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!
Yes Paul, I was referring to your post with my question.
Today I installed a Pioneer DVD-RW DVR-110D that has dual layer support in my 'Quicksilver' G4, OS 10.4.2. Using the 'French' patch, iDVD now supports an 8GB dual layer project; although I have yet to test it further by creating such a creature or burning it.
For those others asking about other software, Toast 7 works great for burning disk images made with iDVD. I assume that it will handle a DL iDVD project disk image just fine. Also, for kicks, I authored a DL DVD project directly from within toast (very limited vs. iDVD) and then allowed toast to compress it so that it fit onto a 4.7GB DVD-R. Audio quality is very good, video obviously pixelated and compressed when close ups. For distant shots, however, the video quality is quite acceptable.
It may be some time before I have time to author an 8GB project with iDVD, but will try eventually and see how it goes.
Wanted to get back to you to let you know result of my testing with DL disks. Bottom line is I was able to successfully burn a DL disk using my external Lacie D2 drive. Some of the details of my experience are below.
- Using French patched iDVD5, I created a disk image of about 3.5 hours of content (multiple titles). The size of the image was about 7.4GB. I was not able to burn direct from iDVD5 since iDVD5 only allows burn to internal drive. So my only option was disk image. Interestingly, when I requested the disk image, iDVD5 popped out a message saying DVDs created from DL disk may not play well in some DVD players. Don't know what that's all about. Anyway, after about 24 hours of processing, my image file was complete.
- Using copy function of Toast 6.1 Lite (came with drive), I requested burn of image file using external drive. Note that I selected DL option for burn in pulldown above red burn button. Media used was Verbatim DVD+R DL, about $15 for 3 pack from local Microcenter store.
- Burn lasted about 40 minutes (6X write?). On my first try, I got an error from Toast during final lead out write. Error said:
Sense Key = Medium Error
Sense Code - Ox0c
Write Error
- I tried a second burn, but this time removed all other devices from Firewire chain and turned off some background programs. At end of burn, no errors encountered and verify was successful.
- Both disks seemed to play OK in my older Sony player. In a cheapie player I bought, I did get a freeze while playing one title. (I've been having problems with this cheapie player before, even with SL disks.)
- As a final test, I tried burning disk image using Apple Disk Utility. I failed about half way through with error message stating 'Unable to Burn ... the device did not respond properly ...' Disk Utility may not be a good choice right now for DL burns using image files.
Anyway, I was pretty happy that I was able to successfully create a DL disk using iDVD5 and Toast on my external Lacie drive. I think I need to do some more testing to verify consistency of burns. I might try using other brands of DL media in later testing, but it seems Verbatim works pretty well. Let us know how DL testing goes with your new internal drive when you get around to it.
Good follow-up/report of your DL experience. + point for you.
Some comments...
iDVD5 popped out a message saying DVDs created from DL disk may not play well in some DVD players. Don't know what that's all about.
In burning a DL disc, there is a layer break between the 2 layers, what iDVD says is that the disk image file produced by iDVD does not have this DL layer break point tag imbedded in it. The 'freeze' frame that you saw during playback is where the layer changes. One thing I have learned from the Roxio user forum, if you use Toast 6.1.1 or 7, and choose the
Video / DVD-video from VIDEO_TS, Toast handles the layer break (if the break point tag is missing) much better than the other burn modes.
Disk Utility may not be a good choice right now for DL burns using image files.
I agree that Disk Utility may not burn DL disc properly, nothing in Apple KB indicates that it can.
I think you made a good observation regarding freeze situation between layers. I hadn't done so earlier, but I took my second copy of burned DVD and found freeze occurred in the exact same place. Note that the freezing occurred only on my cheapie player. When I viewed the same spots on my Sony player, there were no freezes; they played correctly.
So apparently the freezing may or may not occur on different players and that's why I got the warning message from iDVD5 when I created the image. Apparently Apple knew this situation could occur. I assume if you burn directly from iDVD5 (on internal drive) this freeze situation has been corrected. Maybe someone (Scott?) could verify this.
Guess I have to buy full version of Toast and try out your suggestion. Hopefully, that will clear up freeze situation on my cheapie player as well as other players.
Note that the freezing occurred only on my cheapie player. When I viewed the same spots on my Sony player, there were no freezes; they played correctly.
From my understanding, during the layer changes, the laser frequency/wavelength (something like that) of the DVD player changes, good DVD player has internal buffer to hold up data, so that the interruption is minimal.
Apparently Apple knew this situation could occur. I assume if you burn directly from iDVD5 (on internal drive) this freeze situation has been corrected.
What a good DVD authoring software tries to do is to set the break point right at a transition point, e.g. at the switch of a menu page, therefore, the glitch/freeze does not seem so obvious. I guess iDVD can do that when burning directly to a DVD, but not when saving to a disk image.
1. At the layer change, the focus of the laser is changed from one layer to the next. The wavelength is not changed. The top layer is semi-transparent, and the refocusing directs the laser focus to the farther, inner layer
2. You are correct that better DVD players do have a buffer to minimize the temporary delay caused by the layer change refocus. The better players can read ahead. Also the refocusing time is faster in better players
3. There are several rules regarding the placement of the layer break:
- the data should be spread almost equally across the layers
- the layer break should be positioned at a point that minimizes the visibility of the tranisition; ideally at a scene transition, or between different, independent video assets
If you are reusing DVD assets, like from a ripped DVD, recall that DVD burners don't have the exact layout as pressed DVDs; the DVD layer-break point in a pressed DVD may not be the optimum location as a burned DVD.
iDVD has NO capability to position the layer change by the user. Same with Toast, as both try to determine the apprpriate point based on equalizing the size of the data written to each layer
I finally got a chance to author a nearly 8GB iDVD project and test it out with my Pioneer DVR-110D internal DVD-RW drive. Overall, great success. I used the 'French patch.'
It took nearly 12 hours to render the project with multiple movies, menues, transitions etc. I created an .img file to test with toast and also tested burning directly from iDVD.
Once rendered, making more copies from iDVD was rather quick. I did not hang around to time it, but it didn't seem to take too long. The disk plays well in two tested DVD players; a cheapie 'Symphonic' that is part of a TV combo unit sold at Wal-Mart and a basic carousel style DVD player from SONY. I did notice a hiccup that I presume was during the layer transition, but after a brief pause and stutter, the movie kept on and no freeze occurred.
My first burn from Toast 7 (full version) failed reporting a hardware error. However, I tried again and it burned just fine. This disk works well with no errors found despite the same warning from iDVD when creating the .img file that some DVD players don't read this type of burned disk very well. This warning appears in the iDVD help viewer file as well. However, it didn't bite me which is great as I prefer to create and store the .img file so that I can burn new disks whenever I desire without the lengthy rendering process. The burn in toast took 19:44.
So, it appears that I will be OK with my new drive and iDVD. Good luck,
Glad to hear you got your DL project to work on your internal drive.
Since I've also just received Toast 7, I tried some additional tests using that software on my external LaCie drive. Previously, I tried DL burns using Toast 6.1 Lite. I did have a successful burn using Toast Lite, but when I tried to play it on my cheapie DVD player, there was a freeze when it tried to switch from one layer to the other. The freeze was permanent in that it just hung there. The permanent freeze did not occur at the switchover point on my other better quality DVD player.
Using Toast 7 (and following Hui's suggestion in an earlier post), I clicked the Video tab, and requested burn 'DVD-Video from VIDEO_TS'. I then selected the VIDEO_TS folder of my project, which was mounted from the image file. The burn completed successfully and was verified. I then loaded the newly created DL disk into my cheapie player and replayed where the layer switch occurred. This time there was a short freeze, say .5 second, and then it switched properly to the second layer. So it appears that burning using VIDEO_TS option of Toast 7 works for both my cheapie and better quality DVD players.
Just to see if I could also burn using COPY function on Toast 7, I requested an image copy burn. This time the burn/verify was successful, but when I played the DL disk over the switch point in my cheapie player, I got the permanent freeze again. So it appears that Hui's suggestion to only use VIDEO_TS option for burning DL DVDs on Toast may be good one for better compatibility on different DVD players.
That's what I've been able to find out so far with DL DVD burns on my external drive using Toast. If I find out anything else significant, I will post here.
Great to learn your DL experiences. Appreciate your insigts and thorough tests on the different burning methods. I know how expensive of the DL media. Excellent info. you get my ++ 🙂
I've applied the patch awhile ago, I don't have the original patch file any more. I'm not legally able to distribute any part of iDVD. You may want to contact the French website for info.
Unfortunately this is not entirely true. I've tried the French patch, but after installing it, iDVD still limited my project to 4GB. (I have an external burner that -- according to the System Profiler -- can burn DL.)
I sent email to the author of French patch and got the following reply:
"Hi,
Sorry but i didn't make tests with externals burners.
It could be the problem.
Lionel"
In other words: the patch should work for unsupported burners, but only for INTERNAL types. (This was not pointed out in the article.)
Hi Kevin,
Welcome to the Discussion.
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.
