Question about choosing an external dvd/cd burner

The burning speed listed in my iTunes preferences goes up to 24x, then "Maximum Pssible". I am thinking of purchasing a LaCie DVD/CD burner that has write(48x)/rewrite(32x)/read(40x). When using with my iMac does this mean that I can burn at 48x with the iTunes burning preferences set to Maximum or does the maximum burning capabilities with my iMac top out at 24x?
Also, the internal burner device (a Matshita model) seems to have something called buffer protection. Can anyone explain what buffer protection is and is a mandatory consideration when using second, external player/burners?
Thanks for any help.

The 24X currently in iTunes is reflecting the speed that is capable of the internal burner in your iMac.
Also, the internal burner device (a Matshita model) seems to have something called buffer protection. Can anyone explain what buffer protection is and is a mandatory consideration when using second, external player/burners?
This is to ensure that your burner does not run out of data while it is burning. If the burner runs out of data, the burn will fail.

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I bought the external DVD player/burner for my Macbook. I tried using it with my Dell laptop but it will not work. Is it not configured to work with anything but apple operating systems?

I bought the external DVD player/burner for my Macbook. I tried using it with my Dell laptop but it will not work. Is it not configured to work with anything but apple operating systems?

If you purchased the Apple USB SuperDrive, it will only work with select Apple devices. It won't work, for example, on my Late 2011 model that has a SuperDrive built-in, but it will work with an Air, Retina model, new 'drive-less' iMacs, etc.
As far as I know, though, you can only hack the drive to work with some other Apple devices, but not with Windows PCs. Which is a shame as other, less expensive DVD/CD devices will work with just about any machine.
Sorry,
Clinton

Here's a very basic question about 2 TB external drives and Time Machine.

Here's a very basic question about 2 TB external drives and Time Machine.
Ihave a Mac Pro with a .75 TB and 1 TB drive. It also has a 1 TB 2ndinternal drive. My current external drive is too small so I'll begetting a 1.5 TB or 2 TB drive.
Obviouslythe new larger 2 TB drive will backup everything on the Mac Prointernal drive with Time Machine. But there will be 1 TB of space leftover going to waste.
ShouldI partition the external drive so that the TM portion will be 1 TB andthe use the remaining extra partition for additional file backups withCarbon Copy?
Thanks for any insights.
I tried searching around on the new Apple discussion forum, but I find it much harder to use than the old forum I used to use.

The problem with terabyte drives is that that a 3 TB is about as big as you can get without going into RAID territory. Ideally, a Time Machine drive should be 3 times as large as all the drives you are backing up. So, if you have 2.75 TB of internal storage, you should have 8 TB of Time Machine space.
Of course, that is "should". If your TB drives are mostly empty, then you can get away with something 3 times the size of your used disk space. Just remember that you are pushing it. Linc is right about Time Machine needing space to work.
It is unlikely that you have regular churn on 2.75 TB of disk. I suggest identifying which drives and folders have the most activity and excluding those drives and directories that don't change much. It would be better to archive the data that doesn't change often and keep it out of Time Machine. Then you may be able to get away with a 2 TB Time Machine drive.

Question about 2 TB external drives and Time Machine.

Here's a very basic question about 2 TB external drives and Time Machine.
I have a Mac Pro with a .75 TB and 1 TB drive. It also has a 1 TB 2nd internal drive. My current external drive is too small so I'll be getting a 1.5 TB or 2 TB drive.
Obviously the new larger 2 TB drive will backup everything on the Mac Pro internal drive with Time Machine. But there will be 1 TB of space left over going to waste.
Should I partition the external drive so that the TM portion will be 1 TB and the use the remaining extra partition for additional file backups with Carbon Copy?
Thanks for any insights.
I tried searching around on the new Apple discussion forum, but I find it much harder to use than the old forum I used to use.

John,
I'm not sure why you posted in the iMac forum so I'm going to attempt to get you to the correct spot. I would recommend reposting in the Time Machine Forum, this is part of the OS X forums (Leopard or Snow Leopard) because you are using Snow Leopard (your profile indicates you are) please click Apple Support Communities and type Snow Leopard. Then you can narrow the search down by clicking Refine this List.
Roger

Choosing an external DVD burner all the time instead of the built in burner

I have the Superdrive but prefer to use the external DVD burner to save wear and tear on the Superdrive. When I pop in a blank DVD to burn, the drop down menu appears and I have to manually click on the external DVD burner. Is there something in the system preferences that I can click so that the external burner shows up and not the Super drive?

This is our resident iPhoto guru, Terence Devlin's, advice:
You can move your iPhoto Library to an external disk:
1. Quit iPhoto
2. Copy the iPhoto Library Folder as an entity from your Pictures Folder to the External Disk.
3. Hold down the option (or alt) key while launching iPhoto. From the resulting menu select 'Choose Library' and navigate to the new location. From that point on this will be the default location of your library.
4. Test the library and when you're sure all is well, trash the one on your internal HD to free up space.
Once that is done you can import directly into the iPhoto library on the external HD.

External dvd reader/burner doesn't show in Finder

Hi and thanks in advance for your help -
I've just purchased an external dvd burner because the pre-super drive dvd reader in my macbook is getting a little tires. It doesn't appear in the finder, but when I check with the System Profiler or Disk Utility application, it is listed there. It's a no-brand dvd burner (from the Fnac chain in France) which appears as a "Slimtype DVD A DS8A3S", am I missing something here?
Thanks

That was the next question I was going to ask.
If your external DVD player has its own power supply, you should definitely use it. If it came with 2 USB cables, it's in your best interest to use both of them with DVD player. One will be responsible for transferring data from the DVD player to the computer, along with supplying some power. The second cable will provide the rest of the power for the drive
~Lyssa

Basic questions about macbook pro + external monitor

Hi,
I have some very basic questions about using a Macbook Pro + external display. I don't actually have them but need to know how things works.
So, here they are:
1) Can I use the external display as the main display?
2) Will the external display run with its resolution or with that of the mbook pro?
3) Somewhere I read that you cannot keep the macbook pro open and get the full resolution of the external display. Is that true ?
4) Is it dangerous to keep the mbook closed while using the external display?
5) Does the usage of the external display impact on mbook performance?
I know...a lot of questions , but would be nice if someone could help me.
Thanks.

Hi - I am presently using an external display.
To answer your questions in sequence:
1. Yes you can use the external display as your main display. The way to enable that mode is to put your MacBook Pro to sleep, attach the external display. Wake up your MBPro with the lid closed and you will see the external display as you main display. You can alternatively set the external to "Mirror" your notebook by using preferences/display.
2. The external display will run at its resolution although you can adjust and calibrate it using Preferences/Display.
3. Not true. You get max resolution on both displays. Of course you may have to tweak as mentioned above.
4. Not at all. I use this mode all the time. Just make sure you initially set up as mentioned above and your LCD on the MBPro will stay off.
5. I have not seen any performance degradation whatsoever.
Hope this helps.

External DVD player/burner region free?

Hi there,
This kind of question has been posted before but the latest thread is from 2006 so I just wanted some up to date information.
My optical drive has been through its 5 changes and has settled on region 2. I want to watch and back up a region 1 dvd. If I were to buy an external DVD player would my mac force it to read only region 2 or would it be region free?
If it is region free does anyone have any recommendations on a good external DVD drive?
Thanks very much.

As I understand it, it is ultimately the DVD drive's firmware that determines that drive's region setting, not the Mac itself (although it's the Mac that initially lets you change the region stored in that firmware, up to five times). When you first connect an external DVD drive, its region encoding will be whatever the manufacturer set it to be.
If you want true region-free playback, you'll have to find a DVD drive whose firmware can be updated to make the drive region free. This process always used to be much easier on a PC than a Mac; I don't know if that's still the case.

Question About Sony Handycam Mini DVD + iMac

A friend recently asked me how she can compile all her half-hour long mini DVD's onto one normal sized DVD. She said she has tried several things but couldn't do it. I have a Sony mini DV recorder and thought I might be able to import the video from her camera the same way I import from mine to my iMac then burn it onto a disc. But I am not able to hook the camera to my iMac because there's no port for a firewire or a USB connection on the camera itself. Any ideas for how I can consolidate these smaller discs onto one DVD?
Thanks

MiniDV (little cassette tapes) or Mini-DVD (miniature optical disks you can stick in a set-top DVD player and playback)?
The former is the format that you would use if you intended to edit the video, and the latter is the format you'd use if you simply wanted to playback the video as it had been recorded without modification. They are not compatible formats as the physical media is different, but so is the data stored on those media.
A MiniDV camera minimally has an i.Link / mini-FireWire400 port on it for data transfer to the computer. The computer can control the camera through this port, use it either as a live camera, or operate it as a VCR and capture the video as it plays back into the computer. MiniDV video is captured real-time from the camera, meaning that if you recorded 60 minutes of video, it will take 60 minutes to transfer to the computer. The capture data will be in DV format, which is effectively uncompressed 720x480 at 29.995 frames per second (for camcorders using the US' NTSC standard video resolution anyway).
On a Mini-DVD camcorder, the camera may not have a port for connecting the camera to a computer to transfer the video. If it does, it is probably a USB or mini-USB port that allows the camera to be used by a computer as an external DVD recorder. If it is a without-connector model, transferring video would mean taking the mini-DVD out of the camera and putting it in a computer -- however Macs cannot take the mini disks and require and external DVD drive to read them. The MPEG2-encoded video on the DVD drive is highly compressed and not really suitable for editing. Manipulation of the content will necessarily degrade it, so you will lose video quality in the process of handling it, reencoding it, and reburning it.

Compare DVD-R burn quality by internal Super Drive to External DVD-R burner

Has anyone compared the video 'quality' of a DVD-R burned using the internal Super Drive
on my MacBook Pro (Windows 8.1 64 bit) to the same DVD-R burned using a standalone
Sony DVD-R Recorder / player? One would think the quality would be slightly better using
a standard external DVD-R disc burner.

I see no difference in the video quality. Although I use a different external burner than your brand. It's possible some external burners are better than the optical drives on a MacBook Pro or vice versa.

I have a question about exporting a short movie to burn on a DVD.

Ok, it's me again. You guys were so much help last night, that I am back for another piece of advice. I have made a short 23 minute movie in Premiere Pro CS3, using 200 still images and some music. I realize that this program is way more than I need, but it is on my computer along with I Photo, I DVD, and I Movie - which are great programs for the quick little thing I am doing, but you can only choose 1 Transition between each still in all three of those programs and that becomes very obnoxious.
Therefore, I used Premiere Pro CS3, but now I want to export it two times - once for a web site and once to burn it to a DVD to watch on a standard TV. Can anyone walk me through that - way, way to many choices and I tried reading the 11 pages in the user manual - it may as well been in a foreign language.
Thanks to all.
Michele

Hi,
If you have encore you can use that for the DVD...encore will take care of a lot of stuff for you automatically...
What are your project settings ? eg.... 720x480 progressive, square pixels, 29.97 fps, 4:3 aspect ratio....etc.
That will have a lot to do with how you export for the web...what settings you use..
You will need to know what web based video size you want ( will it be smaller than your project (720 x480 ? ) for example?)
Sooo, do you have encore?
Can you supply project settings and info about what you want the web video to be

Lacie external DVD/CD burner

I bought an external burner to reduce the wear and tear on the internal optic drive and because the Lacie burner is twice as fast. The model I have comes with a 400 firewire port so I have it daisy chained to a bunch of external hard drives. When I first got the burner, it worked like a charm and I could knock off maybe 10 DVDs in a row before I would give it a rest. Now, almost every DVD is rejected during the verification process even after I let it rest for as long as 20 minutes (the length it takes the internal optic drive to burn a DVD). Has the burner died or am I daisy chaining it to too many hard drives?

I'm talking abouot the Intel computer - that's my primary computer. There are four externals daisy chained together and the burner is plugged in to one of them. Fortunately, I have a cable with a 400 firewire connection on one end (the burner has only 400 ports) and a 800 connection on the other end, so I can connect the burner directly to the computer. Thanks for the tip on burning 3 DVDs before letting it cool down. Will keep this in mind the next time I have to burn a whole bunch of DVDs. Will post back early next month since I don't have any projects right at the moment.
Message was edited by: Sunny's mommy

External DVD/CD burner?

I burn a lot of my home videos and I feel that i am putting a lot of stress on my burner and dont want to burn it out, no pun intended.

Depends on what you mean by "a lot". While your drive can only take so many consecutive burns (I'd stop at 5) the easy thing to do is to give it a bit of time to cool between them. Also, if you have ApleCare it's not something you should need to worry about for a while.
Otherwise, just go out and buy a cheap external drive which you can abuse to your heart's content.

External DVD -/+ DL burner

My client wants this FCP project on a DVD+R and my G5 only does -R, so I need to get an external burner that also does DL in addition to DVD+R. Any brands recommended, or to stay away from? Thanks.
Sharon

macsales.com does not have the overhead of the
pricier Lacie products.
they also don't have the durable metal cases that Lacie has
or lightscribe
or TOAST (very powerful suite of burning software)
DAVE

External DVD/BluRay Burner recommendation

It's been awhile since I've had to do this kind of research, so I'm hoping that it's much simpler than I'm making it. These days, OS/hardware/software incompatibilities make me see red. Anyway...
The CD/DVD drive in my early 2008-era Intel iMac running OS 10.6.8 bit the dust awhile back and can not only NOT read disks, but always refuses to spit them out. In the cursory research I've done, it appears the laser reader is shot. Rather than pay to have a new one installed which would cost me substantially more, I'd prefer to just buy an external (yeah, like I need another USB/Firewire device connected to an already tach'd out hub) and if anyone has recommendations, I'd sure appreciate it hearing about it. I've heard good stuff about LGs, but I'm not necessarily tied to the best deal/cheapest...I just want something that has more longevity than what Apple put into the machine.
Thanks!!

Not all DVD player units for computers are Mac compatible.
LG has a few and can be found on Amazon.com
There are others found here.
http://www.amazon.com/LG-GP10NB20-Portable-External-Drive/dp/B004K2Z4MS/ref=sr_1 _3?ie=UTF8&qid=1398883289&sr=8-3&keywords=Mac+compatible+external+LG+optical+dr i ve
http://www.amazon.com/LG-Electronics-Portable-External-GP40NB40/dp/B009DS6OFU/re f=sr_1_7?ie=UTF8&qid=1398883289&sr=8-7&keywords=Mac+compatible+external+LG+opti c al+drive
Here's another source for Mac compatible optical drives. These are better quality optical drives.
These are also tray loading drives.
Tray loading optical drives are more reliable, plus they are capable of playing those smaller mini sized discs.
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/VLU2SD24XS/
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/MR3F82SD24S/
Also, Macs do not play Blu-Ray discs natively. If you have video discs that are in the Blu-Ray format, you will need to find a Mac compatible Blu-Ray /DVD player and a separate software Blu-Ray player application.
OWC ( http://eshop.macsales.com/ ) has Blu-Ray playing drives, also.
Found here.
http://eshop.macsales.com/search/external+blu+ray
Also, check Amazon.com
Good Luck.

Question about choosing an external dvd/cd burner

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