#1 Burning Software

Hi,

I have some trouble to detect if I can write to a CD/DVD or if I have to erase it before writing.

What I want to do:



I don't want multisession. If there is anything written to the medium it should be erased before writing. The tricky part is the function MediumFull. It seems that every kind of media (CD, CD-RW, DVD+RW, DVD-RW, DVD+R, DVD-R) has its own opinion. I can't rely on DiscStatus because it says "DISC_STATUS_INCOMPLETE" for an fresh DVD+RW. I thought it would be "DISC_STATUS_EMPTY", but no way. An erased DVD+RW says it is "DISC_STATUS_COMPLETE" and I have to check the OccupDiscSize to see that there is nothing written on it. The same fails for and CD-RW. There are some other combinations of media and results of discstatus/trackinformation/discsizeinfo which have to be checked. I'm afraid that I miss something here.
Is there any safe method to examine if I can write to the disc or not?

Regards,
Steffen

Get track information about TRACK_NUMBER_INVISIBLE. If NextWritableAddress is not zero - disc was recorded and you want to erase it. If you cannot get track info for this track - disc is recorded and session closes with no next session allowed, thus again you want to erase it

Thanks this is the easy way I want to know.
Could it be that "StarBurn_CdvdBurnerGrabber_GetTrackInformation" fails (sbException <> EN_SUCCESS) because of other reasons (e.g. Disc not readable)?

In theory - yes. But you'd have to erase the media in any case (full erase) if it happens.

When do I have to full erase the disc and when its enought to use fast erasing?

Full erase is required when you're trying to recover "problematic" media. And when you have DVD-RW media and you want to use in in single session mode (and it was recorded in multisession) and vice versa.

Is it possible to detect those "problematic" media?
The multi/single-session problem is only for DVD-RW (not DVD+RW, CD-RW)?

1) StarBurn would return XXX_FULL_ERASE_REQUIRED in this case.

2) Only DVD-RW.

Does "StarBurn_CdvdBurnerGrabber_GetTrackInformation" returns "EN_FULL_ERASE_REQUIRED" or do I have to call another function?

No. Burning APIs would fail with this code.

Another question: How to detect if a disc is multisession or single session?

Is this assumption right?

Multisession: m__LONG__NextWritableAddress <> 0
Singlesession: StarBurn_CdvdBurnerGrabber_GetTrackInformation fails because disc is closed

GetTOCInformation and parse TOC structure.

Sorry, but I don't know what values to look for in the TOC structure. A single session (video) dvd says TOC.m__UCHAR__NumberOfSessions = 1. I assume a multisession dvd with only one session is identical.

1) NumberOfSessions and disc status (closed or not).

2) What exactly are you trying to do?

3) Create separate thread for each question. Difficult to maintain...

1) Ok.
2) I want to erase if a user has inserted full disc. Because I write a single session disc I want to use full erase if it is a multisession-DVD-RW is inserted otherwise I use fast erase.
3) Ok for next question.