#1 Burning Software

Perhaps I don't see full picture, but if it is the worst mode, then why is it the only write mode available through StarBurn ( I mean, as applied to image writing )?

Raw CD copy was not a number one priority for StarBurn team. And it's VERY time consuming process. And quite a few customers really need it.

Does any modern drive support SAORawRawPW(eg only mode Starburn will burn MDS files in) other than Plextor? plextor's most recent drive(PX-760) is the biggest piece of crap I've ever used and we can't get the 716s anymore so we have to switch to another drive. I just tested the Pioneer 111. It's doesn't support RawRawPW mode. I'm about to test the NEC 3570A(crossing my fingures). I've tried the 3550A(SAORawRawPW failes even though the drive says it suopports it so I'm doubtfull the 3570 will. If I can't find another drive that supports SAORawRawPW I'll need to find out how to burn in DAO mode but there is no information on the MDS file format(that I've been able to find). Any help would be appriciated.

It's getting more and more rare these days. Modern hardware (like BD-RW 101) don't even do any CD burning at all...

And we don't support (and have no plans to support) DAO MDS burning.

For let me say this. I DO NOT care about copying copyprotected media.

I think you should drop MDS support if you will not support writing MDS files. Currently in Starburn it is the ONLY way to read the raw data from a CD(eg non cooked tracks) that I've been able to find. If I'm wrong please correct me. I think you should change the GrabCD and GrabDVD commands to ouput raw track data(eg 2336 bytes) of the CD so your customers(eg we who have paid money for the Starburn SDK) have some means of creating some semi standard multisession image(eg BIN/CUE) which atleast has some information out in the wild.

You told me once that I could take a single session(single track) MDF image and simply set the track name in the DAO_DISC_LAYOUT_ENTRY to burn using DAORawPW. Thats great. So why can't I take a multisession MDF image and break it into individual session/track data and send that data to DAORawPW? I would like to do this so I don't have to go looking for a drive that supports SAO-Raw just so I can have a convienent way of burning multisession images.

1) MDS support would be dropped.

2) Next version of the StarBurn (NapalmBurn) would have no raw CD burning capabilities at all. Neither RAW SAO, nor RAW DAO or whatever.

3) You cannot burn multiple tracks with DAO one-by-one.

So how manmy of these features will be lost when you do this?

" Track-At-Once, Session-At-Once (CUE SHEET) and Disc-At-Once (RAW) recording modes. In Track-At-Once mode everything is handled by the drive itself. The application just passes 2048 bytes/sector streams (data) or 2352 bytes/sector streams (audio). With Disk-At-Once the application creates a whole raw virtual CD image itself and writes with 2448 (DAO96) or 2368 (DAO16) bytes/sector streams. Track-At-Once is the most compatible mode and preferred for data (the only mode to create multi-session CDs) and Disk-At-Once allows you to create gap-less Audio CDs, add CD-Text and CD+G information and some additional features. Session-At-Once is close to Disc-At-Once with the exception it does not require to generate lead-in and lead-out manually and allows programmer to select source data stream format. "

Raw CD burning only. Very few people really use it and this feature is very hardware dependent. We prefer to concentrate on DVD-Audio and DVD-Video authoring and appendable UDF.

Ok, so how will CD+G work? I thought you had to write to some of the PW channels for CD+G?

I've used wrong wording, sorry for this. Current codebase with CD-Text, CD+G etc would co-exist with the new one. We would not remove anything from anywhere. We're just not planning to add any raw CD burning features like CUE/BIN, 1:1 CD copy. B/c number of customers interested in such a things is very small.