Phosphor wrote:
The files need to be burned to CD using the ISO 9660/Joliet protocol. This is the data-burning format that will produce files that are readable by any platform, as it keeps all of the original file’s formatting intact.
Someone should be along shortly to expand on that info or correct it.
Lol! Actually, if you want cross-platform compatibility you want to use the ISO9660 format, but *not* the Joliet option, which is for allowing long file names in Windows. Note that with ISO9660 you are limited to 8.3 file names (filename.tif).
Sari_Ahokainen wrote:
Is the WinZIP only for saving space?
Yes.
Is there any reason to ZIP the files when sending them on a CD?
No, unless there’s not enough space on the disc for uncompressed images (but with .tifs at least you can use the built-in compression).
Some of you mentioned that zipping will help prevent file corruptions. Is this the case only when sending files through the net or…?
Mostly. Compression is mostly for saving space. Audio traders sometimes like to use lossless compression for their .wav files (Shorten, FLAC), but is is because they don’t trust each other to do a good job in copying the audio tracks to CD (the compression allows each person to burn their own audio disks
from the original .wav files). However, traders usually include checksum files for verifying the compressed files before decompressing to .wav, because the process of compressing and decompressing can introduce data errors (read/write errors on the part of your CD drive or hard disk), which can be more
noticeable with audio files than with other types of data. So if you’re burning to CD and you want to minimize the chance of errors, it may actually be better to do so without compression.
If you are having trouble opening files on CD, you could try copying them to the hard disk and opening them from there. Also, when burning your CDs, you may want to try having the CD software write the files to a disc image and then make the CD from that. Your CD writing software should have an option for
doing this–in Easy CD Creator (older versions, anyway), this is on the File menu as "Create Disc Image . . ." (step one) and "Create CD from Disc Image . . ." (step two). With CDRWin, it is the "Build and Record an ISO9660/UDF image file" option under File Backup and Tools. I’ve had the occasional jpeg
come up bad on a CD-R because I copied files "on the fly" instead of from a disc image, although frankly this shouldn’t be a problem with large files (copying a bunch of small files on the fly can lead to buffer underrun problems).
If you think you’re not getting good burns, you could try including a checksum file on the disc, using a shareware utility like MD5summer. With this, you create an MD5 checksum file for the files you want to copy (this isn’t difficult to do) and include this file with the image files on the CD. You can run
this file from the CD to verify that the files were copied without errors before sending it out, and the recipient can do it again after they copy the files to their hdd (or CD, whichever) to verify the files are still good. This is very easy to do and probably useful if you’re concerned about file
corruption.
http://www.md5summer.org/ Hope this helps.
