Burn stops partway

[danco34]

So, I am trying to burn a DVD, and the burn goes for a certain amount and then stops part way through. This has happened with two external burners (Pioneer 108 and 111), several kinds of DVD-R media (Verbatim and Datasafe, which is a Taiyo Yuden disc).The burners were in a combined Firewire and USB external case (Prolific chipset, I think). Burning at the slowest speed, which is 4x.

 

Possibility one is that I am just too impatient, and that I should wait longer before deciding the burn has failed. Still, I have waited a couple of minutes and nothing seemed to be happening. Could the burn have stopped for that long to fill up the cache? I wouldn't have thought so.

 

Possibility two is the connection, though again I can't see why that should be an issue when the burn goes ok for several minutes. I am using Firewire, connected via an external powered hub. I could change to USB2, though again that would probably be through a powered hub.

 

Any other ideas? I am getting tired of making coasters.

[danco34]

I don't think your impatient. It probably stalled and needed to be cancelled. It could be a problem with Toast trying to read the content for the DVD and the drive sits there waiting for new information. One way to check this is to choose Save as Disc Image from the File menu instead of clicking the Burn button. If the disc image is created okay, try burning it to DVD using the Image File setting in the Toast Copy window.

 

It also could be a Firewire issue. The first thing I'd test is connecting the drive directly to the Mac without going through the powered hub. Your drive likely has two Firewire ports so you can place the drive ahead of the hub and still have your other Firewire devices connected.

 

Make sure you're using Toast 7.0.2.

 

Let me know if neither of these work. Also let me know what version OS and QuickTime you're using and whether this is a video DVD or data DVD.

 

Thanks. In fact I had already made a disk image of a video DVD and was trying to copy using Image File, as you suggest. And am using 7.0.2

 

I hadn't thought of putting the burner ahead of the hub - worth looking at, I'll try next time. I hadn't realised there could be significant Firewire issues - I had thought the buffer underrun protection dealt with things. Still, I suppose that some message from the burner like "please send more data" could get corrupted.

 

Machine is a Powerbook G4 1.5GHz, 768 MB RAM, OS 10.4.6, not sure which version of Quicktime 7 I was using, as I just upgraded.

 

The internal burner(Matshita 845) seems to work OK at 2x burn speed. It's supposed to work at 4x but mostly stops after writing the lead-in at that speed. But this, I gather, I a known problem and I am happy to use 2x. The external burner, if it worked properly, allows a wider range of disks to be used for reading and writing.

[tsantee]

So, I am trying to burn a DVD, and the burn goes for a certain amount and then stops part way through. This has happened with two external burners (Pioneer 108 and 111), several kinds of DVD-R media (Verbatim and Datasafe, which is a Taiyo Yuden disc).The burners were in a combined Firewire and USB external case (Prolific chipset, I think). Burning at the slowest speed, which is 4x.

 

Possibility one is that I am just too impatient, and that I should wait longer before deciding the burn has failed. Still, I have waited a couple of minutes and nothing seemed to be happening. Could the burn have stopped for that long to fill up the cache? I wouldn't have thought so.

 

Possibility two is the connection, though again I can't see why that should be an issue when the burn goes ok for several minutes. I am using Firewire, connected via an external powered hub. I could change to USB2, though again that would probably be through a powered hub.

 

Any other ideas? I am getting tired of making coasters.

I don't think your impatient. It probably stalled and needed to be cancelled. It could be a problem with Toast trying to read the content for the DVD and the drive sits there waiting for new information. One way to check this is to choose Save as Disc Image from the File menu instead of clicking the Burn button. If the disc image is created okay, try burning it to DVD using the Image File setting in the Toast Copy window.

 

It also could be a Firewire issue. The first thing I'd test is connecting the drive directly to the Mac without going through the powered hub. Your drive likely has two Firewire ports so you can place the drive ahead of the hub and still have your other Firewire devices connected.

 

Make sure you're using Toast 7.0.2.

 

Let me know if neither of these work. Also let me know what version OS and QuickTime you're using and whether this is a video DVD or data DVD.