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macphoria

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Nov 29, 2002
594
0
My SuperDrive is unable to burn iDVD movie because of "buffer under-run" error comes up. Has anyone experienced this? Does anyone know what might be causing this?
 

Catfish_Man

macrumors 68030
Sep 13, 2001
2,579
2
Portland, OR
Yeah, it used to be a fairly common error with burners. I know the combo drive on my MDD G4 supports buffer underrun protection (burning with toast anyway). Try burning at a slower speed.
 

macphoria

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Nov 29, 2002
594
0
I'm using iDVD 2.1 to burn a movie onto DVD-R. As far as I know, there is no way to adjust the burning speed. Or is there?
 

acj

macrumors 6502
Feb 3, 2003
345
0
are you multitasking?

This happens because the computer can't provide data fast enough. A constant stream of data is required. If it is broken, the whole disc is wasted, unless there is some sort of buffer underrun protection which is common on most modern drives.

So if you are doing other things while burning, try closing all other programs and give it a go without touching the computer.
 

macphoria

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Nov 29, 2002
594
0
acj,

Yes matter of fact I was multi-tasking, surfing the web while it was burning. I thought it wouldn't matter since OS X handles multi-tasking pretty well. I'll do what you suggested and see how it goes. Thanks.
 

HasanDaddy

macrumors 6502a
Jul 16, 2002
586
27
Los Angeles
Macphoria - buffer underruns suck :(

but try the following ----

1. Close all other programs and DON'T TOUCH YOUR COMPUTER, as you plan to do

2. avoid burning things off of a Firewire drive....only burn whats on your internal HD, as the FireWire can't keep up sometimees

3. Make sure that you go to your energy settings and never allow your computer to sleep

the worst thing in the world is waiting 2 hours for a DVD to burn, and then have it screw up because your comp goes to sleep!
 

yzedf

macrumors 65816
Nov 1, 2002
1,161
0
Connecticut
macphoria - ignore all the silly advise by the previous posters. what you need is more memory, and/or a faster hard drive. to me, stopping everything else that i am doing to burn a disk is unacceptable! this is not OS 9 anymore damnit. OS X can do this, but your hardware is lacking (sorry). as a minimum, you should have 512MB of RAM. you don't have folding or SETI or anything else running (web server or samba or anything also) do you? OS X can do many cool things, but it wants the memory to do it with. if your hard drive is 5400rpm, then i suggest 7200rpm as well.
 

acj

macrumors 6502
Feb 3, 2003
345
0
silly advice

Well this is all part of troubleshooting. If my silly advice does not work, than perhaps it's a bad drive and upgrading everything else wouldn't help at all.

For some people the simple (and cheep) solution is best. Me, I'd upgrade...
 

Eckslusive

macrumors 6502
Dec 12, 2002
261
0
I thought the macs never had that problem with the over/under run buffer during burning. Guess I was wrong.
 
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