Optical disc recording modes

Last updated

In optical disc authoring, there are multiple modes for recording, including Disc-At-Once, Track-At-Once, and Session-At-Once.

Contents

CD Disc-At-Once

Disc-At-Once (DAO) for CD-R media is a mode that masters the disc contents in one pass, rather than a track at a time as in Track At Once. DAO mode, unlike TAO mode, allows any amount of audio data (or no data at all) to be written in the "pre-gaps" between tracks.

One use of this technique, for example, is to burn track introductions to be played before each track starts. A CD player will generally display a negative time offset counting up to the next track when such pre-gap introductions play. Pre-gap audio before the first track of the CD makes it possible to burn an unnumbered, "hidden" audio track. This track can only be accessed by "rewinding" from the start of the first track, backwards into the pre-gap audio.

DAO recording is also the only way to write data to the unused R-W sub-channels. This allows for extended graphic and text features on an audio CD such as CD+G and CD-Text. It is also the only way to write audio files that link together seamlessly with no gaps, a technique often used in progressive rock, trance and other music genres.

CD Track-At-Once

Track-At-Once (TAO) is a recording mode where the recording laser stops after each track is finished and two run-out blocks are written. One link block and four run-in blocks are written when the next track is recorded. TAO discs can have both data and audio at the same time.

There are 2 TAO writing modes:

DVD-R Disc At Once

Disc-At-Once (DAO) recording for DVD-R media is a mode in which all data is written sequentially to the disc in one uninterrupted recording session. The on-disk contents result in a lead-in area, followed by the data, and closed by a lead-out area. The data is addressable in sectors of 2048 bytes each, with the first sector address being zero. There are no run-out blocks as in CD-R disc-at-once.

Session At Once

Session-At-Once (SAO) recording allows multiple sessions to be recorded and finalized on a single disc. The resulting disc can be read by computer drives, but sessions after the first are generally not readable by CD Audio equipment.

Audio Master Quality Recording

Audio Master Quality Recording was introduced by Yamaha in 2002. [1]

The feature is only available on some models, notably the Yamaha's CRW3200 [2] and CRW-F1 [3] series, and Plextor's Premium 2. CD Recorders with this feature are no longer manufactured.[ citation needed ]

It uses the Disc-At-Once method, usually at 1x, but some recorders allow for 4x and 8x speed mode. Since the pits and lands are longer, the quantity of information that can fit on a disc is less than with a normal method: 63 minutes instead of 74 minutes on a 650MB CD or 68 min instead 80 minutes on a 700MB CD. [4]

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">CD-R</span> Recordable optical disc specification

CD-R is a digital optical disc storage format. A CD-R disc is a compact disc that can only be written once and read arbitrarily many times.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Optical disc</span> Flat, usually circular disc that encodes binary data

An optical disc is a flat, usually disc-shaped object that stores information in the form of physical variations on its surface that can be read with the aid of a beam of light. Optical discs can be reflective, where the light source and detector are on the same side of the disc, or transmissive, where light shines through the disc to be detected on the other side.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">MiniDisc</span> Magneto-optical storage medium, mainly for audio (1992–2013)

MiniDisc (MD) is an erasable magneto-optical disc-based data storage format offering a capacity of 60, 74, and later, 80 minutes of digitized audio.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Digital Audio Tape</span> Digital audio cassette format developed by Sony

Digital Audio Tape is a signal recording and playback medium developed by Sony and introduced in 1987. In appearance it is similar to a Compact Cassette, using 3.81 mm / 0.15" magnetic tape enclosed in a protective shell, but is roughly half the size at 73 mm × 54 mm × 10.5 mm. The recording is digital rather than analog. DAT can record at sampling rates equal to, as well as higher and lower than a CD at 16 bits quantization. If a comparable digital source is copied without returning to the analogue domain, then the DAT will produce an exact clone, unlike other digital media such as Digital Compact Cassette or non-Hi-MD MiniDisc, both of which use a lossy data-reduction system.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Optical disc drive</span> Type of computer disk storage drive

In computing, an optical disc drive (ODD) is a disc drive that uses laser light or electromagnetic waves within or near the visible light spectrum as part of the process of reading or writing data to or from optical discs. Some drives can only read from certain discs, while other drives can both read and record. Those drives are called burners or writers since they physically burn the data onto on the discs. Compact discs, DVDs, and Blu-ray discs are common types of optical media which can be read and recorded by such drives.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">ISO 13490</span> Successor to ISO 9660, an optical disc recording standard

ISO/IEC 13490 is the successor to ISO 9660, intended to describe the file system of a CD-ROM or CD-R.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Optical disc authoring</span> Content publishing on optical disks

Optical disc authoring, including CD, DVD, and Blu-ray Disc authoring, is the process of assembling source material—video, audio or other data—into the proper logical volume format to then be recorded ("burned") onto an optical disc.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">K3b</span> Optical disc authoring software

K3b is a CD, DVD and Blu-ray authoring application by KDE for Unix-like computer operating systems. It provides a graphical user interface to perform most CD/DVD burning tasks like creating an Audio CD from a set of audio files or copying a CD/DVD, as well as more advanced tasks such as burning eMoviX CD/DVDs. It can also perform direct disc-to-disc copies. The program has many default settings which can be customized by more experienced users. The actual disc recording in K3b is done by the command line utilities cdrecord or cdrkit, cdrdao, and growisofs. As of version 1.0, K3b features a built-in DVD ripper.

Gapless playback is the uninterrupted playback of consecutive audio tracks, such that relative time distances in the original audio source are preserved over track boundaries on playback. For this to be useful, other artifacts at track boundaries should not be severed either. Gapless playback is common with compact discs, gramophone records, or tapes, but is not always available with other formats that employ compressed digital audio. The absence of gapless playback is a source of annoyance to listeners of music where tracks are meant to segue into each other, such as some classical music, progressive rock, concept albums, electronic music, and live recordings with audience noise between tracks.

A cue sheet, or cue file, is a metadata file which describes how the tracks of a CD or DVD are laid out. Cue sheets are stored as plain text files and commonly have a .cue filename extension. CDRWIN first introduced cue sheets, which are now supported by many optical disc authoring applications and media players.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Track (optical disc)</span> Optical disc subdivision

On an optical disc, a track (CD) or title (DVD) is a subdivision of its content. Specifically, it is a consecutive set of sectors on the disc containing a block of data. One session may contain one or more tracks of the same or different types. There are several kinds of tracks, and there is also a sub-track index for finding points within a track.

A mixed mode CD is a compact disc which contains both data and audio in one session. Typically the first track is a data track while the rest are audio tracks. The most common use for mixed mode CDs is to add CD-quality audio to video games on a CD.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Optical disc recording technologies</span> List of technologies used to write to optical discs

Optical disc authoring requires a number of different optical disc recorder technologies working in tandem, from the optical disc media to the firmware to the control electronics of the optical disc drive.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">DiscT@2</span> Technology that allows the writing of visible graphics on common optical discs

DiscT@2 is a method of writing text and graphics to the data side of a CD-R or DVD disc first introduced by Yamaha in 2002. While often compared with the later LabelFlash and LightScribe technologies, which also offered users consumer-grade computerized disc labeling, DiscT@2 is different in that it required no proprietary media and wrote the graphics to the data side of the disc.

Absolute Time in Pregroove (ATIP) is a method of storing information on an optical medium, used on CD-R and CD-RW. ATIP information is only readable on CD-R and CD-RW drives, as read-only drives do not need the information stored on it. The information indicates if the disk is writable and information needed to correctly write to the disk.

Subcode or subchannel data refers to data contained in a compact disc (CD) in addition to digital audio or user data, which is used for control and playback of the CD. The original specification was defined in the Red Book standard for Compact Disc Digital Audio, though further specifications have extended their use.

An NRG file is a proprietary optical disc image file format originally created by Nero AG for the Nero Burning ROM utility. It is used to store disc images. Other than Nero Burning ROM, however, a variety of software titles can use these image files. For example, Alcohol 120%, or Daemon Tools can mount NRG files onto virtual drives for reading.

Libburnia is a project that develops a collection of libraries and command-line tools for burning CDs, DVDs and Blu-ray media.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">CD-ROM</span> Pre-pressed compact disc containing computer data

A CD-ROM is a type of read-only memory consisting of a pre-pressed optical compact disc that contains data computers can read, but not write or erase. Some CDs, called enhanced CDs, hold both computer data and audio with the latter capable of being played on a CD player, while data is only usable on a computer.

LabelTag can create a circular label on the data side of any DVD+R, DVD-R, or CD-R disc containing basic information visible to the eye. When burning the data, the label is printed directly behind that data in the same recording session, and on normal recording speed on the same recording layer side. LabelTag works on any disc and does not require a special disc like LightScribe. As of June 2011, LabelTag was an exclusive technology of Lite-On for its DVD writer drives.

References

  1. "Yamaha's CRW-F1 Series Guarantees CD-R Audio Excellence Via Advanced Audio Master -- re> BUENA PARK, Calif., June 10 /PRNewswire/ --". Archived from the original on 26 August 2014.
  2. http://www.yamahamultimedia.com/yec/helpcenter/manuals/CRW3200E.PDF [ bare URL PDF ]
  3. http://www.yamahamultimedia.com/yec/helpcenter/manuals/F1.PDF [ bare URL PDF ]
  4. "Yamaha's CRW-F1 Series Guarantees CD-R Audio Excellence Via Advanced Audio Master -- re> BUENA PARK, Calif., June 10 /PRNewswire/ --". Archived from the original on 26 August 2014.