereas 4X always works. I have not had problems with Apple media at 8X however.

I never burn Maxell 8X media at 8X though. I get fairly consistent problems with it on multiple drives at 8X, whereas 4X is always fine. Noname 8X media generally is absolute crap. Unreliable even at 4X sometimes.

ie. Apple >= Taiyo Yuden > Maxell >>> noname media.

P.S. I have 4 computer DVD burners and 1 standalone burner, as well as several computer DVD readers and 3 DVD players. Recording and playback on these various machines is how I've reached the above conclusions. I find that some people who claim that "xxx media is awesome at 8X!" often don't have many machines to test it on. For example, Maxell 8X media burned at 8X verifies and plays back just fine on the original burner and a couple of my other machines, but doesn't play back reliably on my other machines. Burn the same media at 4X, and it works fine on all machines.

Eriamjh · Mar 12, 2006, 10:43 AM

Well, I have to stand corrected. One brand of 8X media I already own is capable of burning at 8X on my iMac. Ironically, it is the cheap-a$$ Staples-brand DVD-R media. Now, my only problem is how to I turn of the Burn Verify in the finder so I don't have to wait twice as long?

packetattack · Mar 12, 2006, 11:13 AM

The only DVD media I burn is Ritek and I make sure it's branded as Ritek. It's relatively cheap and rare do I end up with a coaster. On most DVD sites, the Ritek media has been on top of the ratings. I have tried several other brands and all have failed although some fail more then others. Memorex has been the worst for me and that is across four different burners and on the Macs. I will also add that I have tried dual layer but it's been mixed results. I can burn and read them fine on the drive that created them. But, to play them on a different drive is a hit and miss proposition.

MikeS
hackamac.packetattack.com