Hey, Toast 8 -- slow down!

[John Bertram]

Am using Toast 8 to burn DualLayer DVDs from a disc image file I created in DVD StudioPro, and am getting mixed results when testing them out on our home players (two different Toshibas and one Sony, plus the kids' XBox 360 player).

 

Am using Ridata and Verbatim DLs, and so far the Ridatas seem to work fine on all the home players, whereas one of the Verbatims won't play on either of the Toshiba units, while the other Verbatim plays fine on one Toshiba but not on the other.

 

In my efforts to minimize the random Voodoo which seems to surround this whole business of home-burned discs and which machines will play them, I've been trying to use the slowest burn speed possible (on our Intel iMac, the only one of our three Macs here which can burn DLs).

 

The weirdness is this...

 

The Toast manual says on page 25: "To choose a specific write speed, first insert the blank disc into your recorder. After a few seconds, the pop-up will list all speeds available for your recorder and the current blank media."

 

In my case, the choices which appear are either "Best" or "2xDVD". So I select "2xDVD" (I'm guessing that's the slowest speed the optical drive will do -- or is it instead a function of the blank disc?) and start the recording. But in the burn window, the "Current Write Speed" immediately starts to display "3x", as if the speed I set is now being ignored.

 

Is this something I

-a- need to be concerned about?

-b- can exercise any further control over (as in forcing a slower speed)?

 

Thanks,

 

John Bertram

Toronto

[tsantee]

Technically the write speed of those DL discs is 2.4x. My guess is that Toast is doing some rounding where it reports the burn speed.

[John Bertram]

Technically the write speed of those DL discs is 2.4x. My guess is that Toast is doing some rounding where it reports the burn speed.

 

 

Interesting -- I guess that would explain the fudged figures.

 

Meantime, is there anything else I can or should be doing to increase the playability of home-burned DL discs in home players? Or is it just an unfortunate fact of life for now that some Dual Layer discs (even when taken from the same stack of a quality brand like Verbatim, and burned under identical conditions) are going to work better in a given home player than others?

 

Thanks,

 

John Bertram

Toronto

[tsantee]

Interesting -- I guess that would explain the fudged figures.

 

Meantime, is there anything else I can or should be doing to increase the playability of home-burned DL discs in home players? Or is it just an unfortunate fact of life for now that some Dual Layer discs (even when taken from the same stack of a quality brand like Verbatim, and burned under identical conditions) are going to work better in a given home player than others?

 

Thanks,

 

John Bertram

Toronto

I'm not fond of Apple's slot-loading superdrives (both of my Macs have them). Apple is very slow to update firmware and I think the drives were purchased whomever is the low bidder, So I suggest getting an external Firewire tray-loading drive. The LaCie D2 drives may have the best firmware. A better drive may create a more readable disc. If you do this. let me know if it made a difference.

[John Bertram]

Right now I'm just doing this as a favor for a friend, so can't really justify the cost of a separate drive. But I will definitely report back should I get one in the future.

 

Meantime, is there an easy way to tell if the internal optical drive's firmware is in fact up-to-date? (I'm assuming it is, since the Mac itself only dates to the early Spring of this year.)

 

 

Meantime, thanks again Tsantee for all your contributions to this forum -- they're much appreciated!

 

 

John Bertram

Toronto

[tsantee]

Right now I'm just doing this as a favor for a friend, so can't really justify the cost of a separate drive. But I will definitely report back should I get one in the future.

 

Meantime, is there an easy way to tell if the internal optical drive's firmware is in fact up-to-date? (I'm assuming it is, since the Mac itself only dates to the early Spring of this year.)

Meantime, thanks again Tsantee for all your contributions to this forum -- they're much appreciated!

John Bertram

Toronto

You can check the Apple support site for availability of firmware updates for the drive. Presuming there aren't any, your best bet is to use Verbatim DVD+R DL media and to burn at the 2X speed. Choose Save as Disc Image first and then burn that file to the DVD using the Image File setting in the Copy window.

[John Bertram]

your best bet is to use Verbatim DVD+R DL media and to burn at the 2X speed. Choose Save as Disc Image first and then burn that file to the DVD using the Image File setting in the Copy window.

 

That's exactly the path I followed in fact (using both Verbatim and Ridata discs). The surprising part was, all other things being equal, the Ridata +R DLs actually fared better overall than the Verbatim ones, in terms of the number of home players they seemed to work in.

 

Hence my conclusion that no matter what workflow you follow, there's still an element of random Voodoo in this whole process!

 

John Bertram

Toronto