Blast from the past. Optiarc is back, and Vinpower Digital has revised the Optiarc product line with the introduction of the Optiarc 5290S-PLUS optical disc burner, which offer the DVD+R DL Overburn feature toexpand the writing capacity from 8.5GB up to 8.7GB.

Originally developed and distributed by SONY, the Optiarc 5290 picks up where the Optiarc 5280 left off. Vinpower Digital, with the support of SONY, became the exclusive global supplier of the original Optiarc series of drives

Showcased recently at Computex, the 5290S PLUS DVD burner can extend the listed capacity of specific DVD+R DL media from 8.5GB up to 8.7GB to allow the user to capture more content on a single DVD+R DL disc.

This is achieved by taking advantage of a method method for sensing the capacity of the DVD +R DL disc, and more particularly to a method adapted for a disc burner for sensing a recordable maximum capacity of a disc held in the disc burner when overburn functionality is desired.

About the method

Data burned to a disc are burned to the tracks, which are separated into a Lead-in Area, a Data Area and a Lead-out Area, wherein disc specification information such as the disc type and the capacity of the disc are previously written on the tracks in the Lead-in Area.

A dual layer disc has two layers for sequentially storing data. A Lead-in Area and a Lead-out Area of the dual layer disc are respectively on the first layer and the second layer, wherein the first layer and the second layer each have a Data Area, a Middle Area and an Outer Drive Area.

Data burning on a dual layer disc usually will go from the first layer and then cross to the second layers. Two Middle Areas, respectively for the two Data Areas, are used to assist the data burning crossing from the first layer to the second layer. Two Outer Drive Areas, each respectively for one layer of the burned data, are disc testing of the dual layer disc.

Disc burning software installed in a disc burner controls a processor of the disc burner to sense a capacity of a disc before data burning. A conventional method for sensing the capacity of the disc is executed by the processor of the disc burner and has steps of:

• receiving an inquiry instruction from the disc burning software;
• reading standard capacity from a Lead-in Area of the disc in the disc burner; and,
• responding to the inquiry instruction with the standard capacity.

Generally, the amount of total recordable data of the disc is reflected by the standard capacity of the disc previously written on the tracks in the Lead-In area.

However, data can also be stored in the two Middle Areas, thus, the recordable amount of data of the disc is actually higher than the standard capacity. Some disc burning software contain an overburn function to take advantage of these two Middle Areas being used for burning data.

The overburn function of the conventional disc burning software reads the standard capacity from the Lead-in Area of the disc in the disc burner, and then it adds certain overburn capacity to obtain a maximum allowable burn capacity.

The conventional disc burning software with the overburn function controls the disc burner to write data of the disc with an amount of the data that is smaller than the maximum allowable burn capacity. However, Middle Areas of different discs have different amounts of tracks for overburning. Sometimes the overburn function actually writes more data to the disc than is actually allowed, when there is no reliable information about the capacity of the Middle Areas. Therefore, the data overburning may fail due to a shortage of the capacity of the disc.

The Optiarc 5290S-PLUS is sensing a physically-recordable maximum capacity of a disc held in the disc burner. The method has steps of:

• receiving an inquiry instruction for sensing a physically-recordable maximum capacity of a disc;
• sensing wobble signals detected from a disc held in the disc burner;
• obtaining an outermost-edge wobble signal of the disc;
• computing the physically-recordable maximum capacity of the disc based on the outermost-edge wobble signal; and,
• responding to the inquiry instruction with the physically-recordable maximum capacity being computed.

To sum up, the Optiarc 5290S-PLUS computes the physically-recordable maximum capacity of an inserted disc by sensing an outermost-edge wobble signal of the disc. The disc burning software utilizes than computes the physically-recordable maximum capacity Data burning can be assured to process an amount of the data that is smaller than the physically-recordable maximum capacity of the disc to decrease a failure rate of data overburning.

Besides its special overburning capabilities, the 5290S-PLUS suports the following speeds:

Burning:

• DVD ± R: 24X
• DVD ± R DL/+RW: 8X
• DVD-RW: 6X
• CD-R: 48X
• CD-RW: 24X

Reading:

• DVDs: 16X
• CDs: 48X

Random access time: 200 ms for DVD, 140 ms for CD