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Obi Wan · Jun 12, 2003, 11:51 AM

Hi everyone! I originally posted this over in the eMac and iMac forum, but figured I might get some answers here as well, as this question pretains to external hardware.

I recently have been tinkering with the idea of a videography business. I have an eMac, and figured with some additional RAM, that it was good enough to cut video on, so I've started getting some software, and learning to use it. I got Final Cut, which runs beautifully, and then recently added DVD Studio Pro and an external Firewire DVD-RW drive. Much to my dismay, I realized AFTER purchasing the drive, that DVD Player will not play DVDs from an external drive - it won't even allow itslef to be installed on the computer. I wish Apple had been more forthcoming with this information, but that's beside the point, I guess.

I tried a few patches to allow me to run DVD Player, and none of them seem to work. I've tried VideoLAN, but it's picture is pixelated, it drops frames, and most importantly, hasn't played a DVD for longer than about 2 minutes without crashing. So now I'm wondering about the DVD drive, and how well it will work with DVD Studio Pro. Does anyone have any experience using DVD Studio Pro with an external DVD-RW drive? How important is the DVD Player software to DVD Studio Pro? Can it function properly without the Player? I'm concerned that my setup was maybe a little bit of a mistake.

I know that's a lot of questions, but I'm really struggling with this. Thanks in advance! Any advice will be greatly appreciated!

icruise · Jun 12, 2003, 12:05 PM

You can install DVD player using Pacifist or some other tool that allows you to take individual programs from the OS X install disks.

If it won't start because you don't have an internal DVD drive, you can get around this by mounting a Toast disk image of a DVD first. DVD Player will think you have an internal drive for some reason. I use a very small image with no video that I made in DVD Studio Pro for this purpose. You can then manually open the VIDEO_TS folder on the actual DVD you want to play (under File for the DVD Player). If you have Toast, I can give you a copy of this (it's around 650K). I haven't tried it with the last few OS X updates, but I imagine it will still work.

Obi Wan · Jun 12, 2003, 12:20 PM

Thanks Icruise! That sounds great. I'd love a copy of that file. I have Toast, and I had actually used Pacifist to load DVD Player onto my hard drive, so I'm half way there I guess.

I'm not really sure about what it means to "mount" an image, though. I saw some other things about that in my online research, but since I just very recently got Toast, I'm not really familiar with all it's ins and outs. I've really only used it to burn CDs so far. So what exactly do you do to mount an image?

Thanks again!

icruise · Jun 12, 2003, 12:30 PM

Mounting an image basically just means that Toast will take an image file and make it appear on the desktop as if you had inserted a CD or DVD. This apparently fools the DVD player into thinking you have a DVD drive installed.

In Toast's Other tab there is a "disc image" selection. Just drop the image to the window and press mount. I'll send it to you.

Obi Wan · Jun 12, 2003, 07:17 PM

I tried this technique, and the image appears as a CD-RW titled DVD Enabler. I still can't open DVD Player. The icon appears in the Dock, then just goes away. I ttried opening the files using the Open With feature, but it won't allow me to open DVD Player.

So what do you think I'm doing wrong here? I mounted the image onto the desktop using Toast, then inserted a DVD into the DVD-RW drive, and somehow it registers as a CD-RW. I don't get it. Any ideas?

icruise · Jun 12, 2003, 07:47 PM

Well I don't know. As I say, I haven't tried it recently, so it is possible that the last few OS updates broke this method.

However, on my machine I would get a message when I started DVD player that said I didn't have the proper hardware, and that DVD player would quit. It didn't just appear in the dock and then disappear as you describe. Is it possible you didn't install it properly?

Obi Wan · Jun 12, 2003, 10:16 PM

I don't know what's up with this. I installed DVD Player using Pacifist into my Applications folder. That should be good enough I'd think. I don't really know what else to try.

Man, this is frustrating!

I've tried adding patches that supposedly allow you to use DVD Player with an external source, and I can't get that to work. I've tried using Hexedit to manually alter the code, as one web resource recommended, and the numbers they say to change aren't at the corresponding lines that the site said they would be. I don't get it. it's like every way around this problem is somehow eluding me. ARGH!

How difficult a process is replacing the cd drive on an eMac? Is that feasible?

icruise · 11:30 PM

I guess my point is that if the DVD player is not even starting (I had assumed it was giving you the message I described) then all of the patches or enablers in the world aren't going to help, since the program itself isn't even functioning properly. Does anyone else have any ideas here? Would sending a copy of the DVD player program to him possibly work?

I would say it is rather difficult for the average person to replace an eMac optical drive, although I've never done it or anything.

Obi Wan · Jun 13, 2003, 08:44 AM

Thanks so much for all your help, Icruise. I still can't get anything to work. I'm just going to have somebody install a superdrive and send the external drive back. It seems like it's going to be more trouble than it's worth. I've tried everything, and nothing seems to work. Hopefully I can still return it.

I feel like I've been doing this for the past couple of days ->

Having a new drive installed will just make my life a lot easier I think.

Thanks again!

rjenkinson · Jun 13, 2003, 10:48 AM

you can play DVDs from an external drive. download the patch from this page.

-r.

Obi Wan · Jun 13, 2003, 01:51 PM

I think I already tried that one, but I'll give it a shot. I know I tried 3 different patches that were all suppsoed to fix it, but none of them did. I'll check it out. Thanks!

I just got off the phone with the fokls at my local Apple store, who claim they had no idea that DVD Player wouldn't work with an external drive, and they can't add an internal Superdrive for me, but referred me to another company. They said they couldn't get Superdrives that fit into an eMac from their vendor, but I could order one from Apple and they could install it for me. Apple's price tag on an internal Superdrive for an eMac? $580!!!!! What are they smoking?

ARGH! The saga continues! Thanks again for all you help everybody.

Obi Wan · Jun 13, 2003, 05:29 PM

I actually hadn't tried that one before rjenkinson, but it didn't work either. I got a "Patch Not Apply" message, which, while grammatically kind of humorous, wasn't what I wanted to see.

Maybe I haven't gotten DVD Player installed properly. I opened up Pacifist, then selected the DVD Player package from the DVD Studio Pro disc (I also tried unistalling that version, and installing it from the OSX Install disc, but had no luck that way, either) and then clicked "Install file" or whatever that button on Pacifist says. I find the DVD Player icon in the Applications folder, but the only thing I can get it to do is bounce up and down in the task bar, then disappear. Am I doing something wrong with Pacifist maybe? Is there some special setting in there I should be using?

CharlesS · Jun 17, 2003, 10:16 PM

Check the Console app (in /Applications/Utilities). See if it logs anything when the DVD Player fails to launch. That often gives clues...

rjenkinson · Jun 18, 2003, 03:52 AM

Originally posted by Obi Wan:
I actually hadn't tried that one before rjenkinson, but it didn't work either. I got a "Patch Not Apply" message, which, while grammatically kind of humorous, wasn't what I wanted to see.

the patch worked fine for me using DVD player 3.2. could it be that your application is the wrong version or was already patched (from your previous attempts) in some form?

-r.