Optical Disc Recording Technologies - Recording Modes

Recording Modes

Optical discs can be recorded in Disc At Once, Track At Once, Session at Once (i.e. multiple burning sessions for one disc), or packet writing modes. Each mode serves different purposes:

• Disc At Once: writes the entire disc in one pass; preferred for duplication masters
• Track At Once: writes individual tracks with a gap between tracks; used for audio CDs
• Session At Once: writes and finalizes multiple sessions on one CD; usually not supported for CD Audio, and not universally supported by authoring software
• Packet writing: writes data to the medium on demand (see below)