What is the disc recorder doing when it “finalizes” a CD or DVD?
It’s writing a table of contents, so the player knows how many tracks/indexes of what type there are on the disc. Basically a ‘header’ for your player to read so it can retreive the information for playback. It also locks out the disc so it can’t be recorded on in the case of once only recordable discs.
Here’s the lowdown on finalizing CDs. DVDs are mostly the same. Check dvdrhelp for more info about DVDs.
Note that it depends on how a disc is being recorded that effects whether the TOC is written first or last. When I do disc-at-once, the finalizing is mostly just padding and errors during that part usually cause no problem. But with track-at-once, it makes all the difference in the world.
Okay, thanks! I sorta knew this, but it’s nice to see the details.