Hi Everyone

Blu-Rays burners have really dropped in price, I broke down and bought one.

I am having some trouble with it, along with some success. I want to take a step back and learn more about all the various FLOSS tools avilable and also gain a better understanding of optical media in general.

There are resources all over the net but could you recommend your favorites so I can get a better overview ?

Thanks-Patrick

I'll probably get flamed for saying this, but I worked for a spell servicing an old cd plant and we had a BLER(Block Error Rate) tester which I ran on CDRs also.

Using minimum speed minimises errors. That is the bottom line. If you get lightscribe disks you have a guarantee of quality, and they are cheap enough in bulk. Lightscribe writes on the label, but the other side is always very good.

1 members found this post helpful.

Hi business_kid

That is a good tip but I want to get a better understanding of what is happening "under the hood" .

Do you have any favorite books on CD/DVD/BDs ?

Thanks again

Well, I've haven't heard of too much "under the hood" info on optical media, simply because it is rather simple technology.

I can give you recommendations on how to burn them:

CD:
burn iso:
Burnfree is only available for CDs not DVDs. It is very useful for completely eliminating the chance of coasters. Sadly, CDs can't hold much info, and I rarely use them today, maybe for the occasional live CD.

burn .cue/.bin:
blank rewriteable media:
DVD:
For archive purposes I recommend using only DVD+R, because they have better error correction. You may want to consider using Taiyo Yuden DVDs, because of their quality:
http://club.myce.com/f33/taiyo-yuden-faq-178622/
burn iso:
The buffer size is increased here because there is no burnfree and a coaster is possible. Always burn a pre-created iso, never on-the-fly unless you need coasters. If something stalls and the buffer runs dry, you get a coaster. Don't use the HDD too much during the burn.

You can use the '-M' instead of '-Z' for multi-volume disks. Here's a tutorial:
http://www.yolinux.com/TUTORIALS/Lin...ialCDBurn.html

Filesystems:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_966...ile_size_limit
If you want to create an iso filesystem with a file size limit greater than 2/4 GiB e.g. 8 TB, you need:
For a regular iso with the 2/4 GiB file limit, but better compatibility with non-computer devices:
Blu-ray:
Commands are identical to DVD:
http://www.stephencuppett.com/wordpr...-ray-in-linux/

EDIT:
Error correction for backups:
For my important backups I always use dvdisaster to augment an iso and add error correction to it. You can also create a separate ECC file, but would have to save it somewhere, like a sequential backup.
http://dvdisaster.net/en/index.html
Note that the data you want to burn should be less than the maximum size of the disk in order to be able to add the ECC to the iso (the ECC size varies with percent redundancy, 14.3% is default but I use all the rest of the disk usually 40-50%). Also the ECC can be used to verify data on the disk.

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Thanks metaschima

These are handy snippets.

I guess I really want to master the whole process. I would like to understand more about flags available, read/write theory, hardware therory, back ground in writing drivers etc.

Thanks

Very little happens under the hood. Lasers colour stuff, and then read it back. Thereafter, it depends on your 'book' standard. You clearly want to suffer in this. Suffering is good for something, I am sure :-). I will give you the 'under the hood' searches on google.

<colour> book standard specification

where <colour> is replaced by orange, yellow, red, yellow. Then replace
'<colour> book' with

dvd-r, dvd+r, blu-ray. Finally, grok the Wikipedia article on iso9660, & iso13490.

1 members found this post helpful.

Hi business_kid

Thanks for these tips, they really help. I am marking this solved.

Yes suffering is good, I need to pay for my sins and generating software is more productive then flogging myself

Have a great day

I assure you, suffering does not forgive sins, and you don't benefit in any way. It can be a necessary stage in the design/writing processes however, so I will let you get on with it. Glad to help