CAN I OVERBURN ??? (strange this is the first post asking for it...)

Question

CAN I OVERBURN ??? (strange this is the first post asking for it...)

Hello all you Mac gurus. Today's question is:

-> can I OVERBURN? <-

For those who never heard the term: overburning is the use of high capacity cds like the TDK one I have here in front of me and which theoretically could give me up to 800MB or 90mins of space and time. But overburning also lets you get out more than the actual 700MBs out of the usual CD-Rom, sometimes even 15 to 20 MBs more.

Hardware: I have a Matshita UJ-846, aka "Superdrive" that came with my brand new PowerBook 1.67GHz 17" HD.

Apparently NOBODY asked for this before, although the word "overburn" occurs here and there in these forums.
Frankly I think this is strange - how many films or other data do you have that just do not fit on the 700MB CDs from the drugstore? And how nice could it be to get those two or three 798MB DVD rips onto one CD instead of keeping it on your harddrive?

BTW I tried DragonBurn - doesn't work - and also FireStarter - doesn't work either. Both tell me that my drive is not supported. But I would hate to give up.

Thanks!

PS: a question for those with historical memory: is it possible that Apple does not actively support overburning? It's a nice feature that a lot of pee-cees can use (even the really scrappy one my girlfriend has bought last year). So why on earth can WE not???

PowerBook G4 17" 1.67 HD + G4 QS 867 Mac OS X (10.4.6)

Posted on Apr 10, 2006 8:16 PM

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Answer 1

Best reply

Donald Morgan

Level 6

12,807 points

Apr 12, 2006 3:58 PM in response to Dirk van den Berg

If I understand your post correctly you are asking if it is possible to place more data irregardless of the content on a Standard 4.7 GB DVD or a CD that is a 80 min 700 mb disc.
You are using the term Overburn. The term is also known as compression.
In other words there are Softwares available that do in fact allow you to place 6 or 7 gb of video on a standad 4.7gb disc.
Roxio has 2 that I am aware of (Popcorn) and (Toast7) both have this built in compression software.
There are several things that can affect your outcome depending on exactly what you are trying to copy.
It sometimes is not as easy as creating a folder and placing in a disc and hitting copy. It can be a lot more entailed than that, depending on what you are doing.
Cheers Don

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Answer 2

Apr 14, 2006 1:49 PM in response to Donald Morgan

Dear Don,

thanks for your answer. As you probably know, the term "overburn" is a very common term in the Windows world. There are several softwares out there for us Mac users that allow, at least theoretically, to overburn a disk = to put a certain percentage more of data on a CD-ROM or a DVD than what the factory declares it might contain (for example Dragonburn or FireStarter).

My issue (and thus my question) here is a different one.

I have not been able to "overburn" yet with neither of the two above mentioned softwares, even though they both declare it would be possible.

Perhaps I should have asked in a more specific way - so let's do it now:
- is it possible to overburn on a Mac tout-court? Is the Mac software AND hardware environment "open" enough to do allow this? In other words: DOES APPLE at least unofficially SUPPORT OVERBURNING?
- if it is possible, HOW do I do this, and which media can I use?

The second question is triggered by the fact that I bought several 800MB CD-ROMs (so called "High Capacity") from TDK and SONY. Both above softwares signal that my drive is theoretically capable of overburning. But once I start the process - eg. trying to burn an .avi-compressed film of 760MB on an 800MB TDK or SONY CD-ROM - both softwares say that I have only 91 MB available on the CD. Apparently the MacOS does not RECOGNIZE the CD's full capacity.

And, again, it seems strange to me that I am the first to ask for this. I presume a lot of people are having similar problems - and the existence of the two softwares I mentioned DO prove that there is a demand for this kind of feature.

Thanks for an answer!

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