Will I be OK with burning Blu-ray Discs in High Sierra with just the OS, or will I need a specialized app and/or driver for my Philips external USB burner?
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Burning Blu-ray Discs in MacOS (Hi Sierra)
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I don't believe you will have any problems. About a year ago, when I did all the upgrades for my cMP 5,1, I worked with clean install clones, so as not to be slowed down with extra non-Apple software. One day I had to burn a DVD from my external BR burner without Toast. It had been a long time since I used Disk Utility for burning, but I figured it out with a little help from the Googs machine. No problem. I can't remember which OS, but with 2 cMPs I probably ran it on Sierra, HS, and Mojave, with internal and external optical drives. Be careful with disk brands and types. I would only suggest "-R" media, and highly recommend Verbatim disks.
Here's a bit more than you asked for. I have used Toast for the last 7 or 8 years. Here's why. While the regular price is too much, I bought it directly from OWC on Black Friday for 1/2 price or less. I also got the add-in for making videos. While you do get a better GUI and more options with Toast, there's probably no significant differences. But I do time lapse animations, and in most cases, they are only 15 minutes or so in length. The BR quality is far superior to DVD, and the add-in Toast software lets me create BR quality animations on a 20 cent DVD That will DVD will play on any BR player with BR quality! Otherwise, I could do without Toast, and just use DU. I also don't expect Toast to be around much longer. One more new step for a legacy process. Many optical BR burners are capable of using M-disks which are supposed to last 1,000 years... (better longevity in any case) Like BR-r, they are now available in 25, 50 and 100GB/disk. While optical drives are likely to disappear completely in the near future, it's still a very viable for archival storage for my "best of" photography imagery, made since the middle of last century. Good luck
Here's a bit more than you asked for. I have used Toast for the last 7 or 8 years. Here's why. While the regular price is too much, I bought it directly from OWC on Black Friday for 1/2 price or less. I also got the add-in for making videos. While you do get a better GUI and more options with Toast, there's probably no significant differences. But I do time lapse animations, and in most cases, they are only 15 minutes or so in length. The BR quality is far superior to DVD, and the add-in Toast software lets me create BR quality animations on a 20 cent DVD That will DVD will play on any BR player with BR quality! Otherwise, I could do without Toast, and just use DU. I also don't expect Toast to be around much longer. One more new step for a legacy process. Many optical BR burners are capable of using M-disks which are supposed to last 1,000 years... (better longevity in any case) Like BR-r, they are now available in 25, 50 and 100GB/disk. While optical drives are likely to disappear completely in the near future, it's still a very viable for archival storage for my "best of" photography imagery, made since the middle of last century. Good luck
Might depend on your Burner. In theory it should just work but in my experience when moving from one Burner to the next it ended up being really unreliable with lots of failures - I had to use Toast to get back to predictable burning. I also believe I've never lost a single BR ever since adapting that software years ago.
I only do data (backup) BR's - single and dual layer - so I'm not exactly touching any extended functionality of the software.
I also use exclusively Verbatim media. Picking a particularly compatible brand that fits the burner seems important.
I only do data (backup) BR's - single and dual layer - so I'm not exactly touching any extended functionality of the software.
I also use exclusively Verbatim media. Picking a particularly compatible brand that fits the burner seems important.
My experience comes mostly with burning internally on Macs of all sorts. I had to teach Photo1 students to archive their imagery to disk, and the lab had no alternatives to DU. There were lots of mistakes, but no real problems. In my own Macs, I have used stock internal and a Pioneer internal, and currently have left one internal optical drive and added an LG external BR in my 12-core system, but can use it on my 2012 MBP since I tossed the internal DVD and moved the original HDD to the optical bay and replaced the HDD with an SSD.
With my experience with many different burners, I have found that the Verbatim disks were the best in all my burners, but still believe your suggestion may be valid as well, matching media brands to hardware brands. I also wanted to mention that a few of the Toast auto features like backing up all burns, etc. may not work perfectly unless you have the latest version, but none of that has been an issue for me.
Thanks. I'm just looking to do data as well. Will keep media brand in mind. I usually go for store brands but will start with Verbatim.
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I'm using a cMP 5,1 flashed from 4,1 with High Sierra. Thanks for the heads up about increased video quality on BR with Toast.
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Yea, the house brands are the worst. If it's to ship a job, maybe they're okay. I also recommend you burn data archive at the slowest speed for the longest lasting disks. I have had Verbatin BR disks that have had problems after as little as 5 years. There were just dropouts all through the disks of videos from a variety of sources. I also have client backups on DVD from 20+ years ago that are fine. Consequently, I have been using M-disks (Verbatim brand now available) for all archival optical storage. I just checked B&H and they have the 100GB disks for about $10 each, but you must have compatible hardware to use the M-disks (I believe). If you are using the internal Superdrive in the cMP, I don't believe you can use M-disks. One more thing, which may be nothing. The quality of the video is not better, it's that you can burn short videos with BR quality onto DVDs (when played on a BR player). It's the same quality (BR) but the disk is a cheap DVD not a 25GB BR disk. The other caveat is that that Toast feature which authors these capabilities is optional. This stuff is all dead in another decade, but I started (y2K +/-) with a SCSI 3X burner which was full height and cost $300!!!