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Sun 10 Dec, 2006 10:17 am
In the past year I purchased a Panasonic DVR, which has been a very nice purchase. I also purchased a couple of DVD-RW disks and larger supply of DVD -R disks for archival and transfer of VHS media.
I understand the recording process where when a disk is complete, and you want to be able to play the disk on other DVD players - you have to "finalize" the disk. My question regarding the DVD -R disks, is that when you only record and use part of the capacity of the disk, can you remove the disk and reinsert the disk later and add additional content, and "finalize" the disk when the disk is completely full? My component documentation doesn't really talk to this issue very clearly, but intuitively I have think that if content has been recorded (one-time) onto the media, then it's "there" whether I finalize the disk to play on other recorders later or record more content on the disk, and then finalize and closeout the disk later.
Is my intuition working for me today, or have I guessed wrong?
Finalizing means just what it says. Once finalized, a disk can't be altered; the disk is "closed" - though an R/W disk can always be erased and/or formatted - which naturally undoes finalization.
Okay good. I think I understood that "final" is final part. But just to ensure I understand, there's no continuity issue (loss of data, etc.), with removing or replacing a -R disk as many times as you want, until it's full - and then finalizing it (so that it can be played on other DVD players), right?
The only reason I ask, is that from my limited work with CD-R disks, I know that once the disk is written to - usually the application program will (automatically?) closeout the disk, so that I cannot be written to again - regardless of how much (or how little) data you initially copy to the disk.
Thanks for the quick reply.
Check your burning software - sounds like yours may be set to finalize on eject - there oughtta be something like a "multi-session" option which will allow you add files to a writable disk untill its full and/or you decide to finalize it, regardless how many times its loaded/ejected.
Okay, sorry my bad - my CD-R reference was more of a general reference to a prior use with a software (PC-based) application, and had nothing to do with the DVR component. So yes, when I've made CD-R recordings, and that software has finalized the disk on ejection. The DVR certainly doesn't finalize on Eject.
Since I felt pretty confident I knew (or could infer) the answer, I'm recording/copying a DVD right, on the assumption that if it's not full, I can pop it out and then pop it in later and record to it, up the maximum recording capacity (I hope). If it doesn't work, I can always re-record it, and it won't exactly signal the end of Western democracy . . .
Thanks
My DVD recorder asks the question when you eject, if you want to finalise it or not. I just hit 'cancel' and take it out. I can add more later. But as timber said, if it's finalised, and it's not an RW, then that's the end of the recording on that disc.
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