Waveburner stuck during burn

Question

I've been getting stuck in Waveburner whenever I try to burn a CD. I'm able to edit my fades and get the songs ready for a final burn. However, after clicking on the burn and inserting a CD, all that happens is the window opens to display the burn process, and all it does is make a tiny initial move to indicate it's started burning; the time indicator tells how long the burn will take - then nothing; I have to cancel the burn and eject the CD via iTunes.
Any suggestions would be great.
Thanks,
Randall

Answer 1

Randall, I also posted this reply to another gentlemen's thread that addressed the same issue. Here's the copy/paste response I lifted from that thread and wanted to share with the community.
Here we go with what worked for me (finally). I may post this as a standalone "solution," too, albeit quite technical. I will add the caveat here that I just switched to the Mac in Sep 05, so some of the terms I use may not be Mac-speak.
First, here's the present config of my DAW (digital audio workstation) that I went in with to tackle the Waveburner "freezing while burning" issue populating several streams in the forum:
- H/W, S/W: G5 Dual, 2.3GHz, 2.5GBytes RAM, OS 10.4.4, Logic Pro 7.1.1, Waveburner v1.1.2 (I reinstalled the v1.1.2 release), Pro Apps v3.1 (I reinstalled this guy, too)
- Soundcard: Presonus Firepod, but not turned on (For no particular reason, I kept the Firepod turned off during all of the below troubleshooting events. This may/may not contribute to burn problems and I'll try to add some more info regarding this configuration in a later posting.)
- DVD Burner: Pioneer DVD-RW DVR-109 (this was the stock burner in my G5), using CD-R media from "Imation" and "Compucessory" and "Office Depot"
- the crossover cable between the G5 and my PC was left inactive/disabled
Second, I need to mention that I "repaired permissions" on my OS hard drive after the ProApp 3.1 and Waveburner 1.1.2 updates were reinstalled. I should mention I repaired permissions on the hard drive twice in the sense that I first repaired it by selecting the official hard drive name and then selected the personalized hard drive name (e.g., "Rich's Main Drive") within the Disk Utility application. This may not matter, but I was willing to try all options.
Third, I deleted the old Waveburner preferences file that is found in the Users/Library/Preferences folder or something like that since I'm going off of memory here to allow Waveburner to re-establish a new prefs file for itself.
Fourth, I accessed only the Waveburner application and did not open any other application first. Again, this probably won't impact anything, but I took a very conservative approach.
Fifth, let's talk about my Waveburner settings that worked and definitely did not work as of today. I'll need to double check if the OS 10.4.4 update includes the DVD burner driver or firmware updates (I'm unsure if the firmware needs to be activated separate from a simple OS update. Any ideas?). So, here are the settings I used in the Waveburner preferences with comments:
- selected "built-in audio", "channels 1-2" (still need to verify the Firepod would work, too)
- "no dithering" was selected
- burn tab: all items left unchecked (When I selected "CD Text," the burn definitely froze immediately following the mix bounce and I'm not sure if that is burner related or S/W related. Either way, trying to include "CD text" was not successful.)
- "replace region with bounce" checked (when left unchecked, the burn froze after the bounce)
- slowest burn speed selected (4x) to try and miminize burn errors (of course, I'm going to try and increase the burn speed now that I have a stable config working)
- I initially selected "test burn" prior to actually burning. This obviously added extra time to the effort, but was worth it for troubleshooting purposes. In the end, my stable config does not include this step anymore, so I just burn outright without a test burn, now.
- selected the "ballad" mix plug-in chain preset
So, the above settings seemed to be the bare bones settings to start with. Unfortuneately, I trashed multiple disks to get to this point. I'm anxious to see what settings I can add before I have a total freeze again.
Sixth, I need to mention that I imported four pre-dithered, pre-mastered, 16 bit, 44KHz aiff files totaling just over 20 minutes of audio (I also cross-faded them and freely adjusted the track start markers). I realize for better audio, you'd want to import 24 bit, 48KHz files or greater, but remember I'm just trying to troubleshoot right now. I also realized that essentially re-mastering the tracks by including Waveburner's "ballad" plug-in preset would potentially create a mix that was too "hot," but I merely wanted to see if plug-ins were the culprit. It turned out the plug-ins did increase the mix's temperature quite a bit, but the plug-ins did not freeze the burn process.
Lastly, I found that patience, as always, was the key in the following areas:
- After the bounce, the burn did not start until ~45 seconds once the burn status window popped up that shows the time remaining until completion. This delay may decrease or increase based on the overall length of the CD you're trying to burn, but I haven't tested that yet.
- Once the final track was burned and the status window displayed "closing session," the burn process took an additional ~20 to 30 seconds until the disk was automatically ejected.
Give these rather comprehensive ideas a shot and then work your way up from there.
Good luck and I'll keep checking the posts to see if additional questions arise.
Rich