how to burn multiple CDs

Question

Level 1

30 points

how to burn multiple CDs

I have a large list of iphotos to burn on CDs. I have been manually separating the list into different folders to get the size within the range of the CD. This is a pain in the neck.

Does Leopard have any way to look at a folder, calculated the number of disks and sequentially burn multiple disks?

That sure would be a help.

G5 PM, MBP2.33, Mac OS X (10.5.7)

Posted on May 28, 2009 5:55 AM

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Answer 1

May 28, 2009 6:47 AM in response to Cosman

Hello cos:

To my knowledge, no. I have looked for a similar feature myself, but have not found one. There may be a third party program (I have not looked for one myself).

You could set up multiple libraries in iPhoto and then export those for burning.

In my own case, I do not burn CD/DVDs for backup as I use both Time Machine and also make bootable clones. I suspect you are making the CD's to send someplace - a different reason.

Barry

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Answer 2

Cosman Author

Level 1

30 points

May 28, 2009 7:10 AM in response to Barry Hemphill

Barry,

I am making CDs for my wife to take to the local "film developer" to get prints. This last round, the size of the iPhoto Album exceeded 1.5GB, and I burn ~"800MB" disks, which will actually only hold ~700MB.

If course, you can try to burn a folder of any size and get an error message. Divvying out the photos to different folders to balance the size is where the pain is.

After multiple tries, the best way I found was to make 3 desktop folders, export all the pictures into folder #1, arrange the view of the folder as the smallest icon view. Then expand the folder view on the desktop to see columns of icons. I then copied 1/3 of the columns into folder #2, and 1/2 the remaining into folder #2. Note that an equal number of picture is not the same as equal distribution of storage in MB, because different pictures have different sizes when compressed.

This scheme doesn't work with "Burn Folders", they have to be ordinary.

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Answer 3

May 28, 2009 7:21 AM in response to Cosman

Hi again:

I'm fishing here, but.... Have you thought of burning a DVD? My DVDs hold 4.7 GB.

Barry

P.S. I suspected you were making the copies to take someplace 🙂

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Answer 4

May 28, 2009 8:50 AM in response to Cosman

Hi Cosman;

To go Barry one step better if your optical drive is capable of burning dual layer DVDs as the one in my PM Quad G5 is then they will give you 9 GB of space.

Allan

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Answer 5

Cosman Author

Level 1

30 points

May 28, 2009 9:20 AM in response to Allan Eckert

True. The only problem is I don't know if the photo developer can use DVDs. I need to ask. I also have a bunch of CDs to get rid of.

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Answer 6

nerowolfe

Level 6

13,090 points

May 28, 2009 9:42 AM in response to Cosman

You can use DU to create an empty disk image of fixed size. One size that is offered is CD-size, which is the one you want.
Then you can drag files into the image until it's full and then burn the image to the CD.

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Answer 7

Cosman Author

Level 1

30 points

May 28, 2009 9:56 AM in response to nerowolfe

Nerowolfe,

Sounds good, but isn't that the same thing as filling a CD until its full - it already has a size specification.

The problem is managing the division of the pictures into groups that will each fit on a CD.

In my case, I needed 3 CDs, but had to spend considerable time partitioning the files into ~equal size groups, because that is not based on file number, but file size.

I remember back in the foppy disk days where automatic partitioning of a big file onto multiple disks was standard.

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Answer 8

May 28, 2009 11:41 AM in response to Cosman

you can use the backup feature on idisk. You can select to backup the iphoto library to CDs or DVDs and just keep on popping a blank CD or DVD when the previous one is full.

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Answer 9

nerowolfe

Level 6

13,090 points

May 28, 2009 12:02 PM in response to Cosman

Cosman wrote:
Nerowolfe,

I remember back in the foppy disk days where automatic partitioning of a big file onto multiple disks was standard.

Ah! if you mean "disk spanning" you can use Toast to do that.
The problem with that, as with the Windows multiple disk spanning, is that sometimes a file may be split, which you certainly do not want to do.
I have not checked but Toast may provide an option with disk spanning, so as to not split an individual file. I have Toast Titanium, but never used it that way.
I just checked and it does not offer that option.
The files are recovered using a Toast "restore" app., which will not fit you bill, as I understand your requirements.

Message was edited by: nerowolfe

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Answer 10

May 28, 2009 12:17 PM in response to Cosman

Toast will do this for you.

But best advice has to be as already said, to burn to DVD.

But using Disc Copy / Utility to burn CDs is going to require your Photo Shop to be able to read Mac discs. Again Toast can burn PC or hybrid discs for you.

Otherwise, it's just get on with it, we all have to do similar when we backup our sets of photos. Using DVD increases your flexibility, I'll fill a DVD sized disk image until it hits 4GB, then I'll stop as soon as the first set I copy is too large for the remaining space. You could do something similar with CD, copy photos until you get to 600MB-700MB then just burn it. So what if it uses 3 or 4 CDs (that you "need to get rid off") ? Is your time not worth more than the $0.20 cost of a CD-R ?

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Answer 11

Chris CA

Level 10

82,434 points

May 28, 2009 1:06 PM in response to Cosman

You can order prints directly from within iPhoto. 4x6 are 12 cents each.
-> iPhoto Print Products

Might want to see how many total pix you have and add up the cost.
1500 pix (at 1MB each = 1.5GB) would be $180.

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Answer 12

Cosman Author

Level 1

30 points

May 28, 2009 1:19 PM in response to Chris CA

I can't imagine being able to upload 1.5GB of photos to Apple for pictures. I have a 1.5MBs DS line.

But that is a thought.

A second negative is that my wife wants to pick duplicates of pictures at the Photo Processor. For example, there are wedding and shower pictures in the batch. Who should get one, how many duplicates, etc. That would add to the upload problem.

You are right, it is going to cost some money either way.

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Answer 13

Chris CA

Level 10

82,434 points

May 28, 2009 2:15 PM in response to Cosman

A second negative is that my wife wants to pick duplicates of pictures at the Photo Processor

Do it all at home.
Create an album in iPhoto for each individual, add the photos that individual gets then send upload them one at a time.
Then everything is sorted out before and you won't have 1500 photos (and duplicates, triplicates again on top of that) to sort out on the kitchen table.
Everything for each person would come in their own package.
20 people, 20 different albums, 20 different packages.

Even if you are going to do it locally (not through iPhoto), create albums for each individual and burn a CD of each album to get processed.

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Answer 14

Glynn

Level 4

1,375 points

May 28, 2009 2:52 PM in response to Cosman

There is an app called SpanBurner that might work. It costs $10.00.
http://basepath.com/ImageIngester/

I do not know if it will keep your files intact or split them, but you can demo it for free.

Cheers,
Glynn

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Answer 15

Cosman Author

Level 1

30 points

May 28, 2009 6:46 PM in response to Glynn

Glynn,

SpanBurner just might do the trick. According to the site:

SpanBurner is very clever about splitting folders while keeping the folder hierarchy intact, but possibly duplicated on different disks. *But it won't split files*. If a single file is bigger than will fit on a disc (4.6 GB or so for DVDs), it stops with an error.

Thanks for the info.

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