One of the limitations of CD-R software is that it is not psychic - in particular, it is not able to determine what you intend to do or what you will do; it is neither ominscient nor prescient.
Suppose you are making a layout, say of data. The mastering program does not know whether you will be adding an audio layout to make a CD Extra or Mixed Mode disc. It does not know if you are going to make an image or if you plan to burn to a 74-minute blank, an 80, or to one which is already partially written. In fact, when you make up the layout, even you may not know what you will do with it; you might think you're going to burn a standard blank but then decide to add it to an unfinished disc or to use an 80.
While prescient software might decide for you, the stupid stuff we use does not. Instead, it estimates the amount of space required based on the most common assumption: you're making a layout which you intend to burn to its very own standard blank. Even if you already know what you're going to do with the layout, the software is not privy to that information. As a result, it only does what you have told it to do (make the layout) and informs you of what it knows (how it would fit on a standard blank).
In another situation, you might be writing fixed-length packets to a disc. The software knows how much has been written and how much you are about to write, so it can tell you if there is room enough for the files you are adding. But it has no idea of when or whether you are going to finalize the session. If it anticipates that you will finalize, then it should lie to the OS and claim to be full when it would no longer have space for the runout track. If it knows that you won't want to read the disc in a normal drive, then it should tell the OS the truth. Lacking psychic powers, it tells the truth. The result is that you can overfill the disc - write so much that you cannot finalize it. Heck, you knew all along that you wanted it to be readable in other drives; what kind of dumb program knows less than you do?
E-mail me at cdrecording@mrichter.com
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