Problem with Burning DVDs

[The Monkees]

I am trying to burn a DVD in iDVD on my iMac. It failed both times, so I decided to just make a disc image and copy it to a DVD-R to try and burn it on a different computer. Every time I try to do it, it gives me an error saying: "The disc can't burned because the device failed to calibrate the laser pointer level for this media"

This happens when I put the DVD-R in the computer, open it and drag the file to the folder then burn it.

[redwudz]

Each time a disc is burned, the burner does a test in a inner section of the disc to calibrate the laser power to the media and the burning speed. It's called power calibration. If this fails, you would get that error. It can sometimes be caused by the media if your burner doesn't have the burning solution for your brand of media. Try a different brand of media.

It can also be caused by a weak power supply where the burner isn't getting enough power to do it's burn. This is more common on external drives. And lastly, your burning laser may be failing. One way to check this is to burn a CD, which uses a different laser. It that works, maybe time to replace the burner. You can try cleaning the laser lens, that sometimes helps. Or updating the burners firmware. But usually trying a different brand of disc is the first thing to try.

[rumplestiltskin]

Your optical drive has probably failed. I had exactly the same problem and, when I called AppleCare, they scheduled a techie visit and the drive was replaced.

It is unlikely cleaning the drive will help but it won't hurt.