Burning DVD

I am making a wedding video for my sister and her husband and have a mac mini, but no DVD burner. I had an external DVD burner that is USB, but when plugging into my mac mini, the mini doesn't recognize it. Is there any settings that I need to change in system preferences or iDVD?

Secondly, I also used my parents iMac that has a DVD Burner, though my files that are stored on my external hard drive won't transfer for some reason.

Any info on the best solution? All I have left is to Burn a DVD through iDVD on my mac mini, at least that would be the easiest since transferring my files seems to be a bit difficult.

BTW: I used iMovie 09.

Thanks,

-matman2900

What version mini, and what brand external DVD burner do you have? I have an older mini, with a memorex burner hooked up to it. Its always plugged in, but it doesn't show up in finder as a device (or anywhere), but when I want to burn a disc, I can change the preferred drive, and it will show up. I don't use iDVD to burn, I mostly use Toast, but I imagine if you go to preferences in iDVD, you will be able to change the preferred drive to your external burner.

I've not run into this problem before.

I'd really have to know more exact specs on both the iMac and the Mac mini. An older iMac may not work with a new external drive that was pre-formatted, and sometimes it helps to boot cold with the DVD burner already attached.

Also avoid further troubles by making sure you use good DVD media! Only use Verbatim or Taiyo Yuden -- especially since this is an important disc! (A wedding.) .

How do you know the Mini doesn't recognize the drive? Have you tried looking in Apple menu => About This Mac => More Info?

Macs are amazingly quiet about when new devices are plugged in. There won't be an "bleep" or even a little balloon that pops up saying "Your device is ready to use".

The easiest thing to do would probably be to pop in an already-burnt disc and see if it pops up on the Finder.

I'm having a similar issue, on a G5 trying to burn from iDVD onto a Samsung external DVD writer (Super-writemaster) I have burnt CD's and data DVD's using this drive with no problems but cannot burn to a DVD+R 16x from iDVD. It either doesn't recognise there is a blank DVD in there or just won't let me burn. I bought the external drive as the super drive in my Mac died and I was told this external one would do the same things. Any ideas?