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Why the "PLUS" |
| Glossay
of Terms |
This
glossary will explain some common and less common terms used
in relation to DVD+RW, DVD+R and optical recording.
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Direct On-disc Editing
Refers to the ability of a system to make changes directly to an already written disc, without the need for a full rewrite of the entire contents. Very handy when a user wants to change for example the menu screens on a disc that already contains video. DVD+RW is the only rewritable DVD format that allows on-disc editing within its basic format.
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DVD Forum
Industry group consisting of companies active in consumer electronics and computer equipment. Developed the DVD-Video and DVD-ROM formats in the mid 90s. Lack of trust in DVD Forum recordable DVD proposals (mainly with regard to flexibility and compatibility with the existing base of players) meant a large number of companies decided to develop the DVD+RW and DVD+R rewritable and recordable DVD formats outside the DVD Forum. Ironically, these formats are more closely based on the DVD Forum's DVD-Video and DVD-ROM standards than the formats proposed by the DVD Forum itself. Today, DVD+R/+RW have the broadest support in the industry. The DVD Forum is not an official standards setting body, but merely a trade organization.
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DVD+RW Alliance
A voluntary group of industry-leading personal computing, optical storage, blank media, software and electronics manufacturers. Main board consists of Dell, Hewlett-Packard, MCC/Verbatim, Microsoft, Philips, Ricoh, Sony, Thomson and Yamaha, plus close to a hundred active supporting member companies. The DVD+RW Alliance develops, maintains, supports and promotes the DVD+R and DVD+RW formats.
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DVD+RW
A rewritable optical disc technology that allows you to store 4.7 gigabytes of data on a DVD+RW disc, equal to about 6 CDs. Allows for storage of up to 8 hours of video per disc side, depending on the quality setting. DVD+RW was developed to be fully compatible with existing DVD-Video players and DVD-ROM drives in computers. There are no confusing recording modes. The format is also highly suitable for data storage applications, as it uses very powerful characteristics such as robust addressing during writing, built-in defect management and background formatting. Currently the fastest rewritable DVD technology around.
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DVD+R
A recordable optical disc technology that allows you to store 4.7 gigabytes of data on a DVD+R disc, equal to about 6 CDs. Allows for storage of up to 8 hours of video per disc side, depending on the quality setting. A DVD+R disc cannot be rewritten, making it a very suitable medium for the distribution of data and video or for archival purposes. Like DVD+RW, DVD+R was developed to be fully compatible with existing DVD-Video players and DVD-ROM drives in computers. Independent tests conducted by Intellikey Labs have proved that DVD+R is the most compatible of all available formats: discs can be played in over 95% of the current installed base of DVD players.
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DVD+R
DL
DVD+R Double Layer. New double layer technology increases
the capacity of a single sided disc to 8.5 GB, equal to a
pre-recorded double layer DVD. Allows for 4 hours of the highest
DVD quality video, or up to 16 hours of VHS quality video,
to be recorded on a disc. For more information, refer to the
DVD+R Double Layer section on
this web site. |
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DVD-Video
The most successful new technology ever introduced onto the consumer electronics market. Since its introduction in 1997, 100s of millions of DVD players and DVD-ROM equipped PCs have been sold. Offers very high studio-quality video (in standard and wide screen aspect ratios), high quality multi-channel surround sound, up to 8 languages or simultaneous audio tracks, up to 32 subtitle tracks and fully interactive menu features, allowing viewers instantly to see and hear any part of the disc. DVD+RW and DVD+R were developed entirely based upon the DVD-Video standard, offering great flexibility and many editing features, while still offering playability on almost all DVD players sold thus far.
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DVD-ROM
The DVD-counterpart of CD-ROM. Contains up to 4.7 gigabytes of data, equaling about 6 CD-ROMs, making it the ideal medium for wide distribution of large amounts of data. Every DVD-ROM drive is physically able to play DVD-Video discs. DVD+R and DVD+RW share many of the technical characteristics of DVD-ROM, meaning almost all DVD-ROM equipped PCs and notebooks can read DVD+R and DVD+RW discs.
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Favourite Scene Selection
A feature of most DVD+RW video recorders that allows you to make a play list of the scenes you want to view from a program you recorded, thereby eliminating all the unwanted parts (such as interruptions in a movie recorded from TV, or blurred footage from your camcorder recordings). When a favorite scene selection is applied, it will be stored on the DVD+RW disc itself, ready for playback on other DVD-Video players. This is a unique feature of DVD+RW video recorders, as other formats do not allow you to edit or create a play list on a DVD-Video compatible recording.
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Finalization
Unlike other rewritable DVD formats, DVD+RW does not require finalization. A DVD+RW disc is always immediately compatible with read-only equipment such as DVD-Video players when it is taken out of the recorder. As a result, a DVD+RW can always be edited or new recordings can be added to it, without the need for erasing existing recordings. Other rewritable DVD formats require you manually to finalize the disc before it can be played on other equipment, and a finalized disc cannot be recorded on anymore unless existing recordings are completely erased. Finalization is required for these formats in order to comply with the read-only specification. When a disc that needs to be finalized is still in its so-called "unfinalized" state, it cannot be played on other equipment. When the disc is finalized however, no changes can be made to it anymore.
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Formatting
The process necessary before a rewritable medium can be used, and also used to enhance compatibility with read-only equipment. A partially recorded DVD disc that is not fully formatted will be less compatible with other equipment. With other rewritable DVD formats, the user manually has to initiate the format procedure, and wait for the procedure to end before recording can start. DVD+RW however features background formatting, which means that formatting takes place automatically in the drive. Formatting will automatically continue when the drive is idle (that is, no reading or recording takes place). This means no waiting time for the format to complete, and increased compatibility without any hassle with special programs or settings.
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Index Picture Screen
Most DVD+RW video recorders will automatically create a so-called Index Picture Screen on the disc: a menu screen listing all the recordings on the disc, accompanied by a descriptive text and a picture taken from the actual recording. After adding a new recording to the disc, the Index Picture Screen will be updated. Users can also manually change the picture and the text in the menu if they want to. Contrary to other formats, where a graphical menu screen is generated by the recorder itself, and hence not shown when the disc is played on other equipment, the Index Picture Screen is recorded on the DVD+RW disc itself. You can quickly identify the contents of a disc, even when you play it in a normal DVD-Video player.
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Lossless Sector Replacement
DVD+RW has the unique feature of Lossless Sector Replacement: the ability to overwrite exactly a sector on any given location on the disc, while maintaining compatibility with the requirements for sector linking specified in the DVD-ROM and DVD-Video standards. This means for example that DVD+RW is able partially to overwrite video recordings with new ones, without the need for completely erasing the full original recording (also refer to Partial Overwrite in this glossary). It also allows you to replace the menu screens on an already written disc, or you can add new chapter stops or remove some in a recording. As other rewritable DVD formats do not support Lossless Sector Replacement within the basic system description, the features described above are not available on these DVD video recorders when recording a disc in DVD-Video compatible mode.
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Mount Rainier (MRW)
Mount Rainier is an optional feature of the DVD+RW format, that allows for DVD+RW media to be used in a "hard disk-like" fashion on drives supporting this functionality. The drive will be accessible for reading and writing directly from the operating system and all applications without the need for dedicated recording-software.
Planned Windows Vista Optical Support and MRW
Windows Vista is planning to significantly expand in-box support for optical storage devices. This support includes full read/write support for DVD drives using a new version of the IMAPI interface (for burning fixed-format images) as well as packet-writing support (for general data storage) provided using the UDFS file system. Optical drives supporting MRW defect management are supported as standard drives in Windows Vista. MRW functionality operates transparently to the operating system and MRW-formatted media is directly usable for general data storage using the UDFS files system support, on MRW drives. UDFS supports software defect management at the operating system level, which complements (but does not by default directly interact with) MRW defect management if supported at the drive level. The use of MRW-formatted media in non-MRW drives is not directly supported by Windows Vista. It is expected that third party software packages will continue to provide this functionality as they do for today’s Windows systems.
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Partial Overwrite
Refers to the unique ability of DVD+RW to allow you to overwrite only the parts of a video on an already recorded disc that you no longer need, without the need for fully erasing the entire recording. This way, DVD+RW works exactly the same as a traditional VCR, where you can also define yourself where you would like the recording to start. The parts of the recording that are not overwritten will remain on the disc, and can still be viewed. With other rewritable DVD formats, you cannot partially overwrite recordings and maintain compatibility with normal DVD-Video players. With these formats, you have to erase the full recording, even if your new recording is shorter than the one you want to overwrite.
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Recording Mode
There are no different recording modes for DVD+RW. Every recording you make is always compatible with DVD-Video players, and all editing and convenience functions are always available. With other recordable DVD formats, you have to decide up front whether you want to make a DVD-Video compatible recording, or whether you want to be able to edit the video. Such a recording made in the "editable" recording mode cannot be played on a normal DVD-Video player. In the compatible mode, you cannot edit out parts of a recording you don't need (commercials or blurred camera footage), you cannot divide a recording into chapters for direct access, you have to erase the full recording instead of just the parts you no longer need, and there is the lengthy finalization process in order to make the discs compatible. When the disc is finalized (and hence playable on other DVD players), it cannot be changed anymore until it is completely erased. Conclusion: when other recordable DVD formats state that they make "compatible recordings" and that they "offer extensive editing features", they are not referring to the same "recording mode". As a user of such a format, you always have to make a trade-off between compatibility and flexibility.
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Two-way Compatibility
Two-way compatibility is the basic philosophy for DVD+R and DVD+RW. It means that existing DVD-Video discs can be played on a DVD+RW recorder (or that existing DVD-ROM discs can be read on a DVD+RW drive), and that the recordings you make on DVD+R and DVD+RW discs can be played on existing DVD-Video players and DVD-ROM drives.
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Variable Bit Rate
The DVD-Video format allows for the usage of different bit rates (that is: the number of bits allocated per second of video). A lower bit rate results in longer playing time, while a higher bit rate gives a better picture quality. To cope with difficult scenes that consist of a lot of motion, it may also temporarily assign more bits. This is called variable bit rate, or VBR. Hence, VBR gives the best picture quality with the longest playback time. DVD+RW video recorders always employ VBR encoding, while DVD recorders from other formats may only use VBR in their non-compatible mode, and stick with less efficient Constant Bit Rate encoding in DVD-Video mode.
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+VR functionality
DVD+RW video recorders only use one recording mode that is always compatible
with normal DVD-Video players, without sacrificing flexibility, and thereby offering
features like favorite scene selection, partial overwriting, title dividing,
chapter marker
placement, etc. This is called +VR functionality. A disc recorded using +VR functionality
is fully DVD-Video compatible. +VR also allows for seamless convergence between
stand alone DVD+RW recorders and DVD+RW drives in a computer: a recording made
on a stand alone recorder can be edited directly on the disc using any program
that is +VR compliant. It allows you for example to replace the menu screens
on a disc you recorded on a stand alone recorder using sophisticated graphical
software on a PC with a DVD+RW drive. +VR also allows PC users to record video
directly on the DVD+RW disc, without needing to store it on the hard drive first,
saving time and storage space. Please note that the "VR" format employed by other
recordable DVD systems is fully incompatible with normal DVD players.
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