As Peter Hall, product manager for CD Creator, explains it, "Corel saw a business opportunity in creating premastering software for the rapidly growing population of CD-R drives. We wanted to develop the easiest way to create CDs. What was missing in existing products was ease of use and the ability to prevent or even recover from the predictable kinds of recording errors that CD-R units are prone to. And we wanted a price in line with the lower prices on the recorders themselves." (The street price is less than $200 and CD Creator is becoming popular as part of hardware or software bundles.)
Corel's CD Creator holds the user's hand through the whole process, testing the system configuration with a system test utility that examines the SCSI bus for proper termination, tests whether CD-Audio can be read, and so forth. A "scatter gather" utility gathers dispersed files onto a local hard disk. CD Creator thoughtfully checks to see whether there is enough space on the CD-R disc for the files intended for it. A "disc wizard" can be called upon (or not) to present options in an understandable and step-by-step, context-sensitive form. Disc geography optimization is handled by asking the user to group files into a directory structure and to prioritize the files on the disc, indicating the ones most likely to be accessed frequently. Files expected to be read most often are automatically written to the CD first, closest to the center on the disc's inside-out spiral. The user doesn't need to worry about mapping files to specific locations.
Rather than including elaborate simulation utilities or building a physical disc image, Corel's CD Creator takes the approach that the CD-R medium is cheap enough to be its own best test medium. However, some errors that could trash a disc can be detected by initiating a test recording run under CD Creator in which the recording laser remains turned off.
Hall points out that applications can be linked to CD Creator via OLE 2 with a few lines of Visual Basic code_an easier and less expensive process than paying for an API toolkit. Thus it is not difficult to link authoring or file-archiving software to CD Creator.
CD Creator does not support the full range of CD formats and runs at present only on the Windows 3.1 platform (with Windows 95 and Apple HFS format support expected at some point), but Corel has also included more in the way of CD-Audio and Photo CD-related utilities than most premastering packages. CD Creator even adds a jewel case insert design application that can accept graphics files and clip art from Corel Draw and other graphics packages. CD Creator builds "compilation discs" from Photo CD or Corel Professional Photo files. Corel includes 100 Professional Photo files as a clip-art source. CD Creator can record multimedia XA titles and allows multiple file saves within a session by writing a CD "track" per file. Some digital audio editing and mixing utilities have been included, such as drag-and-drop arrangement of track order, special effects and a WAV file editor. WAV audio files can be converted to CD audio tracks.
Corel CD Creator's basket of features and orientation to the non-technician, plus its price, were a shot in the arm (and a kick in the butt) to the CD-R industry. Corel recognized that premastering has become a retail software application, and, as a result, we can expect to see the market respond with a variety of competitively priced alternatives that are easy to use and offer increasingly sophisticated features.