FAQ: IDVD ext Writer

[Dave Morley]

Good Day

Just bought the new I Mac G5 and have never worked on a Mac before. I would just like to know if you can burn a DVD using an external DVD writer from I DVD. I have got I Life 05 and a LaCie ext DVD writer.

I believe it is possible but when I bought the Mac they said I must use Toast 6 lite??????

Any help is greatly appreciated.

Many Thanks
Dave Morley

[bobw]

Try PatchBurn

[thendis]

yea, patchburn will allow you to use it to burn discs directly in iTunes and probably iPhoto, but it will likely NOT allow you to burn DVDs in iDVD.

If anyone knows a way I would love to know. I have an internal superdrive in my eMac that is non-apple (Lacie dual-layer, (NEC)) I cannot use it in iDVD, much to my dismay

the only way you can be sure you will be able to burn directly using Apple applications it to install an Apple-certified drive. From what i have heard they use Pioneer DVD-R drives.

[fryke]

PatchBurn DOES allow you to burn DVDs in iDVD. It's what it's for, basically. I've successfully used PatchBurn 2 and 3 in the past for an external no-name FW "SuperDrive" which has some NEC DVD+/-RW 8x burner inside, and Apple has never used NEC burners AFAIK, so that's quite a good sign, isn't it. The LaCie drive might even use a Panasonic/Matsushita drive in the external case (check System Profiler!) which'd be almost like an original Apple SuperDrive.

[fryke]

According to the FAQ at patchburn.de:

Q: Will PatchBurn help me to use CD/DVD writers with iDVD?
A: Yes, with some restrictions: You need to have a G4 processor or newer. iDVD will not run on a G3 processor or older. Furtheron you need to have at least Mac-OS X 10.3.6 and iDVD 4.0. iDVD is not officially supported by PatchBurn 3, but it may work, if you are using an internal DVD-writer connected to the IDE-port. If you are using an external DVD-writer via Firewire, activate the button "Install support for iDVD 4" in the "Experts Mode". PatchBurn 3 then installs two resource files called "Hurz" and "Pfurz" in your home directory. If these files are present, iDVD shows an hidden dialog box to burn to an external DVD-writer or to write a disc image onto the harddrive. To get this hidden dialog in iDVD press and hold the control-key while clicking two times at the "burn DVD" symbol (lower right corner of the iDVD window). Caution! This is a hack! Apple may remove this feature in future versions of iDVD. It should work so far in iDVD 4.0 and 4.0.1.

So you _might_ be successful. Seems to depend on a couple of things.

Another entry in the FAQ could be helpful, too:

Q: iDVD 4 recognizes the drive but will not complete a DVD. I installed Patch Burn and was able to ctrl-click and select my drive in iDVD. The burning process made it to Stage 4 but then it stayed there all night long and never finished. What did I do wrong?
A: Save the DVD as an image file and burn it later using Disc Utility. In most cases this will work around the problem.

[thendis]

ah ok. I've been using iDVD 5, but 4 will be fine for what i need it for. i'll try that out. thanx for that.

[Captain Code]

It didn't work with iDVD 4 for me. Isn't there an option in iDVD 5 to burn to an image though? Then you could just burn the image to disk afterwards.

[Decado]

I can burn without problems from iDVD 5 to the external Firewire DVD-burner from LaCie (bought it today ). I use system 10.4.2.
On the DVD-burner installdisk there was an installer that made the system aware of the external dvd-burner. required a restart, though.