CDVDBurn
CDVDburn - first impressions
CDVDburn is the latest product from Steffen Huber, also now know as Hubersn Software. It is a development of what has become the standard CD writing software for RISC OS, the ubiquitous CDburn. Because it is still very new this can't be regarded as a 'review' in the normal sense as Steffen declares in the documentation that there is much work still to be done (see later). It would therefore be very unfair to CDVDburn to judge it as a complete product, rather I would regard is as "early beta" at this stage. Furthermore I received the program only a few days before the deadline for this article so I had very little time to experiment.
As you might expect CDVDburn is outwardly very similar to its predecessor, and for anyone familiar with CDburn the most obvious difference with the new version is the new 3D icons.
However, the real changes are "under the hood". As well as the ability to write DVD discs there's an important improvement for Iyonix users. When reading a CD or DVD disc CDVDburn now bypasses CDFS and reads data directly using ADFS. This makes extracting tracks from a CD or DVD faster, and since DVDs are many times bigger than CDs the time saved with this modification is much more significant. This was previously possible with 3rd party IDE interfaces such as those from APDL but it's the first time it's been implemented for ADFS.
Creating the ISO image
Data CD and DVD ISO images are created just as before. You can choose the 'Filer like' method where you drag the files, applications or directories into a window. When you have done this CDVDburn will create an ISO image containing all the material you have chosen. This is the best system to use for creating backups or archives of material since the original files can be anywhere on your system. The alternative method is to place all the material in a single directory and then CDVDburn will create the ISO image from the contents of that directory. This is the best method if you are creating a CD or DVD where you may wish to make changes to the material and then create more copies, such as for software distribution.
DVD ISO images can be much larger than CDs, up to 4.4Gb. This presents a problem as the maximum permitted file size on an Acorn filecore based filesystem is just 2 gigabytes. This effectively means any RISC OS computer except a VirtualAcorn, whose HostFS isn't filecore based can't create a file bigger than 2GB. CDVDburn uses a clever trick to enable it to create ISO images greater than 2 Gb. Instead of creating a single large ISO image file it instead created a directory with the name selected for the ISO image and then places a series of smaller files inside this directory. To write the DVD you drag this directory to the requisite icon in the 'Write' window and CDVDburn sorts out the pieces and joins them up at it writes the DVD.
The old method of writing 'on the fly' has now been discontinued. This is because this method doesn't work well for DVDs. However, in my opinion this is no great loss as it was only of limited use and was a source of many problems experienced by users who did not understand the shortcomings of this method. At present CDVDburn uses a modified system where it creates an ISO image and then offers the user the option of deleting it after writing to disc. This still gives the 'one step' simplicity of writing on the fly but without any of the previous problems. However, Steffen has said that true 'on the fly' may be restored in a later version.
Writing the disc
Writing a CD works exactly as before, and as someone who has written many thousands of CDs using CDBurn I can certainly attest that this is a very reliable process, assuming a suitable drive and reliable media. The one thing which has hitherto been missing is the ability to verify a CD after writing, and although this isn't included at present it is scheduled for a future version, which will be a very welcome addition and once it appears I'll be able to finally retire my old Plextor SCSI CD writer and CDScribe.
Writing a DVD proved rather more problematical. Firstly only one drive is so far known to work properly, and there would appear to be difficulties with media. Using the recommended Lite-On drive on a RiscPC I experienced quite a few difficulties. Steffen suggests that there is a problem with media compatibility, especially cheap unbranded discs. This may well be a significant factor. I certainly had no luck with a pack of cheap discs picked up at the Lidl supermarket checkout. Sony branded discs were better, and Verbatim (as Steffen suggests) were best. However, 'best' is something of a misnomer as I had very limited success writing any DVDs. The most frequent problem was that the drive would start up and then, after a short while it would stop and I'd get a 'CD writer not ready' error with nothing having been written to the disc.
One possible reason for this, bearing in mind that an identical drive and media seemed to work much more reliably on a PC, might be that the RiscPC I was using is simply too slow. With CDs it is possible to set the writing speed, but with this version of CDVDburn this is not possible with DVDs. Instead it reads the speed of the media and then writes at that speed. As the slowest speed media I was able to obtain at short notice was 8x it is possible that this could have been the problem. Using my usual setup with a Blitz interface I can normally write CDs at 12x, but that may not be significant.
Given a bit more time I would like to try the drive on the Iyonix with its much faster IDE interface, and I shall certainly do so at the earliest opportunity. It's also possible that the drive I have fitted to my RiscPC may not be quite perfect, so another test will be to swap it with the one on the PC.
However, I've simply run out of time for any more experimentation as I'm now getting irate phone calls from the editor (Who me? Irate? How dare you...etc - ED) demanding that I finish this article without any more delay!
General limitations.
Current versions of CDFS are not happy with DVDs bigger than 4 Gb, so you will have to keep below this limit if you want to be able to read them on most RISC OS computers.
Of course you will also only be able to create and use data DVDs, in effect large capacity CD ROMs. At present RISC OS can't really make use of anything other than data DVDs.
Future developments.
The first and most obvious thing at the moment is that many messages and templates refer just to 'CD' rather than 'DVD', but of course this will be corrected as development continues and is not a problem. Steffen also lists the following items as 'shortcomings of this version' which will be dealt with.
- Free capacity of medium is not read correctly (DVD+RW, DVD-RW). Because of this, free space checks on the target medium for DVD media has been disabled. Please make sure that the image you want to write fits onto a standard DVD medium, which has a typical capacity of 4482 MB.
- Medium information sometimes reports funny values for DVD media. Just ignore it.
- You can't set the writing speed for DVD media - the writer automatically selects the speed optimal for the inserted medium. This is not properly reflected in the write dialogues.
- Simulation is not supported for DVD media, but this is not properly reflected in the write dialogues.
- Multisession is not supported for DVD media, but this is not properly reflected in the write dialogues.
This is a significant step forward for RISC OS. Please don't be put off by my rather poor success rate with writing DVDs. Certainly I have been able to use CDVDburn to create the master discs for the new RISCWorld compilation DVD described elsewhere in this issue and I'm sure that with a little more time to 'fiddle' I'd have been able to sort out the problems and write reliably.
It's not all that long ago that I was experiencing similar problems with my very first CD writer and it didn't take too long to get that sorted out. There was also a considerable difference in price - my first CD writer plus software cost the best part of a thousand pounds!
And finally....
Because there was a couple of days delay between writing this article and publication to enable us to include the very latest versions of Defender and Firefox I had time to obtain a slightly different model of DVD writer to try with CDVDburn. This worked perfectly on the Iyonix with a variety of media, and slightly better as a writer on the RiscPC but less well at reading DVDs on the RiscPC.
I'll keep trying, and hope to have some better news for the next issue of RISC World.
Dave Holden