The CD Burner

Many years ago, owning a copy of your favorite singer or band would mean going to a retail store or buying from an online website. With the average song count, you would spend at least $10. If you were one of those who couldn't afford to buy a CD, you would probably have to wait for the local radio station to play the songs you liked.

These days however, several music download shareware programs make it possible to get your favorite songs directly from other uses without having to go out and buy them. These programs will store the songs you download to your hard drive, or transfer it to your MP3 player if you prefer.

If you prefer to keep a complete collection of the songs by storing them to a disc, you'll need
one piece of equipment for your computer - a CD burner.

The CD burner comes in two forms: internal and external. External CD burners don't need to be
attached to your CPU, and they can be connected to your computer through a USB port with its own power source. The internal type of CD burner is the one that attaches to your CPU and fits
on the inside of your computer tower.

The CD burner is quite the piece of equipment to have, as it can copy from one CD to another
or even from a hard drive to a blank CD, and vice versa as well.

To use your CD player, you'll need to have software. You can find some types of this software available to download for free on the internet. Some great examples include ISO Recorder, Deep Burner, and Windows Media Player.

If you prefer, you can also purchase quality programs as well. Some examples of these include
Nero, Roxio, and Sonic Record Now. The programs that are free have the same burning capacity, although those that cost money will give you more features and overall flexibility.

Keep in mind that CD burners aren't limited to only copying audio. You can also use it to
copy document files, programs, games, videos, MP3, and many other types of files.

The burners with DVD burning capabilities will enable you to copy your favorite DVD to another
CD in case you want to share it with a friend or back it up. You can also burn a movie to
DVD if you downloaded it off the internet, then watch it on your television or computer.

Preparation Tips for CD Duplication

The master CD or DVD disk, is the one you will provide to your CD or DVD vendor for either
replication or duplication of the media. Below, you will find some tips designed to help you
create a high quality master disc:

1. Always use the highest quality media that you can obtain, as all media isn't the same. Do
your research, take your time, then choose a brand that will produce a high quality disc each
and every time you duplicate or replicate.

2. Avoid copying from a network source. If the source files for your disk are on a network
drive, copy the files to your local disk before you burn a disc. If you can't move the files to your local drive, try using the copy to hard drive first feature. When doing this, your burning software will create a temporary image file during the burning process. Once the burning has been completed, the temporary file will be deleted.

3. You should always avoid burning on a laptop computer that is running on low battery power.
The fluctations that will occur in the available battery power may cause you to have poor results
in your duplication.

4. Always make sure that you finalize your disc. If you fail to finalize, the disc won't play back. Finalizing will also help increase the reading compability in other CD-ROM drives.

5. Never use the packet writing method to burn a master disc. This method is very common with burning drives that have re-writing capabilities. This method will produce discs that can't be read on many CD-ROM drives.

6. Avoid any type of impact or movement of the drive during burning. Doing so can cause the
laser to skip or jump tracks, which will lead to errors or a bad disc.

7. If available, use the "burn-proof" feature. This feature will allow the drive to slow down the burn speed in the event the computer can't supply the data fast enough. Although this can increase the burn time, the quality of the disc will be much better.

8. You should avoid having multiple applications open when burning, especially those that
access the Internet or a network. This can hinder your computer's ability to supply data
to the burner drive at the necessary rate.

If you follow the above tips, you should produce a master disc of excellent quality. A master disc is something you'll want perfect, which is why you shouldn't take any risks.

Differences Between CD and DVD Media

Even though both CD and DVD disks have the same media size and shape, the things they have in common ends there. There are many different things between the two, such as what they hold and how much they hold.

Data pits and lasers

A disc has microscopic grooves that will move along in a spiral around the disc. CDs and DVDs both have these grooves, with laser breams applied to scan these very grooves.

As you may know, digital information is represented in ones and zeroes. Inside of these discs, very tiny reflective bumps known as lands and non reflective holes known as pits, which can be found beside the grooves, reflect both the ones and the zeroes of digital information.

By reducing the wave length of the laser to 625mm or more infrared light, DVD technology has managed to write in smaller pits when compared to the standard technology of CD. This will allow for a greater amount of data per track on the DVD. The minimum length allowed for a pit in a single layer DVD-R is .4 micron, which is obviously more than the .0834 micron that a CD offers.

The tracks of a DVD are narrower as well, which allows for more tracks per disc, which also translates into more capacity than a CD. The average single layer DVD holds 4.5 GB of data, while a CD holds a mere 700 MB.

Layers

As stated above, a DVD has smaller pits and the lasers need to focus on them. This is actually achieved by using a thinner plastic substrate than in a CD, which means that the laser needs to pass through a thinner layer, with less depth to reach the pits. It's this reduction in thickness that's responsible for the discs that were only 0.6mm thickness - which is half that of a CD.

Data access speed

DVDs will access data at a much faster rate than a CD can. The average 32X CD-ROM drive reads data at 4MB a second, while a 1X DVD drive reads at 1.38MB a second. This is even faster than an 8X CD drive.

Universal data format

The recording formats of CDs and DVDs are quite different, as DVDs use UDF, or the Universal Data Format. This format allows data, video, audio, or even a combination of all three to be stored in a single file structure. The advantage to this is any file can be accessed by any drive, computer, or even consumer video. CDs on the other hand aren't compatible with this format.