hybrid CD-R: AUTOMATIC for the people - Company Business and Marketing

Emedia Professional, Nov, 1999 by Robert A. Starrett

Sometimes things are just so innovative and cool that you really are at a loss for words to explain your fascination and wonder. But if you're a CD WRITER columnist, and the objects of your fascination are recordable discs, then try you must. The discs I am referring to are from Mitsui Advanced Media and are labeled "Mitsui AutoProtect Demo Disc." These discs appear to be early prototypes of an application similar to Kodak's recently announced CD-PROM [See Starrett's September CD WRITER, "Will CD-PROM Prove CD-R's Kodak Moment?"--Ed.]. The discs have a small recorded first session on them, but will presumably in the future have a mastered first session.

So, I know everyone is asking "What's on the first session that's so cool?" The answer: backup software. Next question: "What's so cool about that?" Normally this would not be such a big deal except for the way Mitsui has implemented it and the fact that it really works well. The backup software is called AutoProtect and is provided by Veritas, the company that recently purchased Seagate's Backup Exec product line, which included the AutoProtect product.

how autoprotect can serve

So what happens when you insert one of these discs into a CD recorder? That depends on whether auto-insert notification (AIN) is on or off. If AIN is off, the disc shows "Backup" as its label. You need to open the disc and run setup to install the driver. If AIN is on, the driver installs automatically. Once the driver is installed, the behavior of the disc is different when inserted. With AIN off, if you double click on the drive icon the backup screen comes up. If AIN is on, this screen will come up as soon as you insert the disc.

There are four choices on the screen. These are Full Backup, Custom Backup, Restore, and Exit. Like other CD backup programs, AutoProtect allows you to choose the files that you wish to back up, or to do a fill backup, which incudes backing up the Windows System Registry. The program uses file compression and spans multiple AutoProtect discs if your hard drive: is larger than a single CD-R. It's fast, too. A 232MB backup made on a Ricoh 6X recorder took only 5 minutes, 13 seconds.

The program is not flawless, but it is stable and reliable and another example of CD-R's versatility. Like CD-PROM, which can also contain data when shipped, the basis of the technology is defined in Orange Book, Chapter 11. The Orange Book describes this kind of disc as a "Hybrid disc," a multisession disc of which the first session is a mastered session. Hybrid discs are possible because a CD-R stamper is not required to contain only the impression that stamps the pregroove. The first part of the stamper can contain data, and the remainder of the stamper makes the pregroove that fills the remainder of the disc.

imagine the possibilities ...

So how far can the hybrid concept take us? Companies could distribute a hundred or so songs in MP3 or other compressed format on the stamped portion of the disc and allow the user to choose which tracks he likes and then record them to the remaining portion of the disc as Red Book. This is a straightforward task in any recording application that supports the recording of mixed-mode discs.

Unfortunately, you need to copy the MP3 files onto the hard disk and then queue them up in the recording program. Most recording programs would have a little difficulty reading from and writing to the same drive at the same time. One solution would be to add a feature that would let users select the MP3 files that they liked and the program would then write them to hard disk, record them as audio on the non-stamped portion of the disc, and then erase the files from the hard drive.

Another possibility would be to distribute a CD with several Red Book audio tracks in the first session. The remainder of the disc space would be available for writing data with a program like Adaptec's Direct CD. The remaining space on a disc with a Red Book first session can be formatted for Direct CD access and still allow the first-session audio to be played on a standard home or car audio player. The user of the disc could then add data about the music by accessing the band's Web site and downloading lyrics, MP3 files, videos, or reviews of the band's work and other commentary, and writing them to the unused portion of the disc.

Record companies or bands could distribute several of their songs on the first stamped session of the disc. They could then allow users to log onto their Web site and download, for a price of course, MP3 files that they could subsequently record to the hybrid CD. So bands and record companies could send out partially stamped CDs with promotional tracks on them and the customer could add tracks (by the same band or others) and make a custom compilation disc on top of the pre-existing tracks on the disc.

This, of course would necessitate an unclosed session to be stamped on the recordable disc. Can this be done? I'm not sure, but at the rate CD-R/RW technology has progressed of late, I suspect that almost anything is possible with this medium.