I have been up all night tring to solve a problem and find that the drive not ready error has been cause by different DVD's I have been using Verbatim 16x 4.7GB 120 min DVD+R with no problems. I tried some Memorex DVD-R's with the same states and couldn't get them to burn. I am sure some of you have had similar problems. We should compile a list of Bad DVDR's for DVDSP3!

It gets tough to do this as the problems may not be DVDSP but drive/disk problems.

For example:
I've been using Verbatim 16X disks with a G5 and the stock Sony drive. My disks all burn perfectly and play back perfectly (using Toast 6.1.1 for the burning).

I switched to a G4 with a NEC 16X drive and Toast 6.1.1. The same DVD image burns fine and validates fine (at 4X, 8X, and 16X). But it skips on my reference DVD player.

Same blank disks, same image produced by DVDSP, burned with the same program but in a different burner... different results. (Which is a shame, because the NEC can burn the image in 2+ minutes, while the Sony takes 10+ minutes...)

I agree with Michael. There are not many times when I will completely defend Apple softare, but DVDSP does not have disc compatibility problems. I have lots of experience with it over the last year, and I can assure you that when you have problems they are either with your media, writable drive or a particular combination of both.

it could also be a bad burner... i have had a couple of sony drives that had the laser go bad... it's an intermittent failure mode, and the disc plays on some desktop dvd players, but not others.

I highly doubt it is a problem between DVD Studio Pro and the DVD media. What is much more likely is a compatibility problem between the DVD recorder and DVD media, or (possibly) a problem between the burning software and the DVD recorder.

I would suggest checking if there is a new firmware version available for you DVD burner. It might improve compatibility with certain DVD media.

Well that is sure a curious thing indeed. Thanks for the replies so far. The DVD Burner came with the brand new G5 and I have only had it for about 10 months. I have only burned about 20 DVD's with it so far. What was happening was that with the Memorex DVD-R's, I was getting the message "Burn Failed. Disk drive reported the not ready error: Incompatilbe Media etc." It would go through everthing and start formatting and the death spiral could come on and the drive would open.

Switched bact to the Verbatim DVD+R's and the problem went away.

You guys are indicating that the problem could be the burner itself. How can I establish that and since it falls under applecare, do you think they will replace it?

It could be a bad burner, but it could also be a simple incompatibility between the burner and the Memorex DVD media, in which case there is nothing wrong with the drive. Have you tried updating the firmware (if there is an update available for your drive)? I would try that first before assuming the burner is defective. If you update and you still have the problem, then you could try an exchange.

However, since the Verbatim DVDs still work fine, I'm leaning towards the problem lying in some sort of incompatibility between the drive and whatever supplier's blank DVDs happened to be in the Memorex package you purchased (Memorex doesn't make their own DVDs; like most other name brands they purchase from a variety of different manufacturers, some good, some bad).

cris is right on the money... i think that one of the functions of updating the burner includes allowing it to recognize the latest burn speeds of all the media... there is more to burning than just being able to read the media i.d. sector(?)

when those sony drives went bad, there was no warning... the discs all appeared to burn without errors, but as the drives got progressively worse, you could occasionally see problems on the burned area of the disc.

turn your burn failures over and inspect the bottom of the disc around the hub, see how far the burn progressed.

None of them ever even got to the Burn state. The error popped up before that stage of the Burn. How can I tell what kind of Drive it is?

system profiler. make sure you have all the firmware updates.

Just got my G5 back fom the shop. Optical drive replacement. Sometimes you get a bad one. Mine would fail sometimes but not others. My sales rep admitted that he'd seen the problem more than once.

When I got the machine back, the tech had changed my password and disabled one of my HDD's. He also felt an archive install of the original bundled OS was a good idea. I wanted to ...ARG!



Forced me to learn more about the the guts of the beast - silver lining.


I find that computer components can be a lot like wine, a certain percentage will always be "corked" hehehe

lewis

My DVD burner on my Powerbook has been schitzo since I bought it.

Just for kicks, don't change anything other than going to 8X discs.

From what I have heard 16x is just not as reliable as 8X. If you only make that change and get a better result, you have probably isolated the problem.

afaik, -r are still the best bet for set-top player compatibility compared to +r, so you probably want to find a kind of -r that works for you.