CD burner cancelling burn

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Level 1

13 points

CD burner cancelling burn

I have the Apple CD/DVD external burner.

Yesterday, it would start to burn an iTunes playlist, then would "cancel the burn."

I figured the problem was with the burner, so after consulting with this community, purchased a different, LG DVD writer.

Plugged it in, put in a disc, got the same result as with the Apple superdrive burner.

Can the problem be with the computer?

Desperately need this to work; am an elementary music teacher and needed to burn a compilation CD for St. Patrick's Day music....which is tomorrow!

iMac (21.5-inch, Late 2013), OS X Yosemite (10.10)

Posted on Mar 16, 2015 9:03 PM

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Answer 1

Best reply

judysings

Community Specialist

Mar 19, 2015 9:30 AM in response to iteachmusic

Hey iteachmusic,

The articles below provide some things to try if you are unable to burn a playlist to a CD in iTunes. Since the issue is happening with two different drives, have you tested to see if you can burn a data disc from the Finder application to test the drive? Also, have you tried a different brand? Are you using CD-R discs?

OS X Yosemite: Burn CDs and DVDs
https://support.apple.com/kb/PH19009?locale=en_US&viewlocale=en_US

Burn a CD or DVD in the Finder

Insert a blank disc into the optical drive.
If you see a dialog, click the pop-up menu, then choose Open Finder. Select “Make this action the default” if you want to open the Finder every time you insert a blank disc.
The disc appears on your desktop.

Double-click the disc to open its window, then drag the files and folders you want to burn to the window.

Choose File > Burn [disc], then follow the instructions.

Disc Burning Quick Assist - Apple Support

https://support.apple.com/en-us/ht1152

You're unable to burn a CD in iTunes
https://support.apple.com/kb/TA44597?locale=en_US

Check iTunes settings
If you have set the Gap Between Songs to 5 seconds in iTunes preferences, try setting it to something shorter, such as 2 seconds.

Make sure you've chosen the correct disc format for the files you're trying to burn to your CD or DVD. To create an audio CD, you need to choose Audio CD in the Burning pane of iTunes preferences. To create a CD with any type of audio file that iTunes supports (MP3, AAC, AIFF, and so on), you need to choose "Data CD or DVD" in the Burning pane of iTunes preferences.

Songs that aren't selected are not burned to a disc and are dimmed during a burn. If none of the songs in a playlist are selected, you will see the alert "None of these items in this list can be burned to CD."

Set the burn speed in iTunes to 2x:

From the iTunes menu (Mac OS X) or Edit menu (Mac OS 9), choose Preferences.

iTunes 5: Click the Advanced tab and then click the Burning tab. iTunes 3 and 4: Click the Burning tab.

Choose 2x from the Preferred Speed pop-up menu. If the burn is successful, keep trying a faster burn speed until you are unable to burn successfully, then set the burn speed to the last successful speed.

Other things to check

If your playlist includes songs that were purchased from the iTunes Store (iTunes 4 only), you can only burn 7 copies of the same playlist to an audio CD. If you can't burn a CD that contains purchased songs, make sure you haven't tried to burn the same playlist 7 times. Additionally, if the song has not been authorized to play on the computer, it will not burn.

Have a good day,

- Judy

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Answer 2

iteachmusic Author

Level 1

13 points

Mar 22, 2015 9:39 AM in response to judysings

I never realized that there was a limit to 7 burns of the same song, purchased from iTunes!

This may be the root of the problem, and I would not have had to purchase a new CD burner, which had the same problem burning the same playlist!

As an elementary music teacher, I have lots of seasonal and topical Smart Playlists.

From one year to the next, I burn CDs from these playlists, altering them to fit a new group or grade of students.

How would I know how many times I have burned the same song to a CD?

And, does this also hold true for songs purchased digitally from Amazon, or just those purchased from iTunes?

Have not even tried the other fixes suggested by judysings, since this one was eye-opening to me!

Now I guess I need to figure out which song it was that was causing the thing to "cancel the burn"!

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