HDCD Burning & Playback

[ATallJohn]

I have an Optorite DD0203 DVD Burner (with HD-Burn capabilities), a standalone DVD Player that will read HDCD burned CDs (APEX AD5131) and the latest Nero (Nero 6.0 Ultra Edition which supports burning HDCD, including all updates), how do I burn an HDCD, in SVCD file format/structure? The HD-Burn Video format routine, that comes with Nero 6.0, only burns in DVD file format (*.VOBs). I am told by an APEX tech, is not possible to read an HDCD burned DVD, on their AD5131. Is there a program (shareware or cheapware), work-around or whatever, that will create such a file structure, that's identical to that of the SVCD/VCD file structure? A lot of the 2-Disk SVCD's will fit onto a HD-Burned S-Video CD! Any help would be greatly appreciated! Please feel free and email me! TIA

[Cornucopia]

You're getting your abbreviations and technologies mixed.

From my semi-limited knowledge:

HD-Burn is a optical disc burning technology that does something similar to file or disk compression. Think of taking all your files (VOB, MPG, PDF, MOV, WAV, etc) and putting them in one big ZIP file, which just happens to fit the size of your optical disc. Then hardware on the drive reads and decompresses the compression coding, showing you just the files, but with ~2x the available room. Since it relies on hardware compression support, only drives that support HD-Burn will be able to read them.

HDCD is an AudioCD enhancing technology. It takes a higher def audio signal (44.1kHz, Stereo, 20bit) and codes it such that the last few extra bits are truncated/split, ?losslessly? compressed and saved along with triggers and metadata into the R-W subcode. This is similar to CD+G, CD+Text, or CD+Midi. Therefore, you have to have a drive which supports DAO96/full subcode -AND- additional decoding circuitry for those additional 4 bits to be merged back into the main audio stream. If you don't have either of these, you still at least have a regular audio CD.

Notice how the 1st technology works only with Data discs, and the 2nd works only with Audio discs (which don't exist on DVD media). Now I think you'll see where I'm going with this.

HTH,
Scott