Seems like most questions about Macs and Blu-ray drives have to do with video (ripping, playing, copying, authoring). But what about BD-R data discs? I just want to buy an external BD burner and use it to burn BD-R data discs for storage purposes. I've found conflicting reports. Some say that no special software is needed for this, and others say that something like Toast is required. I know I'd need Toast to author Blu-ray video discs. But would I also need Toast to burn Blu-ray data discs, or is Disk Utility (or burn.app) sufficient?
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Mac Blu-ray Data Disc Burning: Need Toast?
- Thread starter dringkor
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No software is needed. I'd been using Blu-rays to back up standard def video projects (FCP document + all media) for years, now. Can be burned right through the finder.
Thanks TheStrudel. I bought a Blu-ray burner and so far so good. I got the LG BE12LU30 for $150 at Best Buy. It's an external USB/eSATA drive that I've connected to my early 2008 MacBook Pro running OS X 10.6.7. The drive is detected in About This Mac, and seems to function just like any other optical drive. When I inserted a blank BD-RE disc and opened burn.app, it said I had a blank disc with 25GB free. I was able to use burn.app to burn an existing .dmg file (created with Disk Utility) and also to create a UDF data disc with 22.73GB of files. Given that I don't want to watch my Blu-ray movies but only want to burn Blu-ray data discs, everything seems to "just work" with no special software as TheStudel said. I hope this is useful to someone out there.
DVD Studio Pro won't import HD codec
I'm wondering why DVD STudio Pro doesn't like the HD codec that compressor made. It keeps saying incompatible format even though compressor made it for DVD Studio Pro to make a blu-ray disc. The codec works in Toast and makes a blu-ray no problem, but I want to authorize a disc with menus and DVD Studio 4 pro (came with FCP 7) doesn't accept it for import? Anyone know why?
I'm wondering why DVD STudio Pro doesn't like the HD codec that compressor made. It keeps saying incompatible format even though compressor made it for DVD Studio Pro to make a blu-ray disc. The codec works in Toast and makes a blu-ray no problem, but I want to authorize a disc with menus and DVD Studio 4 pro (came with FCP 7) doesn't accept it for import? Anyone know why?
I don't believe that DVD SP supports Blu-ray. I think you need to use Compressor to produce the image/disk.
I picked up the drive dringkor mentioned, cuz who can beat $150 for a Blu-ray burner, even in the PC world?!
Anyway, I got it home. If I put in a blank disc, it shows up that I have inserted a blank BD disc and prompts me to open finder, like any other blank disc. Only it shows Zero KB for Media Capacity, and when I try to burn to it, it says the disc doesn't have enough room. DVDs show up just fine.
Did anyone have to do anything special to get this drive to work? I've tried different USB ports (on a hub, direct to the mac), rebooting, etc, to no avail. Any suggestions? Or am I taking this back to Best Buy and have to buy a more expensive drive that says "Mac compatible"
Thanks,
Andy
MacOS X has built-in drivers for DVD but not Blu-ray. *******...
Anyway, I got it home. If I put in a blank disc, it shows up that I have inserted a blank BD disc and prompts me to open finder, like any other blank disc. Only it shows Zero KB for Media Capacity, and when I try to burn to it, it says the disc doesn't have enough room. DVDs show up just fine.
Did anyone have to do anything special to get this drive to work? I've tried different USB ports (on a hub, direct to the mac), rebooting, etc, to no avail. Any suggestions? Or am I taking this back to Best Buy and have to buy a more expensive drive that says "Mac compatible"
...
Update: Motab appears to be mistaken about the nature of his trouble. My response to him is not true. I retract it.
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Yeah, I was led to believe by op's second post that there wasn' any other sw required. What about when you order something like this:
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/OWC/MRF8UEBDW10/
I would assume then there wouldn't be alternate SW required. And since that is advertised as Mac compatible, perhaps I'll have better luck...
One additional tidbit of information... I was able to burn to the drive using Win7 in Parallels. The Mac then read it back fine. The only problem is that it seemed to do weird things with some of the Lightroom catalog exports due to long file names, but I'm not sure how big a deal that is. But the Win7 burning method is inelegant... gotta copy the files into the VM, then copy them from one temp dir into another temp dir for the burn. Bleh. If the $200 OWC solution works seamlessly w/ OS X then I will just go with that.
Yep, many thanks, I've just been looking for this very same info.
But hope Apple haven't stripped this ease of use in subsequent OS updates...
If you have updated to 10.7 or 10.8, is it still ' just working'?
Not for me it isn't (10.8). I get something along the lines of not enough room when I try to burn from the Finder. No problem in Parallels with Windows 7, though. Kind of a nuisance ...
Sounds like it works a treat. Thanks guys for this thread its been a real help for me.
I am looking at purchasing an external blue ray burner/player myself that is usb 3.0 and can burn at the highest capacity (I think thats around 100GB?) we wont burn up to we will stick to about 50 but it would be nice to have that option. The use will mainly be for offsite data backup/storage we are looking at using this as opposed to HD for internal reasons. It will be burnt on a mac tower my specs are:
Hardware Overview:
Model Name: Mac Pro
Model Identifier: MacPro3,1
Processor Name: Quad-Core Intel Xeon
Processor Speed: 2.8 GHz
Number Of Processors: 2
Total Number Of Cores: 8
L2 Cache (per processor): 12 MB
Memory: 12 GB
I was looking at the LaCie Slim Blu-ray USB 3.0 as we have used there hardware before.
http://www.lacie.com/au/products/product.htm?id=10602
Does anybody have any other recommendations or thoughts on this. I am new to this and would love feedback. Also where does everyone get there disks? and just to recap I would be able to burn through finder right? Thanks again for the help! Cheers M
bluray for backup...
I made this work:
rmbp 13" running 10.8.4
sony usb BR writer (BDX-S500U)
verbatim blank BR (25GB)
"simply burns" in data mode.
the critical part is to select "DVD-ROM (UDF+ISO9660)" in the file system window, or the drive spits the disc out with an error. however, it hasn't made a coaster at this point, so it's not a disaster if you forget.
hth-
duncan.
I made this work:
rmbp 13" running 10.8.4
sony usb BR writer (BDX-S500U)
verbatim blank BR (25GB)
"simply burns" in data mode.
the critical part is to select "DVD-ROM (UDF+ISO9660)" in the file system window, or the drive spits the disc out with an error. however, it hasn't made a coaster at this point, so it's not a disaster if you forget.
hth-
duncan.
I just purchased and installed a Pioneer BDR-208DBK internal BD burner in the second optical drive space in my new Mac Pro (mid 2012) for data backup. In general the drive seems to read and write Verbatim BD-RE discs fine and burning right from the Finder seems to work correctly as most have said.
However, after looking more closely at the files, I discovered that burning in the Finder, removes any custom file/folder icons and also turns any Finder desktop 'textClipping' files into 0 byte files. In other words, all text contained within is lost. I also discovered that when trying to copy my files back to my desktop, I get Finder can't read errors for '.mpkg' files, and a few random others, which prevent me from copying them back to my hard drive. It seems to recognize and copy most file types OK, like '.dmg', '.pdf', '.rtf', '.rtfd'. '.pkg', '.mov', '.webloc' and '.txt'. There may be other file types that may be incorrectly handled.
Using Toast seems to alleviate the read error problems but produces a messy arrangement of files in the Finder, a nuisance but considering the alternative, an acceptable solution.
Does anyone have any insight on whether this is a Pioneer drive problem, a system preferences problem, or an OS X 10.8.4 file system problem?
However, after looking more closely at the files, I discovered that burning in the Finder, removes any custom file/folder icons and also turns any Finder desktop 'textClipping' files into 0 byte files. In other words, all text contained within is lost. I also discovered that when trying to copy my files back to my desktop, I get Finder can't read errors for '.mpkg' files, and a few random others, which prevent me from copying them back to my hard drive. It seems to recognize and copy most file types OK, like '.dmg', '.pdf', '.rtf', '.rtfd'. '.pkg', '.mov', '.webloc' and '.txt'. There may be other file types that may be incorrectly handled.
Using Toast seems to alleviate the read error problems but produces a messy arrangement of files in the Finder, a nuisance but considering the alternative, an acceptable solution.
Does anyone have any insight on whether this is a Pioneer drive problem, a system preferences problem, or an OS X 10.8.4 file system problem?