[CentOS] Re: K3b or another alternative for CentOS 3.5? -- logical block or physical character recording?

[Lamar Owen]

On Monday 25 July 2005 18:50, Bryan J. Smith wrote:
> > But if you're looking for the utmost player compatibility,
> > you don't want to use logical block writes.

> Lamar Owen <lowen at pari.edu> wrote:
> > Ok, again, stop.
> > Does this answer the original poster's question?  He wants
> > to write CD's; hearing the excess information about DVD's
> > doesn't help him.

> 1.  Romeo stated not to look for an alternative

And for a GUI frontend to the standard CD/DVD writing utilities there isn't 
any need to look at an alternative; IMO, and agreeing with many others, out 
of the frontends available for CentOS 3 k3b is simply the best.

> 2.  Most people today get their CD recording/rewriting from
> their DVD drive.  DVD firmware is very much an issue!
> Especially since many CD-audio players _are_ "dumb."

But this has nothing to do with the GUI frontend.

> And when it comes to rewritables, I actually call
> Sony/Philips CAV/zoned-CLV as "CD+RW" because of the
> compatibility issues.

Which also has nothing to do with k3b.

> > Why is it so hard to simply 'help' the original poster?
>
> I wasn't "helping" the original poster.
> I was explaining _why_ someone might not want to use k3b,
> in response to someone else's comment.

Going into DVD firmware and the other issues brought up has nothing to do with 
the suitability of k3b, since k3b is just a GUI frontend for cdrecord and 
friends.  In particular, cdrdao, cdrecord, and growisofs are the programs 
used by the k3b frontend.  So the features, block writing, etc of the backend 
programs determine what k3b will do.

> Over on the DVDRTools list, someone was bragging how they
> had solicited SuSE to drop CDRecord[+DVDpatch], because
> it wasn't supposively needed.  The reality is that there
> are very much people like myself who want to record
> CD-R and DVD-R in character (byte-by-byte) mode for
> maximum player compatibility.

Did SuSE drop the plain CDrecord program?  And how again does this impact a 
GUI frontend for CentOS 3?

> > Last I checked, k3b for writing CD's uses CDRecord.

> It depends on the drive, mode, etc...  I was trying to
> get at anyone who expects k3b to write CD-R or DVD-R
> for player compatibility, that's all.

K3B uses cdrdao for DAO recording for those drives that support dao; select 
dao as your method in k3b and it will use cdrdao.

> Because, again, someone said ...
>   "don't search for alternative"

Because for CentOS 3 there really isn't a good alternative.  And, if you want 
to never use growisofs for writing, don't upgrade the growisofs 
(dvd+rw-tools) package to a version the latest k3b wants (to get latest k3b, 
install the kde-redhat packages; this will pull in lots of dependencies but 
will work fine, if you want a more modern KDE).

> > Since the OP's question was about CD's and not DVD's,
> > the whole packet of information about DVD's was
> > extraneous and superfluous.

> No it's not.  They are linked very much, especially when it
> comes to player compatibility.

> DVD-R and CD-R are the _same_, _physical_ approach.
> It's important to note this.

Certainly.  But when you're writing CD's using K3B you end up using CDrecord 
(I do this constantly with a Generic DVD Dual drive (Pacific Digital) and 
with my Dell laptop's NEC DVD+RW drive).  I do this, like I say, constantly 
for my radio broadcast.

> > which seems to work just fine with every
> > CD player I've tried the disc's in.

> Depends on the age of the unit, the intelligence in it,
> etc...
> You must have well designed CD players.

Most of my CD's are burnt for a broadcast environment, where the CD player 
quality typically is higher, yes, but not always.  The older Marantz 
professional CD players are notoriously picky about media and burner timing.

> That's why I responded to the comment of "don't search for an
> alternative" with my discussion of "logical block" v.
> "physical character" recording -- because sometimes you _do_
> want an alternative.

I fail to see the relationship between the discussion of a GUI frontend to 
CDrecord and media types and compatibility, which is generic to the hardware 
and not even dependent upon the operating system used, as you will have just 
as many problems with the various Windows burning programs.
-- 
Lamar Owen
Director of Information Technology
Pisgah Astronomical Research Institute
1 PARI Drive
Rosman, NC  28772
(828)862-5554
www.pari.edu