What a disappointment to find after I purchased a LaCie d2 DVD +RW external drive ( the one Apple sells on their site) that there is no way I can create and burn the longer playing dual layer discs with iDVD. How to cripple an otherwise great piece of software.... truly, this is a significant bit of shortsightedness. In retrospect, I probably should have swapped out the internal superdrive in my G5 but hated to do so since it is less than 9 months old. Also I was discouraged from doing this by the Apple Technical support folks. So my vision of Apples fine products diminishes somewhat!
Be sure to check out the LaCie site first and your software CD that came with the drive. LaCie provides disc burning support for their drives, so always hit LaCie up first. PatchBurn is just a hack to get your Mac to recognize your external drive. LaCie provides profiles for their drives that other manufacturers do not. Always go with the LaCie stuff first, if that doesn't work, then try PatchBurn.
The LaCie Discc Burning profile that ships with the drive, or can be downloaded from our website in the Optical section, allows OS X 10.3.2 and newer, including 10.4.2, to recognize the drive for most every OS X disc burning application.
This includes iDVD 5, with one exception - no support for double-layer (DL) media. It will support 4.7GB single layer media OK.
Apple chose to limit iDVD DL support to the internal SuperDrive only, even if OS X recognizes the drive. Previously not iDVD could not even be used with external drives, but that changed with iDVD 5
You of course can use Toast titanium to make DL DVDs.
While there have been some hacks to permit using external DL drives with iDVD 5, they are not supported.
As usual, lots of good advise here. I'll be exploring the options. In the meantime hopefully Apple will come around and patch iDVD to allow the external dual layer drive to work.
I wouldn't have high hopes on that. Basically iDVD doesn't support burning directly to any external DVD burner natively. Most people using external burners are using a hack, a third party drive profile, or creating disc images and burning to a disc outside of iDVD altogether. Apple still only officially supports their own hardware, even though other hardware technically will work with their software.
Type to update your assumptions concerning iLife, iDVD, and disc burning.
While there are hacks such as Patchburn - probably what you are referring to - there are also approved methods of adding support for external drives:
- LaCie uses Disc Burning profiles which are approved by Apple. These are provided by LaCie for its drives. After installing these profiles, OS X 10.3.2 and newer, including 10.4.x, OS X supports CD and DVD disc burning with Finder, iPhoto, DVD Studio Pro, iTunes, and Disk Utility.
- OS X 10.4.x also has some generic support built in for most CD and DVD burners that comply with industry standards
- with iLife 5, iDVD 5 gained ability to burn to supported external DVD burners. Support is provided by the OS X for a large number of drives, as well as thru drives added with the Disc Burning support mechanism.
As I mentioned in my previous note, only thing missing is dual layer support for iDVD 5, as Apple has chosen to limit burning support to single-layer discs only for external drives.
Support can be confirmed for an OS X recognized drive thru the Apple System Profiler report.
Finally, the method used by LaCie to provide Disc Burning support is approved by Apple, and the installed profiles are properly recognized by OS X for system updates and upgrades.
The LaCie Disc Burning profile, while technically a 3rd party profile, is developed jointly with Apple, and conforms to their design requirements. LaCie is one of the few companies permitted to develop this profile, and distribute it.
LaCie is ultimately responsible for support, as Apple does not support ANY 3rd party peripherals.
I've been using iDVD since day one and have watched as people have been forced to use workarounds to use iDVD with their third party drives... workarounds which in most cases never would have been necessary if Apple had not specifically blocked such support. DVDSP was capable of far more third party support well in advance of iDVD reluctant acceptance of it.
While I will agree that Apple is taking on a more friendly tone towards third party devices, it still doesn't fully embrace the idea. LaCie is one of the few, perhaps the only, third party device manufacturer to go out of their way to support their customers on the Mac platform... and for this I have the utmost praise.
I do not, however, believe that Apple is going to make their software support third party products to the point of affecting their own sales. Thus, holding out hope that tomorrow some new version will change all that would be deceiving at this juncture. Best to operate with what is known to be true today than speculate on what may be true tomorrow.
We're all agreed upon that... he has an external drive and wants to burn to dual layer media. We said it wasn't supported. He wanted to know if such support was forthcoming... I suggested probably not likely.
You are absolutely correct. I burn to single layer just fine...that said I have a suoerdrive internal which also burns single layer DVD's just fine. I bought the LaCie because I have a number of older video tapes (2 hours long) to burn to dvd. The LaCie is sold on Apples site and seemed to be supported, which it is, just not for burning dual layer dvds from iDVD. Apple technical support discouraged me from even trying to change out my superdrive for a new superdrive which would burn the dl dvd. So I went for the LaCie without understanding the limitation, shame on me. Isuppose now I will have to invest on Apples DVD Studio Pro to meet my needs. I understand it will burn to dual layer dvd external drives. Of course I will thoroughly research this before I invest the money.
Again, thanks for all the discussion. Hopefully this thread will keep some other users from investing without understanding the compatability issues.
Well add me to the list of idiots who purchased the LaCie dual layer burner for getting my long video's on to one dvd.
Dual layer must be one of the few reasons we would buy such an item when we already have a superdrive (unless it is faulty). All the advertising blurb / reviews fails to make this dual layer problem clear.
And whats all this that you can save your project as a disc image in iDVD 5 and then burn it dual layer in Toast? iDVD reminds you that you are exceeding the 4GB maximum and won't allow it.
The only thing remaining is Patchburn which looks a bit daunting to me. Has anyone tried it? What are the results like?
The only thing remaining is Patchburn which looks a bit daunting to me. Has anyone tried it? What are the results like?
PatchBurn wouldn't give you the double-layer functionality. Use the
French patch I mentioned in post #1 together with Tiger will enable the double-layer in iDVD.
I've tried to use the french patch as you suggested following the instructions given but it doesn't seem to have made any difference. When I open iDVD 5 the status dvd capacity is still showing 4GB maximum. Am I missing something here? I'm very grateful for your help in this.
When I open iDVD 5 the status dvd capacity is still showing 4GB maximum. Am I missing something here?
Did you remove the drprofile (the LaCie profile in /Library/DiscRecording/DeviceProfiles/ for your case) as indicated in the website? When you in iDVD, open
Project > Project Info, there should be an option for selecting
single-layer (4GB) / double-layer (8GB).
No, I didn't removed the laCie profile! It is now showing that I can burn an 8 GB dvd. THANK YOU so much for your help. I will have a go at burning something tomorrow.
