1 At the top of “my most useful list” is packet writing and I use Roxio’s DirectCD software to format the CD-RW and archive data with the convenience of a giant 500+ MB floppy disk. Not because DirectCD is necessarily the best, But because I started with it many, many years ago and you can only have one packet writing system on your machine, and the different packet writing systems are not compatible with each other. It’s great for storing important stuff and transferring data back and forth to my wife’s computer (since I’m not ready to open that bucket of worms called a home network just yet).

2 The workhorse for archiving data is the CD-ROM. I’m not even going to count all the different configurations of file systems and modes available to burn. Most of us are happy to just set it up to do long file names (ISO level 2 file system, Mode 2/XA format, ISO 9660 character set, Joliet) and forget about all the many choices available. Joliet allows file names up to 63 characters long, and a directory path up to 120 characters long.

3 Burning a great audio CD is probably the most satisfying experience you can achieve with a computer and a burner. The shear power of extracting your favorite songs from all music sources and burn them to a CD, creates something that can give you pleasure for the rest of your life. I think it’s what the originators of the Personal Computer (PC) had in mind when they created this wonderfully frustrating monster. Giving the individual PC user the power to create or modify something to their own personal specification is a rare experience in this life.

4 An MP3 CD can be a way to compile around 200 songs on a CD and enjoy them wherever you go with an MP3/CD player or play on your computer while doing your thing. No loud, annoying commercials or having to listen to those songs you can’t stand. I sure enjoy it!

5 Photo or picture CDs (based on the CD-ROM-XA format) have really started to become popular since most of us have connected a DVD player to our best TV. Imagine, compile all our favorite digital pictures and scanned photos in an album using a program like Dazzle OnDVD, and burning a CD that will play in most DVD players. Then, sit back and enjoy the memories. Also, think of it as archiving those precious photos in digital format that will be easy to copy to the next popular digital format in 10 years or so.

6 For those of you who have saved your memories on analog video tape, saving those precious videos to a video-CD (MPEG1) or super video-CD (MPEG2, but not DVD compatible) is a great way to save them in a low resolution digital format. Most movie camcorders come with a way to transfer the videos to your hard disk. If it doesn’t, you can get a video capture card that will digitize the analog signal. It will also convert your favorite movies on analog tape to a digital format on your hard drive, ready to burn a VCD or SVCD with Roxio Easy CD Creator Platinum5 or VideoWave and many more. These also do editing of your video, and burn the CD. If you have a digital camcorder, you should hold off for a while longer till the price of DVD burners comes down to a more reasonable level. If you save your digital videos to VCD format (less resolution than the current VCR), you will lose the excellent picture quality and will not get it back later when DVD or Blu-Ray burners are available. So just be patient and leave those digital home movies on the tapes that you captured them on or buy a big hard drive and save them in their original format. Be patient! The DVD competition is gearing-up and the prices should head south as soon as they start pumping them out in large numbers.

7 The CD+G is a variation of the audio CD that allows you to burn audio and graphics (placed in the subchannels) simultaneously. You will probably recognize it by it’s popular name, karaoke. Not all burners support this function, but some do. It is characterized by the band music, without the singers voice, but with the words to the song scrolling across the screen. We use Dart Karaoke in our lab machines here at Alamo PC to remove the singers voice from a song and sync the lyrics to the sound track.

8 Another variation of the audio CD is the CD+MIDI. The MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) controls are placed in the sub channels. MIDI is the interface between electronic digital instruments and the computer. It has created a new generation of musicians and original music.

9 The CD-Plus or Enhanced CD is a mixed mode CD that allows an ISO-track with the ISO file system (always the first track) and an audio track. This will not play on an audio CD player. Most folks prefer the CD-extra format now.

10 The CD-Extra is a mixed-mode CD burned in two sessions. The first session can have up to 99 audio tracks and will play on audio CD players. The second session, not seen by audio CD players, but seen by CD-ROM drives, contains the ISO-track with an ISO-9660 file system and directories of CDPLUS and Pictures.

11 The CD-Interactive or CD-I is suitable for creating interactive multimedia applications that have parts of programs that can return to animations, video and audio sequences. Playing it requires a compatible play device hooked to a TV screen. Creating this CD is difficult since most burners do not support it and requires a great deal of skill and knowledge. I haven’t actually tried to create one of these.

12 A hybrid CD contains files which can be used in Windows (ISO-9660) and another operating system (like the Mac HFS).

13 A self booting CD is a great way to create an emergency start disc if you have a recent BIOS that will allow you to boot from a CD drive. The floppy emergency start disk doesn’t have room for all the diagnostic programs that make analyzing a malfunction much easier.

14 Raw mode is an essential burning quality if you ever need to make an archival copy of an existing CD. I will not buy a CD burner that doesn’t do raw mode burning like Plextor or LiteOn, supports CD-text, has buffer underrun prevention, and has a Smart-Burn technology to set the burn to the fastest speed the blank CD will support.

New stuff
No sooner did the DVD folks release a brand new 4X burn speed for the third generation of DVD burners, than Sanyo tells us they are currently developing an 8X chipset that should hit the market about September. Sounds like overkill to me, like the 52X CD burner. Smart burner makers are now concentrating on reducing vibrations and developing better speed controls.

Hitachi and Hitachi Maxell have announced they have jointly developed a new basic technology for multi-layer CD and DVD recording that allows terabyte-level storage on an existing sized disc. Seems like there was a limit at about five layers for reliable recording. By adopting an electro-chromic material in the recording layer and hitting it with a low voltage, they now can, theoretically, burn up to about 100 layers on the special discs for recording and play-back. Don’t be scouring the shelves at BestBuy anytime soon for a machine using this technology.

Most of the big DVD drive labels have decided to jump in the DVD dual format (DVD±R/RW) pool. LiteOn, TDK, Verbatim, and Cyndyne have announced they are bringing new dual DVD format drives to market. It’s about time! Sony has had the pool to itself (and held the price at $350) for some time. I wonder how many will use the Sony drive in their new machines. If our DRU-500AX is any indicator, it’s a great drive. Maybe the competition will improve on the software bundle, and some are planning to include all five DVD formats. Let the good times roll!

The folks at 321 Studios (that brave little start-up from the Show-me State that took on the whole movie industry in court), were not satisfied to just release the only really great DVD-video copy software, DVD X Copy v.1.5, capable of making a “Fair use” archive copy of your personal DVD video before the kids got their hands on it. Just released is DVD X Copy Xpress that will take a video that was recorded on a multi-layer DVD that previously required two DVD-Rs to copy, can now with Xpress, be squeezed on one DVD-R. If that isn’t enough big magic, Xpress will now do the copy faster and better than previous versions. At the time of this writing (1^st of June), the court case to decide if this software violates The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (working around the CSS copy protection) has yet to be decided.

Burning tip of the month
Been having a problem with an NT based operating system (NT, Win2K, XP) working with your burner? Might want to check out your Advanced SCSI Programming Interface (ASPI layer). What’s an ASPI layer? What’s that you say, is it like a rash? No, but it can be a pain if it doesn’t work right. Its purpose in life is to act as an interpreter of the commands from your burner software to the burner. It started out to be an interpreter for SCSI drives, but when IDE drives became popular, they decided to use it. There’s also a pretty long list of burner software that relay on the ASPI layer. The problem got worse when the NT family of operating systems decided not to include an ASPI layer. Then Adaptec/Roxio, long the prime source for the best ASPI layer, decided to get proprietary on us. The current version seems to only recognize real SCSI drives in most WinXP setups. So, how do you fix it? First, go to www.cd-rw.org and read “Installing a working ASPI layer” in the articles section. My guess is one of the three suggestions will work for you. It did for me. The ASPI check utility will tell you if you have an ASPI layer and the version number. Then, you can decide what course of action to take.

Alamo PC has also seen his other skills come forward with the move to the Computer Learning Center in Crossroads Mall, doing some highly skilled work and the finish work on the walls at the new location, skills learned during the years and had lived in military housing that always needed remodeling. Dale spent over 30 years in the Army as a helicopter pilot. He enjoyed the challenge of Army life, the variety of living places, and the foods of other cultures. He retired from the Army 14 years ago.