10-03-2006, 07:24 PM

Ok - I have this problem: when I insert a blank dvd-rw it ejects it immediately.

At first I bought DVD+RW - and it rejected it, so I looked for info and foudn out that my burner only accepts ROM and DVD/CD -RW.
Ok - no problem, so I bought some DVD-RW. Only, it's doing the same with these.

So - what's the deal? I know my burner can burn a DVD - I've looked it up in my manual and it says it can, anyway - so why are these being rejected? Can I only use apple brand blank DVD's (I bought Maxell, btw) ?

If this is so - then can a Windows based comp even read them after they're burned?

All I want to do is take home vids of the kids - burn them onto disk - and send them to my husband in Iraq.

Any help would be appreciated - thank you, I just want this to work and I don't really care what I need to buy for it to happen. Even if I have to spend a ton of money buying external equipment and so on - It's just that important.

10-03-2006, 07:42 PM

Originally Posted by Silverfroth

All I want to do is take home vids of the kids - burn them onto disk - and send them to my husband in Iraq.

give him our best wishes, and hope he comes home safe.

Originally Posted by silverfroth

Any help would be appreciated - thank you, I just want this to work and I don't really care what I need to buy for it to happen. Even if I have to spend a ton of money buying external equipment and so on - It's just that important.

I am happy to tell you that I think you are looking to far into this. Buy any brand DVD-R (they are the most compatible with dvd players according to a few surveys). Put it in (the computer should not reject this type of disc) and burn it in iDVD, since it will be burned as a region 0 disc and burned on a -R it is very unlikely that there will be problems, unless it is either a really old dvd player, or like a 10$ unit. Good luck getting your home videos made.

10-03-2006, 07:56 PM

Well - of it shouldn't be doing this then I need to get it fixed, eh?
It just so happens that I am having to drive into Little Rock tomorrow to pick up my husband's computer from the shop - they do Mac repairs, there - and I can have them give me their two bits.

I just bought this Mac Mini one month ago -from the Apple.com, it's new - not refurbished...So I shouldn't be having problems at all, eh?

Ok - I'll keep the -RW's and see what the repair guy says, if there is a problem with it I'll have him fix it.

Thank you

10-04-2006, 03:59 AM

One of two things I think. Either you have a Combo drive which can read DVDs, but not write them, and it reads and writes CDs. Or you have an earlier DVD writer that only burns DVD-R discs. It's always possible the drive is bad too, I suppose.

Beyond the manual, another way to figure out which kind of drive you have is to launch the System Profiler app in the Utilities directory. I'm running system 10.4 (Tiger) and under the Hardware content tab at the left is an option to see Disk Burning options. Earlier versions have something similar. This clearly shows me what the system thinks it can do with my DVD drives.

Another option is to create smaller files that fit onto CDs. Export the movie from iMovie to a Quicktime file. (With Flip4Mac it looks like you can save it as a native Windows file. Although that likely costs.) It doesn't play like a regular DVD, but will be good quality and you can fit a decent amount on a CD. If you go that route, download Quicktime for Windows and add that to the CD too. I'm sure there is more information in these forums.

The way to do the CD is to create the files in a common directory, load a blank CD and drag the files to it. Then use the Burn button to write them.