Appendix C. DVD-9 Projects

Back in Chapter 2, we mentioned that dual-layer burners were imminent—so imminent, in fact, that they became available in July 2004. Not only did they become available, but also, they launched at a street price of about $240! Quite the introduction, don't you think?

If you rushed out to buy one of the new models, you might have been a bit disappointed that DVDSP wouldn't work with it. Or more precisely, that DVDSP could not use the DL media. But fear not, you do have options.

Toast 6 from Roxio can burn to dual-layer media. The media itself still was expensive (around $12/disc) when we went to press, but that price should drop as manufacturers catch up. Obviously, it's still cheaper to use two single-layer discs when you can, but it sure is convenient to put long movies (or several short ones) on one disc. This chapter goes through the steps required to build a DVD-9 project in DVDSP. We'll also show you how to burn an image to a DL disc via Toast.

Dual-Layer Details

First, let's take a quick look at what makes dual-layer media work. It uses essentially the same setup as single-layer media, but using two layers does involve a few quirks. Figure C-1 recaps the physical construction of single-sided, dual-layer media that we looked at briefly in Chapter 2.

The two layers use slightly different specs to help keep the tracks distinguishable. The pit length goes up from 400 nanometers ...

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