Yamaha Corporation

Morihiro Murata

Kenichiro Takeshita

Yutaka Ishimura

Akio Hirai

An optical disk is compatible with one type of a recording apparatus which is designed to irradiate an optical beam onto the optical disk to form pits along the pregroove for actual recording of information. The optical disk is incompatible with another type of a recording apparatus which is designed to successively record the times of the test recording into a count area of the conventional optical disk. The optical disk has a test area corresponding to the test area of the conventional optical disk and a prepit area corresponding to the count area of the conventional optical disk, the prepit area being provisionally formed with prepits at least in a section corresponding to the predetermined section of the count area of the conventional optical disk so as to inhibit the other type of recording apparatus from conducting the test recording.

Optical disk capable of disabling incompatible recorder

A method is designed to logically erase contents of a CD-RW disc in response to an erase command. The CD-RW disc is optically rewriteable, and has a program area and a PMA area. The program area is recorded with the contents in the form of tracks. The PMA area is recorded with at least two kinds of frames, one kind of frames containing identification information for identifying the CD-RW disc and the other kind of frames containing track information for indicating the tracks of the contents recorded in the program area. The method is carried out by the steps of accessing to the PMA area in response to the erase command, deleting all of frames which contain the track information from the PMA area, thereby logically erasing all of the contents from the program area, and reserving frames which contain the identification information in the PMA area, so that the CD-RW disc can be identified at rewriting thereof even after all of the contents are logically erased from the program area of the CD-RW disc. Specifically, the step of reserving reserves frames containing the identification information at a leading section of the PMA area. Practically, the PMA area is divided into sections by every ten number of frames, and the step of reserving reserves a ten number of frames containing the identification information into a predetermined section of the PMA area so as to fill the predetermined section.

Method of logically erasing contents of a CD-RW disc while preserving disc ID

An optical disk recording apparatus includes an input device that receives an input digital audio signal sampled by a predetermined sampling rate, an external reference clock pulse generator that reproduces a first reference clock pulse on the basis of the input digital audio signal, an internal reference clock pulse generator that generates a second reference clock pulse, a buffer memory that stores the input digital audio signal therein in synchronism with the first reference clock pulses, and that reads out a stored input digital audio signal therefrom in shynchronism with the second reference clock pulses, an operator operable by a user to give an instruction as to whether an inter-music-piece blank signal is to be recorded or not, the inter-music piece blank signal being capable of recording onto an optical disk before recording of the input digital audio signal read from the buffer memory, and a controller that, on the basis of the instruction from the operator, when the inter-music piece blank signal is to be recorded, makes to reduce a time interval from start of storing of the digital audio signals into the buffer memory to a start of recording of the digital audio signals onto the optical disk as compared to when the blank signal is not to be recorded.

Optical disk recording apparatus

Upon loading of an optical disk into a CD-R/RW drive, access is first made to a given location within an innermost lead-in area of the optical disk, to retrieve a starting time of the innermost lead-in area from ATIP information. Then, access is made to a starting point of a PMA area of the disk, on the basis of the starting time of the innermost lead-in area, to retrieve PMA information. After that, on the basis of a time interval between adjoining tracks represented by the PMA information, the tracks are divided into a plurality of sessions. Next, access is made to a lead-in area of the last session to determine presence/absence and validity of lead-in information in the last session. Then, only when the lead-in information of the last session is judged to be valid, the lead-in information of the last session is retrieved as valid lead-in information. This way, for each multi-session-recorded CD-R or CD-RW disk, it is possible to reliably avoid erroneous retrieval of information of any old session that should have been erased previously from the disk.

Methods of retrieving information from optical disk and controlling access and recording to optical disk, and optical disk recording apparatus

An optical disk has a recording surface which is divided in the radial direction of the optical disk into a plurality of volumes. Each volume consists of a lead-in area, a program area and a lead-out area. Each of the volumes has a recording capacity which is not constant and has absolute position information recorded therein. The absolute position information consists of time information starting from a common initial value. The lead-in area, program area and lead-out area of the respective volumes is adapted to have information of the Compact Disc format recorded therein and adapted to have volume number information corresponding to the volume number thereof recorded in a predetermined position of the area. In one aspect of the invention, a part or all of the volumes has a higher recording density than a standard recording density determined by the Compact Disc format and absolute address information continuously increments from an initial value without overlapping among the respective volumes and address information is independent from the absolute address information. In another aspect of the invention, address information and absolute address information recorded in the first volume are within a range determined by the Compact Disc format and address information and absolute address information recorded in the second and subsequent volumes are larger than a value determined by the Compact Disc format.

Optical disk having plurality of volumes, recording device and reproduction device for same

Detection is made of an outermost track on a CD-R medium for which track-descriptive information is not yet recorded in a PMA area and track-specific recording data are already recorded in a program area by a track-at-once scheme. It is then determined whether recording on the outermost track is terminated at the end of a first-type area where a Q subcode INDEX is at a value of 0 or is made up to a second-type area where the Q subcode INDEX is at a value of 1 or greater. If the recording on the outermost track is terminated at the end of the first-type area represented by the Q subcode INDEX value 0, the track-specific recording data are additionally written onto the outermost track starting at the beginning of the second-type following the first-type area and the track-descriptive information for the outermost track is recorded into the PMA area. If the recording on the outermost track is made up to the second-type area represented by the Q subcode INDEX value 1 or greater, the track-descriptive information for the outermost track is recorded into the PMA area without the track-specific recording data being additionally written onto the outermost track. Such arrangements allow a main body of a music piece to be additionally written onto an outermost track which has only a blank segment or inter-music-piece signal recorded thereon.

CD-R medium recording method

In an optical disk having various information recorded thereon on a frame-by-frame basis, each of the frames being organized in a predetermined format comprising a main channel where data are recorded and a subcode providing additional information including recorded positions of the data, table-of-contents or TOC information for the data recorded in the main channel is contained in the main channel of the optical disk. When a subcode block representing a single unity of information is formed of a plurality of the subcodes belonging to 98 EFM frames, the table-of-contents information is recorded in the main channels of the 98 frames in such a manner that every piece of information needed as the table-of-contents information is fully accommodated in a predetermined data block made up of the data of the main channels belonging to the 98 frames. Thus, there can be provided an optical disk and optical disk reproduction system which permit high-speed readout of the TOC information.

Optical disk and optical disk reproduction system

Recording surface of an optical disk is segmented radially into a plurality of volumes each including a lead-in area, program area and lead-out area. In each of the volumes, information indicating presence of a succeeding volume is recorded in a main channel of the program or lead-out area. Dedicated player can receive the information indicating presence of a succeeding volume during reproduction of the first volume and thus is allowed to access the second volume. By contrast, non-dedicated or ordinary CD-ROM players have no capability to read the information indicating presence of a succeeding volume and thus is only allowed to reproduce the first volume without knowing the presence of the succeeding volume.

Optical disk, optical disk reproducing device and optical disk reproduction system

Data buffer stores therein data of a plurality of packets supplied from an optional external source on a packet-by-packet basis. When a predetermined quantity of data have been stored in the data buffer, a system controller successively reads out from the data buffer the data for N (an optional integral number of two or more) packets from among the supplied packets. Encoder converts, into a recording format of an optical disc, the data for the N packets successively read out from the data buffer and outputs the converted data after adding thereto packet-linking information. Then, the converted data for the N packets with the packet-linking information are successively recorded onto the optical disc. Thus, even for long data of a plurality of packets, this arrangement can reduce a necessary number of track seek operations to thereby greatly reduce a necessary recording time.

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Hamamatsu, Japan

Morihiro Murata