What
is CD/DVD duplication?
CD duplication
involves burning a CD-R with a laser in a standard CD or DVD writer
drives. The 'R' after the format type stands for 'Recordable' (As
opposed to replicated discs which are referred to as CD ROM where
the 'ROM' stands for 'Read-Only Memory' as these discs cannot be burnt
at all and are pressed at the time of manufacture).
Storm media uses
robotic CD duplicators that can process large numbers of CDs quickly
and efficiently. This type of production is ideal for smaller print
runs of less than 1000 discs, or where the discs are required very
quickly.
Duplicated media
is then printed using a five colour silk screen or offset lithographic
process, resulting in a very high quality disc.
Please
feel free to visit our CD:DVD
Duplication and printing page for further information.
What
is CD/DVD Replication?
CD replication
is a physical production process that involves actually pressing the
discs during manufacture from a glass master. Replicated discs are
also referred to as CD ROM discs, with the 'ROM' standing for 'Read-Only
Memory' (as opposed to the CD-R where the 'R' stands for 'Recordable').
The glass master is made of glass that has been coated by a chemical,
which is burned off with a laser. The glass master is a 'negative'
of the CD and it is then coated with a molten nickel compound and
turned into a 'stamper'. The stamper punches tiny pits in the production
CDs that use molten aluminium as the reflective surface and polycarbonate
for the remainder of the disc.
CD replication is a very quick and cost-effective production method
for larger quantities of discs (1000 or more).
Replicated media
is then printed using a five colour silk screen or offset lithographic
process, resulting in a very high quality disc.
Please
feel free to visit our CD:DVD
Replication and printing page for further information.
How
do CD Business Cards Work?
CD business cards
work just like a normal CD and can contain whatever information you
wish to put on them up to a capacity of 50MB.
The CDs will work
in just about any standard PC or laptop CD/DVD drive. In a standard
drive the disc fits into an inner circular tray as the CD business
cards themselves have a raised circular section on their underside
which fits neatly into this depression. In a laptop drive with a prominent
spindle that you push the discs directly onto, these discs work in
exactly the same way as standard CDs. The orientation of the discs
does not matter. They sit with the label facing upwards, just as with
standard 12cm discs.
These discs are
not suitable for use in slot-loading CD drives, although these are
fairly uncommon.
Please
feel free to visit our CD
Business Cards page for further information.
What
are DVD-R Discs?
DVD-R discs are
recordable DVD media that can be written to only once. The discs can
be writen in standard DVD writer drives. The DVD-R format was developed
by Pioneer in 1997 and is the most commonly used type of writable
DVD (other types include DVD+R and the re-writable DVD-RW/DVD+RW).
DVD-R discs have
much higher storage capacities than CD-R discs by using smaller pit
sizes and narrower track pitches in the spiral groove that runs around
the discs. These smaller pits and grooves require a different wavelength
of laser light (650nm) to that used in CD drives (780nm) and therefore
DVD discs cannot be read in standard CD drives.
The DVD-R discs
are available in two main sizes, 12cm and 8cm. The 12cm discs are
the typical size for CDs and DVDs and have a capacity of 4.7GB and
the 8cm discs have a capacity of 1.4GB.
DVD-R discs are
made from two 0.6mm polycarbonate layers that are bonded to each other.
One of the layers contains a grooved reflective surface and a recording
dye (hence the slightly green/blue colouring of DVD-R discs when compared
to replicated discs). The other layer is just clear and is used to
create the required disc thickness of 1.2mm.
Please
feel free to visit our DVD
page for further information.
What
are DVD-5 Discs?
DVD-5 discs are
one-sided, single layer recordable DVDs with a capacity of 4.7GB.
The numbering after DVDs can be approximated to the capacity of the
discs. For example DVD-9 discs can hold 8.5GB on a one-sided, double
layer disc and DVD-18 can hold 17.4GB on a dual-side, dual-layer disc.
DVD-5 discs are
12cm discs and can be created through the production processes of
either DVD duplication or DVD replication. DVD-5 are the most common
type of DVD as the 4.7GB capacity is currently more than enough for
most applications or requirements, holding 120 minutes of high quality
audio and video.
DVDs have much
higher storage capacities than CDs by using smaller pit sizes and
narrower track pitches in the spiral groove that runs around the discs.
These smaller pits and grooves require a different wavelength of laser
light (650nm) to that used in CD drives (780nm) and therefore DVD
discs cannot be read in standard CD drives.
Please
feel free to visit our DVD
page for further information.
What
are DVD-9 Discs?
DVD-9 discs are
one-sided, double layer recordable DVDs with a capacity of 8.5GB.
The numbering after DVDs can be approximated to the capacity of the
discs. For example DVD-5 discs can hold 4.7GB on a one-sided, single
layer disc and DVD-18 can hold 17.4GB on a dual-side, dual-layer disc.
In double layer
(also referred to as dual layer) DVD-9 discs, two layers of standard
DVD-5 are joined together with a transparent spacer and a thin reflector
between the two. The bottom layer is read and written to in exactly
the same manner as DVD-5. Reading and writing to the second layer
is achieved by the laser focusing a fraction of a millimeter beyond
the first recording layer.
DVD-9 discs are
12cm discs and can have the content data added through the production
processes of either DVD duplication or DVD replication. The DVD-9
format is not as common as the DVD-5 format as the 4.7GB capacity
of the DVD-5 discs is usually sufficient for most business uses, although
many DVD films will use DVD-9 format if the film length is over 120
minutes.
DVDs have much
higher storage capacities than CDs by using smaller pit sizes and
narrower track pitches in the spiral groove that runs around the discs.
These smaller pits and grooves require a different wavelength of laser
light (650nm) to that used in CD drives (780nm) and therefore DVD
discs cannot be read in standard CD drives.
Please
feel free to visit our DVD
page for further information.
What
are dual layer DVD's?
Dual layer and
double layer DVDs are the same thing and are also referred to as DVD-9
discs and have a capacity of 8.5GB.
In dual layer
DVD-9 discs, two layers of standard DVD-5 are joined together with
a transparent spacer and a thin reflector between the two. The bottom
layer is read and written to in exactly the same manner as DVD-5.
Reading and writing to the second layer is achieved by the laser focusing
a fraction of a millimeter beyond the first recording layer.
Dual layer DVD
discs are 12cm in diameter and can have the content data added through
the production processes of either DVD duplication or DVD replication.
Dual layer discs are not as common as the single layer format as the
4.7GB capacity of the single layer discs is usually sufficient for
most business uses and dual layer discs are also a lot more expensive.
Will my DVD drive
be able to record dual layer DVDs?
Typically only the newer DVD recorder drives will be able to write
to dual layer or double layer discs. You should look on the face of
the drive tray for the logo shown to the right. The extra rectangular
border in the top right and the 'DL' are the key differences to mark
these drives out from standard DVD writer drives that only record
to single layer discs.
DVDs have much higher storage capacities than CDs by using smaller
pit sizes and narrower track pitches in the spiral groove that runs
around the discs. These smaller pits and grooves require a different
wavelength of laser light (650nm) to that used in CD drives (780nm)
and therefore DVD discs cannot be read in standard CD drives.
Please
feel free to visit our DVD
page for further information.
What
are Blu-ray Discs?
Blu-ray discs
(also known as 'BD'), are a next-generation optical disc format jointly
developed by the Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA).
The Blu-ray format
offers more than five times the storage capacity of traditional DVDs
and can hold up to 25GB on a single-layer disc and 50GB on a dual-layer
disc by using a blue laser with a shorter wavelength of 405nm (DVDs
use a longer 650nm wavelength red laser and CDs are longer still at
780nm). The shorter wavelength of the Blu-ray system allows the laser
to focus on smaller spots and so the pits and spiral groove in the
discs can be made even smaller and tighter.
Blu-ray discs
are exactly the same physical size as a standard DVD or CD discs at
12cm in diameter and 1.2mm in thickness.
Please
feel free to visit our Blu-ray
disc page for further information.
What
is a glass master?
A glass master,
also referred to as a 'stamper' is used to punch all of the data pits
into a CD or DVD during the process of replication.
The reason why
it is called a glass master is because the information is copied onto
a special chemical coating on a circular block of glass. The block
of glass is actually much larger than a CD (they are typically 240mm
in diameter and 6mm deep) to facilitate handling and to avoid the
sensitive data area from being touched or damaged.
The glass master
is polished until it is ultra smooth as even microscopic scratches
can affect the quality of the CDs being produced.
Glass mastering
is performed in a Class 100 clean room (10 times cleaner than an operating
theatre). A Class 100 cleanroom is designed to never allow more than
100 particles (0.5 microns or larger) per cubic foot of air (typical
office building air contains from 500,000 to 1,000,000 particles per
cubic foot of air). This is because dust, pollen and smoke particles
can all affect the quality of a CD glass master whilst it is being
prepared, so the mastering facilities are kept as clean as possible.
There are three
principle steps involved in creating a glass master:
Step 1 - Photoresist
mastering and Laser Beam Recording (LBR)
The first step
in producing the glass master is to clean the glass plate with detergents
and to then apply a photoresistive light-sensitive material of about
140 to 150 microns that is then burnt using a Laser Beam Recorder
(LBR) which is a deep blue or ultraviolet laser. When exposed to the
laser light, the photoresist undergoes a chemical reaction which hardens
it.
After mastering,
the glass master is baked at about 80°C for 30 minutes to harden
the developed surface material and prepare it for metalisation. Metalisation
is a critical step prior to electroplating with nickel.
Step 2 - Metalisation
of the glass master
After the photoresist
mastering, the developed glass master is placed in a vapour deposition
metaliser which lowers the pressure inside a chamber to an extreme
vacuum. A piece of nickel wire is then heated to white hot temperature
and the nickel vapour is deposited onto the rotating glass master.
The glass master is coated with the nickel vapour up to a typical
thickness of around 400nm before being removed.
Step 3 - Electroforming
The information
contained on the metalised glass master is extremely fragile and it
must be transferred to a more resilient form for use in the injection
moulding equipment.
The metalised
master is therefore rotated in a plating tank containing a nickel
salt solution (Nickel Sulfamate). The electroforming process takes
approximately 1 hour to create a 0.3mm thick uniform nickel layer.
This master is
then called the 'father' and a negative of the father, the 'mother'
needs to be created to be able to punch the pits and grooves into
the membranes on the final CDs or DVDs that the customer will receive.
A polycarbonate layer of an actual DVD disc prior to application of
the reflective aluminium surface
The mother glass
master is created from the father using electroforming and the mothers
are then used to punch holes in the membrane layer on replicated CDs
or DVDs that will then allow light through to reflect off the silver
aluminium layer above the membrane layer in the centre of a CD or
DVD.
Please
feel free to visit our CD:DVD
Replication and printing page for further information.
What
are the turnaround times for producting and Deliverying CD's and Dvd's?
Turnaround times
for our duplicated 12cm, 8cm and business card CDs and DVDs depend
slightly on the quantity of CDs or DVDs ordered, whether you have
prepared the artwork for printing in advance or it must still be completed.
We can confirm
the expected delivery date with you at the time of ordering.
The turnaround
times for 100 - 1000 CDs and DVDs is about 3-5 days and 7 - 15 days
on 2000 or more.
Should you have
an urgent deadline to meet then please contact us to discuss your
own requirements and for a more accurate estimation of delivery date.
How
do i create an autorun file?
If you have produced
the contents for your CD and then want them to autoplay when the disc
is loaded into a computer then you should add an autorun file to the
CD. An autorun file is a simple text file that tells the operating
system which executable file to start.
There are two
main types of autorun file that you could use:
Autorun using
the 'open' command
The open command
is compatible with any PC running Windows 95 or later (although it
is possible to manually disable the autorun feature on any computer,
so if someone cannot view your autorun application then this may be
a reason). However it can only be used for opening executable files
ending in .exe such as Flash presentations, it cannot be used for
opening documents such as Word files, PDFs or web pages. To open documents
rather than executable files using autorun please look at the shellexecute
command instructions below.
The icon for the
autorun file looks like the one below and the text file is called
autorun.inf
In the above window
the flashfile.exe part should be replaced with the filename that you
wish to open.
To download a
open autorun.inf file to use yourself, please right
click here and go to 'Save Target As...' and save it to a suitable
location on your computer. Then edit the flashfile.exe part to suit
your own requirements.
Autorun using the 'shellexecute' command
The shellexecute
command is more flexible than the open command and will allow you
to open nearly any file on a PC in its native application, so can
be used for PDFs, Word files, web pages and movies where the open
command would not work. However this function was only introduced
by Microsoft in Windows 2000 and so will only work in Windows 2000,
Windows Me, Windows XP, Windows Server 2003 and later.
The icon for the
autorun file looks like the one below and the text file is called
autorun.inf
In the above window
the index.html part should be replaced with the filename that you
wish to open, such as the name of the PDF or the name of the webpage
that you would like to open up first. If for example the file to open
was called index.html and it was in a folder called website then the
second line of the autorun file should be shellexecute=website/index.html
To download a
shellexecute autorun.inf file to use yourself, please right
click here and go to 'Save Target As...' and save it to a suitable
location on your computer. Then edit the index.html part to suit your
own requirements.
Notes about autorun files
For PowerPoint
presentations you do not need to create an autorun file and should
use the autorun feature built-in to PowerPoint.
The autorun.inf
file should always be in the top level of the CD and not placed within
a folder.
Can
i have the artwork pre-printed onto the discs and then burn the CD's
or DVD'S myself?
Yes. We provide
this option with all of our duplicated CDs and DVDs..
Note that this
self-burn option is not available for large orders of replicated discs
as these discs cannot be burnt in standard CD/DVD writer drives as
they are pre-pressed discs from a glass master.
Please
feel free to visit our CD
Printing page for further information.
Please
feel free to visit our DVD
Printing page for further information.
(+27) 083 381 1564 
0866 322 110 
General