To burn a CD in the IMAGE Lab, you'll need to be on the Mac that has the CD burner attached to it. Go to the Mac and click on the Apple in the top left-hand corner. Then, go down to Programs and then select the burning program, Sony Discribe PPC.
 | This is the initial Sony Discribe Screen. The program screen is divided into two main sections: the left, which shows you where you are in the burn process, like source, image, recorder, write; and the right, which displays the options for that particular section. If you've never burned a CD before, here's a bit of the jargon. Burning means writing or putting data onto the CD. Images on CDs are not necessarily image files, but can be images of data. Images of data are ISOs and these images are like snapshots in time of the data as it is. You're entire home computer could be put on into one or multiple images or ISOs if you needed to transfer data from it exactly as it is to another computer. Images like this are used in standardizing software on multiple computers, and so images and ISOs are technical terms with any data copying process. |
The copying process and the options vary depending on the options selected. Because New Project will most often be the source, these steps cover the most typical burn process. For anything different, please see the program help or ask teh lab assistant. The typical steps in a new CD burn project are:
Source, where you tell the program where the files you want copied are. You need to define the source so the program knows what to copy and where to get it. Here you will also select your project (if this is continuing), New for a new burn, Copy CD to copy a CD, or Extract to extract files from a CD to be burned. (For this list, we're using new.)
Select Format, where you choose the type of format to burn to CD. The main options you'll use are ISO and Audio. ISO is for images and ISO 9660 is generally the right choice; you'll use this when copying software like OpenOffice or image files, like a collection of .PNG files for your research. Audio is for audio CDs.
Recorder, this is where you'll tell the program what files you want to copy. Click add on the far right. A new box will open, and drag and drop the files you want to burn into that box and then click okay.
Write, once you've chosen all your settings, you'll tell the CD burner to write to the CD. There is a box that will ask you what drive to use as the burner, you should be able to click "Done" this. But if it asks you, scroll down to the Sony CDRW and select it.
Writing is burning in that it puts the data onto the CD. You can choose to finalize the CD, if you won't burn anything else onto this CD, or you can choose to not finalize the CD, in case you will burn data onto this CD again.