Older Posts
· Damascus-based site better than the Open Directory...
· Side note about Earthlink Total Access and Corel P...
· Can you record streaming audio from the Internet?
· Western Digital external hard drive won't power do...
· Total Annihilation vs. Windows XP
· Kodak EasyShare program
· Symantec Integrator has encountered a problem and ...
· Taking down Alexa.com site ranking boxes
· Corel Photo Album 6 has encountered a problem and ...
· Kodak DC4800 v. Windows XP #3
Archives
April 2005
May 2005
June 2005
July 2005
August 2005
November 2005
December 2005
January 2006
February 2006
March 2006
May 2006
June 2006
July 2006
August 2006
October 2006
March 2007
May 2007
June 2007
September 2007
November 2007
January 2008
June 2008
August 2008
Links
· Startup Applications List
· Welcome to the Hex Hub (Named Hexadecimal Color Codes for HTML)
More blogs on this site:
|
|
Computer Blog - thebroadroom.net: Sonic DigitalMedia LE v7
Disclaimer: all of the following is purely from personal experience. TheBroadroom.Net urges you to use your own instincts,
common sense, and willingness to take risks when applying any of the information below.
Sonic DigitalMedia LE v7
posted by Colleen Shirazi,
Saturday, January 07, 2006
at 4:49 PM (Pacific)
Also known as "CD Burning for Idiots." :D
I am the idiot and the Sonic program came with a Dell that I'm working on. I've had very little experience burning anything so here is my preliminary report on this product and CD burning in general.
Note: this first part addresses CD-R recording only. This stands for "CD Recordable" and means that you can burn some stuff on the CD, then add to it later on, but you may not erase and rerecord on the CD.
First of all, I did google around to find some information about burning CD's. It was horribly, horribly confusing. Like so much of the latest technology, what I got out of it was that "this CD medium won't work on this CD player," "the burning speeds are all different," "format or don't format"... etc.
Anyhow. Apparently, before you even buy your first spindle of CD recordable disks, you should know what the speed of your CD burner drive is.
That's great if you still have the spec label attached to the front of your computer shakes head. I mean I'm sure there is in fact an idiot's way of determining this in a computer you didn't actually buy or else bought long ago. I tried the usual Device Manager and didn't seem to get anywhere.
How I determined the recording speed of my drive was that I started recording something in it using the above mentioned Sonic program. The one I have is 48x; the Sonic program tells you this.
(At least I think that's what the 48x signifies. It could be the read speed for all I know.)
To get there, I bought some Memorex CD-R blank discs (52x, 700 MB, 80 minutes). Why 52x and why Memorex? I went to Staples, they also had HP, Sony, Maxell, the Staples house brand, etc. I chose Memorex simply because I'm old; Memorex cassette tapes were quite commonly used for tape dubbing (ask your parents).
Why 52x? That was the maximum recording speed on the shelf. (Sony's were 48x.) From what I've read, you can use a higher speed blank on a slower speed drive, but not the other way around. Turns out I could have bought the 48x ones as well.
Close all other programs and turn off your screen saver or anything else that might start running while you're recording, before you burn anything.
I read that somewhere...your CD burning relies on your PC writing everything in one fell swoop. Having your screen saver or other power save pop up during the burn may well produce a "coaster."
To format or not to format?
Let me repeat, I'm old. I well remember having to format floppy disks before writing to them. I also remember when they started selling floppies already formatted.
The Sonic program has a feature that uses "DLA" (drive letter access) technology. All that means is that it's less complicated burning stuff to the disk. It doesn't seem to affect the quality of the recording; it simply emulates the experience of using, say, your Windows Explorer to copy files and folders from one place to another.
That's what I started out using. For this..."Direct-to-Disc" under "Data" on the menu...you do need to format the blank first, using the Sonic "format" button.
This eats up a significant amount of space on the disk btw. I saw the available space on disk plummet to around 627 MB.
Formatting a CD-R disk using "quick" format takes only a few seconds, it is not a big deal.
You may then literally punch "Add Data" and select whatever you want burned to the disk. It's a cosy, comfortable familiar feeling for the beginning "burner."
You then have to hit the "Make Compatible" button when you're done. This is to make your newly burned disk compatible with computers or players which do not have Drive Letter Access installed in them.
With CD-R, you can append data even after you've run Make Compatible, but you will need to run Make Compatible again after you're done. Make Compatible eats disk space too. What I got out of the Sonic site...which I found pretty useless actually, it seemed geared towards people who already know what they're doing...was that Make Compatible could be run a maximum of 15 times on the same disk...so try to do the majority of your burning before running it.
That's all folks.
I tried using DLA the first two times I burned anything. On my Imation CD-R, everything worked perfectly. On my Memorex CD-R, I couldn't get a Windows 98 computer with a CD-ROM drive to read the disk.
Imation: I formatted my Imation CD-R using the Sonic DLA formatting program. In different sessions, using Direct-to-Disc, I burned a jpg image file, a program file, and a folder full of jpg's, to the Imation. I then ran Make Compatible to test it out.
The Win 98 clunker read everything fine from this disk.
Memorex: Here I formatted the disk, burned three folders full of jpg images to it, then ran Make Compatible.
The Win 98 machine would not read the volume label of the disk and wouldn't show any of my files in My Computer.
I went back to the XP/Sonic machine and tried running Make Compatible again.
This time the Win 98 machine "read" all three of my folders as a single music file, which I couldn't open, naturally enough (since it was not a music file).
Two Windows XP machines with DLA installed on them read the same disk perfectly so technically it was not a "coaster," but I felt disgruntled nonetheless.
At this point I decided to not use DLA for my next test.
Data Disc v. Direct-to-Disc
The other option under Data is Data Disc. (There is also "Easy Archive" but I haven't gotten there yet.)
This, imo, is much much better than Direct-to-Disc, once you feel comfortable with the general burning process.
With Data Disc, you need to make a project...but it's not as awful as it sounds. It's actually quite easy.
Here, again, you turn off your screen saver and whatever programs are running.
You place an unformatted blank in your burner drive.
Here...I think it's much easier to go ahead and give your disk a volume label before you burn anything to it. i.e. I'm sure there is a way to go back and do this post-burning but it's not obvious.
If there's anything already on the disk apparently you have to load the lot into your project before adding anything new ("Load Disc"). I haven't done this yet though.
Click "Add Data" and start selecting what you want to burn on the disk. Here it just adds your selection(s) to the project; you haven't burned anything yet.
Sonic tells you as you're going how much space you have left on the disk.
Once you're done, go ahead and hit the big red button on the bottom of the screen ("Click button to continue").
You get a gratifying screen telling you, finally, what speed your drive records at, what speed you are in fact recording at, the progress of your project...it takes only a few minutes to burn the whole thing.
Plus, you need not run Make Compatible at all. My "Data Disc" Memorex ran fine on the Win 98 clunker as is.
When you're done, you also have the option to save the project. Presumably you may then burn the exact same set of files and folders to another disk.
When to use DLA?
Thinking on it, the DLA option makes sense if you want to have a CD-R handy to burn stuff on here and there, the same way you would have with a floppy disk.
You would be able to use this CD to transfer files to, say, another computer that already has DLA installed in it...so, once you've formatted the disk, you're basically good to go.
When to use Data Disc?
This would appear to be the obvious choice when you want to save a bunch of stuff on a disk and then share the disk with someone else (or else play the disk on a non-DLA device). Or you just want to save a bunch of stuff and be done with it. It's ultimately less hassle than DLA (no formatting, no Make Compatible) and you get quite a bit more disk space in the bargain.
Good luck and have fun burning!
0 Comment(s)
 
|
