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Microsoft has recently proposed two new standards, Enhanced CD and the Joliet file system, which will affect the CD-R industry by helping users circumvent some of the lingering limitations that have hampered CD-Recording efforts since the inception of ISO 9660, the standard file structure for CD-ROM.
Enhanced CD is a multisession disc--designed primarily to court audio CD fans as potential buyers of CD-ROM hardware--which reverses the conventional multisession configuration by positioning Red Book audio tracks in the first session and data in the second session. The beauty of Enhanced CD format for CD-ROM users is that it provides multisession versatility at no additional hardware cost to either the home-based consumer or the multimedia CD-ROM professional.
Joliet is a new file system that is upwardly compatible with ISO 9660 and the UNIX file system's proposed Rock Ridge Interchange Protocol. Not so much a new CD-R specification as an extension of the existing capabilities of the ISO 9660 standard structure, Joliet helps users overcome many undesirable features of ISO 9660 by markedly increasing the efficiency of its data distribution capabilities.
ENHANCED CD: MIXED-MODE REMIX MERGES AUDIO CD WITH MULTIMEDIA CD-ROM
From CD-DA (Compact Disc Digital Audio) to CD-ROM, all compact discs share at least one common characteristic: the ability to store digital data as zeros and ones. CD-DA stores digitized audio in one or several tracks. Since the beginning, CD-DA has been used only to store digital audio. One can easily imagine what other sorts of data, readable on computers equipped with CD-ROM, that CD-Audio customers would like to see augmenting the music: song lyrics, images of the artist, or any supplementary information related to the band or its music. Usually, a CD-DA title contains only 50 to 60 minutes--of the 74 minutes available on an MPC standard-density CD--of audio, and the remaining 14 to 24 minutes of space are left blank. That unused space would seem an ideal place to store relevant written and visual information about the songs or the band. This space can also be used to advertise similar or unrelated products.
To use this space advantageously, "mixed-mode" CDs were created. A "mixed-mode" CD contains data in the first track and audio in subsequent tracks. Traditionally, it has been necessary to store data in...