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BOOT CAMP 251 (12/11/02)
MAKING YOUR OWN CDS & DVDS,
part 1
In just a couple of years CD-writers have evolved from an
expensive luxury to an essential ingredient of most new multimedia PCs and
laptops. However, judging by the number of emails and letters we receive on the
subject it’s all happened rather quickly and caught a lot of people on the hop.
To the uninitiated the technology can appear baffling, many manufacturers seem
to take it for granted that every PC users knows instinctively how to use it and
there’s lots of new jargon words to learn.
A new generation of PCs fitted with DVD-writers is only going
to complicate matters so the next few episodes of Boot Camp are devoted to those
shiny discs, in all their many and various incarnations, what they do, how they
do it what they can do for you. This week a general overview, in subsequent
episodes we’ll be looking at CD-writer software, backing up PC files creating
your own music and picture discs and recordable DVD.
First the basics, a standard 12cm CD/CD-ROM disc can hold
between 650 and 700Mb of digital data, which can be in the form of music, video,
or plain old computer data. Think of DVDs as high capacity CDs that can hold
between 4.7 and 15.9 gigabytes of data, depending on how they are constructed
and configured.
All optical discs, and that includes audio CDs, CD-ROMs,
DVDs, Laserdiscs, MiniDiscs and so on are made up from several layers of
plastic, bonded together to protect the all important reflective layer in the
middle, which holds the digital data. Seen under a under a microscope the
reflective layer appears as a spiral of shiny dots or ‘pits’, each one
representing a binary digit or ‘bit’ of digital information. As the disc spins a
low power laser tracks across the surface of the disc, the reflections from the
‘pits’ are picked up by an optical sensor and converted into a stream of digital
data.
On pre-recorded CDs, CD-ROMs and DVDs the pits are stamped
into the plastic using a powerful press and then coated with a reflective layer
of aluminium -- just a few atoms thick -- inside a vacuum chamber. Clearly this
process would be a little difficult to replicate within the confines of a PC so
CD-writers use a different technique to record data onto blank discs.
There are two types of recordable disc: CD-Rs, which can be
recorded once, and rewritable CD-RWs, which can be erased and reused many times.
The DVD variants are DVD-R and DVD-RW (in fact there are three types of
rewritable DVD discs, which we’ll look at in more detail in part four). CD-Rs
are cheap and cost only a few pence each when bought in bulk, inevitably CD-RW
discs are dearer costing a couple of pounds each. Blank DVDs are still quite
expensive (three or four pounds each for DVD-Rs and seven or eight pounds apiece
for rewritable discs) but there’s every reason to suppose prices will fall
reasonably quickly when the economies of scale start to take effect.
On a record-once disc the shiny reflective layer –
preformatted with a spiral guide track -- is coated with a photosensitive
organic dye (the characteristic green or blue tint) that turns opaque when
‘burned’ with a high-powered laser beam. During the recording process the laser
beam, controlled by the data being recorded, switches on and off as it tracks
across the surface of the disc, the unexposed areas of the disc allow the
reflective layer to show through as a spiral of reflective dots.
CD-RW discs use a different process, known as ‘phase change’.
The reflective layer is made up of a compound that changes between reflective
crystalline and non-reflective amorphous states when heated by a high power
laser beam. However, unlike the dyes used on CD-R discs the process is
reversible and if the compound is exposed to a slightly lower power laser it
effectively ‘melts’ and becomes reflective once again, erasing the recording.
The reflective dots on a CD-RW are not as shiny or sharply defined as the pits
on a factory produced discs or CD-R disc and some older CD players and CD-ROM
drives may refuse to read CD-RW discs.
Incidentally, the MiniDisc format employs a yet another
variation of the theme, called magneto-optical phase change, which uses a
combination of laser light and magnetism to switch the state of the disc’s
reflective layer.
These processes highlight some of the important differences
between CD-R/RW disc technologies and the more familiar hard and floppy magnetic
disc storage systems. The recording process is a lot slower than writing data to
a hard disc and it’s not possible to selectively erase and rewrite data. Well,
that’s not strictly true, some CD-writers allow data to be added to a recordable
disc in separate sessions using ‘packet’ writing software, but in order for the
disc to be readable on another CD player or CD-ROM drive the session has to be
‘closed’ or ‘finalised’, which fixes the disc’s table of contents (TOC). Before
a disc is finalised data cannot be erased but references to it can be removed
from the TOC, so it won’t be readable by normal means. However the ‘erased’ data
is still on the disc and the space it occupies cannot be re-used. There are a
few ifs and buts and specialist software and CD-writers that can get around some
of these limitations but they often compromise compatibility or reliability.
CD-R/RW is not an alternative to hard disc storage but it is
a convenient means of storing large volumes of data, discs are cheap, robust,
portable and easily read on other PCs and once you’ve got the hang of using a
CD-writer you’ll wonder how you ever managed without it…
Next week – Part 2, CD-Writer tecnospeak tutorial
JARGON FILTER
BURNING
The process of recording a CD in a CD-writer
MP3
Motion
Picture Experts Group audio layer 3 -- digital audio compression system commonly
used to send files containing audio and music over the
Internet
TOC
Table of contents, the main directory on a CD-ROM, listing
all of the files it contains
TOP TIP
Blank CD-Rs are very cheap nowadays and can be bought in
bulk, on ‘spindles’ of 100 for less than £20 by mail order and from computer
fairs, but there’s a lot of unbranded rubbish on the market, including reject,
faulty and out of spec discs masquerading as top quality product. It’s
definitely worth paying a little extra for blanks from a well-known
manufacturer, especially if you are planning to use them for backing up valuable
data.
NEXT
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