Need recommendations for an external BR burner for my mid-2011 iMac 3.4 27"....

Hello Community,

I need some advice. Some of my clients are asking me for their FCPX final product on Blu-Ray Discs....Why not just give it to them on a memory stick? - I dont know. The customer is always right....But in any case I have absolutely no experience with Blue Ray and would like to make a sound purchase on an external Blue Ray writer. I have seen things on OWC, on Samsung, on Lacie, on Pioneer, and on many other sites. There is also the issue of the, what seems to be new, XL discs that take something like 128GB. This would also serve as an interesting back up solution I presume, even though I may not need XL practically.

***Bottom line is which external blue-ray player should I buy to use on my iMac? ...of course with projects that I produce with FCPX .....

PS(((I'm assuming there will also be the issue of menu creation/authoring. So a secondary question is which software is "quirk-free"???? )))) Thanks.

Samsung Blu-ray SE-506AB

www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2402405,00.asp

Today's Blu Ray players are all pretty equal. They've been made for long enough, and the technology is old hat now. I tend to like OWC, as you get immediate and high quality tech support with it.

FCP X gives you very basic menus. Toast 11 Pro gives you more options without breaking the bank. Adobe's DVD authoring app (name escapes me, waiting on coffee in the middle of SE LA's worst rain storm in years, day 3, flash flood/tornado watches) gives you a full featured choice. Depends on how complex the disc has to be and how much money you have.

...looking at these two recommendations. It seems that the Samsung is far better in terms of price and capability, b/c the firewire 800 wouldn't make a difference as the USB 2.0 speed at max 35MB/s is more than the 6x Blue-ray recording speed which is 28MB/s that it would be limited to.

...unless I'd be going for the support of OWC, which could be crucial....

Honestly, I'd not consider the speed of burning an optical disc. Always burn at slower speeds for better quality burns, fewer mistakes, fewer ruined discs, and better compatibility. When I did burn optical media I never burned faster than 2x or 4x. That's just me, though.

Ben, You are actually right I also burn at lower speeds....Honestly, I hate the fact that I have to look in to this. I personally consider it a backwards step. But hey there is this local supply and demand thing that is affecting me....I'm sure you know, in the "event" business there are lots of people/consumers that want something that is "ready-in-hand".

You know I've tried to tell them let me give you an mp4 to put on your iPad or your comp or even a vimeo link, and they ask me: How will I play that on my TV? That question alone is enough to convey the technical acumen. Although, they know how to buy a Blu-ray player and press play in this case...so hey whatever the customer wants....

Enjoy your coffee!

So I now have Toast 11, this Samsung SE-506BB (a newer model) all hooked up to my system. I have a bunch of projects waiting to get on Blu-ray out of FCPX 10.0.7 on OSX 10.8.2. NO LUCK.

I tried everything share-export directly to blu-ray, exporting QT files and burning with Toast, exporting an image and burning with Toast, burning an image with Finder (which surprisingly works). I even converted files to mpeg and tried burning them on my windows system... with all with different settings and varied parameters.

The most successful one was QT files burned with toast. Actually none of them really worked, only that this one actually showed images and a menu structure. The menus worked but when playing the TDK BD-R it was extremely choppy.

Does anyone have any suggestions. Workflows that they know work - in specific, with my system?

Or should I just go an order the OWC drive?

Here's an Apple Knowledge Base document about this. May or may not help.

Final Cut Pro X, Motion 5: Share to DVD returns alert "The operation couldn't be completed. (DSPPublishing error -29)"
support.apple.com/kb/TS4522

Unfortunately, my solution involved Adobe Encore and lots of cash. The drive works. At least for me it finally has...

How did you get you Samsung SE-506AB to work with Encore? I get nothing but disc errors when trying to burn a blu-ray disc with a simple one button menu. Been at it for 3 days now, about to call it quits.

I went through the same thing. I "burned" 15 BD-Rs till I got one to work. Basically, I exported an image form Encore and burned it with Toast 11.

I've tried using Toast 11 Pro but every time I attempt to load the ISO disc image it tells me there were two unknown file formats and doesn't accept the file. I'm lost, just for the heck of it I took the same project and burned it using my internal drive as an SD DVD and no issues! Just at a stand still now, no clue what to do next... URGH!!!

I didn't get that error message for the single ISO file I created with Encore. But I feel ya brotha'....FCPX and Blu-ray dont mix well.....

...and then there are all these other people that will tell you that Blu-ray is on its way out...it may very well be and whatever the case may be...since FCPX has the Blu-ray export function in it, it simply should work.

Additionally, Apple hasn't really done much with updating their Authoring software. They should. This lack of attention may all be justified with their theorized plans, but then again the case remains that people ask for DVDs ad Blurays and these are features that have been built in to the most recent of updates as well...

Hopefully Apple solves this for us...

PS I obviously created an entire customized menu with Encore, very intricate at that, and very time consuming as its not a daily software for me. Encore is an extremely powerful program but extremely complex as well...its easy to make mistakes...easy to miss things..as opposed to Apple software philosophies which do most of the work for ya. Thats what computers are for...right? . Maybe try some online tutorials....
... ... thats all I got....

I hear ya! Nothing fancy about my many, animated background from a gfx artist with one button. CRAZY! I'll post if I figure it out.

Thanks for your thoughts!

I also updated the firmware of the Samsung sit. Not sure if that made a difference.

and the DVD, if I recall correctly is a BDMV structured file.

Also, there is an advanced options click in the Toast menu that gives you some more setups. Try that...

Now, that is all I got... things keep coming back to me. hahahah

HAHAHA!!! You may have one more thing for me! What was the process you were using to burn your ISO in Toast? Maybe I'm doing this all wrong.

First, I have a registered Toast Titanium 11.1 installed.

So, if I recall correctly, open Toast and pick Copy -> Image File -> Drag in the image and wait.

I only managed to burn one successful Blu-ray in the end and then I completely gave it up because its way to time consuming, and I actually now discourage my clients from it, because of this.

Popping in my successful BD-R the disc now reveals a BDMV file and a CErtificate Folder.

Thats it...

that's where I get confused, when I do that it just copies the ISO image file to disc and doesn't actually create the playable DVD I need. If I mount the ISO file and drag it into Toast it gives me the file error messages but I'll get the actual movie itself loaded without a menu.... did I mention how much I hate DVD authoring yet?

I did just get the closest I've ever been to burning a blu ray from Encore.... it quit 25MB's short of completing the task. I lowered the bps in my project settings to 30mbps on that run. Could that have something to do with all of these Encore burning issues?