Had the same issue tonight for the first time, found this post and stopped reading part way through page 2. Fixed the problem almost immediately on my own, burned two nearly full DL DVDs, came back and finished reading all nine pages (currently) just to see if there was ever a solution like mine and yes, but although mentioned twice, it is roundly ignored.
People posting to this thread seem to be suffering a number of separate issues (with their computers), mostly centered around the same fairly generic error code. This is a communication error, pure and simple. There are a few things that could cause a "communication error" but the most likely one, and what solved the problem for me, is verifying that the computer can transfer data from the source to the laser well enough to burn the disk within the parameters of the disc, the drive it's in, and the software controlling it all.
Of course, there are endless possibilities of some of these posters having too little available RAM to properly cache the data, their drive is actually damaged, they have a source drive that runs slow or is on a slow USB connection (perhaps a 1.0 hub without knowing it, or maybe it's just a cheap-arse external drive). They could have dirt in the optical drive (obscenely common, particularly with laptops and especially in areas like Southern California that have suffered huge brush fires and still have ash in the air even if you don't see it so much). It could very well be a software or firmware update to the OS, the computer, or one of the peripherals and it could easily be some piece of poorly written software (like a Microsoft product?) that's taking too many cylces.
I think the key is to analyse/evaluate/understand your computer, its peripherals, and it's limitations as best you can and then make the best of it by eliminating or adjusting for all the weak links.
In my case, I had some large files on a Firewire 400 drive I needed to burn to DL-DVD media using a 24" "Early 2008" iMac with a 3GHz processor and maxed out at 6GBs RAM. It's an older beast but having upgraded a few things, she still works quite well. I initially inserted a piece of blank media (TDK 8x from a spindle pack), allowed the Finder to create a little blank window for me to drag my files in... drug the files in (they created little aliases), then clicked the Burn button, typed a name, left the default "highest speed", and sent it on it's merry way. It promptly failed. I Googled the error code and found this 'wonderful' thread, gave up, and went back to an old standard:
(MY FIX:) I deleted all those little aliases and dragged my files across again but THIS TIME, I held the Option key down so they were "duplicated" to my boot drive. Now when I burned the data to the disc, it went fine.
As it happens, I upgraded my original 500GB 5400 RPM Apple drive about two years ago to a 2TB 7200 RPM drive. The internal drive speed is just one variable but certainly, by copying the data to the internal boot drive, I eliminated all the possible problems with the external drive, the Firewire chain, and any caching happening within those components. Firewire 400 shoud have been fast enough and it's a quality drive, but I did this anyhow.
Had it not worked, I would have looked for the next weakest link (checked available RAM, lowered the burn speed, restarted the computer and not opened all the usual apps before burning, checked the list of running processes and eliminating things that were taking too much processing power or memory, etc.).
Now, having read through the rest of the thread, I see many posters that could probably be helped if they find a reasonably experienced tech and buy him a beer or perhaps take the stick out of their arse (you bought an Apple, congratulations, you are having so many fewer problems compared to any version of Windoze that you can now dedicate all your frustration just to his one, lucky us). I also suspect that Apple is partly responsible for either introducing an upgrade to the OS or firmware that wasn't 100% compatible with all the different DVD writers and not crafting better, more accurate error messages.
On page 7, someone posted a very nice summary of things to try such as verifying permissions (one of the suggestions that drew some highly unwarrented flak) - you should consider everything in that list including verifying permissions. I've been doing this for about 30 years (I still own my original Apple ][ and it still works) and while I've read endless "experts" regarding the potential futility of verifying the permissions, I have seen it fix problems on a modern Mac that should have NOTHING to do with file permissions... and anyhow, it's just a good idea to run it before and after each software upgrade and occasionally just for fun... I do.
As for the EFI, I see that downgrading it has worked for some but not others. Can't guess at the reason although it probably is Apple's fault in that they made a change that say, for example, switched from trusting the hardware cache on the optical drive to trusting a hardware cache on the controller in an attempt to fix a different problem being complained about in a different thread... regardless, I suspect there was/is a fairly simple solution prior to attempting the downgrade or buying a new computer.
Ah, the wife has signalled it's dinner time and my second disc is just about 100% verified. G'evening all.
