External DVD Burners & iDVD Compatibility

I am looking to purchase external DVD burners for use at my school - that are compatible with iDVD.
I am running iLife 5 on many different pre-intel Tiger Macs (mostly eMacs)
I have looked for a definitive listing of burners and have been receiving conflicting pieces of information.
I understand that I students can save iDVD projects as Disk Images then burn after the fact... but it would be nice to know which External Burners are compatible with iDVD without having to go the Disk Image route.
Any assistance that you can provide me would be tremendously appreciated.
Thanks in advance
Dave

Hello Dave,
iDVD 5 does not natively support external burners. What you have discovered concerning the creation of disk images, though, is not simply a workaround, but a widely recommended procedure, as it greatly reduces the risk of burn errors.
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=939694&start=0&tstart=0
hope this helps
mish

Similar Messages

External DVD burner/iDVD and iMovie

Would iDVD work with this external dvd burner?
http://accessories.us.dell.com/sna/products/System_Drives/productdetail.aspx?c=u s&l=en&cs=19&sku=A0960630

Tim Haigh wrote:
That would depend on the brand of dvd drive they are using inside there enclosure.
In my experience Pioneer drives always work well.
One would ask why you want to get a small external drive. full size tray loading drives are faster more robust and are much more efficient.
It doesn't have to be a small drive. I picked that particular drive because it was the only drive I could find with Apple listed under supported OS.
I put together my own external drive. I used a pioneer 112D 18x DVD-RW cost £16. I got an icybox dvd enclosure for £20. This enclosure has usb2 and firewire.
It is recognised in the apple system profiler as 'apple shipped'. And works with idvd and itunes and diskburning.
It looks like that copy is only in the UK. Perhaps there is a US version?
Or maybe I just need to find one that is USB supported and it will work on my Macbook? I have a feeling some will work. I just wont be able to use the software for them.

External DVD Burners ?

My first post so please be patient!!! I have an Imac with ComboDrive and am looking to buy an external DVD drive to burn a couple of projects I'm working on in IMovie. Could anyone please offer any recommendations ? Also will I still be able to burn from IDVD using an external DVD writer or is there a way to upgrade my existing drive to Super drive ? Probably silly questions but I'm new at this!!!
Thanks.

Hi, and welcome to Apple Discussions.
You can upgrade to a Superdrive, but simply adding an external drive is much easier, and probably less expensive (no labor). You also don't have to be without the computer till 'they get to it' and you avoid the worry of packing up & transporting the computer.
Garyjr is right, there are many drives that will do fine with the iMac; I got the LaCie d2 for actually a bit less than the cost of an internal Superdrive (without even counting labor), and have been happy with it.
The only really silly question is the one not asked which would have saved unnecessary trouble/expense/unhappiness, just for the asking!
Vicki

External DVD Burners.... Suggestions Needed

I am looking to buy an external DVD r for my Mini. Can anyone tell me which is the best to purchase? I would perfer something that would compliment the Mini, but I do not want to compromise performance for looks. Any suggestions?

I have an LG 5163D DVD drive and it works fine with the Mini. It comes in white and complements the Mini nicely. It doesn't, however, come with any software for the Mac, but it works fine with Patchburn and OS 10.4's built in burn capabilities (i.e., disk utility, finder, and probably iTunes, iPhoto and iDVD), and Toast.
I bought it because I don't live in the US and I don't have many options for Mac compatible hardware, and the LG drive was the cheapest DVD drive I could get. It's a very quiet drive (a nice change after my noisy EZQuest CD/RW drive), but it's not a "plug and play" drive - you have to plug it in before turning on the computer. You can use it with either Firewire 400 or USB 2.0. Company support (by e-mail) is reasonably good, especially from the UK division.

Bus powered external DVD burners risky?

I am thinking of putting a second HD in my 1.83 MBP with the Maxupgrades kit , and getting an external DVD writer.
Years ago I had a firewire bus powered Formac DVD writer, which took too much current out of my Ti powerbook and burnt the internal firewire bus.
Are the modern generation of portable bus powered (USB2 and FW) such safe in this respect?
I see that offering includes an internal battery. Why would they do that if the no-battery ones are OK?
Thanks for any input.

so the battery is not there to prevent overload of the USB port,
I doubt it, though having a functioning battery may do so
but so that the device can be used independently (from computer)
Perhaps the drive could power headphones so you could listen to music, but the battery is there to provide additional life when you aren't plugged in. If your MBP normally gets 4 hours of life from a full charge, add that bus powered burner and it will drop - bigtime I'd expect. The extra battery in the device gives you a bit longer life.

Alternating external DVD burners

In theory, could I hook up 2 Lacie external DVD burns to the USB ports on my keyboard and alternate between the two of them while burning DVDs? I would like to do this since the internal burner is too slow and I know you're supposed to let a burner cool down after so many burns.

I still would not use the keyboard ports; they do not have enough power for burning. I tried finding any kb article on the power issue, but could not directly - the only one I found is this:
http://support.apple.com/kb/TS3932
I don't know if the reason for this has to do with the power or not, but thought I'd link to it.
The best test might be to possibly "waste" a DVD and try it - you may wind up with a coaster but you'd know - try this at your own risk. I wouldn't do it.

Any cheaper external dvd burners out there???

Now that i've found out that my wonderfully expensive apple doesnt have a dvd burner, i have to buy an external dvd burner. I was recommended Lacie but that's too expensive. Anyone know of any cheaper ones that work fine as well??
also, do i need all of that touch8 stuff? can i just get the dvd writer without all of the extra programs?

That's the beauty of it. No drivers required when you make your own. The OS already has everything you need. There is nothing required in terms of additional downloads to make your burner work via Firewire when you install a Pioneer S-Drive into a standard 400 0r 800 firewire enclosure. It works right out of the box!
At one point in time, I too thought that whatever I build in terms of computer hardware was bound to fail. Now it turns out that the items I built, actually last the longest!
Now there is one exception to the above that comes to minds, Lacie (pre configured) ext. FW HD's may rerquire additional 3rd party drivers at times.
Don't ask me why. You'd have to check their web site for this type of support.

Any external DVD Burners out there for Dual G4 450?

Hey, I have a Dual G4 450 Gigabit Ethernet with 10.2.8 w/ firewire 1 and a meh USB2.0 from CompUSA. I've checked a couple of places for an external DVD burner but most are listing a 500mhz as a requirement. The OWC drive they're selling isn't listing a speed as a requirement, so I'm worried about ordering their drive. Does anyone have their drive and would know if it works with my speed, and is there still a drive out there that can work with my computer? Thanks for your answers.

Went ahead with another burner.

Which external dvd burners are compatible with lion?

I'm looking into buying an external dvd - dvdL - cd burner but wanted to make sure it would work with lion.. anyone ?
thanks!
H

I have successfully used apples external SuperDrive.
However, I get faster results using the Mac's built-in SuperDrive.

External DVD burners once and for all!

I did not buy my mini with a dvd burner on purpose because I wanted to use Lacie light scrib. So, does it work? Can you use other external burners with iLife 5 and iDvd 5 as advertised when it came out? Or am I wasting my time?

Edward,
iDVD5 will let you "save as disk image" and then burn the image with Toast or Disk Utility. on external drives.
Also there are some other helper apps and maybe even drivers from LaCie that will let 'em burn directly from iDVD, but I prefer the image route in any case....
John

Are external DVD burners better quality than an internal on a laptop?

I've always had this prejudice that stock Powerbook G4 internal DVD drives are poor quality and prone to breaking down. I lost mine after less than a year of service and it seems to me that folks are regularly complaining about stock internal burners going out.
I've had no working DVD drive for a couple of years on my old G4 and I'm getting a new one this week. I also have a Sony external dual layer DVD burner that is a real workhorse for me. It's what I've been using for all these years.
Now I'm wondering, when I have the new DVD burner installed next week, do I need to baby it and use the external whenever possible? Should I only use it whenever absolutely necessary and let the external do all the heavy lifting? Is this new internal drive going to fritz out on me after six months just like the last one did?
I've burned hundreds, maybe close to a thousand, DVDs on my external Sony and the machine is still good as gold. No sign of wear.
Is there any evidence to support this idea that internal laptop drives are delicate pieces of equipment waiting to break down and that external Sonys are solid and rugged? Or is that just my personal experience and is everyone else happy with their internal drives?
By the way, my new internal drive being shipped to me this week is an OWC (Other World Computing) drive made just for the older 400 mHz Powerbook G4 Titaniums. There's not a lot of choice in the market for a drive for such an old machine.

Software is the key to quality. Period, along with the quality of the original content, if it is good quality then you will get good quality, if it's poor quailty then you will get poor quality.
Use the best.
http://www.roxio.com/

Suggestions on external DVD burners for Mac

Last one I had was a Mad Dog multimedia burner which I paid about $140 about 6 months ago, the puppy had a freak accident and got in soapy water don't ask how.
What I'm trying to find is a burner in the $100 mark, any suggestions?

I strongly recommend http://www.macsales.com/ Firewire burners. They are the only ones that out of the box are compatible with iDVD, and Apple's other DVD burning applications. Others may need http://www.patchburn.de/ and specific firmware updates to be compatible. Some of these are outlined in the website:
http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/
It wasn't until the Intel Macs, that USB became bootable for Mac OS X.

Restrictions on external DVD burners and HDDs?

Hello, I REAALLY want to buy a mac mini - my incessantly crashing Windows machine has a new 160GB drive (internal) and a new Sony DRU720A DVD burner - what I'd like to do is buy a couple of 5.25" enclosures with USB 2.0 or Firewire connections and connect them as externals to the Mini...
are there any complications using a Sony dvd burner with a mac mini? HDD issues to be aware of?
Thanx in advance - help me get back to happy computing!
ferd

I would guess that there will be no issues at all with your hard drive. Those are pretty standard pieces of hardware that are supported by both hard drive enclosures and Mac OS X. A DVD burner may be a different story though. It will have to be supported by Mac OS X whether it's an internal drive or in an external enclosure. However, there is a third party utility you may be able to use to create a driver for your DVD burner. Check out the Patch Burn utility. I've never used it, so I can't comment on it's compatibility, but it seems like it might help you if the drivers aren't already built-in.
-Doug

IMac G3 hooking up External DVD Burner

Hey.
I'm trying to hook up an external DVD Burner to my iMac G3 to use with iLife '05 (I don't think the G3 is compatable with '06)
The problem is, my external USB 2.0 DVD burner I got for my Windows XP computer doesn't say it can be used for Mac OS X. I can take the wait of a movie being burned on a USB 1.1 connection.
Does Apple already have a generic driver for External DVD Burners like it does for Bluetooth?
I'd like to show off to my friends the awesome movie-making capabilities on a Mac, but it can't be done without a DVD burner.

Instead of using an external USB with iMacG3, I also recommend using a firewire one with it. iMac G3's are equipped with USB 1,1 and it is slow for cd/dvd burning. With a firewire case you can use all the speed of your writer.
On the other hand, some writers (CD-R or DVD-R) are not fully functioning with all applications. Toast can handle much of them but iTunes for example was not functioning with my old mitsumi CD-R. I prefered to buy an LG and now it works perfectly.

External DVD burner for G4

Hi,
I was wondering if there are any external dvd burners for a G4 with a USB port that is under 2.0. Also, it's a 400 firewire. Thanks in advance.

Hi
If you're Mac profile is accurate, you will have problems with any new drive: OS9.1 will not natively support any new drive, and will not allow you to burn DVD's at all without third party software, such as Toast 5.2.3 (last version that can burn to DVD-/+R (no DL media), and run in OS9)
All USB2.0 drives are backwards compatable w/USB1.01, BUT USB1.01 will not support DVD burns, as it cannot run faster than 4X CD-R (way too slow to burn a DVD (1X DVD = 9X CD)).
You will want to go with a FireWire-based drive, if you go external, as WWJD pointed out.

External DVD Burners & iDVD Compatibility

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for