CD and DVD Burning Guide

Nero StartSmart: an example of CD abd DVD burning software

To avoid burning unusable, unplayable, incompatible or defective discs observe the following:

1.  Use high quality media.  Defects in the media like scratches, scuffs, stains, contamination, defects in the plastic, will cause defects in your written disc. 
2. Keep your hands off the disc... or at least the underside of the disc. Fingerprints or dirt on the bottom of the disc can cause distortion of the writing or reading laser.
3. Keep your discs dust-free. 
4. Never wipe discs in a circle. 
5. Plan your burn - figure out what kind of disc you want to make.  If you want to make the disc playable in an audio CD player, you can’t format it as a ROM (data) disc.  If you want a DVD to play in DVD Video players, you can’t format it as a DVD-ROM. 
6. Burn using Disc-at-Once mode whenever practical.  Track-At-Once mode is meant to help avoid buffer underruns on slower computers, but causes overlapping sectors in between tracks called "link transitions".  
7. Turn off other programs, including screen savers.  If you have problems with buffer underruns, you should choose a slower writing speed.  You should also turn off virus protection software.  For the best results, don’t run any other programs while you are burning.
8. Keep your hard disks defragmented.  While this is a good idea for better PC performance in general, it is an especially good idea for people who do a lot of audio or video editing, or other multimedia production.  If your hard disk is highly fragmented, it will have to seek to many sections in order to read and write each file.  This will slow down the transfer rate of data to and from the hard drive, and it could cause buffer underruns when burning.
9. While higher speed recording saves time and generally results in great discs, slower speed recordings may give you your best chance for a higher quality disc, with lower error rates. 
10. Always use a felt-tip marker to write on the top of your recordable discs.  Never use a ball-point pen, or roller ball pen.  These pens could damage the recording layer, which is just beneath the printed top layer.
11. Don’t leave open sessions.  Unless you are storing data in increments to a recordable disc (using multi-session recording), you should "finalize" your recording.  This will allow your burning software program to write a lead-out to the end of your session.  This is necessary for compatibility with audio CD players.

CDs and DVDs

Blank CDs on display

CD is short for compact disc. DVD initially stood for digital video disc, then digital versatile disc, but today the term DVD is often used without referring to a specific set of words. Both CDs and DVDs are optical media, meaning media that use light technology (more specif­ically, laser light) for data retrieval. A disc drive focuses a laser light beam into the CD or DVD to “read” the bits (data) in the disc. The drive can also “write” bits by focusing the laser beam into recordable CDs or DVDs. The laser reads and writes data starting from the center of the disc and proceeding in a spiral direction toward the outer edge. A pre-groove is stamped in all blank recordable and rewritable CDs and DVDs to guide the laser as it writes.

 

Usability

Optical discs are differentially identified to designate specific features such as recordability, rewritability, and accessibility. For example, CD-R, DVD-R, and DVD+R discs are dye-based record­able (write-once) discs—i.e., recordable but not erasable. CD-RW, DVD-RW, and DVD+RW discs are phase-change based, recordable, (rewritable) discs, or discs that permit the erasing of earlier informa­tion and the recording of new material in the same location on the disc. DVD-RAM discs are phase-change based, recordable (rewrit­able) discs formatted for random access, much like a computer hard drive. CD-ROM and DVD-ROM discs are pressed and molded, non­recordable, read-only discs.

Used DVDs on display.

CDs and DVDs consist of the same basic materials and layers but are manufactured differently. A DVD is actually like two thin CDs glued together. A CD is read from and written to (by laser) on one side only; a DVD can be read from or written to on one or both sides, depending on how the disc was manufactured. Recordable DVDs (DVD-R, DVD-RW, DVD-RAM) can be manufactured with one re­cording layer on each side. Prerecorded DVDs (DVD-ROM) can be manufactured with one or two recorded layers on each side.

CD-R, CD-RW, DVD-R, DVD+R, DVD-RW. DVD+RW, and DVD-RAM discs can become unusable in a matter of days. If such a disc is left in an environment that allows direct sunlight and extreme heat buildup (e.g., on the dashboard of a car in summertime, or next to a heater by a window), the organic dye or phase-changing film that holds the data will degrade quickly, causing the disc to become unreadable. A disc is not protected from the effects of heat buildup if left in a case that is exposed to direct sunlight or

other sources of heat. Extreme heat buildup can also cause warping of the disc.

Direct sunlight to R discs is harmful for two reasons: The sunlight’s ultraviolet photons (the higher frequency of the sunlight spectrum) have enough energy to produce a photochemical reaction, altering the optical properties of the dye (recording layer) molecules. The broad spectrum of unfiltered sunlight, infrared to ultraviolet (low frequency to high), can impart heat to the disc. The increased temperature generated by sunlight will accelerate the degradation or breakdown of the dye layer (recording layer) of the disc. The combination of high temperature and high relative humidity will further accelerate that degradation.

Scratches generally cross data lines or tracks on the disc, and how bad (deep and wide) they are will determine the extent of interfer­ence with laser focus on the data. Small or occasional scratches will likely have little or no effect on the ability of the laser to read the disc, because the data are far enough below the surface of the disc that the laser is focused beyond the scratch.

Choosing the best writing speed

Choosing a higher writing speed will result in a faster disc burn, but the optical quality may be lower (less reflective). If the reflectivity is too low to be accurately read when the CD is played back, it may skip or contain unwanted audio artifacts such as squeaking and clicking sounds. For optimal results burn at the media's rated speed. 

New age DVDs; the HD-DVD and Blue-ray Disc

New age DVDs

DVD is still very successful, and will definitely be around for some time. With the introduction of HD-DVD and Blue-ray Discs and their respective media, large media content of upto 25GB on single-layer, and 50GB dual-layer can be stored. Blu-ray and HD-DVD both employ Blue Laser technology which has a much shorter wavelength than the red laser technology used in current DVD). Blu-ray and HD-DVD enables a disc the size of a current DVD disc but, which has much greater storage capacity than a standard DVD, to hold an entire film at HDTV resolution or allow the consumer to record two hours of high definition video content.

New Media Technology in Education

Examples of applications for New-media technology.

 There have been advance improvements in media technology and that has affected immensely on the way we interact, the way we get information, communicate, and the conduct business. More so traditional teaching methods are giving way to new educational approaches as the use of this technology in the classrooms is becoming more widespread.

New media technology is any type of application meant to transfer information via digital techniques, computerized systems or data networks. The forms of this technology are interactive and contain compressed data designed to be accessed in a variety of markets. Wikipedia refers new media as the on-demand access to content any time, anywhere, on any digital device, as well as interactive user feedback, creative participation and community formation around the media content. 

Creation of media content, its publishing, distribution and consumption is nowadays extensive beyond imagination with increasing real-time generation of new, unregulated content. New media does not include television programs, feature films, magazines, books, or paper-based publications; unless they contain technologies that enable digital interactivity. 

Interactive media must be interactive and easy to and track responses.

As technologies advance, we use these emerging tools to our advantage. Each technology provides potential benefits to help people learn, but at what cost? The changes in how we learn with new technologies can have both positive and negative effects on our ability to learn and on the educational systems at large. 

Social networking sites allow students to explore their interests on a global scale and discuss their interests with a wider range of people. By adding some self development skills through the new media can boost oneself towards success. Facebook is an example of the social media model, in which most users are also participants. This has huge implications for self-learning, as information and resources are much more available than they were previously. However, for students that aren’t skilled at evaluating different content, it can be hard for them to sort through various resources to find accurate and useful information.

It’s not so rare anymore nowadays for entire courses and degree programs to be offered online, where educators and students are using a wide variety of tools to work within these new virtual learning environments.