Optical disc authoring Optical disc authoring Optical disc authoring, including DVD and Blu-ray Disc authoring is the process of assembling source material—video, audio or other data—into the proper logical volume format to then be recorded ("burned") onto an optical disc (typically a compact disc or DVD). To burn an optical disc, one usually first creates an optical disc image with a full file system, of a type designed for the optical disc, in temporary storage such as a file in another file system on a disk drive. Then, one copies the image to the disc. Most optical disc authoring utilities create a disc
Optical disc authoring require writing the entire disc at once, but allow writing of different parts at different times. This allows a user to construct a disc incrementally, as it could be on a rewritable medium like a floppy disk or rewritable CD. However, if the disc is non-rewritable, a given bit can be written only once. Due to this limitation, a non-rewritable disc whose burn failed for any reason cannot be repaired. (Such a disc is colloquially termed a "coaster", a reference to a beverage coaster.) There are many optical disc authoring technologies for optimizing the authoring process and preventing errors. Some