We all know that a CD can hold up to 700mb *or* 80min audio.
Well, 80min audio = 2ch * 16bits * 44100samples * 4800seconds = 6773760000bits = 846720000bytes = 826875Kb = 807.5Mb

BUT, one cannot burn a 807Mb wav file in *DATA* mode because the CD filesystem need some overhead for data protection. (hence the 700mb limit printed on the media)

What if I want to burn ~800Mb FLACs in some way to fit on the CD???

In fact, I would like to burn 700mb FLACs on the media and add 100mb or PAR2 data recovery protection (www.quickpar.org.uk).

So the 200$ question is: Is there a way to burn data on a CD in raw mode to max out every bit on a CD?? (or DVD±R)

Maybe NERO does this in some way?!

I hope that's not true:


Thanks
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be020261

2 quick links
Link 1
Link 2

These tricks work with media files (i.e. video), I'm not sure if you can use them for standard data.

Ok thanks for the info.

Is there any way I can do that with a DVD±R?

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be020261

> I hope that's not true:

That's true, you can only burn data in a very few ways and Mode2 Form2 seems to be
the way you're looking for. There's no such thing as raw burning or mode 1/2 for DVD.

Isn't Mode2 Form2 the mode used for SVCD ? I remember that I always burned MPEG2-Video files of ~ 800MB to one standard CDR ...

Yup.



But about mode2cdmaker, the last time I checked it it did not feature any error correction at all. So that's not a really usable solution, even with mode2. But it could have changed.

I think Mode2Form2 is a format that does not use any error correction at all...I have "tested" this with a scratched CDRW, I can transfer and view any avi video from it, but I burnt a VideoCD image to it and it was completely b0rked by the disk.

That's why the Par2 files.

I'd like to create the bigest DVD possible, without any error protection applied to the data.

My par2 files would be kept separate on a normal 'data' CD (ie mode1). so if I got any error on the DVD, I can repair almost everything with my par2 files.

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be020261

Keep in mind that c2 errors at data speed are very common. Your files will likely be corrupted, and you'll need the PAR2 correction often.
Audio is usually read slower.

*ALL* CDs have C1 and C2 error correction. This includes M2F2. An 80 minute CD is actually ~1GB counting the C1 and C2. I just burnt a M2F2 CD, and PlexTools said there were 2.8 errors per second corrected by the C1 level. [ edit: and it extracted bit-perfect, after undoing all the VCD junk that I talk about in the following post ]

There is no such thing as a M2F2-ish DVD, since DVD error correction is much better than CD.

[review]
Audio CDs have two levels of error correction: C1 and C2. They were designed to be good enough for audio. However, it's not good enough for programs and generic data, so a certain amount of data is reserved in each sector for and additional error correction level. M2F2 just does away with the additional level.

DVDs, however, were designed much better and only need 2 levels of error correction for any data. (Called PI and PO) There is less ECC data, but it's used more efficiently so can correct better than CDs.
[/review]

There is no way to get rid of the first two levels of error correction in either format, and there is no reason you would want to anyway. If you didn't have those levels of error correction, you'd need to apply the PAR2 files EVERY time you extracted it, and there could very well be too many errors to correct any of them. (remember that if there isn't enough PAR data to correct all errors, you won't be able to correct any of them.)


For example:
The last CD that I burnt had a total of 13186 C1 errors. It had 800MB of data. That means that there is, on average, one error every 62KB.

• If the PAR2 files have blocks greater than 62KB, I can expect almost every block to report an error, and I would need an 800MB PAR2 file to correct my 800MB of data.
• If my block size is ~31KB, then around half of the blocks would be corrupted, meaning that I'd need 400MB of recovery data to correct it.
• I wouldn't be able to use a block size of < 25KB, as there is a total block limit of 32768. So with 25KB, this would mean that around 1/3 of the blocks are corrupted = 267MB of recovery info.

This is a brand-new disk, with no scratches at all, and I'd need almost 300MB of PAR files that I'd need to apply on every reading, were it not for C1 error correction.

(I don't know what kind of PI/PO error rates are normal for DVDs, as my DVD drive doesn't report them, but I'd bet the results are similar.)

Using it with general data is harder, but still possible. The problem is that the files have weird headers and CRC data strewn about, plus there seems to be padding at the end.

It is easy to fix, though. In that second link, "dat2file" will fix files and "XCDextractor" will apparently rip to standard files (I've tested dat2file, not XCDextractor)

Those tools don't seem to fix the padding at the end, but you can use a PAR2 file to fix it (you don't even need any recovery blocks, just the file descriptor part) It was a bit of work, but easy enough when you know what to do.

Of course, there's always the option of oversized CD blanks if your drive supports overburning. A 90-minute CD holds around 800MB in Mode I, even a little more if you overburn to ~ 92 minutes. A 99 or 100-minute CD holds ~ 870MB in Mode I, which should provide more than enough space to burn a 700-750MB FLAC and an accompanying PAR2 correction file.

This might be helpful,

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=63047

http://www.plextor.be/English/pdf/PlextorGigaRec.pdf

http://www.digital-sanyo.com/BURN-Proof/HD...5%20English.pdf

I've used Plextor's GigaRec, and the result is quite good. The 1.2x mode played in every CD drive I could get my hands on. The 1.3x wouldn't read in a few drives (not sure what they were; probably generic garbage)

[edit: Just made my first GigaRec at 1.4x. When I tried reading it back, it gave ~100000 C1 errors, ~10000 C2 errors, and ~200 CU errors before dying 1/3 of the way through. Guess my CDs can't handle it ]

I tend not to use GigaRec because it can't use the buffer underrun protection for some reason. Plus, the error rates were a bit higher than the standard CD.
However, you can easily get 850MB out of an 80min CD without mucking around with error correction, and it will be playable on almost all CD drives.

The problem with Sanyo's HD-BURN is that it bends the CD spec a lot. The CDs won't play on any normal CD drives, only some of Sanyo's drives and DVD drives with a firmware update (I don't know if any updates exist yet; do they?). Also, I bet they have much higher error rates. But you get 1.4GB from a CD-R. If you don't care about compatibility, then it might be a good option.

PAR files are not aware of directories so you need to have the data you want to recover the same location as the PAR files which means this wouldn't work.

Well, the PAR2 spec allows for directories, but I don't know if any PAR2 program will work that way. It's more of an implementation issue than a specification issue.

Have a look at this par2 software: www.quickpar.co.uk

I planned to keep the base par2 file with the associated data for convienence. (ie the one that's only a few kb). If any error occurs, i click on ADD, then locate the actual par2 recovery data file. (I usualy create only one big data par2 file for my backup for convienence purpose, and to optimize the efficiency %)

Ciao!
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be020261

Don't forget that in addition to error correction, you'll also need your own error detection. So you'll need to add CRC or MD5 data too.

Not that PAR uses Reed Solomon codes, which is what data CD is also using already.

And think about how often you'll need the PAR files to fix a few bits (probably all the time)...

And what if your PAR CD breaks? (literally)

I wonder what you're planning to do with this, it just looks like a total waste of effort. Just split the file onto multiple disks...

PAR2 does error detection on its own. There are file descriptor packets which give the MD5 of each file, as well as the MD5 of each slice in the recovery set.

Also, I don't see your point about the Reed-Solomon codes. A standard data CD has 3 levels of recovery data, each of them use Reed-Solomon data. The PAR2 file will simply add another layer on top of that. The difference is that the CD's error correction is only good for one sector (2048 bytes) for the third level, and only 24 bytes for C1 and C2. A PAR2 file's data can be applied to an entire CD.