CDBurn User Manual ================== Manual Version 1.18, suitable for CDBurn Version 1.60 !CDBurn and its associated files are all Copyright 1996-2004 by Steffen Huber for hubersn Software, and may not be distributed without written permission. All rights reserved. All Trademarks aknowledged. This software is provided "as is", with no guarantee of its suitability for any purpose. The programmer and copyright holder will accept no responsibility for any data lost while using this program. hubersn Software can be contacted at: hubersn Software Steffen Huber Geigeraeckerstr. 19 71336 Waiblingen Germany Fax: +49 7151 920355 EMail: steffen@hubersn-software.com WWW: http://www.hubersn-software.com/ Official CDBurn website: http://www.cdburn.net/ All efforts are taken to make this product reliable and safe to use. However, neither Steffen Huber nor hubersn Software accept any liability for any loss or damage caused by the use of this program or the information in this User Manual. The software is under continuous development. Upgrades are usually made available via the CDBurn Upgrade Website at http://www.huber-net.de/cdburn/upgrades/ Upgrade announcements and login details are regularly published on the CDBurn Support Mailing List - see http://www.huber-net.de/cdbsup.htm for more details. Special thanks are going to Matthias Faust, who produced the wonderful new set of icons, and helped with template optimisation. Software requirements: - RISC OS 3.10 or above Hardware requirements: - Any Acorn computer running RISC OS 3.10 or above, with 4 MB RAM minimum. CDBurn needs quite a lot of memory to prepare the directory tree for a Data CD - you might not be able to generate ISO images with many small files if you don't have at least 8 MB free. - A SCSI card 100% compatible to the Acorn standard and capable of transfering at least 600 KB/s. The faster your SCSI card is able to operate, the more reliable is CD writing at higher speeds. Alternatively, an IDE card from APDL/MicroDigital which supports the ATAPI_BE_Op SWI. Alternatively, an IDE card from Simtec which supports the IDEFS_ATAPICmd SWI. (Version 1.11 or later) Alternatively, a Risc PC with your writer connected to the internal IDE. Alternatively, either a RiscStation or a Mico. Alternatively, a Castle IYONIX pc. Alternatively, a MicroDigital Omega. - A CD-R or CD-R/W drive supported by CDBurn. Currently these include: CD-R: Grundig CDW100 HP 4020(i) (also known as HP C4323/C4324) HP 6020(i) Philips CDD2000 Philips CDD2600 Plasmon CDR4220 Plextor PX-R820T (MMC compatible) Yamaha CDR200(t) (MMC compatible) Yamaha CDR400(t) (MMC compatible) Teac CDR56S (MMC compatible) Teac CDR56S-450 (MMC compatible) Teac CDR56S-600 (MMC compatible) Teac CDR58S (MMC compatible) Sony CDU-920S (TAO only) Sony CDU-924S (TAO only) Sony CDU-926S (TAO only) Sony CDU-948S (TAO only) CD-R/W: Philips CDD3600 (MMC compatible, TAO only) Plextor PX-W4220T (MMC compatible) Plextor PX-W8220T (MMC compatible) Plextor PX-W124T (MMC compatible) Plextor PX-W1210T (MMC compatible) Sony CRW-195 (MMC compatible) Sony CRW-210 (MMC compatible) Sony CRW-215 (MMC compatible) Sony CRW-220 (MMC compatible) Yamaha CRW2260 (MMC compatible) Yamaha CRW4260 (MMC compatible) Yamaha CRW4416 (MMC compatible) Yamaha CRW6416 (MMC compatible) Yamaha CRW8424 (MMC compatible) Traxdata CDRW2260(Pro) (MMC compatible) Traxdata CDRW2260Plus (MMC compatible, TAO only) Traxdata CDRW4260 (MMC compatible) Ricoh MP6020S (MMC compatible, TAO only) (DAO experimental) Ricoh MP7040S (MMC compatible) Ricoh MP7060S (MMC compatible) Nomai 680.rw (MMC compatible, TAO only) Mitsubishi MCA-CDRW 226 (MMC compatible, TAO only) other MMC compatible drives A general warning: keep an eye on the power consumption of the drive and the power your power supply is able to deliver. - Quite a lot of free HD space to prepare the CD data. - To exploit the Copy CD feature, an additional CD-ROM is needed, which must be either a SCSI device or accessable by CDFS. For a drive to be accessible by CDFS, you need a softloadable CDFS driver - these are included e.g. in RISC OS 4 and/or come with your SCSI or E-IDE podule. !!! Owners of Philips CDD2600 and HP 6020, be careful! Although your !!! !!! CD writer should be able to read audio data with 6x speed, reports !!! !!! show that this is not always the case. It is strongly recommended !!! !!! to use 2x or 1x speed on these drives. !!! Note: if you have an Acorn Access Network, please switch it off during time critical operations. Network access is served via interrupt, and can generate a high processor and I/O load which could lead to a write failure (typically a buffer underrun) On some SCSI controllers, there could be a problem if a drive is configured for a non-available id, because the controller tries to detect the device repeatedly which often locks the computer. Please deconfigure such drives. The Connect32 aka Yucani F1 aka SCSI-Connect is known to be sometimes a bit problematic. For maximum compatibility, set the "Continuously read/written blocks" setting (available via the "Advanced" configuration) to 16. This is known to work with most drives. If it doesn't (random crashes, total hangs etc.), try to switch the Connect to 8bit I/O mode instead of DMA mode. 0. Contents ~~~~~~~~~~~ 1. Installation 2. Configuration 3. Creating an Audio CD 4. Creating the Data for a Data CD 5. Writing a Data CD 6. Copy a CD 7. Creating a CD with data and audio combined 8. CD tools 9. What to do when something goes wrong 10. Thanks 11. If you have a suggestion... A.1 Appendix 1: Creating your own filename translation table A.2 Appendix 2: Switching the language A.3 Appendix 3: Configuring drives manually A.4 Appendix 4: Useful things to know 1. Installation ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Installing CDBurn on your harddisc is simply a matter of copying the whole content of the CDBurn disc in a directory of your choice on your harddisc. CDBurn is not copy-protected, and you are allowed to make any number of backups for your personal use. You may need to unarchive CDBurn before using SparkFS, SparkPlug or InfoZip. 2. Configuration ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The first and most important step before using CDBurn is configuring the application for your environment. To do this, double click on the CDBurn icon on your harddisc. When it has installed itself on the icon bar, click with the menu button on the icon and select "Configure" from the icon bar menu. A window will be opened where all the necessary configuration details can be specified. The first thing you have to do is to specify the CD Writer you have. To do this, click on the menu icon in the "CD Writer Options" box and select the Writer you want to use. CDBurn automatically scans all known SCSI and IDE cards and presents you a list of drives. If your writer does not turn up on the list, and it is an officially supported drive, please contact hubersn Software support. You can rescan your devices at any time by pressing the "Rescan" button. If you select the Option button "Simulate writing by default", the write simulation of the CD Writer is selected by default throughout CDBurn. No matter what you configure this to, it is still possible to select simulation mode from the corresponding writing dialogues. Now the CD Writer should be configured correctly. The next thing to do is to specifiy the CD Reader you want to use. Again, click on the menu icon in the "CD Reader Options" box and select the CD Reader you want (note that this could also be your writer!). Note that there could be duplicates in the list - CDBurn allows you to choose wether you want it to access the SCSI and IDE drives directly, or whether this should work via CDFS. The CD Reader is used as the source drive when copying CDs and when reading audio data from Audio CDs (also known as "sampling"). There is special support in CDBurn to enable Plextor and Toshiba CD-ROMs to read audio especially reliable. Please note that if you select to use your CD Reader via CDFS, CDBurn can not guarantee that audio sampling works - this is only determined by your softloadable CDFS driver. In "Audio Options" you can determine the used speed for reading ("sampling") of Audio tracks and writing of Audio CDs. The reading speed could have an impact on the quality of the sampled audio data, consult section "speed considerations" for more information. In "Data Options" you can determine the used speed for reading the data when copying from one drive to another, and the speed for writing a Data CD. Additionally, you can specify if after a data write operation the disc should be fixated. Fixation of a disc means that it is made ready to be read in standard CD-ROMs, and that further writing to the disc is not possible anymore (unless you do a multisession fixate, which makes the CD readable in standard CD-ROMs, but allows multisession capable software like CDBurn to write additional data to the CD at a later date). The option to omit the fixation is useful for the creation of multi track CD-ROMs, i.e. with the first track as a data track and the others as audio (see chapter 7 for more details). Be aware that the speed settings are not working for several CD-ROMs, as these have no standard way to set the reading speed. Some Toshiba CD-ROMs are e.g. only able to read audio data with single speed, and read normal data always with full speed. There are speed setting routines built in for the Plextor CD-ROM driver as well as for all CD Writer drivers. Keep in mind that not all selectable speeds may be supported. CD Writers usually use the next slower speed available if you select a non-supported speed. Even if the selected speed is available, the CD writer is free to use a slower speed if it finds that the writable medium does not support the selected speed. When you finished configuration correctly, click on the "save" button to save your settings on the harddisc. Whenever you are running CDBurn again, these settings will be used. Of course you can change any of them at any time if you like. If you only do a temporary reconfigure of the options, use the "OK" button which forces CDBurn to use these options, but does not save your configuration. Clicking on Cancel will restore the original options when opening the Configure window. Speed considerations -------------------- CDBurn allows you to select the speed of certain operations. Some might think why it should be sensible to select a slower speed to do the same operation. However, it is not that easy. When reading Audio data from a CD, very high precision is necessary to read all the data correctly as Audio data does not have any indicator where one could see if the read data is actually right or wrong. The lower the reading speed is, the better is the precision while reading - always remember that the standard read speed is just single speed! Most CD Writers are quite good at reading Audio data at 2x or 4x speed, but also think about your computer having to take all the data and store it on disc. As the reading must be continuous due to technical reasons, this must happen quite fast, so on a slow computer with a slow drive even double speed might be too much. Be careful if the Audio read operation takes longer than expected. This might be a problem with the CD reader not being able to operate at the given speed, and could result in a much worse audio quality than normal. Select a lower speed if this happens. When writing data, no matter if Audio or real data, with the CD Writer, the speed is also determining the "quality" of the writing. It is however not easy to say if the quality is better when doing a write faster or slower. It actually depends on the calibration of the writer if it is optimised for higher writing speeds or not. Fortunately, this is mainly a theoretical thing. For data, it won't matter anyway as the quality will be always well within the CD specifications. For audio, it is only an area of interest for high end audio fans, a normal human being will surely not hear any difference. Writing speed is more important when thinking of the actual writing process. This is an uninterruptable operation. Once started, a continued flow of data must be provided to the writer. If not, writing stops and the CD-R medium is no longer usable. So to be on the safe side speed-wise, use single speed recording. However, the operation is not as speed critical as some (especially PC magazines) believe. Try out a simulated writing if you are not sure if your computer is up to a certain writing speed. Please note that writing a CD as multisession is much more critical, both speed- and media-wise. As a rule of thumb, the cheaper the medium was, the lower should the writing speed be chosen. 3. Creating an Audio CD ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ If it is not already running, start CDBurn first. Click with Select button on the CDBurn icon. The main window called "CDBurn Control Center" will open. This is the central control window when using CDBurn. Click onto the icon named "Layout Audio CD". A window named "Layout Audio CD" will be opened. An Audio CD normally consists of several audio tracks. On a standard CD-R medium, you can have 74 minutes of music on one disc. First, you have to think of the audio tracks you want to have on the Audio CD you are creating. Insert the Audio CD where one or more tracks you want to have on your Audio CD are located into your CD Reader (see "2. Configuration" for more information), wait a little until the CD is correctly recognised by the CD Reader, then click on the leftmost button at the top of the "Layout Audio CD" window. Another window will be opened where all the tracks available on the currently inserted CD are shown. CDBurn keeps a database of CD and track titles. If your inserted CD is already in this database, the field below "Current CD" will contain the CD title, and the column named "title" will show the respective track titles. If your CD is not known, all track titles are shown as "Untitled". You can change the CD and track titles by directly clicking with the Select Button on the title. The icon will then turn into a writeable field where you can type in the appropriate title. As long as the window has the input focus, you can cycle through the title items with cursor keys, TAB or Return. When you close the window and you have changed any titles, the data will be saved and the CD is now known to CDBurn. To actually add an audio track, click on the respective track number. If you click with Select, the window will be closed. However, it will be kept open if you click with Adjust, so you can comfortably add more than one Audio track from one CD. As a special shortcut, there is an "All" button which allows you to add all the audio tracks of the shown CD with just one click. Please note that you can only add Audio tracks to your Audio CD layout - a data track will be greyed out in this window, and the "All" button will only add Audio tracks. Now the data for the added Audio track(s) are shown in the "Layout Audio CD" window. You should now read the Audio data of the added track(s). To do this, select the track in the "Layout Audio CD" window by clicking on it. Then click on the second button from the right at the top of the window. A save box will be opened. First, choose the audio format you like with the two radio buttons. Both formats will give you the same "quality", as both carry full CD quality information. WAV files may be handy if you have a sample editor somewhere which only accepts the WAV format, otherwise use the CD format, as CDBurn has less work to do when writing the data to the CD writer. It is a wise decision to listen to the sampled Audio data before actually writing it to a CD. There are many tools available on the Acorn and other platforms to do this, for example the excellent SoundCon by Rick Hudson. The "CD" format is 44.1 kHz 16 bit stereo signed linear big endian data, the WAV format should be recognised automatically. Now drag the icon to a place on your harddisc where you have enough space to store the Audio data. It needs quite a lot of space, around 173 KB for a second of music, so the length of an average Audio track of say 4:00 minutes will take around 41 MB! For a full 74 min Audio CD, you therefore need approximately 750 MB to store all the data. CDBurn now starts to read the audio data from the CD Reader. This reading is done in singletasking, as it is a very timing critical operation, and many CD-ROMs are not able to read Audio data correctly when unexpected interruptions occur. An Hourglass will be shown with a percentage display to give you an estimate when the reading process will be finished. When reading is finished, the text describing the Audio track in the window "Layout Audio CD" is updated and now shows a "Sampled" entry to indicate that the Audio data is now on your harddisc. Repeat the process outlined above to add the tracks you want on your Audio CD. If you have more than one track from the same CD in your audio layout, you are able to select more than one track (by using the adjust mouse button) and to read all selected audio tracks in at once by clicking on the second button from the right. The Save box will then contain a directory, where all the tracks will be stored in after the drag. Please note: not all CD-ROMs are able to read Audio data, and there are many different methods to actually do this, many of them currently undocumented by the manufacturers. It is highly recommended to use the CD Writer to actually read any Audio data, as these devices are usually much more accurate in doing this than standard CD-ROM drives. A notable exception of this rule are the Plextor CD-ROMs which feature a very fast and precise audio extraction mechanism. At any time, you are able to do certain operations on the current audio layout. First, you can scrap the current audio layout and start a completely new (empty) one. Do this by bringing the menu of the "Layout Audio CD" window up by clicking the Menu Button over the window, and select "New audio layout..." from the menu. All the old data is deleted, and he window will then show a blank layout again. You can also delete one or several tracks. By clicking with the select mouse button, you select the audio track while deselecting all other possibly selected tracks. By clicking the adjust mouse button, all current selections are preserved and the track is selected or unselected. Now either click on the red "X" button at the top of the window or bring up the menu and select "Delete track". All selected tracks will be deleted. If you have more than one track in your audio layout, you can change their order by dragging around the track entries. Try out how CDBurn behaves depending on where you stop the drag. You can also use WAV or "CD" format sound files as CD tracks - just drag them into the Audio CD layout window. By double-clicking on one of the tracks, an associated track info window is opened which might contain useful and interesting information. In this window, you can also edit the length of the pause area before the track. This is given in blocks (75 blocks are 1 second). This setting is only useful when doing disc-at-once writing (see below). The track title is also editable - note that these changes are only used for the layout itself and are not saved back to the CDBurn CD database. You can also change the referenced file with the audio data by dragging either a WAV file or a data file containing the correct "CD" audio format - this is especially handy if you use CDBurn to extract the audio tracks and use another piece of software to do some audio processing. If you are satisfied with your audio layout, you should save it. Bring up the menu and follow the "Save audio layout" entry. A "Save as" window will be opened. Give the layout a sensible name and drag it to a filer window of your choice. Audio layouts can be loaded into CDBurn by dragging them to the "Layout Audio CD" window. Now you can actually write the Audio CD with that layout. Put an empty CD-R medium into your CD Writer and click on the icon showing a CD with a red arrow pointing towards it. A window labelled "Write Audio CD" will be opened. Now select the Write options. Click on the "Simulate writing" Option Button to do no real write, but a simulated one. This can be handy when trying out if the speed of your computer system is sufficient to support a certain writing speed. Also select an appropriate writing speed. Now choose a writing method. Disc-at-once has the advantage, that it allows defined pause lengths between tracks. When doing Track-at-once, the writer itself always puts a pause of 2 seconds between tracks. However, track-at-once is generally more compatible, as especially early firmware versions of CD writers had problems with disc-at-once. If you are unsure about the suitability of your writer, try it out with a simulated write first. If you want to create a CD Extra, select "Prepare for CD Extra" in the writing dialogue. For more information about this combined audio and data format, consult chapter 7. !!! Please note! The current Yamaha drives seem to have a bug which !!! !!! prevents the drives from working correctly in DAO mode. If you !!! !!! want to use DAO mode with Yamaha drives, please make sure that !!! !!! all "pause-before-track" values are set to 0. !!! !!! Please note! DAO will currently not work with IDE writers. It !!! !!! is anticipated that this will change very soon. !!! When all parameters are chosen correctly, click on the "Write" button at the bottom of the window. CDBurn will carry out some checks (i.e. if there is a CD-R medium in the CD Writer, if all the audio tracks in the layout are actually sampled and readable from the harddisc...), and will then start writing the CD. An Hourglass will show the progress of the Write operation. When the percentage display is switched off, the writing is complete and the CD Writer is now fixating the medium. This will take another 3-6 minutes, depending on your writer model and the selected writing speed. All the writing is done in singletasking, as it is an extremely speed critical operation, and RISC OS' cooperative multitasking approach is not really up to support such an operation in a multitasking way(1). When the write operation is finished, the tray of the CD Writer will be opened. Your Audio CD is now ready. (1) If you feel adventurous, you could try out Wimp2, the preemptive multitasker by Niall Douglas - the author has tested it successfully with CDBurn. 4. Creating the Data for a Data CD ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ CD-ROMs, being developed as a read-only medium and as platform compatible as possible, use a special format to store the data. This format is known as ISO9660 and is supported by CDFS on the Acorn, which will read any standard ISO9660 image. It supports ISO level 2, i.e. long filenames (up to 31 characters), so if you want to actually read the CD on an Acorn computer, stay with the ISO standard. MS-DOS and Windows 3.x computers usually only support the 8.3 naming standard. If you are preparing an image which should be readable from such computers, be sure that all the filenames are in that format. Choose "ISO Level 1" as the Filename translation standard. CDBurn will warn you if any filenames are too long in a separate window (this only happens in the "Data Layout by given directory" case - future versions will alleviate that shortcoming). CDBurn converts characters in filenames according to the selected filename translation standard. ISO9660 for example only allows upper case letters, digits and the underscore. It therefore converts all lower case letters to upper case, and all not allowed characters to underscores, if one of the ISO Level X standards is selected. Filenames are always fully used, no matter how long they are. You are able to specify the maximum length of object names, and CDBurn will warn you about names which are too long. ISO9660 puts the limitation to 31 characters, so to stay within the standard, be careful with your source data. While the two ISO Level X filename translation standards are very restricted when it comes to allowed characters, the Acorn CDFS standard copes with many more characters. However, always switch on the Acorn CDFS extensions if you use the "Acorn CDFS" standard, and be aware that your CD-ROM may not be readable properly on most systems. Acorn has defined their own set of extensions to the ISO9660 standard to save the Acorn specific data like load/exec address, date stamp, filetype and access rights. To include these extensions, which are fully compatible with the ISO standard, be sure that the option button "Add CDFS extensions" is selected. This will allow CDFS to read back the Acorn specific things like the filetype while not hindering other systems to access the CD data. Often, CD-ROMs are used from File servers. Therefore it is necessary to have public access to these files. To force public access for all files and directories, select the Option button "force public access". Note that ISO9660 does not have any way to specify access rights, so this option only applies to the Acorn extension and is therefore only sensible when used in conjunction with "Acorn extensions". If "force public access" is not selected, CDBurn leaves the access rights as they are. ISO9660 allows four different standard identifiers on the CD, namely the system identifier (32 chars), volume identifier (32 chars), volume set identifier (128 chars) and publisher identifier (128 chars). All are limited to the ISO9660 naming limitations, i.e. upper case letters, digits and the underscore. On most systems (including CDFS), only the volume identifier is used (on DOS/Win 3.x and Acorn systems, only the first 11 characters of the volume identifier are used!) as the name of the CD-ROM, the other identifiers are ignored. Because of this, only the volume identifier is directly visible. Click on the button labelled "Others..." to gain access to the other three identifiers. With the release of CDROMFS by Warm Silence Software, there is now an option available for RISC OS to read data CDs with Joliet extensions. Joliet is a standard defined by Microsoft (and hence most often used on PCs with Windows 95 or later) which fixes most of the problems associated with plain ISO9660. You should always add Joliet extensions to a data CD - the CD is still ISO9660 compatible, but carries more information for readers capable of interpreting the Joliet extensions. So you get both - better capabilities and full backward compatibility, for only a small price, which is additional space for the Joliet directory structure of the CD. The new RISC OS Select CDFS is also able to read the Joliet extensions written by CDBurn. Considering the shortcomings of the original ISO9660 + extensions implementation of the original CDFS, it is anticipated that more and more CDs for RISC OS systems are mastered to take advantage of Joliet. 4.1 Creating an ISO9660 image from a single directory ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ To actually create the ISO9660 image, open the "Data layout by given Dir." window by clicking on the corresponding icon in the main window. Drag the source directory of the files you wish to be included in the image to the writeable icon just below "Source Directory". The directory itself will not be included in the image, only the files and directories within it. Select all the options and fill out the neccessary writeable icons as described above. Now you have the choice between generating the ISO image on your harddisc, or writing the data directly to CD. The first possibility has the advantage that you are able to look at the image before actually writing it, e.g. using !FakeCD, which is bundled with CDBurn. Also, it is not at all speed critical. The disadvantage is obviously the vast space requirements on your harddisc to store the complete image. When writing the data "on-the-fly" (this is called "on-the-fly" because the necessary ISO9660 format is generated while writing), you don't have the chance to have a look at the image, and the operation is very speed critical, especially if many small files are to be included, or the whole data comes off an image filing system (e.g. a DOSFS partition). You are advised to do a simulated write *in every case* when trying "on-the-fly"-writing. If you want to create the image on your harddisc first, click on the button "Generate Image" to start the construction of the ISO9660 image. This may take a while, depending on how much data there is to include. A status window pops up to tell you the state of completion. Everything is done in multitasking for your convenience - don't delete files from your source directory while image creation is in progress, this will result in an error message and image generation will be stopped. If you want to do a "on-the-fly"-write, click on the button "Write CD on-the-fly". The window "Write Data CD on-the-fly" will be opened. Select the writing speed and the options (which are described more precisely in the section 5), and click on the "Write" button. As soon as the operation is finished, CDBurn tells you about it. If you have chosen an Image Generation, your image is now ready and can be written. How to do this is explained in the next section. If you have chosen the "on-the-fly"-write, you should now have a readable CD-ROM. 4.2 Creating an ISO9660 image by drag'n'drop, with multisession capability ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Since version 1.21ß, CDBurn supports real drag'n'drop image generation and full multisession capability. Click on "Filer-like Data layout" in the main window, and CDBurn will open a "Layout Data CD" window. There, you can choose mainly the same options than described above, only the source of the data is no longer a single directory. Click on "Open ISO filer" to open a filer-like window of your ISO9660 image root directory. Now you can drag files and directories from filer windows into this root directory, and CDBurn will store links to those files. You can move those files inside the CDBurn ISO filer windows around by simply dragging them. If you are satisfied with your virtual ISO layout, you can generate a real ISO image from this layout. To do this, select "Generate Image" from the filer submenu "ISO Image" - this will be the same as with using a directory as the source (see above). You can also write the CD on the fly (simulation strongly recommended because of possible speed problems!). All parameters for this physical image are taken from the "Layout Data CD" window, even the name mapping and the extension control. To create a multisession CD, you first need a writable CD with at least one session on it. You can then import the latest session - CDBurn starts to scan through the directories already written on the CD, and tries to locate the session offset. This can take a while. The whole directory tree of the CD is then shown in the CDBurn filer window(s). You can now add more files to it, or "delete" old files. The "Import Session" function can be used from both the ISO filer menu and from the "Layout Data CD" window. Please note that CDBurn has to read a previous session from your selected CD Writer, not the CD Reader. This is because CDBurn has to check if the medium is still writable (else an import wouldn't be sensible!), and has to locate where the writing will be continued. !!!Be careful!!! You have to write the so generated ISO image on exactly the same CD where the import came from, otherwise things will go horribly wrong! If you want to scrap your current data layout, click on "delete current layout". This will delete all links in your ISO9660 image root directory, and also a perhaps imported previous session. When clicking on "Show layout information", CDBurn shows you the current size of all the data in your virtual layout. Please note that these informations are not continuously updated because of the general performance. You can update them however anytime by clicking again on the button. 5. Writing a Data CD ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ To write a Data CD, you first need an appropriate CD image. To get this, you can use any image generation software which stores the image in an unencoded format (that includes ISOform from Acorn, mkisofs from Unix, some PC packages and of course CDBurn itself). To actually write a Data CD, open the "Write Data CD" window by clicking on the respective icon in the main CDBurn window. A window called "Write Data CD" will be opened. Drag the file containing the ISO9660 image to this window. CDBurn will do a short check if it is a valid ISO image and rejects it if not. First, put in an empty CD-R medium into the CD Writer. Now select the writing parameters. Use "Simulate writing" for a simulated write instead of a real one, and select the desired writing speed. If you want to be able to add more data later, select "Multisession". However, be aware that this uses additional space on your medium. The first "multisession-capable session" needs an additional 23 MB, every following (multi-)session needs 14 MB. If you want to create a Mixed Mode CD, select the "don't fixate" option and refer to chapter 7 of this manual. Click on the "Write" Button at the bottom of the window to start the writing operation. CDBurn will now open a status window to inform you what it is doing and how long it is going to take (all timing is only approximated as many things are not calculateable like the duration of the fixation which heavily depends on the Writer model). The Hourglass will show you the completed percentage of the write operation. After the write is completed, the CD Writer tray is opened. Your Data CD is now ready. 6. Copy a CD ~~~~~~~~~~~~ You can do a CD-to-CD copy with this feature. Currently, only single session CDs consisting of Audio or Data tracks (Mode 1 or Mode 2 Form 1 only!) are copied correctly. You need two independent devices to read and write the CD. Copying a CD with only one device is currently not possible with this function, but you can always extract all tracks by hand and then create the CD from these tracks. For copying Audio CDs, it is recommended to use the standard "Create Audio CD" way, selecting "All" tracks to add to the layout and use the batch extraction feature to arrive at a working copy quickly. You can choose if you would like to do a direct CD-to-CD copy or a non-direct one, which reads one track to the HD before writing it. The second possibility is a lot more safe, but requires the disc space to store the largest track on the CD. If you choose direct copy, be aware that speed is extremely critical here. If your CD Reader only supports double speed reading, it is not possible to write with double speed to your CD Writer. Trying to do so will result in a buffer underrun. Always use a speed below the maximum reading speed of your CD Reader. If this is not possible (e.g. many CD-ROMs only allow to read audio data with single speed), don't use direct copy. It is strongly recommended to do a simulation before the real copy to ensure that the whole source CD is readable. To actually copy a CD, put the source CD into your CD Reader, and put the empty destination CD-R medium into your CD Writer. Select the appropriate options as described for the other writing operations, and click on the Copy button at the bottom of the window. The copying will start immediately. An Hourglass and a status window will show the completed percentage of the copy operation. After the copy is completed, the CD Writer tray is opened. Your CD is now copied. Please note: Copying copyrighted software for other purposes than personal backup is usually not allowed. Respect copyright! !!! Important !!! The Copy CD feature is *not* comparable to similar features in Windows-based software - it is only a quick way to duplicate "simple" CDs. Because it uses the Track At Once writing method, it cannot duplicate CDs with special features like multisession, specific subcode data, special TOC features etc. 7. Creating a CD with data and audio combined ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ There are two possible ways to combine Audio and Data on one CD. The first possibility is called "Mixed Mode CD". This type of CD is basically a single session CD with multiple tracks where the first track is in ISO9660 format (a Data track) and subsequent tracks are Audio tracks. The advantage of this format is its compatibility with respect to the Data - every computer with a connected CD-ROM can read a single session CD and expects the data track as the first track - no software or hardware changes need to be made at all. The disadvantage is that some standalone Audio CD players do not recognize the first track as a non-playable track and start interpreting the data as music, which might result in destruction of your loudspeakers. Because of this problem, a new format was introduced - CD Extra. Such a CD is a multi session CD containing two sessions: the first session consists of Audio tracks, the second session contains the Data. For a standalone Audio CD player, this CD Extra looks exactly like any other Audio CD, because it is only able to read the first session. A computer, on the other hand, can easily spot the second session and use that for displaying the data content of the CD. The disadvantage of the CD Extra approach is that compatibility with different computer systems is not as good as it is with the Mixed Mode CD. Because both methods have their distinctive advantages and disadvantages, CDBurn offers you both. There is no Wizard-style creation process for Mixed Mode CDs or CD Extra often found in Windows software - instead, a combination of already proven tools has to be used to produce the desired outcome. 7.1 Creating a Mixed Mode CD ---------------------------- A Mixed Mode CD contains only a single session which consists of one data track and one or more (up to 98) audio tracks. First of all, create the data part of your Mixed Mode CD. Use the steps described in chapter 4 of this manual to arrive at a working ISO9660 image. In the Write Data CD dialogue, be sure to select "don't fixate" to keep the session open to be able to add Audio tracks later on. After a successful write, create an Audio layout like described in chapter 3. Write the resulting collection of Audio tracks using Track At Once (TAO) mode. Do *not* select "don't fixate". Do *not* select "Prepare for CD Extra". Please note that CDBurn does not ensure that enough space is free for the added audio tracks. This weakness will be alleviated in a future version. 7.2 Creating a CD Extra ----------------------- A CD Extra contains one session of purely Audio tracks, and one session of exactly one Data track. First of all, create the audio part of your CD Extra. Use the steps described in chapter 3 of this manual to arrive at a collection of readily sampled Audio tracks. In the Write Audio CD dialogue, tick the "Prepare for CD Extra" option. After a successful write, go to "Filer-like Data layout" and click on "Import previous session". CDBurn will try to read the first session on your CD-R/RW, which is the audio session you have just written. Because it cannot find a data session (which is the standard for doing a multisession CD and hence using the "Import previous session" feature), it will report "Medium in CD writer does not contain a data track - assuming CD Extra format." which is exactly what we need. Now prepare the data you want to write to your CD Extra in the usual manner via the filer-like drag'n'drop interface (see chapter 4/4.2 for reference). In the "Write Data CD" dialogue, do *not* select "Multisession". Do *not* select "don't fixate". Please note that some CDFS versions are not happy to read CD Extra. Use the RISC OS Select CDFS or Warm Silence Software's CDROMFS. 8. CD Tools ~~~~~~~~~~~ There are several smaller functions grouped together in the "CD Tools" window. a) Medium information for detailed information (like exact capacity, number of sessions, erasability) about the medium inserted into the CD writer b) "Extract track" for extracting a single track from a CD (audio or data) Choose the track you would like to extract with the up/down buttons and click on the "Grab" button. A Save-Window will pop up. Drag the icon to a directory window to extract the track. c) "Manual fixation" for manually fixating a disc This is sometimes handy if you have selected "don't fixate" but now don't want to create a multi track CD, but a single track Data CD. Select the appropriate CD type and click on the button "Fixate". d) "CD-R/W control" for blanking (deleting) CD-R/W media The new technology "CD-R/W" or "ReWriteable" is able to delete a complete medium after writing to it. It is recommended to always use "full blank", but be aware that this will take a while to complete. 9. What to do when something goes wrong ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Writing CDs is a relatively new technique, so there are in fact many things that can go wrong. There are several known problems with certain CD Writers, of which some are firmware related, others are hardware related. Ask your dealer for the latest firmware version of your CD Writer. If you experience any problems with the CD Writer itself, ask the manufacturer. Many first generation 5.25" drives suffer from thermal problems. If you get a strange error after writing some CDs consecutively, it might be just that - a thermal problem. It is also a known problem that some drives can't cope with very long tracks, so when doing a data CD, you are advised to keep the ISO image length below 600 MB. Be aware that these problems don't show up when doing a simulated write! Confusingly, errors of this kind are often reported as Hardware Errors or as buffer underruns. Another uncertain thing is the quality of the CD-R media. Especially no-name media is sometimes quite critical in use and could lead to unexpected errors while writing. The best thing to do is to test a wide range of different media, and then go for one of the reliable ones. Personally, the author of this software has good experiences with TDK media. Be aware that not all Writers will work with all media. There is a wide range of very different chemical material used, and the Writer has to calibrate its laser to give an optimal writing process before writing starts. This calibration, known as the OPC (Optimum Power Calibration), is carried out automatically by the drive, so this software can do nothing about it if it goes wrong. Buy some other media if you encounter such a problem. There are definitely writers out there which don't work with special kinds of media! Additionaly, there are known problems to read certain CD-R media back on some CD-ROMs. For example, early Toshiba CD-ROMs seem to have problems with golden CD-R media. This is due to different reflexion properties of the different kinds of CD-R media. It is absolutely necessary that your SCSI bus is 100% reliable. Please check termination and cable quality as well as the lesser known requirements like having at least 10 cm cable between two devices. Consult the manual of your SCSI controller for further information. Experience has shown that CD writers seem to be very fastidious when it comes to the signal quality on the SCSI bus. Therefore, even small things like loose cable ends or not-quite-standard terminators can disturb things heavily and cause all kinds of weird effects. There are also error sources on the Acorn side of things. CDBurn configures your SCSI controller in a special way so that it can give the User more information when something goes wrong. This may be not implemented in the firmware of every SCSI controller. You should be still able to use this software, but it won't be able to give you sensible hints when a SCSI error occurs. There seems to be an incompatibility with the Connect32/SCSIConnect/Yucani F1 SCSI controllers. Try to set the "Continuously read/written blocks" setting in the Advanced Configuration to 16 blocks. A possible problem area is speed. The writing of a CD is an uninterruptable process, and if the data is not transfered fast enough to the CD Writer, a so-called "buffer underrun" occurs and the writing fails, leaving you with a destroyed CD-R medium. CDBurn tries to do its best to buffer some of the data, but basically the SCSI podule, the processor and the harddisc where the data is stored need to be fast enough. If there are speed problems to be expected (e.g. on an A3000 with an 8bit internal SCSI podule), switch the CD writing speed to 1, i.e. single speed. If your CD Writer does not seem to work after a Write operation, switch it off and on. CDBurn tries to set the Writer in a consistent state after doing a write, but not all Writers are able to do that due to bugs in certain firmware versions. Further problems could show up if the computer operates in a network environment. Many network software works under interrupts (e.g. Acorn Access), so it is for them even during the single tasking operations possible to disturb the operation. It is recommended to switch off networks during the time critical operations like writing and audio sampling. Later drives often have a considerable power consumption. Unfortunately, Acorn computers never had very strong power supplies. Especially for single slice Risc PCs and A7000s you need to keep an eye on the overall power consumption of your system - errors that are caused by too weak power supplies are incredibly hard to track down, because basically everything might happen. 10. Thanks ~~~~~~~~~~ Thanks are going to: - Robin Watts of Warm Silence Software for actually selling the software and giving me moral and technical support all the time - Matthias Faust, who produced the wonderful new set of icons, and helped with template optimisation. - Martin Würthner and Peter Naulls - without them, there wouldn't be a 32bit CDBurn - Guttorm Vik for StrongED, an excellent text editor - Dominic Symes for Zap, the other excellent text editor ;-) - Peter Burwood for porting GNAT 3.03 to RISC OS and giving me excellent support during development, including the Ada 95 mode for StrongED - Tim Tyler for doing an Ada 95 syntax colouring Zap mode only around 48 (!!) hours after my suggestion to do one - Dick Alstein for TemplEd which was used for all the Templates - Christoph Schemainda for contructive critisism - Oliver Fischer for many suggestions and discussions on the user interface - Axel Gern and Jochen Linkohr for buying the Writer with me, which was the initial motivation to write this program - All the beta testers for the ongoing constructive cooperation - HP and Philips for giving me the documentation for their CD Writers - The German Archimedes Group (GAG) for ResFind, which is used to select the country resources - Herbert zur Nedden, for many suggestions regarding the program and the manual - Michael Sierp, for his help when aquiring various writer documentations - Karl-Heinz Penteker, for his help with the manual - Manuel Schlegel, my No 1 beta tester and Power-tec firmware version expert - Brian Caroll, for the creation of the Impression version of the manual - Bob Latham, for providing three different data sets which uncovered three different CDBurn ISO/Joliet bugs in just a few hours (!) - Simtec Ltd. who gave me one of their Simtec IDE podules and associated documentation to implement Simtec/RiscStation IDE support - Simtec Ltd. again for giving me their prototype USB podule to implement USB support - APDL / David Holden who gave me one of their APDL IDE podules and documentation to implement APDL/MicroDigital/Mico IDE support - ACE / Dr. Ulrich Wittig who gave me a SCSIConnect podule to test CDBurn compatibility and find workarounds - Peter Naulls who provided me with the docs for the RapIDE API - Arthur Albuquerque who lent me his RapIDE interface - Castle Technology for producing the Iyonix - Thomas Milius for introducing me to the wonderful world of USB - Nick Burrett, Peter Naulls, John Tytgat, Alex Waugh and Ian Jeffray for their continuous work on the GCC front - this will hopefully one day enable me to use a more modern GNAT compiler - many other people who offered help, but I wasn't able to get back to them :-( - and finally: all my customers who continuously provide the motivation to improve the software further 11. If you have a suggestion... ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ If you have any suggestions how to make the software better, please do tell us about them. We are trying to listen to every customer, so chances are good that your suggestions, if they are reasonable, are built into a future version of CDBurn. The next big release version of CDBurn will most probably include the following features: - more flexibility during ISO image creation - more support for Audio-relevant features like index setting, hidden tracks etc. - Disc at once with PQ subcode control And finally, there is now something like a CD-R/RW successor on the market, which will hopefully be supported in a future application with a name not completely unlike CDBurn. Appendix ======== A.1 Creating your own filename translation table ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ To provide the ultimate flexibility in ISO9660 Image Generation, CDBurn allows the user to define his own filename translation table. This is basically a text file residing in !CDBurn.Mappings which contains all the necessary information. It consists of five lines: Name of the Translation table maximum object name length maximum filename length maximum extension length Char-Mapping Table The "Name of the Translation table" is a string which is shown in the "Layout Data CD" window in the "Filename translation standard" icon if selected and in the pop-up menu. "Maximum object name length" is the maximum size of an object name (i.e. directory or file) in characters. For example, the ISO level 2 standard restricts the maximum length to 31 characters. "Maximum filename length" is the maximum size of a filename, "Maximum extension length" is the maximum size of a filename extension in characters. The "maximum" settings are used in CDBurn to generate warnings if a name is longer than allowed. CDBurn does not take direct action to ensure these maxima anywhere. It is only sensible to either have a value for "Maximum object name length" while the other two are zero, or to have zero for the object name length and instead values for both the filename and the extension length. CDBurn only checks for filename and extension length if the object length is set to 0. The Char-Mapping Table consists of 256 characters, which are mapped against the standard ISO 8859/1 characters. Filename and extension are splitted up at the "." character after the name translation has taken place. All filename translation tables are read in at start time, so if you want to add your own translation tables, you have to restart CDBurn to be aware of them. A.2 Switching the language ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ CDBurn uses ResFind to adapt itself automatically to the configured language (configured using *Configure Country, not the active territory!). In case you want CDBurn to run in a language different from the one which is automatically selected, you can override this: The easiest way is to use ResConf, which is available via the German Archimedes Group (GAG) as well as from various FTP servers. There is also the possibility to do it via an Obey file. This only consists of one line, e.g. set CDBurn$Language Germany to select the German language. Look into !CDBurn.Resources to see what countries are supported (at the time of writing UK and Germany). A.3 Configuring drives manually ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The drive scan routine in CDBurn is new and therefore not as widely tested as it should probably be. If CDBurn does not recognize your drive, you have to edit the file !CDBurn.settings by hand. The CD writer configuration comprises the first four text lines: Name of CD Writer (only for display) ID Interface type Drive type The Name of the CD writer is not really relevant - it is only being displayed in the configuration window. The ID is the SCSI or ATAPI ID your drive has. 1.) SCSI writer Type *devices in the CLI and look what ID your driver has 2.) IDE writer a) APDL interface (also MicroDigital, Mico, Omega) ATAPI drives (e.g. CD-ROMs, ZIPs and CD writers ) are numbered from 0 upwards: Master IDE 0, Slave IDE 0, Master IDE 1, Slave IDE 1. E.g. if your writer is connected as Master IDE 1 and your CD-ROM as Slave IDE 1, your writer has the ID 0 (and your CD-ROM ID 1). b) Simtec interface (also RiscStation) Master IDE Port 0 is ID 0, Slave IDE Port 0 is ID 1, Master IDE Port 1 is ID 2, Slave IDE Port 1 is ID 3. c) Acorn internal IDE (Risc PC) Master is ID 0, Slave is ID 1. d) Yellowstone RapIDE interface Master IDE Port 0 is ID 0, Slave IDE Port 0 is ID 1, Master IDE Port 1 is ID 2, Slave IDE Port 1 is ID 3. (*preliminary info - not yet confirmed*) The interface type describes the type of interface your writer is connected to. 0 = Acorn IDE (Risc PC internal IDE) 1 = APDL IDE (APDL, MicroDigital, Mico, Omega) 2 = Simtec IDE (Simtec and RiscStation) 3 = SCSI 5 = Yellowstone RapIDE The drive type has one of the following numbers: 0 = Philips CDD2000, HP4020, Plasmon 4220 2 = Philips CDD2600, HP6020 3 = MMC compatible (most CD-RW drives, all ATAPI drives) 6 = Sony 92xS, 948S 7 = Teac CDR50S,55S 9 = Ricoh MP6200S Note that only type 3 is supported for ATAPI devices. So a typical SCSI writer entry could look like that: SCSI:4 PLEXTOR CD-R PX-R820T 4 3 3 A Plextor PX-R820T at SCSI ID 4. For CD-ROMs, there is basically the same mechanism - additional drive types: 1 = Toshiba CD-ROM 4 = plain SCSI2 CD-ROM (with "read cd-da" command for audio extraction) 5 = CDFS CD-ROM 8 = Plextor CD-ROM There is an additional interface type here: 4 = CDFS Note that for a CDFS drive, you have to add 256 to the drive number. Use *-cdfs-cddevices to get the drive number. A typical CDFS CD-ROM entry could look like that: CDFS:1 PLEXTOR CD-ROM PX-32TS 257 4 5 A Plextor PX-32TS as CDFS drive 1. A.4 Useful things to know ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ This is a largely unstructured collection of knowledge that might be useful to the user in special circumstances. A.4.1 Audio related things -------------------------- a) CDBurn WAV format is 16 bit stereo signed linear little endian 44.1 kHz b) CDBurn CD format is 16 bit stereo signed linear big endian 44.1 kHz A.4.2 Data related things ------------------------- a) CDFS has several "interesting" bugs which are hidden from the user in CDBurn, but might result in astonishing effects. - Without the CDFix patch, CDFS is not able to use the DOSmap table to map DOS style 3 character extensions to filetypes - As soon as CDFS encounters the CDFS extensions, it switches off its inbuilt filename translation - unfortunately, this also means that any "." in the filename (which is the ISO9660 extension separator) will *not* be translated into a "/" - this is absolutely fatal, as RISC OS can't access a file which contains a ".", instead it tries to open a directory. The second bug means that CDBurn has to suppress the CDFS extensions as soon as it encounters a "." in a filename (in the ISO9660 filename, to be more precise). All would be well if file extensions could be mapped to filetypes, but unfortunately, the first bug means that this strategy will not work for unmodified pre RO4 CDFS versions. All this results in additional difficulty for creators of truly cross platform CD-ROMs. Those bugs are fixed in RISC OS Select CDFS and Warm Silence Software's CDROMFS. Both alternatives use the more powerful MimeMap mechanism instead of DOSmap. The first bug is also fixed in the RO4 CDFS. A.4.3 CD related things ----------------------- a) An "Audio block" on the CD contains 2352 bytes of "data", while a "Data block" contains only 2048 bytes of data. This is because the data block contains additional header information as well as additional error detection and correction code. This has several interesting consequences: - If you write with single speed, the computer only needs to provide 150 KB/s when writing a Data CD, but 172 KB/s when writing an Audio CD. - If you have a CD-R/RW medium with 650 MB capacity, this usually relates to its Data CD capacity. If you fill the medium with Audio tracks, you need nearly 750 MB of Audio files! A.4.4 Writer related things --------------------------- a) Most Writers use a little endian audio stream - a notable exception are the Philips CDD2000/2600 models (and derivates like the HP4020/6020). So for maximum performance, use the WAV format for Audio on most writers and the CD format for Audio on those exceptions of the rule. b) Most Writers only support a limited subset of possible writing speeds. If you select a non-supported writing speed, you will usually not get an error, but the writer will pick the nearest writing speed below the selected one. The same happens if the drive detects that the inserted medium is not specified for the selected speed. c) Writers like it cool - be sure that there is enough air circulating in the case where your Writer is situated. d) Simulation mode is only able to pick up certain error classes like buffer underruns. Once you have a tested system, it is highly recommended that you no longer simulate your writes. This prolongues the life of your CD Writer and reduces the time to produce a CD. There are even some CD Writers which have different behaviours in Simulation mode than in Real Write mode. This results in special "simulation write" variants inside CDBurn, further reducing the value of a simulated write process.