Lacie DVD writer speed options

[JeeJee]

The super-drive in my eMac G4 (a Pioneer DVR-105) is very slow so I bought a Lacie external writer that hooks up via USB. It's also very slow. When I open Toast basic I can only choose two burning speeds. The first is "best", the other is "4x". It's the same when using iDVD, it took about an hour just to process a 10 minute film then took a while to burn. The total to burn a 10 minute short film was 2 hours while on my friends iMac it took about 20 minutes. I thought I could burn up to 16x with this Lacie writer... is the problem just my computer?

 

[CaptainChunk]

Are you using the version of Toast that came bundled with the new LaCie drive? If not, that could be your problem.

Some of the older eMacs had USB 1.1 ports, which max out at 12 Mbps. That's not nearly enough bandwidth to burn at 16X and Toast could be rightfully preventing it. If this is the case, you really should use FireWire instead if the drive supports it.

 

[velocityg4]

If the burner does not have firewire you could either...

Remove it from its enclosure and install it directly into your eMac or return it and get an internal model.
http://www.wilko.com/emac/
Warning: only open if you are knowledgable about dealing with electricity as CRT can potentially shock you if you a touch the wrong parts, avoid touching the CRT.

Or get a drive that connects by Firewire.

To further elaborate on Captainchunk's post. USB 1.1 at 12Mbps (1.5MBps) at most could handle somewhere between 1x and 2x dvd speeds. DVD 1x = 1.32 MB/s, DVD 2x = 2.64 MB/s

 

[JeeJee]

Unfortunately I bought a burner with only USB from a store on eBay and I don't think they return items unless it is damaged. I'll see if they will exchange this for a model with Firewire.

Thanks for the info