be written to only once; any leftover CD capacity is wasted. Read about
other options in the cdrecord man page.
Current capacity for CD media is 700MB of data or 80 minutes of music.
(There are 800MB/90-minute CDs, but they are rare.) Some CDs can be
overburned—that is, recorded to a capacity in excess of the standard. The
cdrecord command and some graphical programs are capable of
overburning if your CD-RW drive supports it. You can learn more about
overburning CDs at
http://www.cdmediaworld.com/hardware/cdrom/cd_oversize.shtml/.Creating DVDs from the Command Line
There are several competing formats for DVD, as follows:
DVD+R
DVD-R
DVD+RW
DVD-RWDifferences in the + and - formats mostly have to do with how the data is
modulated onto the DVD itself, with the + format having an edge in buffer
underrun recovery. How this is achieved affects the playability of the newly
created DVD on any DVD player. The DVD+ format also has some
advantages in recording on scratched or dirty media. Most drives support the
DVD+ format. As with any other technology, your mileage may vary.
We focus on the DVD+RW drives because most drives support that standard.
The software supplied with Ubuntu has support for writing to DVD-R/W
(rewritable) media, as well. It will be useful for you to review the
DVD+RW/+R/-R[W] for Linux HOWTO at
[http://fy.chalmers.se/~appro/linux/DVD+RW/ before you attempt to use](http://fy.chalmers.se/~appro/linux/DVD+RW/ before you attempt to use)
dvd+rw-tools, which you need to install to enable DVD creation (also
known as mastering) and the cdrtools package. You can ignore the
discussion in the HOWTO about kernel patches and compiling the tools.
TIP
The 4.7GB size of DVD media is measured as 1,000 megabytes per
gigabyte instead of the more traditionally used, but not entirely accurate,
1,024 megabytes per gigabyte (more appropriately written GiB), so do not
be surprised when the actual formatted capacity, about 4.4GB, is less than
you anticipated. Most hard drive manufacturers have also made the switch.