The LightScribe CD/DVD has a special color/thermal layer between the top and bottom layers; this layer can be heated by the laser in the recorder so that pictures and text can be burned on the CD/DVD.

LightScribe is a technology with which pictures or texts can be burned on the label side of discs with a laser.

Booting refers to loading the operating system when a computer is started. This is normally done from the hard drive. However, if you do not want to boot or cannot boot your computer from your hard drive for whatever reason, you can load an operating environment from the drive with a boot CD.

An image refers to a single file on the hard drive that contains the image for a complete disc. A disk image can be used to create exact copies on media at a later point in time if problems occur during the write process or if no recorder is connected to your PC. The image requires as much free space on the hard drive as the contents of the original disc.

A label refers to a label on a disc. Some drives, e.g. drives that use LightScribe or Labelflash™ technology, can transfer labels directly to special media.

Disc format defines the the format in which the data is organized on a disc. For example, the disc format DVD-VR is only supported by and can only be used with DVD-RW and DVD-RAM discs. For example, Video CD (VCD), Super Video CD (SVCD), miniDVD and (if supported) HD-BURN can be burned to CD-R and CD-RW disc formats. The technical optionsavailable, such as subtitle or multiple sound tracks, are a factor of the disc format.

Labelflash is a technology with which pictures and texts can be burned on the label side of a disc with a laser.

The Universal Disc Format is a platform-independent file system. File names can be up to 255 characters long; 8 and 16 bit character sets are supported.

The advanced SCCI programming interface is the interface between the software, the SCSI (Small Computer System Interface) card and the operating system of a PC. This permits communication between the SCSI device (e.g. a SCSI scanner) and the SCSI card. However, ASPI drivers are also required for ATA, ATAPI, USB and FireWire interfaces.

CD Text consists of additional information on a CD that can store e.g. music track titles and artists. CD Text is stored in the so-called lead-in area of the CD before the audio data starts. The display on the CD player shows the additional data. You must have a CD burner which supports CD Text to enable the CD Text to be written to a CD. In particular, CD Text can only be written in disc-at-once mode.

A multisession refers to completing a disc in multiple cycles. After a first session has been written to the disc, information can then be added in another record because the disc has not been finalized.

A multisession disc can contain several sessions that are not fixed. This way, more data can be added in new sessions at a later point in time, and the disc is not closed until it is full.

The International Organization for Standardization defined the Universal Standard 9660 which determines the features of the CD. This format is platform-independent and can thus be read by computers with different operating systems. In order to ensure universal readability, the file names used should be as short as possible. (In a DOS environment no more than eight characters may be used).

The MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3 audio format is used to reduce the size of audio files to a fraction of their original size (factor 1:10) with little loss of quality. You can estimate about 1 MB per minute as opposed to 10 MB for the original files. This value and the quality can vary depending on the complexity of the audio signal. The bit rate used can be used as a measure of quality. The higher the bit rate, the better the quality, but also the more memory required.

Ripping refers to the process of extracting audio or video data from an optical storage medium onto a computer's hard drive in order to process it.

An Audio CD can contain up to 74 minutes of audio sequences and individual tracks in hi-fi quality.
The storage capacity is 747 MB at a sample depth of 16 bit and a scan rate of 44.1 kHz.

Disc-At-Once refers to a method in which the laser in your recorder burns straight through in one session without turning off and on between each track. This method is best when recording Audio CDs you would like to play on your home or car stereo.

The leadout is the ending area of user data on a data carrier that is used to close a session. If the disc has not been completed yet, the reference for the next session is stored here.

Joliet refers to an extension of the ISO-9660 standard for file names. Joliet was designed by Microsoft in order to represent more characters. The file name can be up to 64 characters long and contain the letters A-Z, a-z, umlauts and the ß.

The compressor/decompressor encodes the data for recording or saving digitally and then decodes it for playback. Various software codecs are available such as Cinapak, Indeo, Quicktime, Video for Windows, etc. Hardware codecs include MPEG, H.261, Motion JPEG, etc.

Normalizing in audio technology is the process whereby analog and/or digital audio data is raised to a uniform volume level.

Track-At-Once refers to a write method in which each track is written to the disc individually. The writing process is interrupted briefly after each track, i.e. the laser starts again for each track. With this write method, it is only possible to continue writing to a DVD sometimes and at a later stage. There is a pause of at least 27ms between tracks, which can be disruptive for Audio CDs.

On-the-fly refers to a method for copying to a disc. The data is transferred directly from the original storage location to the disc to be burned. To do this, Nero uses a compilation, a small file that simply refers to the transferred data.

The Audio Interchange File Format is an uncompressed audio file format from Apple® and represents a sort of counterpart to the WAV format from Microsoft. Files are larger than when using a compressed format, but the quality is higher. AIFF compressed is the compressed variation.

SecurDisc refers to a security technology that protects data carriers from unauthorized access.