Schily's USER COMMANDS CDRECORD(1)
NAME
cdrecord - record audio or data CD, DVD or BluRay
SYNOPSIS
cdrecord [ general options ][ dev=device ][ track options ]
track1...trackn
DESCRIPTION
Cdrecord is used to record data or audio Compact Discs on an
Orange Book CD-recorder, to write DVD media on a DVD-
recorder or to write BluRay media on a BluRay-recorder.
Supported Media
Cdrecord supports to write the following media types:
CD-R CD recordable, a write once CD medium.
CD-RW CD read/write, a rewritable once CD medium.
DVD-R DVD recordable, a write once DVD medium. This is
the preferred single layer write once DVD medium
type.
DVD-RW DVD read/write, a rewritable DVD medium. This is
the preferred single layer rewritable DVD medium
type.
DVD+R DVDplus recordable, a write once DVDplus medium.
DVD+RW DVDplus read/write, a rewritable DVDplus medium.
DVD-R/DL DVD Dual layer
DVD+R/DL DVD Double layer This is the preferred dual layer
DVD medium type as DVD+R/DL works on most writers
and on almost all readers.
BD-R Blu-Ray recordable a write once Blu-Ray medium.
This includes multi layer support.
BD-RE Blu-Ray rewritable a rewritable Blu-Ray medium.
This includes multi layer support.
Device naming
Most users do not need to care about device naming at all.
If no dev= option was specified, cdrecord implements auto
target support and automagically finds the drive in case
that exactly one CD-ROM type drive is available in the sys-
tem. In case that more than one CD-ROM type drive exists on
the system, a list of possible device name parameters may be
retrieved with cdrecord -scanbus or from the target example
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from the output of cdrecord dev=help, then the dev= parame-
ter may be set based on the device listing.
The device parameter to the dev= option explained below
refers to the SCSI CAM standard notation for
scsibus/target/lun of the CD/DVD/BluRay-recorder. If a file
/etc/default/cdrecord exists, the parameter to the dev=
option may also be a drive name label in said file (see
FILES section).
Constraints for running cdrecord
On SVr4 compliant systems, cdrecord uses the real-time class
to get the highest scheduling priority that is possible
(higher than all kernel processes). On systems with POSIX
real-time scheduling cdrecord uses real-time scheduling too,
but may not be able to gain a priority that is higher than
all kernel processes.
In order to be able to use the SCSI transport subsystem of
the OS, run at highest priority and lock itself into core
cdrecord either needs to be run as root, needs to be
installed suid root or must be called via a fine grained
privileges mechanism, such as the Solaris privileges(5)
mechanism via exec_attr(4) or the Linux capabilities(7)
mechanism via setcap(8) to allow cdrecord to be used as an
ordinary user.
File to track mapping
In Track At Once mode, each track corresponds to a single
file that contains the prepared data for that track. If the
argument is `-', standard input is used for that track. Only
one track may be taken from stdin. In the other write
modes, the direct file to track relation may not be imple-
mented. In -clone mode, a single file contains all data for
the whole disk. To allow DVD writing on platforms that do
not implement large file support, cdrecord concatenates all
file arguments to a single track when writing to DVD media.
GENERAL OPTIONS
General options must be before any track file name or track
option.
Informative options
-help
display version information for cdrecord on standard
output.
-version
Print version information and exit.
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-v Increment the level of general verbosity by one. This
is used e.g. to display the progress of the writing
process.
Media write mode options
-dummy
The -dummy option modifies the current write strategy.
The CD/DVD/BluRay-recorder will go through all steps of
the recording process, but the laser is turned off dur-
ing this procedure. It is recommended to run several
tests before actually writing to a Compact Disk or
Digital Versatile Disk, if the timing and load response
of the current system is not yet known.
The -dummy option does not work with all media and
write modes. DVD+ media and BluRay media does not sup-
port dummy writes and most CD-recorders do not support
dummy writes in raw mode.
-multi
Allow multi-session CDs or multi-border DVDs to be
made. This flag needs to be present on all sessions of
a multi-session or multi-border disk, except you want
to create a session on a CD that will be the last ses-
sion on the CD-media.
For CD-media, the fixation will be done in a way that
allows the CD/DVD/BluRay-recorder to append additional
sessions later. This is done by generating a TOC with a
link to the next program area. The so generated media
is not 100% compatible to manufactured CDs (except for
CDplus). Use only for recording of multi-session CDs.
If this option is present, the default track type is
CD-ROM XA mode 2 form 1 and the sector size is 2048
bytes. The XA sector subheaders will be created by the
drive. The Sony drives have no hardware support for
CD-ROM XA mode 2 form 1. You have to specify the -data
option in order to create multi-session disks on these
drives. If you like to record a multi-session disk in
SAO mode, you need to force CD-ROM sectors by including
the -data option. Not all drives allow multi-session
CDs in SAO mode.
For DVD media, -multi switches the write mode to incre-
mental packet recording. There is currently no way to
prevent the ability to append further sessions and
there is currently only support for DVD-R/DVD-RW media.
To reuse a DVD-RW that has previously been written in
incremental packet recording mode for different write
modes, you need to blank the entire media before.
-dao
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-sao Set SAO (Session At Once) mode which is usually called
Disk At Once mode. This currently only works with MMC
drives that support Session At Once mode. Note that
cdrecord needs to know the size of each track in
advance for this mode (see the mkisofs -print-size
option and the EXAMPLES section for more information).
There are several CD writers with bad firmware that
result in broken disks when writing in TAO or SAO mode.
The result of this firmware bugs is that in special
with disks written with no pregap, the time is going
backwards on the player or the disk will not continue
with the next track. Since today, many CD writers are
made by the Chinese manufacturer Lite-ON that is known
for various firmware defects, it is recommended to
write all audio CDs in raw mode. If you find any prob-
lems with the layout of a disk or with subchannel con-
tent (e.g. wrong times on the display when playing the
CD) and your drive supports to write in -raw96r or
-raw16 mode, you should give it a try.
-tao Set TAO (Track At Once) writing mode. This is the
default write mode in previous cdrecord versions. With
most drives, this write mode is required for multi-
session recording.
There are several CD writers with bad firmware that
result in broken disks when writing in TAO or SAO mode.
If you find any problems with the layout of a disk or
with subchannel content (e.g. wrong times on the
display when playing the CD) and your drive supports to
write in -raw96r or -raw16 mode, you should give it a
try.
-raw Set RAW writing mode. Using this option defaults to
-raw96r. Note that cdrecord needs to know the size of
each track in advance for this mode (see the mkisofs
-print-size option and the EXAMPLES section for more
information).
-raw96r
Set RAW writing mode with 2352 byte sectors plus 96
bytes of raw P-W sub-channel data resulting in a sector
size of 2448 bytes. Because there are several CD writ-
ers with firmware bugs, this is the preferred mode to
write audio CDs. This is the preferred raw writing mode
as it gives best control over the CD-writing process.
Writing data disks in raw mode needs significantly more
CPU time than other write modes. If your CPU is too
slow, this may result in buffer underruns. Note that
cdrecord needs to know the size of each track in
advance for this mode (see the mkisofs -print-size
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option and the EXAMPLES section for more information).
-raw96p
Set RAW writing mode with 2352 byte sectors plus 96
bytes of packed P-W sub-channel data resulting in a
sector size of 2448 bytes. This is the less preferred
raw writing mode as only a few recorders support it and
some of these recorders have bugs in the firmware
implementation. Don't use this mode if your recorder
supports -raw96r or -raw16. Writing data disks in raw
mode needs significantly more CPU time than other write
modes. If your CPU is too slow, this may result in
buffer underruns. Note that cdrecord needs to know the
size of each track in advance for this mode (see the
mkisofs -print-size option and the EXAMPLES section for
more information).
-raw16
Set RAW writing mode with 2352 byte sectors plus 16
bytes of P-Q sub-channel data resulting in a sector
size of 2368 bytes. If a recorder does not support
-raw96r, this is the preferred raw writing mode. It
does not allow to write CD-Text or CD+Graphics but it
is the only raw writing mode in cheap CD-writers, as
these cheap writers in most cases do not support -dao
mode. Don't use this mode if your recorder supports
-raw96r. Writing data disks in raw mode needs signifi-
cantly more CPU time than other write modes. If your
CPU is too slow, this may result in buffer underruns.
Note that cdrecord needs to know the size of each track
in advance for this mode (see the mkisofs -print-size
option and the EXAMPLES section for more information).
Cdrecord functional options
-abort
Try to send an abort sequence to the drive. If you use
cdrecord only, this should never be needed; but other
software may leave a drive in an unusable condition.
Calling cdrecord -reset may be needed if a previous
write has been interrupted and the software did not
tell the drive that it will not continue to write.
-atip
Retrieve and print out the ATIP (Absolute Time In Pre-
groove) info of a CD/DVD/BluRay recordable or
CD/DVD/BluRay re-writable media. With this option,
cdrecord will try to retrieve the ATIP info. If the
actual drive does not support to read the ATIP info, it
may be that only a reduced set of information records
or even nothing is displayed. Only a limited number of
MMC-compliant drives support to read the ATIP info.
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If cdrecord is able to retrieve the lead-in start time
for the first session, it will try to decode and print
the manufacturer info from the media. DVD media does
not have ATIP information but there is equivalent
prerecorded information that is read out and printed.
blank=type
Blank a CD-RW and exit or blank a CD-RW before writing.
The blanking type may be one of:
help Display a list of possible blanking types.
all Blank the entire disk. This may take a long
time.
fast Minimally blank the disk. This results in
erasing the PMA, the TOC and the pregap.
track Blank the last track.
unreserve Unreserve a reserved track.
trtail Blank the tail of a track.
unclose Unclose last session.
session Blank the last session.
Not all drives support all blanking types. It may be
necessary to use blank=all if a drive reports a speci-
fied command as being invalid. If used together with
the -force flag, this option may be used to blank CD-RW
disks that otherwise cannot be blanked. Note that you
may need to specify blank=all because some drives will
not continue with certain types of bad CD-RW disks.
Note also that cdrecord does its best if the -force
flag is used but it finally depends on the drive's
firmware whether the blanking operation will succeed or
not.
-checkdrive
Checks if a driver for the current drive is present and
exit. If the drive is a known drive, cdrecord uses
exit code 0.
-clone
Tells cdrecord to handle images created by readcd
-clone. The -clone write mode may only be used in con-
junction with the -raw96r or -raw16 option. Using
-clone together with -raw96r is preferred as it allows
to write all sub-channel data. The -raw16 option
should only be used with drives that do not support to
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write in -raw96r mode.
Note that copying in clone mode disables certain levels
of error correction and thus always results in a qual-
ity degradation. Avoid copying audio CDs in clone mode
for this reason.
cuefile=filename
Take all recording-related information from a CDRWIN-
compliant CUE sheet file. No track-file arguments to
cdrecord are allowed when this option is present and
one of the following options: -dao, -sao, -raw,
-raw16, -raw96r is needed in addition.
defpregap=#
Set the default pre-gap size for all tracks except
track number 1. This option currently only makes sense
with the following drives:
Teac CD-R50S, Teac CD-R55S, JVC XR-W2010, Pinnacle
RCD-5020
when creating track-at-once disks without the 2-second
silence before each track.
This option may go away in the future.
driver=name
Allows the user to manually select a driver for the
device. The reason for the existence of the
driver=name option is to allow users to use cdrecord
with drives that are similar to supported drives but
not known directly by cdrecord. All drives made after
1997 should be MMC-standard-compliant and thus sup-
ported by one of the MMC drivers. It is most unlikely
that cdrecord is unable to find the right driver
automatically. Use this option with extreme care. If a
wrong driver is used for a device, the possibility of
creating corrupted disks is high. The minimum problem
related to a wrong driver is that the -speed or -dummy
will not work.
The following driver names are supported:
help To get a list of possible drivers together with a
short description.
mmc_bd
The generic SCSI-3/mmc BluRay driver is auto-
selected whenever cdrecord finds an MMC-compliant
drive that does support to write BluRay media or a
multi system that contains a BluRay disk as the
current medium. This driver tries to close the
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tray, checks the medium found in the tray and then
branches to the driver that matches the current
medium.
mmc_bdr
The generic SCSI-3/mmc BluRay driver is auto-
selected whenever cdrecord finds an MMC-compliant
drive that does support to write BluRay BD-R media
or a multi system that contains a BluRay BD-R disk
as the current medium.
mmc_bdre
The generic SCSI-3/mmc BluRay driver is auto-
selected whenever cdrecord finds an MMC-compliant
drive that does support to write BluRay BD-RE
media or a multi system that contains a BluRay
BD-RE disk as the current medium.
mmc_cd
The generic SCSI-3/mmc CD-ROM driver is auto-
selected whenever cdrecord finds an MMC-compliant
drive that does not identify itself to support
writing at all, or that only identifies to support
media or write modes not implemented in cdrecord.
mmc_cd_dvd
The generic SCSI-3/mmc CD/DVD/BluRay driver is
auto-selected whenever cdrecord finds an MMC-2 or
MMC-3-compliant drive that seems to support more
than one medium type and the tray is open or no
medium could be found to select the right driver.
This driver tries to close the tray, checks the
medium found in the tray and then branches to the
driver that matches the current medium.
mmc_cdr
The generic SCSI-3/mmc CD-R/CD-RW driver is auto-
selected whenever cdrecord finds an MMC-compliant
drive that only supports to write CDs or a multi
system drive that contains a CD as the current
medium.
mmc_cdr_sony
The generic SCSI-3/mmc CD-R/CD-RW driver is auto-
selected whenever cdrecord would otherwise select
the mmc_cdr driver but the device seems to be made
by Sony. The mmc_cdr_sony is definitely needed
for the Sony CDU 928 as this drive does not com-
pletely implement the MMC standard and some of the
MMC SCSI commands have to be replaced by Sony
proprietary commands. It seems that all Sony
drives (even newer ones) still implement the Sony
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proprietary SCSI commands so it has not yet become
a problem to use this driver for all Sony drives.
If you find a newer Sony drive that does not work
with this driver, please report.
mmc_dvd
The generic SCSI-3/mmc-2 DVD-R/DVD-RW driver is
auto-selected whenever cdrecord finds an MMC-2 or
MMC-3-compliant drive that supports to write DVDs
and an appropriate medium is loaded. There is no
Track At Once mode for DVD writers.
mmc_dvdplus
The generic SCSI-3/mmc-3 DVD+R/DVD+RW driver is
auto-selected whenever one of the DVD+ media types
that are incompatible to each other is found. It
checks media and then branches to the driver that
matches the current medium.
mmc_dvdplusr
The generic SCSI-3/mmc-3 DVD+R driver is auto-
selected whenever a DVD+R medium is found in an
appropriate writer. Note that for unknown reason,
the DVD+RW Alliance does not like that there is a
simulation mode for DVD+R media. The author of
cdrecord tries to convince manufacturers to imple-
ment a simulation mode for DVD+R and implement
support. DVD+R only supports one write mode that
is somewhere between Track At Once and Packet
writing; this mode is selected in cdrecord via the
-dao/-sao option.
mmc_dvdplusrw
The generic SCSI-3/mmc-3 DVD+RW driver is auto-
selected whenever a DVD+RW medium is found in an
appropriate writer. As DVD+RW media need to be
formatted before their first use, cdrecord auto-
detects this medium state and performs a format
before it starts to write. Note that for unknown
reason, the DVD+RW Alliance does not like that
there is a simulation mode nor a way to erase
DVD+RW media. DVD+RW only supports one write mode
that is close to Packet writing; this mode is
selected in cdrecord via the -dao/-sao option.
cw_7501
The driver for Matsushita/Panasonic CW-7501 is
auto-selected when cdrecord finds this old pre-MMC
drive. Cdrecord supports all write modes for this
drive type.
kodak_pcd_600
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The driver for Kodak PCD-600 is auto-selected when
cdrecord finds this old pre-MMC drive which has
been the first high speed (6x) CD-writer for a
long time. This drive behaves similarly to the
Philips CDD-521 drive.
philips_cdd521
The driver for Philips CDD-521 is auto-selected
when cdrecord finds a Philips CDD-521 drive (which
is the first CD-writer ever made) or one of the
other drives that are known to behave similarly to
this drive. All Philips CDD-521 or similar drives
(see other drivers in this list) do not support
Session At Once recording.
philips_cdd521_old
The driver for Philips old CDD-521 is auto-
selected when cdrecord finds a Philips CDD-521
with very old firmware which has some known limi-
tations.
philips_cdd522
The driver for Philips CDD-522 is auto-selected
when cdrecord finds a Philips CDD-522 which is the
successor of the 521 or one of its variants with
Kodak label. Cdrecord does not support Session At
Once recording with these drives.
philips_dumb
The driver for Philips CDD-521 with pessimistic
assumptions is never auto-selected. It may be
used by hand with drives that behave similarly to
the Philips CDD-521.
pioneer_dws114x
The driver for Pioneer DW-S114X is auto-selected
when cdrecord finds one of the old non-MMC CD-
writers from Pioneer.
plasmon_rf4100
The driver for Plasmon RF 4100 is auto-selected
when cdrecord finds this specific variant of the
Philips CDD-521.
ricoh_ro1060c
The driver for Ricoh RO-1060C is auto-selected
when cdrecord finds this drive. There is no real
support for this drive yet.
ricoh_ro1420c
The driver for Ricoh RO-1420C is auto-selected
when cdrecord finds a drive with this specific
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variant of the Philips CDD-521 command set.
scsi2_cd
The generic SCSI-2 CD-ROM driver is auto-selected
whenever cdrecord finds a pre-MMC drive that does
not support writing or a pre-MMC writer that is
not supported by cdrecord.
sony_cdu924
The driver for Sony CDU-924 / CDU-948 is auto-
selected whenever cdrecord finds one of the old
pre-MMC CD-writers from Sony.
teac_cdr50
The driver for Teac CD-R50S, Teac CD-R55S, JVC
XR-W2010, Pinnacle RCD-5020 is auto-selected when-
ever one of the drives is found that is known to
use the non-MMC command set used by TEAC and JVC.
Note that many drives from JVC will not work
because they do not correctly implement the docu-
mented command set and JVC has been unwilling to
fix or document the bugs. There is no support for
the Session At Once write mode yet.
tyuden_ew50
The driver for Taiyo Yuden EW-50 is auto-selected
when cdrecord finds a drive with this specific
variant of the Philips CDD-521 command set.
yamaha_cdr100
The driver for Yamaha CDR-100 / CDR-102 is auto-
selected when cdrecord finds one of the old pre-
MMC CD-writers from Yamaha. There is no support
for the Session At Once write mode yet.
bd_simul
The simulation BluRay driver allows to run timing
and speed tests with parameters that match the
behavior of BluRay writers.
cdr_simul
The simulation CD-R driver allows to run timing
and speed tests with parameters that match the
behavior of CD-writers.
dvd_simul
The simulation DVD-R driver allows to run timing
and speed tests with parameters that match the
behavior of DVD writers.
There are two special driver entries in the list:
cdr_simul and dvd_simul. These driver entries are
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designed to make timing tests at any speed or timing
tests for drives that do not support the -dummy option.
The simulation drivers implement a drive with a buffer
size of 1 MB that can be changed via the
CDR_SIMUL_BUFSIZE environment variable. The simulation
driver correctly simulates even a buffer underrun con-
dition. If the -dummy option is present, the simula-
tion is not aborted in case of a buffer underrun.
driveropts=option list
Set driver specific options. The options are specified
as a comma separated list. To get a list of valid
options use driveropts=help together with the -check-
drive option. If you like to set driver options
without running a typical cdrecord task, you need to
use the -setdropts option in addition, otherwise the
command line parser in cdrecord will complain.
Currently implemented driver options are:
burnfree
Turn the support for Buffer Underrun Free writing
on. This only works for drives that support
Buffer Underrun Free technology. This may be
called: Sanyo BURN-Proof, Ricoh Just-Link, Yamaha
Lossless-Link or similar.
The default is to turn BURN-Free off, regardless
of the defaults of the drive.
noburnfree
Turn the support for Buffer Underrun Free writing
off.
varirec=value
Turn on the Plextor VariRec writing mode. The man-
datory parameter value is the laser power offset
and currently may be selected from -2, -1, 0, 1,
2. In addition, you need to set the write speed
to 4 in order to allow VariRec to work.
gigarec=value
Manage the Plextor GigaRec writing mode. The man-
datory parameter value is the disk capacity ratio
compared to normal recording and currently may be
selected from 0.6, 0.7, 0.8, 0.9, 1.0, 1,1, 1.2,
1.3, 1.4. If values < 1.0 are used, then the
effect is similar to the Yamaha Audio Master Q. R.
feature. If values > 1.0 are used, then the disk
capacity is increased.
Not all drives support all GigaRec values. When a
drive uses the GigaRec feature, the write speed is
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limited to 8x.
audiomaster
Turn on the Yamaha Audio Master Q. R. feature
which usually should result in high quality CDs
that have less reading problems in Hi-Fi players.
As this is implemented as a variant of the Session
At Once write mode, it will only work if you
select SAO write mode and there is no need to turn
it off. The Audio Master mode will work with a
limited speed but may also be used with data CDs.
In Audio Master mode, the pits on the CD will be
written larger than usual so the capacity of the
medium is reduced when turning this feature on. A
74-minute CD will only have a capacity of 63
minutes if Audio Master is active and the capacity
of a 80-minute CD will be reduced to 68 minutes,
the capacity in will be reduced to 85% of the ori-
ginal capacity. On newer Plextor drives, this
feature is also present but the capacity will be
reduced to 86.66% of the original capacity. For
other factors on Plextor drives, see the gigarec
option above.
forcespeed
Normally, modern drives know the highest possible
speed for different media and may reduce the speed
in order to grant best write quality. This tech-
nology may be called: Plextor PowerRec, Ricoh
Just-Speed, Yamaha Optimum Write Speed Control or
similar. Some drives (e.g. Plextor, Ricoh and
Yamaha) allow to force the drive to use the
selected speed even if the medium is so bad that
the write quality would be poor. This option tells
such a drive to force to use the selected speed
regardless of the medium quality.
Use this option with extreme care and note that
the drive should know better which medium will
work at full speed. The default is to turn for-
cespeed off, regardless of the defaults of the
drive.
noforcespeed
Turn off the force speed feature.
speedread
Some ultra high speed drives such as 48x and fas-
ter drives from Plextor limit the read speed for
unknown media to e.g. 40x in order to avoid dam-
aged disks and drives. Using this option tells
the drive to read any media as fast as possible.
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Be very careful as this may cause the media to
break in the drive while reading, resulting in
damaged media and drive!
nospeedread
Turn off unlimited read speed.
singlesession
Turn the drive into a single-session only drive.
This allows to read defective or non-compliant
(illegal) media with extremely non-standard addi-
tional (broken/illegal) TOC entries in the TOC
from the second or higher session. Some of these
disks become usable if only the information from
the first session is used. You need to enable
Single Session mode before you insert the defec-
tive disk!
nosinglesession
Turn off single-session mode. The drive will again
behave as usual.
hidecdr
Hide the fact that a medium might be a recordable
medium. This allows to make CD-Rs look like CD-
ROMs and applications believe that the media in
the drive is not a CD-R.
nohidecdr
Turn off hiding CD-R media.
tattooinfo
Use this option together with -checkdrive to
retrieve the image size information for the Yamaha
DiskT@2 feature. The images always have a line
length of 3744 pixels. Line number 0 (radius 0)
is mapped to the center of the disk. If you know
the inner and outer radii you will be able to
create a pre distorted image that later may appear
undistorted on the disk.
tattoofile=name
Use this option together with -checkdrive to write
an image prepared for the Yamaha DiskT@2 feature
to the medium. The file must be a file with raw
image B&W data (one byte per pixel) in a size as
retrieved by a previous call to tattooinfo. If
the size of the image equals the maximum possible
size (3744 x 320 pixels), cdrecord will use the
first part of the file. This first part then will
be written to the leftover space on the CD.
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Note that the image must be mirrored to be read-
able from the pick up side of the CD.
layerbreak
Switch a drive with DVD-R/DL medium into layer
jump recording recording mode and use automatic
layer-break position setup.
By default, DVD-R/DL media is written in sequen-
tial recording mode that completely fills up both
layers.
layerbreak=value
Set up a manual layer-break value for DVD-R/DL and
DVD+R/DL. The specified layer-break value must
not be set to less than half of the recorded data
size and must not be set to more than the remain-
ing Layer 0 size of the medium. The manual
layer-break value needs to be a multiple of the
ECC sector size which is 16 logical 2048 byte sec-
tors in case of DVD media and 32 logical 2048 byte
sectors in case of HD-DVD or BD media.
Cdrecord does not allow to write DL media in case
that the total amount of data is less then the
Layer 0 size of the medium except when a manual
layer-break has been specified by using the
layerbreak=value option.
-eject
Eject disk after doing the work. Some devices (e.g.
Philips) need to eject the medium before creating a new
disk. Doing a -dummy test and immediately creating a
real disk would not work on these devices.
-fix The disk will only be fixated (i.e. a TOC for a CD-
reader will be written). This may be used, if for some
reason the disk has been written but not fixated. This
option currently does not work with old TEAC drives
(CD-R50S and CD-R55S).
-force
Force to continue on some errors. Be careful when using
this option. Cdrecord implements several checks that
prevent you from doing unwanted things like damaging
CD-RW media by improper drives. Many of the sanity
checks are disabled when the -force option is used.
This option also implements some tricks that will allow
you to blank bad CD-RW disks.
-format
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Format a CD-RW/DVD-RW/DVD+RW/BD-RE disc. Formatting is
currently only implemented for DVD+RW and BD-RE media.
A 'maiden' DVD+RW or BD-RE medium needs to be formatted
before you may write to it. However, as cdrecord auto-
detects the need for formatting in this case and auto
formats the medium before it starts writing, the -for-
mat option is only needed if you like to forcibly
reformat a DVD+RW or BD-RE medium.
fs=# Set the FIFO (ring buffer) size to #. You may use the
same syntax as in dd(1), sdd(1) or star(1). The number
representing the size is taken in bytes unless other-
wise specified. If a number is followed directly by
the letter `b', `k', `m', `s' or `f', the size is mul-
tiplied by 512, 1024, 1024*1024, 2048 or 2352. If the
size consists of numbers separated by `x' or `*', mul-
tiplication of the two numbers is performed. Thus
fs=10x63k will specify a FIFO size of 630 kBytes.
The size specified by the fs= argument includes the
shared memory that is needed for administration. This
is at least one page of memory. If no fs= option is
present, cdrecord will try to get the FIFO size value
from the CDR_FIFOSIZE environment. The default FIFO
size is currently 4 MB.
The FIFO is used to increase buffering for the real-
time writing process. It allows to run a pipe from
mkisofs directly into cdrecord. If the FIFO is active
and a pipe from mkisofs into cdrecord is used to create
a CD, cdrecord will abort prior to do any modifications
on the disk if mkisofs dies before writing starts. The
recommended FIFO size is between 4 and 128 MBytes. As
a rule of thumb, the FIFO size should be at least equal
to the size of the internal buffer of the
CD/DVD/BluRay-recorder and no more than half of the
physical amount of RAM available in the machine. If
the FIFO size is big enough, the FIFO statistics will
print a FIFO empty count of zero and a FIFO min fill
not below 20%. It is not wise to use too much space
for the FIFO. If you need more than 8 MB to write a CD
at a speed less than 20x from an image on a local file
system on an idle machine, your machine is either
underpowered, has hardware problems or is mis-
configured. If you like to write DVDs or to write CDs
at higher speed, it makes sense to use at least 16 MB
for the FIFO.
On old and small machines, you need to be more careful
with the FIFO size. If your machine has less than
256 MB of physical RAM, you should not set up a FIFO
size that is more than 32 MB. The sun4c architecture
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(e.g. a Sparcstation-2) has only MMU page table entries
for 16 MBytes per process. Using more than 14 MBytes
for the FIFO may cause the operating system in this
case to spend much time to constantly reload the MMU
tables. Newer machines from Sun do not have this MMU
hardware problem. The author has no information on PC
hardware reflecting this problem.
Old Linux systems for non-x86 platforms have broken
definitions for the shared memory size. You need to fix
them and rebuild the kernel or manually tell cdrecord
to use a smaller FIFO.
If you have buffer underruns or similar problems (like
a constantly empty drive-buffer) and observe a zero
fifo empty count, you have hardware problems that
prevent the data from flowing fast enough from the ker-
nel memory to the drive. The FIFO size in this case is
sufficient, but you should check for a working DMA
setup.
gracetime=#
Set the grace time before starting to write to #
seconds. Values below 3 seconds are not allowed in
order to prevent the volume management from interrupt-
ing the write process.
-ignsize
Ignore the known size of the medium. This option should
be used with extreme care, it exists only for debugging
purposes so do not use it for other reasons. It is not
needed to write disks with more than the nominal capa-
city. This option implies -overburn.
-immed
Tell cdrecord to set the SCSI IMMED flag in certain
commands (load, eject, blank, close_track,
close_session). This can be useful on broken systems
with ATAPI hard-disk and CD/DVD/BluRay writer on the
same bus or with SCSI systems that do not use
disconnect/reconnect. These systems will freeze while
blanking or fixating a CD/DVD/BluRay or while a DVD
writer is filling up a session to the minimum amount
(approx. 800 MB). Setting the -immed flag will request
the command to return immediately while the operation
proceeds in background, making the bus usable for the
other devices and avoiding the system freeze. This is
an experimental feature which may work or not, depend-
ing on the model of the CD/DVD/BluRay writer. A
correct solution would be to set up a correct cabling
but there seem to be notebooks around that have been
set up the wrong way by the manufacturer. As it is
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impossible to fix this problem in notebooks, the -immed
option has been added.
A second experimental feature of the -immed flag is to
tell cdrecord to try to wait short times while writing
to the media. This is expected to free the IDE bus if
the CD/DVD/BluRay writer and the data source are con-
nected to the same IDE cable. In this case, the
CD/DVD/BluRay writer would otherwise usually block the
IDE bus for nearly all the time making it impossible to
fetch data from the source drive. See also the minbuf=
and -v options.
Use both features at your own risk. If it turns out
that it would make sense to have a separate option for
the wait feature, write to the author and convince him.
-inq Do an inquiry for the drive, print the inquiry info for
the drive and exit.
-load
Load the media and exit. This only works with a tray-
loading mechanism but seems to be useful when using the
Kodak disk transporter.
-lock
Load the media, lock the door and exit. This only works
with a tray-loading mechanism but seems to be useful
when using the Kodak disk transporter.
mcn=med_cat_nr
Set the Media Catalog Number of the CD to med_cat_nr.
minbuf=value
The minbuf= option allows to define the minimum drive-
buffer fill ratio for the experimental ATAPI wait mode
that is intended to free the IDE bus to allow hard disk
and CD/DVD/BluRay writer to be on the same IDE cable.
As the wait mode currently only works when the verbose
option -v has been specified, cdrecord implies the ver-
bose option in case the -immed or minbuf= option has
been specified. Valid values for minbuf= are between
25 and 95 for 25%...95% minimum drive-buffer fill
ratio.
-media-info
-minfo
Retrieve and print information about the state of the
medium. This option currently only works for MMC-
compliant drives.
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-msinfo
Retrieve multi-session info in a form suitable for
mkisofs-1.10 or later.
This option makes only sense with a CD that contains at
least one closed session and is appendable (not finally
closed yet). Some drives create error messages if you
try to get the multi-session info for a disk that is
not suitable for this operation.
-noclose
Do not close the current track, useful only when in
packet writing mode. This is an experimental inter-
face.
-nofix
Do not fixate the disk after writing the tracks. This
may be used to create an audio disk in steps. An un-
fixated disk can usually not be used on a non CD-writer
type drive but there are audio CD-players that will be
able to play such a disk.
-overburn
Allow cdrecord to write more than the official size of
a medium. This feature is usually called overburning
and depends on the fact that most blank media may hold
more space than the official size. As the official size
of the lead-out area on the disk is 90 seconds (6750
sectors) and a disk usually works if there are at least
150 sectors of lead out, all media may be overburned by
at least 88 seconds (6600 sectors). Most CD-recorders
only do overburning in SAO or RAW mode. Known excep-
tions are TEAC CD-R50S, TEAC CD-R55S and the Panasonic
CW-7502. Some drives do not allow to overburn as much
as you might like and limit the size of a CD to e.g. 76
minutes. This problem may be circumvented by writing
the CD in RAW mode because this way the drive has no
chance to find the size before starting to burn. There
is no guarantee that your drive supports overburning at
all. Make a test to check if your drive implements the
feature.
-packet
Set Packet writing mode. This is an experimental inter-
face.
pktsize=#
Set the packet size to #, forces fixed packet mode.
This is an experimental interface.
-prcap
Print the drive capabilities for SCSI-3/mmc-compliant
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drives as obtained from mode page 0x2A. Values marked
with kB use 1000 bytes as kilo-byte, values marked with
KB use 1024 bytes as Kilo-byte.
-setdropts
Set the driveropts specified by driveropts=option list,
the speed of the drive and the dummy flag and exit.
This allows cdrecord to set drive specific parameters
that are not directly used by cdrecord like e.g. sin-
gle session mode, hide cdr and similar. It is needed
in case that driveropts=option list should be called
without planning to run a typical cdrecord task.
speed=#
Set the speed factor of the writing process to #. # is
an integer, representing a multiple of what has been
defined as single speed for the medium.
For CD-media, single speed is the audio playback speed.
This is about 150 KB/s for CD-ROM and about 172 KB/s
for CD-Audio. Single speed is about 1385 kB/s for DVD
media and about 4496 kB/s for BluRay media.
If no speed option is present, cdrecord will try to get
a drive specific speed value from the file
/etc/default/cdrecord and if it cannot find one, it
will try to get the speed value from the CDR_SPEED
environment and later from the CDR_SPEED= entry in
/etc/default/cdrecord. If no speed value could be
found, cdrecord uses a drive specific default speed.
The default for all new (MMC-compliant) drives is to
use the maximum supported by the drive. If you use
speed=0 with a MMC-compliant drive, cdrecord will
switch to the lowest possible speed for drive and
medium. If you are using an old (non-MMC) drive that
has problems with speed=2 or speed=4, you should try
speed=0.
-text
Write CD-Text information based on information taken
from a file that contains ascii information for the
text strings. Cdrecord supports CD-Text information
based on the content of the *.inf files created by
cdda2wav and CD-Text information based on the content
from a CUE sheet file. If a CUE sheet file contains
both (binary CDTEXTFILE and text based SONGWRITER)
entries, then the information based on the CDTEXTFILE
entry will win.
You need to use the -useinfo option in addition in
order to tell cdrecord to read the *.inf files or
cuefile=filename in order to tell cdrecord to read a
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CUE sheet file in addition. If you like to write your
own CD-Text information, edit the *.inf files or the
CUE sheet file with a text editor and change the fields
that are relevant for CD-Text.
textfile=filename
Write CD-Text based on information found in the binary
file filename. This file must contain information in a
data format defined in the SCSI-3 MMC-2 standard and in
the Red Book. The four-byte-sized header that is
defined in the SCSI standard is optional and allows to
make the recognition of correct data less ambiguous.
This is the best option to be used to copy CD-Text data
from existing CDs that already carry CD-Text informa-
tion. To get data in a format suitable for this option
use cdrecord -vv -toc to extract the information from
disk. If both, textfile=filename and CD-Text informa-
tion from *.inf or *.cue files are present,
textfile=filename will overwrite the other information.
-toc Retrieve and print out the table of contents or PMA of
a CD. With this option, cdrecord will work with CD-R
drives and with CD-ROM drives.
-waiti
Wait for input to become available on standard input
before trying to open the SCSI driver. This allows
cdrecord to read its input from a pipe even when writ-
ing additional sessions to a multi-session disk. When
writing another session to a multi-session disk,
mkisofs needs to read the old session from the device
before writing output. This cannot be done if cdrecord
opens the SCSI driver at the same time.
-useinfo
Use *.inf files to overwrite audio options. If this
option is used, the pregap size information, the index
information, the pre-emphasis information and the CD-
Text information is read from the *.inf file that is
associated with the file that contains the audio data
for a track.
If used together with the -audio option, cdrecord may
be used to write audio CDs from a pipe from cdda2wav if
you call cdrecord with the *.inf files as track parame-
ter list instead of using audio files. The audio data
is read from stdin in this case. See EXAMPLES section
below. Cdrecord first verifies that stdin is not con-
nected to a terminal and runs some heuristic con-
sistency checks on the *.inf files and then sets the
track lengths from the information in the *.inf files.
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If you like to write from stdin, make sure that
cdrecord is called with a large enough FIFO size,
reduce the write speed to a value below the read speed
of the source drive and switch the burn-free option for
the recording drive on.
SCSI options
dev=target
Set the SCSI target for the CD/DVD/BluRay-recorder, see
notes above. A typical target device specification is
dev=1,6,0 . If a filename must be provided together
with the numerical target specification, the filename
is implementation specific. The correct filename in
this case can be found in the system specific manuals
of the target operating system. On a FreeBSD system
without CAM support, you need to use the control device
(e.g. /dev/rcd0.ctl). A correct device specification
in this case may be dev=/dev/rcd0.ctl:@ .
General SCSI addressing
The target device to the dev= option refers to the
SCSI CAM standard notation for scsibus/target/lun of
the CD/DVD/BluRay-recorder. Communication on SunOS is
done with the SCSI general driver scg. Other operating
systems are using a library simulation of this driver.
Possible syntax is: dev= scsibus,target,lun or dev=
target,lun. In the latter case, the CD/DVD/BluRay-
recorder has to be connected to the default SCSI bus of
the machine. Scsibus, target and lun are integer
numbers. Some operating systems or SCSI transport
implementations may require to specify a filename in
addition. In this case the correct syntax for the dev-
ice is: dev= devicename:scsibus,target, or dev=
devicename:target,lun. If the name of the device node
that has been specified on such a system refers to
exactly one SCSI device, a shorthand in the form dev=
devicename:@ or dev= devicename:@,lun may be used
instead of dev= devicename:scsibus,target,
Remote SCSI addressing
To access remote SCSI devices, you need to prepend the
SCSI device name by a remote device indicator. The
remote device indicator is either REMOTE:user@host: or
REMOTE:host: A valid remote SCSI device name may be:
REMOTE:user@host: to allow remote SCSI bus scanning or
REMOTE:user@host:1,0,0 to access the SCSI device at
host connected to SCSI bus # 1,target 0, lun 0. In
order to allow remote access to a specific host, the
rscsi(1) program needs to be present and configured on
the host.
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Alternate SCSI transports
Cdrecord is completely based on SCSI commands but this
is no problem as all CD/DVD/BluRay writers ever made
use SCSI commands for the communication. Even ATAPI
drives are just SCSI drives that inherently use the ATA
packet interface as SCSI command transport layer build
into the IDE (ATA) transport. You may need to specify
an alternate transport layer on the command line if
your OS does not implement a fully integrated kernel
driver subsystem that allows to access any drive using
SCSI commands via a single unique user interface.
To access SCSI devices via alternate transport layers,
you need to prepend the SCSI device name by a transport
layer indicator. The transport layer indicator may be
something like USCSI: or ATAPI:. To get a list of sup-
ported transport layers for your platform, use dev=
HELP:
Portability Background
To make cdrecord portable to all UNIX platforms, the
syntax dev= devicename:scsibus,target, is preferred as
it hides OS specific knowledge about device names from
the user. A specific OS may not necessarily support a
way to specify a real device file name nor a way to
specify scsibus,target,lun.
Scsibus 0 is the default SCSI bus on the machine. Watch
the boot messages for more information or look into
/var/adm/messages for more information about the SCSI
configuration of your machine. If you have problems to
figure out what values for scsibus,target,lun should be
used, try the -scanbus option of cdrecord described
below.
Using logical names for devices
If no dev option is present, cdrecord will try to get
the device from the CDR_DEVICE environment.
If a file /etc/default/cdrecord exists, and if the
argument to the dev= option or the CDR_DEVICE environ-
ment does not contain the characters ',', '/', '@' or
':', it is interpreted as a device label name that was
defined in the file /etc/default/cdrecord (see FILES
section).
Autotarget Mode
If no dev= option and no CDR_DEVICE environment is
present, or if it only contains a transport specifier
but no address notation, cdrecord tries to scan the
SCSI address space for CD-ROM drives. If exactly one
is found, this is used by default.
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debug=#, -d
Set the misc debug value to # (with debug=#) or incre-
ment the misc debug level by one (with -d). If you
specify -dd, this equals to debug=2. This may help to
find problems while opening a driver for libscg as well
as with sector sizes and sector types. Using -debug
slows down the process and may be the reason for a
buffer underrun.
kdebug=#, kd=#
Tell the scg-driver to modify the kernel debug value
while SCSI commands are running.
-reset
Try to reset the SCSI bus where the CD-recorder is
located. This does not work on all operating systems.
-scanbus
Scan all SCSI devices on all SCSI busses and print the
inquiry strings. This option may be used to find SCSI
address of the CD/DVD/BluRay-recorder on a system. The
numbers printed out as labels are computed by: bus *
100 + target
scgopts=list
A comma separated list of SCSI options that are handled
by libscg. The implemented options may be uptated
indepentendly from applications. Currently, one
option: ignore-resid is supported to work around a
Linux kernel bug.
-silent, -s
Do not print out a status report for failed SCSI com-
mands.
timeout=#
Set the default SCSI command timeout value to #
seconds. The default SCSI command timeout is the
minimum timeout used for sending SCSI commands. If a
SCSI command fails due to a timeout, you may try to
raise the default SCSI command timeout above the
timeout value of the failed command. If the command
runs correctly with a raised command timeout, please
report the better timeout value and the corresponding
command to the author of the program. If no timeout=
option is present, a default timeout of 40 seconds is
used.
ts=# Set the maximum transfer size for a single SCSI command
to #. The syntax for the ts= option is the same as for
cdrecord fs=# or sdd bs=#.
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If no ts= option has been specified, cdrecord defaults
to a transfer size of 63 kB. If libscg gets lower
values from the operating system, the value is reduced
to the maximum value that is possible with the current
operating system. Sometimes, it may help to further
reduce the transfer size or to enhance it, but note
that it may take a long time to find a better value by
experimenting with the ts= option.
-V Increment the verbose level in respect of SCSI command
transport by one. This helps to debug problems during
the writing process, that occur in the CD/DVD/BluRay-
recorder. If you get incomprehensible error messages
you should use this flag to get more detailed output.
-VV will show data buffer content in addition. Using
-V or -VV slows down the process and may be the reason
for a buffer underrun.
TRACK OPTIONS
Track options may be mixed with track file names.
-audio
If this flag is present, all subsequent tracks are
written in CD-DA (similar to Red Book) audio format.
The file with data for this tracks should contain
stereo, 16-bit digital audio with 44100 samples/s. The
byte order should be the following: MSB left, LSB left,
MSB right, LSB right, MSB left and so on. The track
should be a multiple of 2352 bytes. It is not possible
to put the master image of an audio track on a raw disk
because data will be read in multiple of 2352 bytes
during the recording process.
If a filename ends in .au or .wav the file is con-
sidered to be a structured audio data file. Cdrecord
assumes that the file in this case is a Sun audio file
or a Microsoft .WAV file and extracts the audio data
from the files by skipping over the non-audio header
information. In all other cases, cdrecord will only
work correctly if the audio data stream does not have
any header. Because many structured audio files do not
have an integral number of blocks (1/75th second each)
in length, it is often necessary to specify the -pad
option as well. cdrecord recognizes that audio data in
a .WAV file is stored in Intel (little-endian) byte
order, and will automatically byte-swap the data if the
CD-recorder requires big-endian data. Cdrecord will
reject any audio file that does not match the Red Book
requirements of 16-bit stereo samples in PCM coding at
44100 samples/second.
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Using other structured audio data formats as input to
cdrecord will usually work if the structure of the data
is the structure described above (raw pcm data in big-
endian byte order). However, if the data format
includes a header, you will hear a click at the start
of the track.
If neither -data nor -audio have been specified,
cdrecord defaults to -audio for all filenames that end
in .au or .wav and to -data for all other files.
-cdi If this flag is present, the TOC type for the disk is
set to CDI. This only makes sense with XA disks.
-copy
If this flag is present, all TOC entries for subsequent
audio tracks of the resulting CD will indicate that the
audio data has permission to be copied without limit.
This option has no effect on data tracks.
-data
If this flag is present, all subsequent tracks are
written in CD-ROM mode 1 (Yellow Book) format. The data
size is a multiple of 2048 bytes. The file with track
data should contain an ISO-9660 or Rock Ridge filesys-
tem image (see mkisofs for more details). If the track
data is an ufs filesystem image, fragment size should
be set to 2 KB or more to allow CD-drives with 2 KB
sector size to be used for reading.
-data is the default, if no other flag is present and
the file does not appear to be of one of the well known
audio file types.
If neither -data nor -audio have been specified,
cdrecord defaults to -audio for all filenames that end
in .au or .wav and to -data for all other files.
index=list
Sets an index list for the next track. In index list
is a comma separated list of numbers that are counting
from index 1. The first entry in this list must contain
a 0, the following numbers must be an ascending list of
numbers (counting in 1/75 seconds) that represent the
start of the indices. An index list in the form:
0,7500,15000 sets index 1 to the start of the track,
index 2 100 seconds from the start of the track and
index 3 200 seconds from the start of the track.
-isosize
Use the ISO-9660 file system size as the size of the
next track. This option is needed if you want cdrecord
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to directly read the image of a track from a raw disk
partition or from a TAO master CD. In the first case
the option -isosize is needed to limit the size of the
CD to the size of the ISO filesystem. In the second
case the option -isosize is needed to prevent cdrecord
from reading the two run-out blocks that are appended
by each CD-recorder in track-at-once mode. These two
run-out blocks cannot be read and would cause a buffer
underrun that would cause a defective copy.
Note that if this option is used on files created by
mkisofs, the padding data that was added by mkisofs is
lost and replaced by padding added by cdrecord. This
may also change the amount of padding.
In case cdrecord reads the track data from stdin, only
the first track may be used with the -isosize option.
If -isosize is used for a track, cdrecord will automat-
ically add padding for this track as if the -pad option
had been used but the amount of padding may be less
than the padding written by mkisofs. Note that if you
use -isosize on a track that contains Sparc boot infor-
mation, the boot information will be lost.
Note also that this option cannot be used to determine
the size of a file system if the -multi option is
present.
isrc=ISRC_number
Set the International Standard Recording Number for the
next track to ISRC_number.
-mode2
If this flag is present, all subsequent tracks are
written in CD-ROM mode 2 format. The data size is a
multiple of 2336 bytes.
-nocopy
If this flag is present, all TOC entries for subsequent
audio tracks of the resulting CD will indicate that the
audio data has permission to be copied only once for
personal use - this is the default.
-nopad
Do not pad the following tracks - the default.
-nopreemp
If this flag is present, all TOC entries for subsequent
audio tracks will indicate that the audio data has been
mastered with linear data - this is the default.
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-noshorttrack
Re-enforce the Red Book track length standard. Tracks
must be at least 4 seconds.
-pad If the track is a data track, 15 sectors of zeroed data
will be added to the end of this and each subsequent
data track. In this case, the -pad option is super-
seded by the padsize= option. It will remain however as
a shorthand for padsize=15s. If the -pad option refers
to an audio track, cdrecord will pad the audio data to
be a multiple of 2352 bytes. The audio data padding is
done with binary zeroes which is equal to absolute
silence.
-pad remains valid until disabled by -nopad.
padsize=#
Set the amount of data to be appended as padding to the
next track to #. Opposed to the behavior of the -pad
option, the value for padsize= is reset to zero for
each new track. Cdrecord assumes a sector size of 2048
bytes for the padsize= option, independent from the
real sector size and independent from the write mode.
The megabytes mentioned in the verbose mode output how-
ever are counting the output sector size which is e.g.
2448 bytes when writing in RAW/RAW96 mode. See the fs=
option for possible arguments. To pad the equivalent
of 20 minutes on a CD, you may write padsize=20x60x75s.
Use this option if your CD-drive is not able to read
the last sectors of a track or if you want to be able
to read the CD on a Linux system with the ISO-9660
filesystem read-ahead bug. If an empty file is used
for track data, this option may be used to create a
disk that is entirely made of padding. This may e.g.
be used to find out how much overburning is possible
with a specific medium.
-preemp
If this flag is present, all TOC entries for subsequent
audio tracks will indicate that the audio data has been
sampled with 50/15 microsec pre-emphasis. The data
however is not modified during the process of transfer-
ring from file to disk. This option has no effect on
data tracks.
pregap=#
Set the pre-gap size for the next track. This option
currently only makes sense with the TEAC drive when
creating track-at-once disks without the 2-second
silence before each track.
This option may go away in the future.
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-scms
If this flag is present, all TOC entries for subsequent
audio tracks of the resulting CD will indicate that the
audio data has no permission to be copied anymore.
-shorttrack
Allow all subsequent tracks to violate the Red Book
track length standard which requires a minimum track
length of 4 seconds. This option is only useful when
used in SAO or RAW mode. Not all drives support this
feature. The drive must accept the resulting CUE sheet
or support RAW writing.
-swab
If this flag is present, audio data is assumed to be in
byte-swapped (little-endian) order. Some types of CD-
writers e.g. Yamaha, Sony and the new SCSI-3/mmc drives
require audio data to be presented in little-endian
order, while other writers require audio data to be
presented in the big-endian (network) byte order nor-
mally used by the SCSI protocol. Cdrecord knows if a
CD-recorder needs audio data in big- or little-endian
order, and corrects the byte order of the data stream
to match the needs of the recorder. You only need the
-swab flag if your data stream is in Intel (little-
endian) byte order.
Note that the verbose output of cdrecord will show you
if swapping is necessary to make the byte order of the
input data fit the required byte order of the recorder.
Cdrecord will not show you if the -swab flag was actu-
ally present for a track.
tsize=#
If the master image for the next track has been stored
on a raw disk, use this option to specify the valid
amount of data on this disk. If the image of the next
track is stored in a regular file, the size of that
file is taken to determine the length of this track.
If the track contains an ISO-9660 filesystem image use
the -isosize option to determine the length of that
filesystem image.
In Disk At Once mode and with some drives that use the
TEAC programming interface, even in Track At Once mode,
cdrecord needs to know the size of each track before
starting to write the disk. Cdrecord now checks this
and aborts before starting to write. If this happens
you will need to run mkisofs -print-size before and use
the output (with `s' appended) as an argument to the
tsize= option of cdrecord (e.g. tsize=250000s).
See fs= option for possible arguments.
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-xa If this flag is present, all subsequent tracks are
written in CD-ROM XA mode 2 form 1 format. The data
size is a multiple of 2048 bytes. The XA sector sub-
headers will be created by the drive. With this
option, the write mode is the same as with the -multi
option.
-xa1 If this flag is present, all subsequent tracks are
written in CD-ROM XA mode 2 form 1 format. The data
size is a multiple of 2056 bytes. The XA sector sub-
headers are part of the user data and have to be sup-
plied by the application that prepares the data to be
written.
-xa2 If this flag is present, all subsequent tracks are
written in CD-ROM XA mode 2 form 2 format. The data is
a multiple of 2324 bytes. The XA sector sub-headers
will be created by the drive.
-xamix
If this flag is present, all subsequent tracks are
written in a way that allows a mix of CD-ROM XA mode 2
form 1/2 format. The data size is a multiple of 2332
bytes. The XA sector sub-headers are part of the user
data and have to be supplied by the application that
prepares the data to be written. The CRC and the P/Q
parity ECC/EDC information (depending on the sector
type) have to be supplied by the application that
prepares the data to be written.
EXAMPLES
For all examples below, it will be assumed that the machine
includes two drives. The reader is assumed to be target 1
on the primary SCSI bus. The CD/DVD/BluRay-recorder is
assumed to be target 2 on the primary SCSI bus of the
machine.
If there is only one drive in the machine, the dev= option
may be omitted in the examples below, but in this case the
examples for replication without intermediate files do not
apply.
Replicating an Audio CD
To copy an audio CD in the most accurate way, first run
cdda2wav dev=1,0 paraopts=proof -vall cddb=0 -B -Owav
and then run
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cdrecord dev=2,0 -v -dao -useinfo -text *.wav
This will try to copy track indices and to read CD-Text
information from disk. If there is no CD-Text information,
cdda2wav will try to get the information from freedb.org
instead.
To copy an audio CD from a pipe (without intermediate
files), first run
cdda2wav dev=1,0 -vall cddb=0 -info-only
and then run
cdda2wav dev=1,0 -no-infofile -B -Oraw - | \
cdrecord dev=2,0 -v -dao -audio -useinfo -text *.inf
This will get all information (including track size info)
from the *.inf files and then read the audio data from
stdin.
If you like to write from stdin, make sure that cdrecord is
called with a large enough FIFO size (e.g. fs=128m), reduce
the write speed to a value below the read speed of the
source drive (e.g. speed=12), and switch the burn-free
option for the recording drive on by adding
driveropts=burnfree. For the same reason, it is not recom-
mended to extract the audio data in paranoia mode in this
case.
Replicating a simple CD-ROM/DVD-ROM/BD-ROM
To copy a simple disk, first read the master using:
readcd dev=1,0 f=somefile
Then write the disk using:
cdrecord dev=2,0 -v somefile
Replicating a CD-ROM in clone mode
To copy a CD in clone mode, first read the master CD using:
readcd dev=1,0 -clone f=somefile
or (in case the CD contains many sectors that are unreadable
by intention) by calling:
readcd dev=1,0 -clone -nocorr f=somefile
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This will create the files somefile and somefile.toc. Then
write the CD using:
cdrecord dev=2,0 -raw96r -clone -v somefile
Creating an Audio CD
To record a pure CD-DA (audio) at single speed, with each
track contained in files named track01.cdaudio,
track02.cdaudio, etc.:
cdrecord -v speed=1 dev=2,0 -dao -audio track*.cdaudio
To check if it will be OK to use double speed for the exam-
ple above, use the dummy write option:
cdrecord -v -dummy speed=2 dev=2,0 -dao -audio
track*.cdaudio
Creating a mixed Audio-Data CD
To record a mixed-mode CD with an ISO-9660 filesystem from
cdimage.raw on the first track, the other tracks being audio
tracks from the files track01.cdaudio, track02.cdaudio,
etc.:
cdrecord -v dev=2,0 -dao cdimage.raw -audio
track*.cdaudio
Creating a CD-ROM/DVD-ROM/BD-ROM
To record a pure disk at double speed, using data from the
file cdimage.raw:
cdrecord -v speed=2 dev=2,0 -dao cdimage.raw
To create an image for an ISO-9660 filesystem with Rock
Ridge extensions:
mkisofs -R -o cdimage.raw /home/joerg/master/tree
To check the resulting file before writing to disk on
Solaris:
mount -r -F fbk -o type=hsfs /dev/fbk0:cdimage.raw /mnt
The fbk driver first appeared in 1988.
Solaris 9 or newer comes with a variant of the original fbk
idea called lofi. The command for the lofi variant is:
mount -r -F hsfs ` lofiadm -a /tmp/cdimage.raw ` /mnt
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Note that lofiadm needs absolute path names.
On Linux:
mount cdimage.raw -r -t iso9660 -o loop /mnt
Go on with:
ls -lR /mnt
umount /mnt
If the overall speed of the system is sufficient and the
structure of the filesystem is not too complex, cdrecord
will run without creating an image of the ISO-9660 filesys-
tem. Simply run the pipeline:
mkisofs -R /master/tree | cdrecord -v -dao fs=6m speed=2
dev=2,0 -
The recommended minimum FIFO size for running this pipeline
is 4 MBytes. As the default FIFO size is 4 MB, the fs=
option needs to be present only if you want to use a dif-
ferent FIFO size. If your system is loaded, you should run
mkisofs in the real-time class too. To raise the priority
of mkisofs replace the command
mkisofs -R /master/tree
by
priocntl -e -c RT -p 59 mkisofs -R /master/tree
on Solaris and by
nice --18 mkisofs -R /master/tree
on systems that do not have UNIX International-compliant
real-time scheduling.
Cdrecord runs at priority 59 on Solaris, you should run
mkisofs at no more than priority 58. On other systems, you
should run mkisofs at no less than nice --18.
Creating a CD-ROM without file system image on disk has been
tested on a Sparcstation-2 with a Yamaha CDR-400. It did
work up to quad speed when the machine was not loaded. A
faster machine may be able to handle quad speed also in the
loaded case.
To handle drives that need to know the size of a track
before starting to write, first run
mkisofs -R -quiet -print-size /master/tree
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and then run
mkisofs -R /master/tree | cdrecord -v -dao speed=2
dev=2,0 tsize=XXXs -
where XXX is replaced by the output of the previous run of
mkisofs.
Setting drive options
To set drive options without writing a disk (e.g. to switch
a drive to single-session mode), run
cdrecord dev=2,0 -setdropts driveropts=singlesession
If you like to do this when no disk is in the drive, call
cdrecord dev=2,0 -force -setdropts
driveropts=singlesession
ENVIRONMENT
CDR_DEVICE
This may either hold a device identifier that is suit-
able to the open call of the SCSI transport library or
a label in the file /etc/default/cdrecord.
CDR_SPEED
Sets the default speed value for writing (see also
-speed option).
CDR_FIFOSIZE
Sets the default size of the FIFO (see also fs=#
option).
CDR_FORCERAWSPEED
If this environment variable is set, cdrecord will
allow you to write at the full RAW encoding speed a
single CPU supports. This will create high potential
of buffer underruns. Use with care.
CDR_FORCESPEED
If this environment variable is set, cdrecord will
allow you to write at the full DMA speed the system
supports. There is no DMA reserve for reading the data
that is to be written from disk. This will create high
potential of buffer underruns. Use with care.
If this environment variable is set to the value any,
cdrecord allows to write at any speed even though it
may fail later with a buffer underrun.
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RSH If the RSH environment is present, the remote connec-
tion will not be created via rcmd(3) but by calling the
program pointed to by RSH. Use e.g. RSH=/usr/bin/ssh
to create a secure shell connection.
Note that this forces cdrecord to create a pipe to the
rsh(1) program and disallows cdrecord to directly
access the network socket to the remote server. This
makes it impossible to set up performance parameters
and slows down the connection compared to a root-
initiated rcmd(3) connection.
RSCSI
If the RSCSI environment is present, the remote SCSI
server will not be the program /opt/schily/sbin/rscsi
but the program pointed to by RSCSI. Note that the
remote SCSI server program name will be ignored if you
log in using an account that has been created with a
remote SCSI server program as login shell.
EXIT STATUS
The following exit codes are used:
0 No error appeared.
-1 A specific error appeared. This may be a usage error
caused by an illegal command line or another error with
a problem specific error message from cdrecord.
-2 An unspecified error appeared during the process of
talking to the drive. See SCSI error message for more
informations. The section DIAGNOSTICS below contains an
explanation on how to read SCSI error messages.
other
The errno value from a failed system call.
Note that older operating systems and older shells may not
support the full 32 bit range of the exit code and mask the
value with 0xFF. This results in shortened exit codes in the
range 0..255 where -1 is mapped to 255.
FILES
/etc/default/cdrecord
Default values can be set for the following options in
/etc/default/cdrecord. For example: CDR_FIFOSIZE=8m
or CDR_SPEED=2
CDR_DEVICE
This may either hold a device identifier that is
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suitable to the open call of the SCSI transport
library or a label in the file
/etc/default/cdrecord that allows to identify a
specific drive on the system.
CDR_SPEED
Sets the default speed value for writing (see also
-speed option).
CDR_FIFOSIZE
Sets the default size of the FIFO (see also fs=#
option).
CDR_MAXFIFOSIZE
Sets the maximum size of the FIFO (see also fs=#
option).
Any other label
is an identifier for a specific drive on the sys-
tem. Such an identifier may not contain the char-
acters ',', '/', '@' or ':'.
Each line that follows a label contains a TAB
separated list of items. Currently, four items
are recognized: the SCSI ID of the drive, the
default speed that should be used for this drive,
the default FIFO size that should be used for this
drive and drive specific options. The values for
speed and fifosize may be set to -1 to tell
cdrecord to use the global defaults. The value
for driveropts may be set to "" if no driveropts
are used. A typical line may look this way:
teac1= 0,5,0 4 8m ""
yamaha= 1,6,0 -1 -1 burnfree
This tells cdrecord that a drive named teac1 is at
scsibus 0, target 5, lun 0 and should be used with
speed 4 and a FIFO size of 8 MB. A second drive
may be found at scsibus 1, target 6, lun 0 and
uses the default speed and the default FIFO size.
*.inf
The *.inf files are created by cdda2wav where * is
replaced by the actual audio file prefix. They are
read and used by cdrecord in case cdrecord was called
with the -useinfo option.
There are three general types of parameters:
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numerical parameters
A numerical parameter is a number and directly
follows the tag label without any quoting.
unquoted string type parameters
An unquoted parameter is make from one or more
words that directly follow the tag label. How
many words from the parameter list are used by
cdrecord depends on the tag label.
quoted string type parameters
A string type parameter is enclosed in single
quotes. The string starts after the first single
quote character that follows the tag label and
ends before the last single quote on the same
line. It needs no escape sequences in case that a
single quote appears inside the string. Any text
to the right of the rightmost single quote charac-
ter is ignored.
The order of the tag labels in the file is not impor-
tant.
The following tag labels may appear in a *.inf file:
CDINDEX_DISCID=
The cdindex disk ID is used by the musicbrainz
CD-database.
This tag label uses a quoted string type parame-
ter.
This tag label is ignored by cdrecord.
CDDB_DISCID=
The cddb disk ID is used by the cddb and the
freedb CD-database.
This tag label uses a numerical parameter.
This tag label is ignored by cdrecord.
MCN= The Media Catalog Number (MCN) is a 13 digit
number that follows UPC/EAN-13 rules.
The data is used by cdrecord to create sub-channel
data.
ISRC=
The International Standard Recording Code (ISRC)
is a 12 byte string that is created from two
uppercase characters for the country code,
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followed by three uppercase characters for the
owner, followed by two digits for the year of
recording followed by five digits for the record-
ing serial number.
To increase the readability of the ISRC tag, there
may be a minus sign between every two fields of
the ISRC string.
The data is used by cdrecord to create sub-channel
data.
Albumtitle=
The Album Title is the name of the disk in the
CD-Text information.
This tag label uses a quoted string type parame-
ter.
Tracktitle=
The Track Title is the name of the current track
in the CD-Text information.
This tag label uses a quoted string type parame-
ter.
Albumperformer=
The Album Performer is the global name of the of
the performer of the disk in the CD-Text informa-
tion.
This tag label uses a quoted string type parame-
ter.
Performer=
The Performer is the name of the of the performer
of the current track in the CD-Text information.
This tag label uses a quoted string type parame-
ter.
Albumsongwriter=
The Album Songwriter is the global name of the of
the songwriter of the disk in the CD-Text informa-
tion.
This tag label uses a quoted string type parame-
ter.
Songwriter=
The Songwriter is the name of the of the song-
writer of the current track in the CD-Text
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information.
This tag label uses a quoted string type parame-
ter.
Albumcomposer=
The Album Composer is the global name of the of
the composer of the disk in the CD-Text informa-
tion.
This tag label uses a quoted string type parame-
ter.
Composer=
The Composer is the name of the of the composer of
the current track in the CD-Text information.
This tag label uses a quoted string type parame-
ter.
Albumarranger=
The Album Arranger is the global name of the of
the arranger of the disk in the CD-Text informa-
tion.
This tag label uses a quoted string type parame-
ter.
Arranger=
The Arranger is the name of the of the arranger of
the current track in the CD-Text information.
This tag label uses a quoted string type parame-
ter.
Albummessage=
The Album Message is the global message text of
the disk in the CD-Text information.
This tag label uses a quoted string type parame-
ter.
Message=
The Message is the message text of the current
track in the CD-Text information.
This tag label uses a quoted string type parame-
ter.
Albumclosed_info=
The Album Closed_info is the global closed info
text of the disk in the CD-Text information.
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This tag label uses a quoted string type parame-
ter.
Closed_info=
The Closed_info is the closed info text of the
current track in the CD-Text information.
This tag label uses a quoted string type parame-
ter.
Track=
The parameter contains the relative number of the
current track on the original disk. The first
track always has the track number 1, a hidden
track uses track number 0.
This tag label uses a numerical parameter.
This tag label is ignored by cdrecord except when
checking the the Trackstart for track #1.
Tracknumber=
The parameter contains the absolute number of the
current track, taken from the TOC on the original
disk. The first track on the original disk may
have a number greater than 1, a hidden track
always uses track number 0.
This tag label uses a numerical parameter.
This tag label is currently ignored by cdrecord as
cdrecord assigns track numbers when compiling the
disk information.
Trackstart=
The parameter contains the track start offset in
sectors on the original disk. If the current
track becomes the first track on the new disk and
if the track was the first track on the original
disk. cdrecord uses this number to set up the
offset for index 1 on the new disk.
This tag label uses a numerical parameter.
Tracklength=
The parameter is used by cdrecord to set up the
size of the track on the new disk.
This tag label uses an unquoted string type param-
eter in the form "sectors, samples".
This label is mandatory for cdrecord.
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Pre-emphasis=
The pre-emphasis parameter controls whether the
related pre-emphasis bit in the sub-channel data
is set by cdrecord. Permitted values for this
parameter are yes and no.
This tag label uses an unquoted string type param-
eter. Valid values are yes and no.
Channels=
The parameter of this tag is the number of chan-
nels on the disk. All CD-audio disks use stereo
recording and thus a 2 is the correct parameter.
This tag label uses a numerical parameter.
This label is currently ignored by cdrecord.
Copy_permitted=
The parameter for this tag label contains informa-
tion about the copyright state of a track on the
original disk.
This tag label uses an unquoted string type param-
eter. Valid values are:
yes The digital copy permitted bit is set in the
TOC and in the sub-channel data. If this bit
is set, the related track is not copyright
protected and may be copied infinitely.
no The digital copy permitted bit is not set in
the TOC. The digital copy permitted bit in
the sub-channel data alters with 9.375 Hz.
This is called Serial Copy Management System
(SCMS). The sense of this track state is to
flag that the creator of the CD does not have
the copyright permission to create copies of
the related track. The related track is copy-
right protected and the creator of the CD
thus is just given the permission to create
one single copy from fair use rights and no
further copies are permitted from this
source.
once The digital copy permitted bit is not set in
the TOC and in the sub-channel data. The
sense of this track state is to flag that the
related track is copyright protected and thus
may not be coped infinitely. One single copy
from fair use rights is permitted.
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Note that many CDs sold by the music industry have
SCMS flagged for one or more tracks, signalling
that the related content company does not own the
copyright to make copies from this track.
Endianess=
The parameter for this tag is the byte order used
in the audio data file that was created for this
track.
This tag label uses an unquoted string type param-
eter. Valid values are little and big.
This label is ignored by cdrecord as the endianess
is retrieved from the audio file format.
Index=
The parameter list for this tag is a list of
numbers that are sector numbers counting rela-
tively to the logical beginning of the track
(which always is at index #1). As any track needs
to have an entry for index #1, the first entry in
the list is always 0. If more entries are present
for this tag, there are more offset values that
correspond to index values greater than 1.
This tag label uses an unquoted string type param-
eter that contains a list of space separated index
offset numbers.
Index0=
The parameter for this tag is a number that
represents the number of sectors relatively to the
beginning (index #1) of this track. This number
identifies where index #0 of the next track
begins. It the parameter is set to -1, the next
track has no index #0, resulting in pregap size 0
for the next track.
Note that cdrecord strictly follows the CD-
standard that defines that the logical beginning
of a track is at the location where index #1
starts in this track. If index #0 for track n
contains audio data, the related audio data is a
logical part of track n-1.
This tag label uses a numerical parameter.
MD5-offset=
The parameter for this tag is the byte offset
where the raw audio data begins in the related
audio file.
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This tag label uses a numerical parameter.
This label is ignored by cdrecord.
MD5-size=
The parameter for this tag is the number of bytes
of raw audio data in the related audio file.
This tag label uses a numerical parameter.
This label is ignored by cdrecord.
MD5-sum=
The parameter for this tag is the md5 sum for the
raw audio data in the related audio file.
This tag label uses a numerical parameter.
This label is ignored by cdrecord.
*.cue
The *.cue files are CD-structure description files
introduced by CDRWIN. They are read and used by
cdrecord in case cdrecord was called with the
cuefile=name.cue option.
The following commands are supported in CUE files:
ARRANGER arranger-string
This command is used to specify the name of a
arranger for a disk that includes CD-Text enhance-
ments.
The parameter is the name of a arranger. If the
string contains any spaces, it must be enclosed in
quotation marks.
If the ARRANGER command appears before any TRACK
command, the string parameter will be encoded as
the arranger of the entire disk. If the ARRANGER
command appears after a TRACK command, the string
parameter will be encoded the the arranger of the
current track.
This command is only accepted if the cdrecord
specific CUE extensions are permitted.
CATALOG media-catalog-number
This command is used to specify the disc's Media
Catalog Number. The media-catalog-number is a 13
digit number that follows UPC/EAN-13 rules.
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This command can appear only once in the CUE SHEET
file. It must appear before any TRACK command.
CDTEXTFILE filename
This command is used to specify the name of a file
that contains binary encoded CD-Text information.
CDRWIN only accepts headerless binary encoded CD-
Text information, but cdrecord also accepts binary
encoded CD-Text information with an MMC-compliant
header. The CD-Text information is ignored by
cdrecord unless the -text option is used.
If the filename contains spaces, it must be
enclosed in quotation marks.
COMPOSER composer-string
This command is used to specify the name of a com-
poser for a disk that includes CD-Text enhance-
ments.
The parameter is the name of a composer. If the
string contains any spaces, it must be enclosed in
quotation marks.
If the COMPOSER command appears before any TRACK
command, the string parameter will be encoded as
the composer of the entire disk. If the COMPOSER
command appears after a TRACK command, the string
parameter will be encoded the the composer of the
current track.
This command is only accepted if the cdrecord
specific CUE extensions are permitted.
FILE filename filetype
This command is used to specify a data or audio
file that contains data to be written to the
medium.
If the filename contains spaces, it must be
enclosed in quotation marks.
The following values are allowed for the file type
parameter:
BINARY Intel binary file (LSB first)
MOTOTOLA Motorola binary file (MSB first)
AIFF Audio AIFF file
WAVE Audio WAVE file
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MP3 Audio MP3 file
AU Audio AU file (only permitted if
cdrecord CUE extensions are enabled)
OGG Audio OGG file (only permitted if
cdrecord CUE extensions are enabled)
All audio files (WAVE, AIFF, MP3, AU and OGG) must
be in 44100 Hz 16 bit stereo format. MP3 and OGG
is currently unsupported.
If an audio file is not an exact multiple of a
CDROM sector (2352 bytes), then is is padded with
zeroes to fill up to the needed size.
All FILE commands need to be before a related
TRACK command and after the last INDEX command or
POSTGAP command for the previous track.
If the cdrecord specific CUE extensions are
enabled, then a FILE command may also appear
between an INDEX 00 and an INDEX 01 command. This
allows to let the user create one file per track
where the file starts at INDEX 01 of the track and
ends after INDEX 00 of the following track. In
this case, no FILE command is allowed before the
related TRACK command.
FLAGS flags
This command is used to set special subcode flags
within a track.
The following flags are supported:
DCP Digital copy permitted
4CH Four channel audio
PRE Pre-emphasis enabled (audio tracks
only)
SCMS Serial copy management system (not
supported by all recorders)
More than one flag type argument may appear after
the FLAGS command (e.g FLAGS DCP PRE).
The FLAGS command must appear after a TRACK com-
mand but before any INDEX command. Only one FLAGS
command is allower per TRACK command.
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The fourth subcode flag that marks data tracks is
set automatically for data tracks.
INDEX number mm:ss:ff
This command is used to specify indexes within a
track.
The first parameter is the index number in the
range 0-99.
The second parameter is a relative time in
minutes, seconds and frames (there are 75
frames/second).
All index numbers must be between 0 and 99
inclusive. The first index for a track must be
either 0 or 1 with all indexes being sequential to
the first one. The first index for a file must
start at 00:00.00.
INDEX 00 specifies the starting time of the pre-
gap of the track.
INDEX 01 specifies the starting time of the
track. This is the index that is stored
in the table of content for the disk as
the track start.
INDEX > 1 specifies a subindex within a track.
ISRC recording code
This command is used to specify the International
Standard Recording Code (ISRC) of a track. This is
a code that should exist for all commercial audio
tracks.
The ISRC code must be 12 characters in length.
The first two characters are characters that are
from the two character country code. The next
three characters are alphanumeric and describe the
studio code. The next two characters are the last
two digits from the recording year. The last 5
characters are digits that form a serial number
that is unique for the same studio and year.
If cdrecord specific CUE extensions are permitted,
the four fields of the ISRC may be separated by a
minus sign.
If the ISRC command is used, it must appear after
a TRACK command but before any INDEX command.
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MESSAGE message-string
This command is used to specify the test of a mes-
sage for a disk that includes CD-Text enhance-
ments.
The parameter is the test of a message. If the
string contains any spaces, it must be enclosed in
quotation marks.
If the MESSAGE command appears before any TRACK
command, the string parameter will be encoded as
the message of the entire disk. If the MESSAGE
command appears after a TRACK command, the string
parameter will be encoded the the message of the
current track.
This command is only accepted if the cdrecord
specific CUE extensions are permitted.
PERFORMER performer-string
This command is used to specify the name of a per-
former for a disk that includes CD-Text enhance-
ments.
The parameter is the name of the performer. If the
string contains any spaces, it must be enclosed in
quotation marks.
If the PERFORMER command appears before any TRACK
command, the string parameter will be encoded as
the performer of the entire disk. If the PER-
FORMER command appears after a TRACK command, the
string parameter will be encoded the the performer
of the current track.
POSTGAP mm:ss:ff
This command is used to specify the length of a
postgap at the end of a track. The postgap data
is generated internally by cdrecord. No data is
consumed from the current data file.
The parameter specifies the postgap length in
minutes, seconds and frames.
The POSTGAP command must appear after all INDEX
commands for the current track. Only one POSTGAP
command is allowed per track.
PREGAP mm:ss:ff
This command is used to specify the length of a
pregap at the beginning of a track. The pregap
data is generated internally by cdrecord. No data
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is consumed from the current data file.
The parameter specifies the postgap length in
minutes, seconds and frames.
The PREGAP command must appear after a TRACK com-
mand but before any INDEX command. Only one PRE-
GAP command is allowed per track.
REM comment
This command is used to put comments into a CUE
file.
The text that appears in the line after a REM com-
mand is usually ignored. There is an exception:
The special comment REM CDRTOOLS is used to enable
cdrecord specific CUE extensions in the parser.
SONGWRITER songwriter-string
This command is used to specify the name of a
songwriter for a disk that includes CD-Text
enhancements.
The parameter is the name of a songwriter. If the
string contains any spaces, it must be enclosed in
quotation marks.
If the SONGWRITER command appears before any TRACK
command, the string parameter will be encoded as
the songwriter of the entire disk. If the SONG-
WRITER command appears after a TRACK command, the
string parameter will be encoded the the song-
writer of the current track.
TITLE title-string
This command is used to specify a title for a disk
that includes CD-Text enhancements.
The parameter is the title for a track or for the
disk. If the string contains any spaces, it must
be enclosed in quotation marks.
If the TITLE command appears before any TRACK com-
mand, the string parameter will be encoded as the
title of the entire disk. If the TITLE command
appears after a TRACK command, the string parame-
ter will be encoded the the title of the current
track.
TRACK number datatype
This command is used to start a new TRACK.
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The first parameter is a track number in the range
1-99.
The second parameter specifies the track data
type.
The following datatypes are permitted:
AUDIO Audio/Music (2352)
CDG Karaoke CD+G (2448)
MODE1/2048 CDROM Mode1 Data (cooked)
MODE1/2352 CDROM Mode1 Data (raw)
MODE2/2336 CDROM-XA Mode2 Data
MODE2/2352 CDROM-XA Mode2 Data
CDI/2336 CDI Mode2 Data
CDI/2352 CDI Mode2 Data
All track numbers must be between 1 and 99
inclusive. The first track number can be greater
than one, but all track numbers after the first
must be sequential. There must be at least one
track per file.
SEE ALSO
cdda2wav(1), readcd(1), scg(7), fbk(7), mkisofs(8), rcmd(3),
ssh(1).
NOTES
Not all options described in this manual may be supported by
the OpenSource variant of cdrecord. Cdrecord issues a warn-
ing if an attempt is made to use an option that has been
disabled in the OpenSource variant.
On Solaris before Solaris 10 Update 1, you need to stop the
volume management if you like to use the USCSI fallback SCSI
transport code. Even things like cdrecord -scanbus will not
work if the volume management is running.
Disks made in Track At Once mode are not suitable as a mas-
ter for direct mass production by CD-manufacturers. You
will need the disk at once option to record such disks.
Nevertheless the disks made in Track At Once will normally
be read in all CD-players. Some old audio CD-players however
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may produce a two second click between two audio tracks.
The minimal size of a track is 4 seconds or 300 sectors. If
you write smaller tracks, the CD-recorder will add dummy
blocks. This is not an error, even though the SCSI-error
message looks this way.
Cdrecord has been tested on an upgraded Philips CDD-521
recorder at single and double speed on a SparcStation 20/502
with no problems, slower computer systems should work also.
The newer Philips/HP/Plasmon/Grundig drives as well as
Yamaha CDR-100 and CDR-102 work also. The Plasmon RF-4100
works, but has not been tested in multi-session. A Philips
CDD-521 that has not been upgraded will not work. The Sony
CDU-924 has been tested, but does not support XA-mode2 in
hardware. The Sony therefore cannot create conforming
multi-session disks. The Ricoh RO-1420C works, but some
people seem to have problems to use them with speed=2, try
speed=0 in this case.
The Yamaha CDR-400 and all new SCSI-3/mmc conforming drives
are supported in single and multi-session.
You should run several tests in all supported speeds of your
drive with the -dummy option turned on if you are using
cdrecord on an unknown system. Writing a CD is a real-time
process. NFS will not always deliver constantly the needed
data rates. If you want to use cdrecord with CD-images that
are located on a NFS mounted filesystem, be sure that the
FIFO size is big enough. The author used cdrecord with
medium load on a SS20/502 and even at quad speed on a
Sparcstation-2 which was heavily loaded, but it is recom-
mended to leave the system as lightly loaded as possible
while writing a CD. If you want to make sure that buffer
underruns are not caused by your source disk, you may use
the command
cdrecord -dummy dev=2,0 padsize=600m /dev/null
to create a disk that is entirely made of dummy data.
Cdrecord needs to run as root to get access to the /dev/scg?
device nodes and to be able to lock itself into memory.
If you don't want to allow users to become root on your sys-
tem, cdrecord may safely be installed suid root. This allows
all users or a group of users with no root privileges to use
cdrecord. Cdrecord in this case checks if the real user
would have been able to read the specified files. To give
all users access to use cdrecord, enter:
chown root /opt/schily/bin/cdrecord
chmod 4711 /opt/schily/bin/cdrecord
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To give a restricted group of users access to cdrecord
enter:
chown root /opt/schily/bin/cdrecord
chgrp cdburners /opt/schily/bin/cdrecord
chmod 4710 /opt/schily/bin/cdrecord
and add a group cdburners on your system.
Never give write permissions for non root users to the
/dev/scg? devices unless you would allow anybody to
read/write/format all your disks.
You should not connect old drives that do not support
disconnect/reconnect to either the SCSI bus that is con-
nected to the CD-recorder or the source disk.
A Compact Disc can have no more than 99 tracks.
When creating a disc with both audio and data tracks, the
data should be on track 1 otherwise you should create a
CDplus disk which is a multi-session disk with the first
session containing the audio tracks and the following ses-
sion containing the data track.
Many operating systems are not able to read more than a sin-
gle data track, or need special software to do so.
More information on the SCSI command set of a HP CD-recorder
can be found at:
http://www.hp.com/isgsupport/cdr/index.html
If you have more information or SCSI command manuals for
currently unsupported CD/DVD/BluRay-recorders please contact
the author.
The Philips CDD 521 CD-recorder (even in the upgraded ver-
sion) has several firmware bugs. Some of them will force you
to power cycle the device or to reboot the machine.
When using cdrecord with the Linux SCSI generic driver, you
should note that cdrecord uses a layer, that tries to emu-
late the functionality of the scg driver on top of the
drives of the local operating system. Unfortunately, the sg
driver on Linux has several flaws:
o It cannot see if a SCSI command could not be sent at
all.
o It cannot get the SCSI status byte. Cdrecord for that
reason cannot report failing SCSI commands in some
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situations.
o It cannot get real DMA count of transfer. Cdrecord can-
not tell you if there is a DMA residual count.
o It cannot get number of bytes valid in auto sense data.
Cdrecord cannot tell you if device transfers no sense
data at all.
o It fetches too few data in auto request sense
(CCS/SCSI-2/SCSI-3 needs >= 18).
The FIFO percent output is computed just after a block of
data has been written to the CD/DVD/BluRay-recorder. For
this reason, there will never be 100% FIFO fill ratio while
the FIFO is in streaming mode.
DIAGNOSTICS
You have 9 seconds to type ^C to abort cdrecord after you
see the message:
Starting to write CD at speed %d in %s mode for %s session.
A typical error message for a SCSI command looks like:
cdrecord: I/O error. test unit ready: scsi sendcmd: no error
CDB: 00 20 00 00 00 00
status: 0x2 (CHECK CONDITION)
Sense Bytes: 70 00 05 00 00 00 00 0A 00 00 00 00 25 00 00 00 00 00
Sense Key: 0x5 Illegal Request, Segment 0
Sense Code: 0x25 Qual 0x00 (logical unit not supported) Fru 0x0
Sense flags: Blk 0 (not valid)
cmd finished after 0.002s timeout 40s
The first line gives information about the transport of the
command. The text after the first colon gives the error
text for the system call from the view of the kernel. It
usually is: I/O error unless other problems happen. The
next words contain a short description for the SCSI command
that fails. The rest of the line tells you if there were any
problems for the transport of the command over the SCSI bus.
fatal error means that it was not possible to transport the
command (i.e. no device present at the requested SCSI
address).
The second line prints the SCSI command descriptor block for
the failed command.
The third line gives information on the SCSI status code
returned by the command, if the transport of the command
succeeds. This is error information from the SCSI device.
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The fourth line is a hex dump of the auto request sense
information for the command.
The fifth line is the error text for the sense key if avail-
able, followed by the segment number which is only valid if
the command was a copy command. If the error message is not
directly related to the current command, the text deferred
error is appended.
The sixth line is the error text for the sense code and the
sense qualifier if available. If the type of the device is
known, the sense data is decoded from tables in scsierrs.c .
The text is followed by the error value for a field replace-
able unit.
The seventh line prints the block number that is related to
the failed command and text for several error flags. The
block number may not be valid.
The eighth line reports the timeout set up for this command
and the time that the command really needed to complete.
The following message is not an error:
Track 01: Total bytes read/written: 2048/2048 (1 sectors).
cdrecord: I/O error. flush cache: scsi sendcmd: no error
CDB: 35 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
status: 0x2 (CHECK CONDITION)
Sense Bytes: F0 00 05 80 00 00 27 0A 00 00 00 00 B5 00 00 00 00 00
Sense Key: 0x5 Illegal Request, Segment 0
Sense Code: 0xB5 Qual 0x00 (dummy data blocks added) Fru 0x0
Sense flags: Blk -2147483609 (valid)
cmd finished after 0.002s timeout 40s
It simply notifies that a track that is smaller than the
minimum size has been expanded to 300 sectors.
BUGS
Cdrecord has even more options than ls.
There should be a recover option to make disks usable, that
have been written during a power failure.
CREDITS
Bill Swartz (Bill_Swartz@twolf.com)
For helping me with the TEAC driver support
Aaron Newsome (aaron.d.newsome@wdc.com)
For letting me develop Sony support on his
drive
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Eric Youngdale (eric@andante.jic.com)
For supplying mkisofs
Gadi Oxman (gadio@netvision.net.il)
For tips on the ATAPI standard
Finn Arne Gangstad (finnag@guardian.no)
For the first FIFO implementation.
Dave Platt (dplatt@feghoot.ml.org)
For creating the experimental packet writing
support, the first implementation of CD-RW
blanking support, the first .wav file decoder
and many nice discussions on cdrecord.
Chris P. Ross (cross@eng.us.uu.net)
For the first implementation of a BSDI SCSI
transport.
Grant R. Guenther (grant@torque.net)
For creating the first parallel port tran-
sport implementation for Linux.
Kenneth D. Merry (ken@kdm.org)
for providing the CAM port for FreeBSD
together with Michael Smith
(msmith@freebsd.org)
Heiko Eiszfeldt (heiko@hexco.de)
for making libedc_ecc available (needed to
write RAW data sectors).
MAILING LISTS
If you want to actively take part on the development of
cdrecord, you may join the developer mailing list via this
URL:
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/cdrtools-
developers
AUTHOR
Joerg Schilling
D-13353 Berlin
Germany
Additional information can be found on:
http://cdrecord.org/private/cdrecord.html
If you have support questions, send them to:
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cdrtools-support@lists.sourceforge.net
If you have definitely found a bug, send a mail to:
cdrtools-developers@lists.sourceforge.net
or joerg@schily.net
To subscribe, use:
https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/cdrtools-
developers
or https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/cdrtools-
support
SOURCE DOWNLOAD
A frequently updated source code for the cdrtools is
included in the schilytools project and may be retrieved
from the schilytools project at Sourceforge at:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/schilytools/
The download directory is:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/schilytools/files/
Check for the schily-*.tar.bz2 archives.
Less frequently updated source code for the cdrtools is at:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/cdrtools/files/
and
http://sourceforge.net/projects/cdrtools/files/alpha
Separate project informations for the cdrtools project may
be retrieved from:
http://cdrecord.org
INTERFACE STABILITY
The interfaces provided by cdrecord are designed for long
term stability. As cdrecord depends on interfaces provided
by the underlying operating system, the stability of the
interfaces offered by cdrecord depends on the interface sta-
bility of the OS interfaces. Modified interfaces in the OS
may enforce modified interfaces in cdrecord.
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