John the Greek

Q: failure to burn photo DVD in iPhoto

I'm using 10.6.8, iPhoto version 9.2.3. It now won't burn a backup DVD of my photos. Each time I try it it looks like it's going to work, even gets to the point where it tells me it's burning the DVD, then up pops the error message and it ejects the DVD. Now I know that blank DVD-Rs aren't that expensive, but I don't want to go through a whole post of the things getting the same result every time, because the annoying thing is, once you've tried to record to a DVD-R it's useless and can't be used again. Any suggestions, apart from smash the MacBook in frutstration that is!!

MacBook, Mac OS X (10.6.8), null

Posted on Aug 19, 2015 8:55 AM

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Q: failure to burn photo DVD in iPhoto

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  • by Terence Devlin,

    Terence Devlin Terence Devlin Aug 19, 2015 9:01 AM in response to John the Greek
    Level 10 (139,532 points)
    iLife
    Aug 19, 2015 9:01 AM in response to John the Greek

    Best suggestion: forget about using DVDs as back up. The next Mac you buy won't have a DVD drive, nor will whatever app you use for managing your photos read these DVDs.

     

    What's the error message that pops up?

  • by John the Greek,

    John the Greek John the Greek Aug 19, 2015 11:11 AM in response to Terence Devlin
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Aug 19, 2015 11:11 AM in response to Terence Devlin

    Whilst I appreciate your comment. It's untrue to say that the next Mac I buy won't have a DVD drive. I am a graphic designer with a huge number of CD and DVD backups of my work over many years. I need access to these when working for clients. Plus, how will I access digital photos from the past 10 years if I don't have a drive in my Mac? I need to get these current photos off my HD now using the tools that are available to me, but they're not working. Anyone else out there? No offence, but not sure how helpful that reply is to me I'm afraid.

  • by Terence Devlin,

    Terence Devlin Terence Devlin Aug 19, 2015 11:51 AM in response to John the Greek
    Level 10 (139,532 points)
    iLife
    Aug 19, 2015 11:51 AM in response to John the Greek

    You asked for suggestions and that was mine. You're a grown up I'm sure and can make you own decisions, but remember

     

    1. optical media is going the way of the floppy disk.

    2. Are you sure the older disks haven't succumbed to disk rot yet? If you're buying cheap retail media there is a strong likelihood that they will degrade.

    3. The next Mac you buy will have a later version of iPhoto or Photos. These will not read those DVDs. Can I make that any more clear?

    4. Exactly one model of Mac now comes with an internal drive. One.

     

    That said, you didn't answer my question. Hard to help troubleshoot if you don't.

  • by John the Greek,

    John the Greek John the Greek Aug 19, 2015 2:22 PM in response to Terence Devlin
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Aug 19, 2015 2:22 PM in response to Terence Devlin

    Apologies Terence, I had no intention of sounding ungrateful or rude. I have always used good quality blank CD or DVD disks. In fact I have back-ups going back to the 90's that I still use to access data on a regualr basis. I have probably only had one or two disks go bad in all of that time. I didn't answer your question, so here is the message...

    Screen shot 2015-08-20 at 00.17.07.png

    I have run a cleaner in the drive too. Not sure how effective those things are though. Fact is, I also have hundreds of MP3 CD's backing up my extensive music collection too which I foresee myself using for a long time to come. After all, I use them in the car all the time.

     

    I was just hoping that someone would have had this problem who had found a way to solve it. Sometimes it's something fairly obvious or simple that one just doesn't think of.

  • by Old Toad,

    Old Toad Old Toad Aug 19, 2015 2:29 PM in response to John the Greek
    Level 10 (141,085 points)
    Mac OS X
    Aug 19, 2015 2:29 PM in response to John the Greek

    Can you burn a disk from the Finder or another application?

    OTsig.png

  • by John the Greek,

    John the Greek John the Greek Aug 20, 2015 7:11 AM in response to Old Toad
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Aug 20, 2015 7:11 AM in response to Old Toad

    OT, yes just tried it. using the finder it burnt a backup DVD no problem.

  • by Old Toad,

    Old Toad Old Toad Aug 20, 2015 9:35 AM in response to John the Greek
    Level 10 (141,085 points)
    Mac OS X
    Aug 20, 2015 9:35 AM in response to John the Greek

    Log into another user account on your Mac, and see if you can burn a CD from iPhoto there.  Create a test album with a couple of photos and give it a try.  If not then the problem is system wide and a reinstall of iPhoto would be the first step to take.

  • by John the Greek,

    John the Greek John the Greek Aug 22, 2015 8:14 AM in response to Old Toad
    Level 1 (0 points)
    Aug 22, 2015 8:14 AM in response to Old Toad

    I only have the one user account on my Mac I'm afraid. How do I re-install iPhoto without re-installing the other apps? or is that not possible?

  • by Old Toad,

    Old Toad Old Toad Aug 22, 2015 8:37 AM in response to John the Greek
    Level 10 (141,085 points)
    Mac OS X
    Aug 22, 2015 8:37 AM in response to John the Greek

    If you have Time Machine enabled you can go back in time and restore iPhoto but make sure it's the version you need.  Go back far enough to a time before this problem began.


    If you're installing from an iLife disk do a custom install and check only iPhoto.

  • by clodo9,

    clodo9 clodo9 Aug 23, 2015 6:01 PM in response to John the Greek
    Level 2 (194 points)
    Aug 23, 2015 6:01 PM in response to John the Greek

    hi john,

    have you tried burning the photos through the "Export" dialog, to a folder on Desktop , then clicking "burn to disc" in Finder ? Was it such a photo burn you were referring to above ?

    And another thing : DVD + R are definitely superior.

  • by clodo9,

    clodo9 clodo9 Aug 24, 2015 4:49 PM in response to John the Greek
    Level 2 (194 points)
    Aug 24, 2015 4:49 PM in response to John the Greek

    "DVD + R are definitely superior" was the short answer...Here's the long answer, taken from the excellent      https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-6031

    As to the type of professional DVD blank media: DVD-R is inferior for data preservation for several reasons: error correction, wobble tracking, and writing method. For a DVD to track where it is on the disc, it uses three things: the ‘wobble’ of the data track to tell where it is in the track, the position of the track to tell where it is on the disc, and some additional information where on the disc to tell where the track begins and ends. On –R media, the ATIP is stored as a frequency modulation in the wobble itself; since the wobble changes subtly to encode data, it is impossible to use with the small size of tracks DVD requires, as electric noise in the laser pickup and wobbles introduced by the electric motor spinning the disc, these could easily be read as frequency changes in the real track itself.

    On DVD-R this problem had been attempted to be solved by ‘pre-pits’ where spikes in the amplitude of the wobble appear due to pits fully out of phase with the rest of the track (between two spirals of the track, where there is no data). This can be viewed as a simple improvement over CD-R as it makes it easier to track the wobble. This method has one flaw: due to electric noise in the laser pickup, it would be very easy to miss the pre-pit (or read one that wasn’t actually there) if the disc were damaged or spun at fast speeds. DVD-R traded hard to track frequency changes for hard to read wobble-encoded data.

    On a DVD+R there is a better write method. Instead of changing the frequency of the wobble, or causing amplitude spikes in the wobble, they use complete phase changes. Where DVD-R’s methods make you choose between either easy wobble tracking or easy ATIP reading, DVD+R method makes it very easy to track the wobble, and also very easy to encode data into the wobble. DVD+R method is called ADIP (Address In Pre-groove).

    Now, the third item on the list: how DVD+R discs burn better. ATIP/pre-pit/ADIP stores information about optimum power control settings. DVD-R basically fails on all three accounts because DVD+R simply includes far more information about the media in the ADIP data than DVD-R does in it’s pre-pit data. DVD+R includes four optimum profiles, one for four major burning speeds. Each of these profiles includes optimum power output based on laser wavelength, more precise laser power settings, and other additional information. With this information, any DVD+R burner can far more optimize its burning strategy to fit the media than it can with DVD-R, thereby providing better burns.

    DVD+R also gives four times more scratch space for the drive to calibrate the laser on; more space can only improve the calibration quality. So DVD+R media exists to simply produce better burns and protect your data better, which when it comes to data hub archiving is of vital importance.