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Karim · Nov 19, 2002, 11:26 AM

I just wrote my first DVD-R in Toast. It was a data disc full of files, approx 4.3GB worth.

I decided to unplug power and check the battery runtime. When first unplugging the PB estimated 2:40 of power and I was on highest performance setting.

Started to burn the DVD, Toast said 55 minutes to complete. (Toast only gave an option for 1X burning)

Battery time immediately dropped to 1:40 and ticked off from there.

When the DVD completed writing (Not including verification), the battery time remaining was 0:46.

Fan was on the whole time wile writing.

escher · Nov 19, 2002, 11:32 AM

Thanks for your report, Karim. It looks like there won't be a lot of people burning DVDs on battery power. But it's good to know that it can be done, as long as you prepared the files while you were still plugged in.

I was initially opposed to the idea of having a slow DVD-R in a PowerBook. But after some thought, DVD-R drives in laptops make sense, just like the originally slow CD-RW drives did.

Escher

UnixMac · Nov 19, 2002, 11:33 AM

An Apple care tech told me that the new update/downloads for the DVD-R's on the apple website will allow the PB SD to burn at 2X, did you hear anything about that? I would be curious to know if anyone has installed this update and what their results were?

Eug · Nov 19, 2002, 11:35 AM

DVD-R burning (without encoding) doesn't take many CPU cycles, but it's still a good result for battery time, considering the amount of juice required to run the optical drive.

4.3 GB is close to the limit. It's just over 4.37 GB (4700000000 bytes). So the absolute max for burning would probably be around 56 minutes.

An Apple care tech told me that the new update/downloads for the DVD-R's on the apple website will allow the PB SD to burn at 2X, did you hear anything about that? I would be curious to know if anyone has installed this update and what their results were?

Where's the update?

UnixMac · Nov 19, 2002, 11:37 AM

BTW Karim, do you have DVD Studio Pro 1.5? Can you report on how that goes if you do...

Eug · Nov 19, 2002, 11:41 AM

Originally posted by UnixMac:
BTW Karim, do you have DVD Studio Pro 1.5? Can you report on how that goes if you do...

It would be good to see that it works. However, even if DVD Studio Pro didn't directly support that drive yet, it's no big deal since you could just ask DVD Studio Pro to create a VIDEO_TS folder, which you could burn later with Toast. In fact, for your own projects sometimes this would be recommended, because then if you have space you can add other stuff to the disc.

Karim · Nov 19, 2002, 11:41 AM

The actual size of the DVD-R I wrote was 4.36GB (I rounded off before).

I do have DVD Studio. I'm going to do a DVD movie project soon and will post my results.

UnixMac · Nov 19, 2002, 11:43 AM

Originally posted by Eug:
It would be good to see that it works. However, even if DVD Studio Pro didn't directly support that drive yet, it's no big deal since you could just ask DVD Studio Pro to create a VIDEO_TS folder, which you could burn later with Toast. In fact, for your own projects sometimes this would be recommended, because then if you have space you can add other stuff to the disc.

Will that automatically play thru DVD player if you do that? That would be great if it did, would save a lot of $$ on Disks.

Karim · Nov 19, 2002, 11:43 AM

I see no update on Apple's site nor does Software Update pull anything...

UnixMac · Nov 19, 2002, 11:46 AM

Originally posted by Karim:
I see no update on Apple's site nor does Software Update pull anything...

Go here www.apple.com/powermac/superdrive.html and look at the top right of the screen above the picture of the SD and CD-RW....that is the update he said would work on the PB..

Eug · Nov 19, 2002, 11:48 AM

Originally posted by UnixMac:

Will that automatically play thru DVD player if you do that? That would be great if it did, would save a lot of $$ on Disks.

I'm not sure what you're asking but I'm talking about data files, etc. ie. The original VIDEO_TS folder would still play fine in any DVD player, but you can have other folders of data which would be ignored by the DVD player.

eg. If you had a 2 GB VIDEO_TS folder you could even put your DVD Studio Pro project and video, etc. in a separate folder as a built-in backup of the original project on the same DVD-R.

Go here www.apple.com/powermac/superdrive.html and look at the top right of the screen above the picture of the SD and CD-RW....that is the update he said would work on the PB..

That AppleCare person doesn't know what he is talking about. That's for the iMac and PowerMac, which (currently) use Pioneer drives.

The PowerBook uses a Panasonic drive.

gg1234 · Nov 19, 2002, 12:02 PM

I went to the link given above and clicked on the superdive upgrade link which brought me to an FAQ which had this info:

Q: "If I buy a new Macintosh with SuperDrive today, will I need this update?"

A: "Apple�s most recently introduced SuperDrive-equipped Macs (that is, the 17-inch flat-panel iMac, the eMac with SuperDrive, the new Power Mac G4 (introduced in August 2002) with SuperDrive, and the new PowerBook G4 (introduced in November 2002) with SuperDrive already have the latest update, and are ready for the new media. And all SuperDrive-equipped Macs being manufactured today have the latest update."

(bold emphasis mine)

Eug · Nov 19, 2002, 12:20 PM

Originally posted by gg1234:
I went to the link given above and clicked on the superdive upgrade link which brought me to an FAQ which had this info:

Q: "If I buy a new Macintosh with SuperDrive today, will I need this update?"

A: "Apple�s most recently introduced SuperDrive-equipped Macs (that is, the 17-inch flat-panel iMac, the eMac with SuperDrive, the new Power Mac G4 (introduced in August 2002) with SuperDrive, and the new PowerBook G4 (introduced in November 2002) with SuperDrive already have the latest update, and are ready for the new media. And all SuperDrive-equipped Macs being manufactured today have the latest update."

(bold emphasis mine)

Yeah, that sounds like the 4X media update. Pioneer drives could theoretically fry themselves with 4X media. The update allows the use of 4X media without risk, albeit only at 1X (even though the drive is capable of 2X writing).

AFAIK, no Panasonic DVD-R drive has had this issue, and anyways the PB SuperDrive came out after this 4X media issue came to light.

iBorg · Nov 19, 2002, 01:26 PM

Originally posted by Eug:
Yeah, that sounds like the 4X media update. Pioneer drives could theoretically fry themselves with 4X media. The update allows the use of 4X media without risk, albeit only at 1X (even though the drive is capable of 2X writing).

As Eug said, the DVD-R update was to allow use of higher speed DVD-R media without damaging the equipment. Not only does it not allow faster speed burning, you're only able to DVD-R at 1x speed if using higher speed media, even with 2x DVD-R burners in iMacs and G4 Powermacs. (Using 2x DVD-R media still allows 2x burning with those units, 1x with TiSD's.)

iBorg

UnixMac · Nov 19, 2002, 03:43 PM

Thanks for all the good info felas.. So I guess there is no chance of a download that will speed up the PB SD anytime in the future? Oh well, 1X DVD is still reasonable when you consider that you can plug it in and work on other stuff while it does it.

hifi · Nov 19, 2002, 05:56 PM

the superdrive (mke uj-815) in the new powerbook g4's only supports 1x dvd burning. this CANNOT be changed with a firmware update

gg1234 · Nov 19, 2002, 06:12 PM

Originally posted by hifi:
the superdrive (mke uj-815) in the new powerbook g4's only supports 1x dvd burning. this CANNOT be changed with a firmware update

There is some debate as to whether or not it really is a 1X drive....See this thread.

hifi · Nov 20, 2002, 03:21 PM

Originally posted by gg1234:
There is some debate as to whether or not it really is a 1X drive....See this thread.

you will just have to trust me, it will only do 1x dvd-r

it doesn't do dvd-rw's (atleast with the firmware it shipped with), it doesnt do dvd-ram's.

Eug · Nov 20, 2002, 03:24 PM

Originally posted by hifi:

you will just have to trust me, it will only do 1x dvd-r

it doesn't do dvd-rw's (atleast with the firmware it shipped with), it doesnt do dvd-ram's.

Well, the drive mechanism is a DVD-Multi, which means it does do DVD-RAM. So you're saying Apple has cut out both DVD-RW and DVD-RAM support? If so that's a major bummer.

Interestingly, seanyepez has said his Apple contacts have suggested that DVD-RAM support in the future isn't out of the question.

P.S. Welcome to MacNN.

hifi · Nov 20, 2002, 03:28 PM

Originally posted by Eug:

Well, the drive mechanism is a DVD-Multi, which means it does do DVD-RAM. So you're saying Apple has cut out both DVD-RW and DVD-RAM support? If so that's a major bummer.

Interestingly, seanyepez has said his Apple contacts have suggested that DVD-RAM support in the future isn't out of the question.

P.S. Welcome to MacNN.

thanks for the welcome.

support for any type of media can be turned on or off with a change to the firmware. the speed of the drive can also be limited (not increased) by firmware.

as far as dvd-ram goes... dvd-ram support exists in osx, it mimics a zip-disc or another form of removeable SLOW storage (i.e. copy and remove files to it from the finder/terminal). the only feature that i could see in the future is the ability for iDVD or DVD StudioPro to 'burn' DVD-RAM sort of like a test disc. this would only work with TYPE-II DVD-RAMs however.

urrl5201 · Nov 20, 2002, 03:30 PM

Someone posted it will burn DVD-RW disks if you eject the DVD-R while in beginning encode stage and replace it with a DVD-RW. If this is true perhaps the right update would work.

hifi · Nov 20, 2002, 03:37 PM

Originally posted by urrl5201:
Someone posted it will burn DVD-RW disks if you eject the DVD-R while in beginning encode stage and replace it with a DVD-RW. If this is true perhaps the right update would work.

i would not consider that a safe thing to do, for the drive and for the media. and the firmware on the drive was created explicitly for use in Apples machines. updating or changing the firmware while re-enabling dvd-rw support could work, it may cause other problems.

wouldn't you think it was disabled for a reason, since all other superdrives that apple ships support it.

Eug · Nov 20, 2002, 03:41 PM

Originally posted by urrl5201:
Someone posted it will burn DVD-RW disks if you eject the DVD-R while in beginning encode stage and replace it with a DVD-RW. If this is true perhaps the right update would work.

Oh yeah, I forgot about that. JayTi did say that the iDVD DVD-RW swap trick does work. OTOH, he never did confirm he had the Matshita (although I'm sure he does), and Toast doesn't see DVD-RW support in the drive.

As for the safeness of this, I don't think it's a big deal, since when iDVD is encoding, it doesn't access the drive at all. I don't use iDVD, but I believe all it does is check to see if a blank disc is in the drive, encode everything, then burn the disc.

as far as dvd-ram goes... dvd-ram support exists in osx, it mimics a zip-disc or another form of removeable SLOW storage (i.e. copy and remove files to it from the finder/terminal). the only feature that i could see in the future is the ability for iDVD or DVD StudioPro to 'burn' DVD-RAM sort of like a test disc. this would only work with TYPE-II DVD-RAMs however.

Actually, I already have a DVD-RAM drive. It's much slower than a hard drive obviously, but actually the speed is OK because usually I'm just backing up less than a 100 MB at a time. The drag-n-drop support with this medium is great, and it's faster than my 250 MB zip drive. Furthermore 250 MB is a little too limited these days - fills up quite quickly.

I'd love to see this feature supported with this new drive.

gg1234 · Nov 20, 2002, 03:45 PM

Originally posted by hifi:

i would not consider that a safe thing to do, for the drive and for the media. and the firmware on the drive was created explicitly for use in Apples machines. updating or changing the firmware while re-enabling dvd-rw support could work, it may cause other problems.

wouldn't you think it was disabled for a reason, since all other superdrives that apple ships support it.

Yes.
I never had my hopes up that the drive could be made to burn DVD-R at 2X or even do DVD-RAM. Obviously those would have been nice selling points and the marketing types wouldn't ignore that. However it appears the drive is capable of the faster burning and DVD-RAM support so it sure would be nice if somewhere down the line an Apple update unleased the full power of the drive.

icruise · Nov 20, 2002, 03:46 PM

Originally posted by hifi:

i would not consider that a safe thing to do, for the drive and for the media. and the firmware on the drive was created explicitly for use in Apples machines. updating or changing the firmware while re-enabling dvd-rw support could work, it may cause other problems.

wouldn't you think it was disabled for a reason, since all other superdrives that apple ships support it.

As far as I know none of the superdrive equipped Macs officially support DVD-RW in iDVD. You can use DVD-RW without apparent problems by doing the trick described above in iDVD (which shouldn't affect the drive adversely at all) or by using another program like Toast or DVDSP. No one seems to know why Apple doesn't officially support DVD-RW but my hunch is that it is because there is some problem with the way the in-finder burning software handles it, so they don't bill their machines as being DVD-RW enabled. In any case, it's not like this is some special problem with the powerbooks.

Rpostma · Nov 20, 2002, 06:58 PM

It is clear to me that Apple does not support DVD-RW because it lets them use many vendors and drives in production. The fact that many older DVD-R drive did not support DVD-RW leads me to belive that they removed support so that they were not stuck only using only one vendor. As soon as DVD-RW is on all drives I am sure they will open the support. We must be carefull in our discussions Apple has far exceded the rumors and included the DVD-R Superdrive in the new G4 PowerBook. Just one day before the anouncement the speculation was no superdrive. I am pleasently suprised they included the new drive so soon.