What's the scoops on DVD burning on Macs?

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Hawaii Cruiser's picture
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What's the scoops on DVD burning on Macs?

I've not yet done any DVD burning. From what I've read, you should have at least an 800mhz G4, and preferably at least a Quicksilver, in order to do tolerable DVD burning. Is this true? And then how do the max burn speeds relate to processor speed? Will an 800mhz Quicksilver be able to do a 20X DVD burn, or will it suffer buffer underruns all the time? Major DVD burning sounds like quicksand. If anything, does anyone have a good link to good info?

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Define "tolerable" ...

Back in the studio days, we used to burn DVDs on a Sawtooth G4 (Dual 450 MHz). Fastest burn was 2x, and no background apps could be running (nor could the burn be done in the background). Maddeningly slow by today's standards, but in '01 and '02, it was pretty impressive.

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you also gotta remember

like I posted in another forum topic, that the speed of an ATA Bus is not constant. it's the burst mode throughput. Actual consistent speed is not at all what they advertise. Thew burst mode is what it "Can do" under proper circumstances (i.e. no interference, not reading and writing at the same time, etc...)

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What type of burning, Video or data?

I put a Pioneer x8 burner in my 500Mhz TiPowerbook, and it works just great for CD's and DVD's (especially since Apple put support into OS 10.4 for it, and I then figured out I had to remove PatchBurn to make everything work correctly). However, on the DVD side of things, I've only used it for making data DVD's, though iDVD did recognize it. I'm not sure of the status of the current drivers, but previously the i-suite of programs required that you use DVD-R's. Supposedly this drive can handle dual-layer DVD's too. Will be great for data back-ups when the price of the blank media comes down just a little bit more.

BTW, Apple should be coming out with computers with BluRay drives in them . . . any time now. . . Apple?

Mutant_Pie

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CPU speeds...

Usually when you see a CPU speed specified for DVD burning it's with the assumption that you're rendering and burning video DVDs, with the quoted speed generally defined as "If it's any slower then this you will go clinically insane waiting for your video to render". (And undoubtedly the "clinically insane" threshold varies per-person. A "high-quality" 90 minute iDVD takes the better part of a day to render on a 1.5Ghz Powerbook G4.) Just about any machine is physically capable of burning a *data* DVD. 1x DVD transfer rate is only about 1.3MB/sec.

I have an off-brand DVD+-R drive in my old 400Mhz B&W and I've burned both data and rendered video iDVD images at 2x without problems. The drive's rated for 8X, but any faster then 2x the combined hard disk, IDE bus, and OS speed limitations start adding up. I've managed a disk at 4x but the machine basically *stops* while doing it. (4x DVD is roughly the same data transfer rate as a 36x CD-ROM burn.)

--Peace

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A beige G3 running at 333 (cl

A beige G3 running at 333 (clocked up from 300) can quite happily burn a dvd at 8x...under Panther...(not tried OS 9 yet) - but in my set up it's the only IDE device in the entire system...

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i have a Beige G3 AIO with a

i have a Beige G3 AIO with a G3 450 cou from a B&W (running at 466mhz) that has a Pioneer DVR-110D, i can burn DVD's 12x just fine. the only real requirement for fast dvd burning is a IDE bus speed around 16mb/s anything less and you try to burn at a fast speed you will have a buffer under run (means you just made a coaster)

yea the only reason they recommend a G4 at that speed if for doing audio video encoding that you will be burning to a dvd.

i found out that the faster my CPU was the faster my IDE bus went. but it topped out at its known 16mb/s, i also replaced the stock IDE cables with 80 wire 40 pin ultra ATA/133 single drive cables witch allowed me to get to 16mb/s, with the stock cables and my new Western Digital SE 120gb HDDi only got around 12mb/s. and with the stock 4gb HDD and IDE cables i hardly got 10mb/s.

you IDE bus speed is beneficial to how fast you can burn at without making a coaster. encoding video and audio is the only real need to have a fast G4 cpu. i have encoded divx on my Beige G3 AIO and it takes forever to do ( i captured audio and video with my Wings Personality card) a G4 cpu of any speed would be considerably faster than what a G3 can do

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Partial success story

Recently used iDVD with my duel 800 mhz Quicksilver to burn a DVD. Got a Pioneer DV110 working thanks to some advice to use PatchBurn with the 10.3.9 system I have. And to be honest from what I've heard of 10.4 I think I will stay at 10.3.9 with my G4 systems.

Anyway, managed to get all things working fairly good, the DVD worked well. But here is a delima I've been wrestling with. iDvd will accept .avi files that are converted to .mov. However, iDvd will not accept .mpgs, or .mpgs that were converted to .mov. Any idea why this is?

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I used Toast 6 (OS X) when I

I used Toast 6 (OS X) when I cooked my DVD. Brand new IDE Sony DVD-RW drive - no patches - no nothing. Worked straight away. Same with OS 9. Only thing I did patch was Apple DVD player in OS 9...

Most DVD drives's fastest write speed is 12x - and that's about 16mb/second - limit of the stock IDE bus in the Beige G3s.

IDE by design was always only able to talk to one device at a time - be it a CD/DVD drive or hard drive. It's always worked like that (no matter which channel they're on). The risk of making a coaster is much higher in an IDE-only drive set up for that very reason. Why do you think they invented buffer-underun prevention....

I've got a stock IDE cable in my G3, and a very recent DVD drive and it cooked perfectly at 12x.

Encoding DivX takes ages anyway.. even on a 1.8GHz Windows machine. Personally I prefer MPEG because I can drop it onto a CD (or DVD..) and chuck it into a DVD player and watch it. There are DivX players around... but a bit rare I think.

Also, hanging a UDMA5 or 6 hard disk off a 16mb/s IDE bus won't help whatsoever - those things run at 100mb/s and 133 respectively...

--Beige G3 Minitower, Rev C ROM, G3 333MHz, 768MB RAM, Adaptec 2940U2B running 3x 160mb/s SCSI hard drives, IDE Sony DVD RW AW-G170A, Radeon 7000 PCI (64mb). OS 9.2.2 and OS X.3.9 (Panther)

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the manual i got with my Pion

the manual i got with my Pioneer DVR-110D said that in order to burn at 16x you would need at least a IDE bus speed of 16mb/s +.

i use BTV Pro in OS 9.2.2 to encode to divx, you use mpeg 2 to encode to right. what app you use to encode to to burn to a disk and work on a dvd player.

no, divx dvd players are all over the place. take a look in wal marts's dvd player isle ( they have them ranging from $50 - $400 depending if you want a generic dvd player with divx capability or a DVD player/burner with divx ability, or a DVD player/ burner with a HDD with divx ability to record from a tv

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DVD cameras?

So what's the deal with the mini DVD video cameras out there? How is it that they can burn a DVD in real time while burning a DVD in a computer never happens in real time, but rather takes much much longer? I assume the technology is completely different.

Jon
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Hardware compression and conv

Hardware compression and conversion vs software. A good DSP can encode MPEG2 in real time fairly easy. Your computer can also write DVDs at above real time speeds, though it may not be able to encode data that fast.

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The manual would say that...

The manual would say that... 1x DVD is only 1.3mb per second. So technically, and assuming you're not using an IDE hard disk... the stock IDE bus in the G3 could happily burn at 16x. IDE can only do one command at a time, to one device at a time.

Anything that converts to MPEG is sufficient - and use Toast or Nero with the VideoCD button to burn. All DVD players can read VCDs. (what do you think DVDs were derived from? Wink

My question for you - how do you get BTV Pro talking to the Wings card... it never wants to let me use video.

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another burning question...

Let me qualify my post by saying this....I'm not the most tech savvy person. Ok...so was that a good qualifier???! Anyway, I was reading this thread to try to get some info...I have a G4 and am just getting into burning DVDs w/iDVD. I don't have an external DVD drive, just the drive that came with the Mac. It has 1x, tops out at 2x...can I safely burn DVDs that are 8x? These are Taiyo's (suppose to be pretty good) and after reading their small print...(this product not sutiable for use with DVD-R/RW drives which do not comply with the new DVD-R/RW specifications for 8x writing speed) it goes on to say that it could cause damage to your drives, etc. I appreciate your comments. Thank you.

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drive firmware update

Yes, it possible to render your drive unusable with faster-than-2X media.

There is a model (or two) of superdrives (Apple DVD burners) that required a firmware update for compatibility with faster-rated media. Find out the model of your drive, then go to Apple's support site and look for an appropriate firmware updater.

Your drive may not need the update, either because it's not amongst the affected models, or because the drive's already been updated.

dan k

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Thanx for the info...

Thanx for the info...

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Late reply, If I want a succ

Late reply,
If I want a successfull burn, CD or DVD ,
( for important data )
I will use the slowest speed available.
Also using the best media available.

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