[scribbler74]

this is the profile for the media profiler... its Memorex but clearly they're getting it from somewhere else...

read DVD structure [0E]
00 6C 00 00 01 40 C1 FD 9E D8 52 00 02 88 0D 0C [email protected].....
88 88 90 00 03 46 55 4A 49 46 49 00 04 4C 4D 30 .....FUJIFI..LM0
33 00 00 00 05 B8 83 00 30 00 01 00 06 09 0F 10 3.......0.......
88 78 90 00 07 29 82 10 21 00 00 00 08 05 17 0D .x...)..!.......
0F 07 07 00 09 96 06 0D 0B 78 88 00 0A 80 00 00 .........x......
00 00 10 00 0B 06 18 1B 85 67 85 00 0C 7C DF B8 .........g...|..
93 01 30 00 0D 1A AA D0 00 00 00 00 00 00 ..0...........


the Drive model is MATSHITA DVD-R J-835E

and finally...

i'm getting an 8X burn... I'm buring two hour movies in 15 minutes ACTUAL REAL time.

[scribbler74]

Make that DVD-R UJ-835E

[tooki]

Originally posted by scribbler74:
i'm getting an 8X burn... I'm buring two hour movies in 15 minutes ACTUAL REAL time.

The length of the video is solely dependent on the compression ratio. But assuming that's a full (4.7GB) disc, 15 minutes is a 4x burn.

tooki

[asxless]

Originally posted by scribbler74:
this is the profile for the media profiler... its Memorex but clearly they're getting it from somewhere else...

read DVD structure [0E]
00 6C 00 00 01 40 C1 FD 9E D8 52 00 02 88 0D 0C [email protected].....
88 88 90 00 03 46 55 4A 49 46 49 00 04 4C 4D 30 .....FUJIFI..LM0
33 00 00 00 05 B8 83 00 30 00 01 00 06 09 0F 10 3.......0.......
88 78 90 00 07 29 82 10 21 00 00 00 08 05 17 0D .x...)..!.......
0F 07 07 00 09 96 06 0D 0B 78 88 00 0A 80 00 00 .........x......
00 00 10 00 0B 06 18 1B 85 67 85 00 0C 7C DF B8 .........g...|..
93 01 30 00 0D 1A AA D0 00 00 00 00 00 00 ..0...........


the Drive model is MATSHITA DVD-R J-835E

and finally...

i'm getting an 8X burn... I'm buring two hour movies in 15 minutes ACTUAL REAL time.

Thanks scribbler74.

For those counting this is the 2nd Fuji code that the UJ-835E recognizes as 8X (TYG02 and FUJIFILM03).

Note: Fuji distributes 8x DVD-R media with at least one other code -- ProdiscF01 -- that we have not heard about yet.

But Memorex distributes 8x DVD-R media with so many different codes that it is a pure gamble

BTW what software are you using to burn two hour movies in 15 minutes ACTUAL REAL time? IIRC DVD-R media is single layer and only holds 1 hour of video (i.e. under 4.5 GB).

-- asxless in iLand

[applemacsatx]

Originally posted by jbianchini:
I have the new powerbook with the 8x drive and I use Sony DVD-R's listed at 8X and when burning with Toast I get 8x speeds. Full 4.4 gig disk burns in about 6:30 or so...Sony media for me is all I buy (for now)

I'm with you, jbianchini...I don't understand all of the problems people are having...this drive DOES work at 8x...

I am burning at 8x on my 1.67mhz 15" SuperDrive AluBook...just finished making a DVD in Roxio Popcorn, compression turned off...what took 45-60 minutes before on a 1x generic DVD-R just took me 7 minutes on an 8x-rated DVD-R...and this is doing the same movie, all settings the same.

By the way, this is slightly off topic but should be of interest: I am using a 25-pk spindle of discs that I bought yesterday at Circuit City for like $7.00 without any rebates necessary...it's their house brand ("esa"), and they seem to work very well. This is what i am using to burn at 8x, so they definitely are not low-quality, contary to what the price says...

They are on sale at CC through today (Saturday), so hurry up and pick a bundle up if you need some good quality, fast discs!

[Laurence]

If you are having issues with any DVD Burner rejecting media or burning at incorrect speeds head on over to http://forum.rpc1.org/dl_all.php and see what firmware versions are available for your drive. That site has links to almost all official firmwares as well as many hacked ones that add faster burning/ripping/extra features/etc... The hacked firmwares are usually more reliable than the ones from Apple/Sony/Pioneer/etc.

My pioneer 108 is flashed with either NILs firmware and it will burn ANY DVD at around 10x. I've been using generic media and after about 200 burns I haven't had one failure. Theoretically I could be burning even faster, but I have to have the drive hooked up on a shared ATA33 (not 133) connection with a 3rd internal HD.

[salgiza]

Hi all,
I was going to open a new thread, but I thought my question should be in this one, as it's just the same problem, but with CDs instead of DVDs.

Has anybody managed to burn a CD at higher speeds than 8x?
I'm at the moment using Verbatim 52x CD-R discs, and Disk utility only allows me to use them at 8x. I feel like I have traveled back in time a few years!!
Any recomended brands? (Apple is not an option, because I don't think I can find them where I live). Do you think I should upgrade the firmware of the drive? Won't that cause me problems with AppleCare?

P.S. Don't try to burn a CD in front of a PC owner. You'll avoid the laughs telling you how much your laptop sucks.

Thanks,
Salva.

[Eug Wanker]

Just a note... I had major problems with some Verbatim CD-R on my Mac and PC. They would burn at higher speeds, but would be unreadable. It happened over and over, and finally I just threw the whole spindle out.

The strange part is that Verbatim DVD-R has been flawless for me. Same with previous bulk Verbatim CD-R I bought too.

[asxless]

Originally posted by salgiza:
...Has anybody managed to burn a CD at higher speeds than 8x?
I'm at the moment using Verbatim 52x CD-R discs, and Disk utility only allows me to use them at 8x...

My new PowerBoook's SuperDrive offers to burn Memorex 48X CD-Rs at 24x (i.e. the full spec of the SuperDrive). Note: I didn't actually time the burn because I wasn't burning a full CD-R.

The odd thing is that the Finder's Disc Burn dialog shows several higher greyed out speeds up to 40x. AFAIK Apple doesn't ship a Mac with an optical drive capable of higher than 24x on a CD-R. So, I'm not sure why it even bothers to show greyed out speeds above 24x but below the spec of the media (48x).

-- asxless in iLand

[U n i o n 0015]

I don't seem to be having a problem with CD burning, which is nice. I seem to be getting full speeds with that. DVD, though...

I just found out that the media we use at work is Taiyo Yuden, top-notch stuff considering we ship out thousands of burned DVDs a month. So I will yoink some and burn another full DVD tonight and record the results.

[asxless]

Originally posted by U n i o n 0015:
I don't seem to be having a problem with CD burning, which is nice. I seem to be getting full speeds with that....

I'm surprised that tooki hasn't pointed out that the SuperDrive spec for CD writing does _not_ include the equivalent of the four letter DVD acronym (ZCLV) which we now know translates to...

"You'll get to burn DVDs at half the speed of the media you use, But only if you can figure out which vendors/codes we recognize as worthy of high speed burning. Otherwise you get to burn at 2x"

-- asxless in iLand

[toddeastman]

I did this same test plenty of times with different media. This was the fastest I was ever able to burn:

Filesize: 4,360 MB (full disk)
Media Type: Fuji 8x DVD-R Media
Toast/drutil status reports media as: 8x
Reported time to burn: 6:53
Actual time to burn: 13:14
Burned at: ~4x (4360MB/794sec=5.49MB/sec)


This drive is garbage. The data rate through Activity Monitor never made it past 5.5 MB/s through any zone. I have used 5 differnt brands and this is the highest data rate I can achieve. I thought these were supposed to ProLine laptops. Sad. I wonder if we wound up with the Mac Mini drives. The Apple Store refused to help and referred me to AppleCare. I was able to get a Case# from them to take to a local Apple Specialist. I'm not sure what thats going to do. I'm not so sure this drive is "defective" as I am that it's crap.

Has anyone else had any luck talking to Apple about this? If an Apple Service center puts in a different drive (say a Pioneer) does that void my warranty?

I feel fooled by generally misleading advertising. 8x, yeah right.

[DVGuy]

You should see my Apple discussion board thread about this topic. Level 2 tech says it is all our fault for not using Apple media! No, this is not a joke. They REALLY EXPECT us to buy and use APPLE media. Problem is that even APPLE media doesn't work at 8x and it is not made by APPLE either. I asked to have the case kicked back up the chain to "tech support."

[shuffle1]

Originally posted by asxless:
As reminder...

We have reports of ONLY 5 'brands' of 8x media that are recognized as 8x by these drives...

Apple (coded MXL RG03)
Maxell (coded MXL RG03)
Verbatim (could be coded MCC 02RG20 or TYG02)
Fuji - Yuden (probably coded TYG02)
Memorex* (could be coded as MCC 02RG20, CMC MAG. AE1, FUJIFILM03.., ProdiscF01.., or RITEKG05.... )

* Note: Memorex coded as CMC MAG. AE1 was _not_ recognized as 8x media. And we have a number of reports of other media 'brands' that are not recognised as 8x.

So these new drives would only need to recognize 3 different 8x media codes to explain all of the reports so far - MXL RG03, MCC 02RG20 & TYG02.

-- asxless in iLand

I have a 1.67 ghz PB w/sd and I tried the 8x Maxell (coded MXL RG03) and it recognizes it at 2x. What a bummer...

[asxless]

Originally posted by shuffle1:
I have a 1.67 ghz PB w/sd and I tried the 8x Maxell (coded MXL RG03) and it recognizes it at 2x. What a bummer...

Say what bro?

MXL RG03 is how the Apple 8X media I have is coded. And we have at least one report of the Maxell brand 8x media coded as MXL RG03 being recognized as 8x. So your report that media coded similarly to "Apple" media isn't even recognized as 8x is a serious bummer

Did you try the Terminal command "drutil status" to confirm the speed?

-- asxless in iLand

[PMDaly]

I have a 1.5ghz 15" PB... do they have the same burner as the recent ones? Also, I have used two different dvd brands (Sony and Verbatim)... they both say 8x but run 4x. Is there a proven brand that will run 8x on the 1.5ghz PBs?

[U n i o n 0015]

Originally posted by PMDaly:
I have a 1.5ghz 15" PB... do they have the same burner as the recent ones? Also, I have used two different dvd brands (Sony and Verbatim)... they both say 8x but run 4x. Is there a proven brand that will run 8x on the 1.5ghz PBs?

Go to "About this Mac" and click "More Info" to open System Profiler. Click the "ATA" under Hardware and you will see what optical drive you have.

We have found that NO BRAND burns at a full 8X, or anywhere near it. Not even Apple's brand. The best we can get is roughly a 4X burn.

[toddeastman]

Here are the data rates through each burn zone since this writer is zCLV. Data rates were taken from Activity Monitor sampling at 1 sec intervals. I personally can't fit anymore data onto a DVD-R so it's safe to say that this is a full burn.

Media Type: TDK 8x DVD-R coded as TTG02
Toast/drutil reports media as: 8x
Filesize: 4473.3MB
Reported time to burn: 6:52 (412 sec)
Actual time to burn: 12:43 (763 sec)


Time 0:00 = 2.5MB/s - 3MB/s (2x)
Time 1:47 = 5MB/s - 5.5MB/s (4x)
Time 6:31 = 7.5MB/s - 8MB/s (~6x)
Time 11:16 = 5.5MB/s - 9MB/s (~6.5x) data rate very inconsistant in this zone
---------------------------------------
Media Type: Generic 8x DVD-R coded as FUJIFI..LM0
Toast/drutil reports media as: 8x
Filesize: 4473.3MB
Reported time to burn: 6:52 (412 sec)
Actual time to burn: 12:45 (765 sec)


Time 0:00 = 2.5MB/s - 3MB/s (2x)
Time 1:47 = 5MB/s - 5.5MB/s (4x)
Time 6:31 = 7.5MB/s - 8MB/s (~6x)
Note: This disc changed velocity only 3 times. the other discs changed four times.
-----------------------------------------
Media Type: Fuji 8x DVD-R coded as TYG02
Toast/drutil reports media as: 8x
Filesize: 4473.3MB
Reported time to burn: 6:52 (412 sec)
Actual time to burn: 12:53 (773 sec)


Time 0:00 = 2.5MB/s - 3MB/s (2x)
Time 1:48 = 5MB/s - 5.5MB/s (4x)
Time 6:31 = 7.5MB/s - 8MB/s (~6x)
Time 11:21 = 6.5MB/s - 9MB/s (~6.5x) data rate very inconsistant in this zone

The media seemed pretty consistant across the board. As you can see, the drive never hit the 11MB/s data rate to claim 8x in these tests. All of these tests were done with Buffer Underrun Protection (BUP) on. It's interesting that with BUP off I would get an underrun error in the last burn zone MAYBE when the drive was trying to hit 8x. That brings up a nasty possibility...is the PowerBook even able to transfer the data fast enough to the drive to write at 8x? The 5400RPM drive should have no problem but I had a buffer underrun consistantly at this point in the burn. The BUP could also account for the inconsistant data rate in the last burn zone as it struggled to keep the data coming in.

Anyone have any thoughts?

[asxless]

Originally posted by toddeastman:
....That brings up a nasty possibility...is the PowerBook even able to transfer the data fast enough to the drive to write at 8x? The 5400RPM drive should have no problem but I had a buffer underrun consistantly at this point in the burn. The BUP could also account for the inconsistant data rate in the last burn zone as it struggled to keep the data coming in.

Anyone have any thoughts?...

I've been wondering about that too. The tests I have been running are with the Finder (aka Disk Utility) Burn Disc functionality. In this method you use the Finder to copy the data to be burned to a temporary disc image prior to the burn. AND... it takes more than 12 minutes for the Finder to copy 4+GB I know that the Finder is building directories etc. And it is reading and writing to the same disk*. But it may be indicating a fundamental bandwidth limitation for data transfer that precludes a full 8x burn to DVD media even if this drive was actully capable of burning at 8x.

*FWIW it actually takes longer to transfer 4+GB of data from my Firewire drive.

-- asxless in iLand

[Simon]

Originally posted by asxless:
*FWIW it actually takes longer to transfer 4+GB of data from my Firewire drive.

And keep in mind that the SuperDrive is connected to the motherboard through a mere EIDE bus with only 16.7 Mbps. We might (soon) be hitting the wall...

[sideus]

I'd like to see someone use the very same media mentioned in this thread burned using an 8x DVD burner on a desktop Mac. I want to know if the desktops can burn at 8x consistently. I'm just curious.

[toddeastman]

My desktop G4 with a Pioneer 107 8x burns this media in roughly half the time. It's not exactly half but pretty close. I dont have numbers but i did set up a race between the two. The PowerBook got spanked.

For now my R&D budget is exhausted. I need to test some Apple 8x to finally put Apple's claims to use their media to rest.....or give it credit. I'm not expecting any miracles though.

[asxless]

Thanks to toddeastman's excellent "R&D" report adding to other previous reports, we have a total of 4 DVD-R 8x media codes that these drives usually* recognize as 8x

Code - Brand(s)
---------------
MXL RG03 - Apple, Maxell
TYG02 - Some TDK, Fuji (Yuden)
TTG02 - Some TDK
FUJIFI..LM0 - Some Fuji and 'generic' brands

And 1 code that these drives probably recognize at 8x - MCC 02RG20 - Some Memorex and some Verbatim.

So if you were running out this afternoon to your local DVD media vendor looking for DVD-R media that your new PowerBook would _probably_ recognize as 8x ( but burn at only 4x avg.), you best bets are:

Apple
Maxell*
TDK**
Fuji (Yuden)

All of the other "brands" distribute media with codes that have not yet been reported or have been reported as _not_ being recognized as 8x. So they are a serious gamble with each purchase. For example, Memorex distributes media with 5 different codes: one has been reported as 8x, one at 2x and the others are unreported.

Of course we have ZERO, NONE, NADA reports of any media that has sustained 8x speeds for any significant period _during a burn_

-- asxless in iLand

* even some Maxell media, coded like the Apple media (MXL RG03), has been reported as being recognized as only 2x.
** TDK distributes one other code that has not been report yet.

[dgf13]

I notice that nobody has mentioned trying to use +R media to test burn rates. These new drives are supposed to be +/- R/RW drives but everybody seems to still be only considering -R (i assume that's because superdrives have only been -R up until now.)

I am going to try some +R's from work. I'm assuming i'll get about the same pathetic results, but it's worth a try.

[prelude]

I have actually tried +r Media and to make a long story somewhat shorter: same results here. I have found another strange thing though. I have used hundreds of 2.4x fuji DVD's in my 2.4 nec 1300 burner (PC) with no problems whatsoever but when I tried to burn one of them in my pb (17" 1.67ghz) I could only choose 2x. I used toast btw. Did the programmers feel it necessary to keep the look of the program clean and consistant and just make it 2x or does it simply burn that .4 slower.

Not that you would notice that .4 But perhaps this just adds up to a list of troubles with this drive.

About the "uo to 8x" thing: I can understand the whole zclv thing and I actually can accept it but I am planning to burn some 600DVD's during the next months so allthough my drive might not be designed for it I DO expect it to do it's job properly! And if you're burning that many discs, I would like to get the best speed possible.

Also, I want to burn printable DVD's Anyone have any experience with those? Or are the manufacturing codes etc. the same and thus the problems the same?

[U n i o n 0015]

There were some interesting graphs posted on the Apple Discussions thread regarding this issue. The graphs showed what speeds certain specs drive achieve while burning. He posted a few of a zCLV drive, which burned in a step-like pattern. It would never achieve it's full speed in the first three steps of the burn, but it would achieve the full speed in the final step.

With this drive, we're never achieving over 5.4MB/sec, even in the final stage of burn.

Here are the graphs (note the zCLV ones)

[prelude]

that is actually what tooki has tried to explain to us for quite some time

Anyway, I guess you meant to say that we will never reach more than 5.4mb/s average? The last part of the writing process SHOULD still give us around 10.5mb/sec. The statistics provided by toddeastman however show us that we never actually get the maximum throughput.

I've also found a claim on some page that in the powerbooks the harddrive and the superdrive are not on the same bus? (I think he meant ide controller) In that case, there should not be a problem with the bnadwidth. I have copied some large files onto my disk and I am able to get 10mb/s+ easily.

[Simon]

Originally posted by prelude:
I've also found a claim on some page that in the powerbooks the harddrive and the superdrive are not on the same bus? (I think he meant ide controller) In that case, there should not be a problem with the bnadwidth. I have copied some large files onto my disk and I am able to get 10mb/s+ easily.

Of course. In my post above I already mentioned that the PB's optical drive is sitting on an 16.7 Mbps EIDE bus. The HD however is on a Ultra ATA DMA 100 Mbps bus.

So yes, the drives are on two separate busses and yes, the HD and its bus offers much higher throughput than the SuperDrive or its bus. OTOH this doesn't mean that the EIDE bus or the I/O device controller is the bottleneck, since we don't know what the maximum SD throughput is.

[asxless]

If you hunt down the specs on the two ZCLV drives that only achieved roughly 10x, you'll find their manufactures claim they are 16x drives

NEC - http://www.necsam.com/optical/produc...500A/specs.cfm

Pioneer - http://www.pioneerelectronics.com/pn...etailComponent

So it looks like Apple is just stooping to the same marketing tactics as the drive industry when it specs this drive as "up to 8x".

For those who like to use the automotive "horsepower" analogy as a defense of Apple's advertising on this drive -- every car I have purchased over the last 3 decades had a _graph_ of the horsepower curve (and torque curve) in the sales literature.

FWIW I would have been happy for Apple to say this was an "up to 8x" drive IF it had provided a graph of the actual burn rates throughout a full DVD burn. As it is, Apple and the DVD drive industry are switching the way they spec drives without letting the consumer know that an "up to 8x ZCLV" drive is actually a "4x average" drive. Somehow "8x across the board" has a better ring than "Up to 8x across the board, but really more like 4x for most of our models"

-- asxless in iLand

[karo]

Some of you are just so industry brainwashed that it's very sad. Get real. Apple sells this machine with 8x burning and I went out to a store and bought three diffrent brand of media none of which burned faster than 2x. Shame on them. Liars. How can anyone defend this wilful deception. I will take them to small claims court and ask for $400. Who wants to join?

[DVGuy]

It is a sad state of affairs that legal action is the only way to get companies like APPLE to be responsive to legitimate customer complaints. Count me in. I figure it will take a CLASS ACTION to get results.

[Eug Wanker]

Originally posted by karo:
Some of you are just so industry brainwashed that it's very sad. Get real. Apple sells this machine with 8x burning and I went out to a store and bought three diffrent brand of media none of which burned faster than 2x. Shame on them. Liars. How can anyone defend this wilful deception. I will take them to small claims court and ask for $400. Who wants to join?

I hope your joking...

[tooki]

A class action suit is a great way to waste your time, get a $50 coupon from Apple (only good on the Apple Store online, of course), and make some lawyer happy.

And afterwards, your drive still won't burn a whole disc in 3 minutes, and Apple will still say "Up to some X' in the product info.

tooki

[DVGuy]

I agree that CLASS ACTION will do nothing. Just makes me angry. It would actually be cheaper to just throw away the drive that came with the PowerBook and buy a new one that actually will reach some speed at least NEAR its rating. BTW, Apple is hiding the thread at the VERY BOTTOM OF PAGE TWO in the PowerBook/DVD section of the discussion board. Sorting by rating has no effect on its position. I expect it will be deleted entirely soon. That is how APPLE solves all customer complaints.

[toddeastman]

Anyone making any progress with an actual 8x burn speed in the last 15% of the burn?

Better yet, anyone making progress with Apple?

[U n i o n 0015]

Originally posted by toddeastman:
Anyone making any progress with an actual 8x burn speed in the last 15% of the burn?

Better yet, anyone making progress with Apple?

I haven't tested in a while, but I NEVER reached 11 MB/sec while burning, even during the final part. It simply isn't happening.

Haven't bothered with Apple since they'd just replace the drive with the same thing. I AM glad that the thread on the Apple discussions is getting so freakin' huge because they won't be able to ignore it if it keeps getting larger.

Even if they released a firmware update that let me burn at 8X for 15% at the end would be nice! I just want to be getting "UP TO 8X" at this point! Not "up to 4X."

[xian101]

Hey, I registered to make a post on 8x burn times.

First of all, I'm doing a finder burn with Apple 8x DVD-R on my PB 17" 1.67, all the latest updates, of a 4.1GB bunch of audio files.

The first minute of the burn was at around 5MB/s, then it jumped to 10.xMB/s, then up to around 16-17MB/s.

Start time = 13:32:38
End time = 13:45:00

So it took 12:22 seconds. It definately got faster as it went. The average speed and the top speed are very different. I'm with tooki. I find these burn times adequate.

Next, I'll try a Memorex DVD+RW. Not that anyone's asking, but what the hey?

As an aside, does anyone know if DVD+R discs I burn will play in an iBook G3 900MHz with a combo drive? I have a pack of 25 I haven't opened yet, which I can swap at Target for DVD-Rs.

Coolio.

[toddeastman]

Originally Posted by xian101

Hey, I registered to make a post on 8x burn times.

First of all, I'm doing a finder burn with Apple 8x DVD-R on my PB 17" 1.67, all the latest updates, of a 4.1GB bunch of audio files.

The first minute of the burn was at around 5MB/s, then it jumped to 10.xMB/s, then up to around 16-17MB/s.

Start time = 13:32:38
End time = 13:45:00

So it took 12:22 seconds. It definately got faster as it went. The average speed and the top speed are very different. I'm with tooki. I find these burn times adequate.

Next, I'll try a Memorex DVD+RW. Not that anyone's asking, but what the hey?

As an aside, does anyone know if DVD+R discs I burn will play in an iBook G3 900MHz with a combo drive? I have a pack of 25 I haven't opened yet, which I can swap at Target for DVD-Rs.

Coolio.

When did you purchase the Powerbook? What model drive and revision does Apple System Profiler report?

Congrats on getting your 8x burn. It would seem as if the firmware of this drive only really likes Apple media.....hmmmmm....there just seems to be something not right about that. Makes me think of Microsoft and web browsers.

[xian101]

Memorex DVD+RW

Start time = 14:51:33
End time = 15:13:28

It climbed to about 7MB/s near the end, but the finder only recognized it as 2x media.

Ok then. 22 minutes.

[xian101]

Todd, I bought this laptop the day it was released through Apple Dev Connection Store.

The drive is a Matshita DVD-R UJ-835E, firmware rev GAN7

[Stratus Fear]

Originally Posted by xian101

As an aside, does anyone know if DVD+R discs I burn will play in an iBook G3 900MHz with a combo drive? I have a pack of 25 I haven't opened yet, which I can swap at Target for DVD-Rs.

I've burned DVD+Rs on my Windows PC before, and they worked without a hitch in my old iBook G3 700MHz w/ combo drive when I had it.

[spiff72]

Originally Posted by Stratus Fear

I've burned DVD+Rs on my Windows PC before, and they worked without a hitch in my old iBook G3 700MHz w/ combo drive when I had it.

I can't believe this thread has faded out...

I just discovered this problem on my PB. It took me about 25-30 minutes to burn a memorex 8X DVD-R (not one of the correctly coded ones). Ridiculous.

Mine is one of the 835E drives.

Has everyone officially given up on this problem?

[tooki]

IMHO, the drive was right in burning an improperly coded disc at 2x.

tooki

[Hornet]

Thought I'd drop by with my various results

1.67, superdrive, and I use toast. I have to say - honestly I think the superdrive is lame in this model. It really is a shame... at least its better than the one in my Titanium. oh well. 'up to 8x' indeed.

TDK 8x blanks that I had - NEVER got a successful 8x burn, ever. I ended up always burning them at 4x because at various points along the way I would get strange errors in toast - not underrun errors, as underrun protection was turned on. I understand there is another type of TDK disk going around - maybe the type I bought was the dodgy one. Oh well. I wont be buying tdk's again.

I now use Verbatim blanks, which have worked at 8x every time. They look generic (inkjet printable, so obviously they will look generic hah). Quite pleased with them.

Burning toast is a strange beast at 8x. It quotes 6 minutes or so for a full dvd, but it only counts down a second every few seconds. You can tell its in a 'low speed' step. Then at about 20%, it will step up to the next speed, at which it does a second in roughly 2 seconds. Finally - at just after FIFTY percent - it actually starts counting down second for second, ie it must be doing 8x then. Hence most of the time the damn drive IS NOT BURNING AT 8X, and for some of the time not even 4x. End burn times are >12mins usually, seemingly 14mins (thats from memory with including the 'closing the disk' wait). Sounds about on par with 4x burners.

ZCLV hey. lame imo.

Its a good book otherwise.. heh

[spiff72]

I am going to pick up some new blanks today, and I am wondering if there is a particular Verbatim media I should look for? I see a couple different ones on the Best Buy and Circuit City web sites. If it is Verbatim 8X DVD-R, will I be OK regardless of which one I get? And by "OK", I mean that the drive will see it as an 8X disc...

Thanks,
Jeff

EDIT:

I am genuinely pissed at this point.

I grabbed some Verbatim 16X media, and here is the code: MCC 03RG20 (rather than 02RG20 like the 8X media that some have had success with).

Once again, the media is only recognized at 2X! 16X media that isn't read any higher than 2X is a joke if you ask me. Does anyone out there know if the 845 superdrive is more "forgiving"?

Also, since I installed Toast (and subsequently uninstalled it and installed Dragon Burn), blank DVDs don't mount in finder (and i can't figure out how to restore this functionality). Any ideas on how to do that? Or is this not the way it works?

I am very close to actually calling Apple tech support to get their story. Do you think they could help over the phone with the Finder question?

Thanks,
Jeff

[Chris_G]

Jeff:

In the system preferences, under CDs & DVDs, make sure that the Finder is set to handle a blank CD/DVD when a blank CD/DVD is inserted.

Chris

[spiff72]

Thanks Chris...

I found that setting a couple days ago, and changed it to the finder, and that helped (sort of). It was set to "ask", but it wouldn't ask once I had uninstalled Toast. I have Dragon Burn installed now, and at least that program doesn't insist on starting when you insert the disc, and then ejecting the disc when you quit toast.

I think I have it under control now, other than that pesky 2X speed issue.

Thanks,
Jeff

[Cory Bauer]

I'm wondering what speed 8x discs will burn at in my revision one Powermac G5 with a 4x burner? I can't assume 4x because my original Flat-Panel iMac started to burn DVDs at 1x after I started buying DVD media rated at higher than 2x (everyone stopped selling the 2x media). Thanks.

[Yonidass]

There's a good deal on Verbatim 8x DVD-Rs advertised as MCC02RG20, one of the codes claimed to actually burn at 8x, at Supermediastore:

http://www.supermediastore.com/verba...-shipping.html

Although on another note, I bought a pack of Tayo Yudens which are TYG02 (one of the codes which suposedly burns at 8x) and they only burn at 4x (identified by Toast as 8x).

I ordered the Verbatims today and will verify if they're burning at 8x when I get them.

[Eug Wanker]

My friend has had problems with Verbatim 8X media. I have never had problems with Apple 8X media. I had problems with Memorex, Sony, and of course the cheaper brands too.

Anyways, my iMac G5 has the Pioneer DVR-K04, and it too burns around a little bit faster than 4X speeds overall for a complete disc, with a full burn over 13 minutes. Really, the pseudo-8X is par for the course for various laptop burner manufacturers. Don't blame Apple.

BTW, I just ordered a bunch of Taiyo Yuden... 4X, just because it's about half the price of the 8X stuff, and it's not as it's gonna make a huge time difference (I hope) on these drives.