anyone know exact definition of "overburn?"

[NFL]

I have heard/read about "overburn" but although it seems obvious as to what it means, I would appreciate if someone could explain what it means, or more importantly, what it can do if you do "overburn." I thought only 700 MB'S could be put on a 700 MB disk. I know a little more could fit, and I thought that would be considered "overburn." I ended up burning an SVCD with one of the disks at 804 MB's, and the disk played/sounded flawlessly! Not a hitch or glitch anywhere. Now I was told I could put UP TO 800 MB'S, MPEG-2, on one 700 MB disk because of the format. Being that I put 804 MB's on one disk, is that considered overburn? And if so, would it benefit me next time to make "three" CD-R's, at about 500-550 MB'S a piece, as opposed to one at 778 MB's and the other at 804 MB'S. If anyone knows, please let me know. Thanks

[P@iNKilleR]

over burn say is when the U put 82 mins of data on an 80 min cd.. simple or a file which is 829mb (vcd or svcd) on an 80 min cd. 804 will probably go on a disk.. If U nero go into the expert features & set the overburn settings from the standard 79.59 say to 82.00 & see if things burn. Most writers will over burn but some may not.

[Thorn]

Overburning is putting more data on a disc than the specification allows, i.e. 720MB or data on a 80min cdr. Note that an 80min CDR holds 700MB of data or 800MB of video if burned as an (S)VCD.

Typically, media can hold about ~30MB of data above the 740/800MB mark (for video) but not all burners can burn it (and not all players can play it). You'll find more information at sites that specialize in cd copying, but typically the burning programs know which burners can overburn (see websites like clonecd and nero).

4MB is not much of an overburn, so you'll probably be ok on decent media. Crappy media is sometimes not up to spec on the outer edges of the disc (overburning uses that outer portion of the disc that isn't required to be able to hold data by the cd specification) so you may get a bad burn with it. Again, the more you overburn the more problems you risk. I've probably never done more than 5-10MB over, but some people burn to the max regularly. Depends on how much you want to risk it

[NFL]

I have to thank you both, painkiller and thorn for that reply. Thorn, your reply was very detailed and it makes a ton of sense. I will go to those sites you suggested and check up on certain media types and burners. I wasn't sure if (4 mb) would be considered overburn, but you've cleared that up. Thanks again for all of your info!

[Thorn]

I forgot to mention that many cd burning programs (I use nero) tell you the capacity of the disc (it just reads the manufacturer's statement of maximum capacity). This capacity is often just above that of the disc type (80min cdr often tell me that they can hold 802MB, 74min discs often have 6-8MB extra)) so there is a tiny bit above the capacity that is not considered overburning. If your burner worked overburning once, I'd never worry about burning 5-10MB over.

[vitualis]

As above.

Overburning is burning more sectors than the amount "claimed" by the CD-R disc.

For example, a 74 min disc has 333,000 user sectors and an 80 min disc has 360,000 sectors. Burning even 1 sector more would be considered overburning (and some old old drives that are not capable of overburning will do esactly that).

To convert the sector number to the amount of user data, you need to know the burn mode.

For example, on an audio CD, you have 75 sectors per second. (--> 74min and 80min capacities respectively).

For a CD-ROM in MODE1 or MODE2 XA (i.e., form 1 sectors), you get 2048 bytes of user data per sector. --> 650.39 MB and 703.12 MB.

For a S/VCD in MODE2 Form2 sectors, you get 2324 bytes of user data per sector --> 738 MB and 798 MB respectively (remember, there is some unavoidable overhead so in terms of the amount of MPEG you can fit without overburning, it is a little bit less than that).

Regards.