There are several books, which are guides as the Bible is to a Christian. They are informally named for the color of which the cover of the first book was published. That color was red. These important documents specify the standards of CDs. Thus the first guidebook of CD-making was called the "Red Book". More books followed and have different colors. They are a collection of specifications and standards of disc making addressing all forms of CDs. The overview of these books is available at the bottom of this page. The books are as follows:
Red Book
The Red Book, written by Philips and Sony in 1982, contains standards for the original compact disc (CD). It includes the physical characteristics of the CD and CD-DA The Red Book standard defines the format in which an audio CD must be recorded so that it will play correctly on a CD player. Red Book is the basis for all later CD standards and specification documents.
Yellow Book
The Yellow Book is the informal name for Philips and Sony's ECMA-130 standard specification for CD-ROM (Compact Disk, read-only-memory). Published by the two companies in 1988, the Yellow Book is an extension of the Red Book that enables the CD to contain data other than the audio data. In 1989, the Yellow Book was issued by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) as ISO/IEC 10149, Data Interchange on Read-Only 120mm Optical disks (CD-ROM). Because the Yellow Book only defines the physical arrangement of the data on the disk, other standards are used in conjunction with it to define directory and file structures. They include ISO-9660, HFS (Hierarchal File System, for Macintosh computers), and Hybrid HFS-ISO. In addition to the disc specification, optical stylus parameters, the control/display system, and sector structure, the Yellow Book includes modulation and error correction data. Definitions include two data modes, mode 1 and mode 2.
CD-ROM, Mode 1 is the standard data storage mode used by almost all standard data CDs (CD-ROMs). Of the 2,352 bytes of data in each block, 2048 are allocated for the data that the user sees. The remaining 304 bytes are used for added error detection and correction code.
CD-ROM, Mode 2 can contain 2336 bytes of user data. It is the same as Mode 1, except that the error detection and code correction bytes are not included. The Mode 2 format offers a flexible method for storing graphics and video. It allows different kinds of data to be mixed together, and became the basis for another standard known as CD-ROM XA (Extended Architecture). The specification for CD-ROM XA was published as an extension to the Yellow Book in 1991.
Orange Book
Orange Book is the informal name for Philips and Sony's Recordable CD Standard. Published in 1990, the Orange Book is a follow-up to their Red Book CD-DA (Compact disc - Digital Audio) specifications. The Orange Book is divided into two sections: Part I deals with magneto-optical (MO) drives, and Part II deals with the first recordable CD format CD-R (Compact disc - Recordable). Part III, released separately, detailed CD-RW (Compact disc - Rewritable). In addition to disc specifications for the above CD forms, the Orange Book includes information on data organization, multisession and hybrid disks, pre-groove modulation (for motor control during writing), and recommendations for measurement of reflectivity, environment, and light speed.
Orange Book specifications enabled the first desktop disc writing. Formerly, CDs had been read-only music (CD-DA), to be played in CD players, and multimedia (CD-ROM), to be played in computers; after the Orange Book, any user with a CD Recorder drive could create their own CDs from their desktop computers.
Magneto-Optical (CD-MO) technology allows tracks to be erased and rewritten on 12cm CDs that are rated to allow millions of rewrites. These drives use two heads (one to write and the other to erase), in a double-pass process. System information may be permanently written in a small, premastered area, but the rest of the area is available for recording, and re-recording many times.
CD-R products can be written to only once, similarly to WORM (write once, read many) products. A CD-R drive records on CDs that have special recording layers and pregrooved tracks. The first tracks are a program calibration area, which is followed by the Lead-in area (where the table of contents will be written), and the program area (where the user actually records), and a Lead-out area. There are hybrid disks that include read-only and recordable areas.
Rewritable CD (CD-RW) was developed by Philips and Sony in 1996, as an extension to the original Orange Book. This addition specifies the use of Phase Change technology and the UDF to produce a CD that can be rewritten in one pass. CD-RW makes it possible for the user to write and rewrite the disk.
White Book
The White Book, which was released in 1993 by Sony, Philips, Matsushita, and JVC, is the specification document for Video CD (VCD), and encompasses specifications for track usage, MPEG audio/video track encoding, play sequence descriptors, data retrieval structures, and user data fields. VCD is defined as a particular adaptation of CD-ROM XA (extended architecture) that is designed to hold MPEG-1 video data. The CD-ROM XA sector structure (as detailed in the Yellow Book and ISO 9660) is used to define the physical and logical blocks, and MPEG-1 is used to compress data so that full-screen, full motion video data can be contained on the disc - without compression, the disc could only hold about 2 minutes worth of video. VCD resolution is similar to that of VHS.
White Book specifications include the disc format (such as the use of tracks, for example), a data retrieval structure compatible with ISO 9660, data fields to enable fast forward and reverse, and closed captioning. VCD, Photo CD and Karaoke CD are defined as bridge disks, a format based on CD-ROM XA to enable the disks to work in compatible CD-ROM and CD-i (CD-Interactive) drives. Following the original specifications, VCD 2.0 was released in 1995, VCD-Internet in 1997, and SuperVCD in 1998, all from extensions to the White Book. Disks of this type interleave MPEG video and audio to achieve proper data flow rates.
Green Book
The Green Book (sometimes known as the Full Functional Green Book, or FFGN) is the informal name for Philips and Sony's 1986 specification document for CD-Interactive (CD-i). More properly known as the Compact disc Interactive Full Functional Specification, the document defines a compact disc format and a complete hardware and software system with specialized data compression and interleaving techniques. The Green Book comprises both the CD-i specification and the Microware OS-9 2.4 (the specified operating system) Technical Manual. CD-i was introduced as an interactive multimedia system that could be connected to the television and stereo system and was the first such system based on CD technology.
The Green Book specifies track layout, sector structure, and an ISO 9660-based data retrieval structure. Adaptive differential pulse-code modulation (ADPCM) is used to convert sound to binary information and to store it along with other types of media data. Green Book block structure enables synchronization of the various kinds of data and file compression for multimedia applications. CD-i sectors make use of an 8 byte area left unused by CD-ROM XA, although they are similar otherwise.
Blue Book
The Blue Book is the informal name for the standard specification document for stamped multisession (also known as enhanced CD or E-CD) disc format, developed in 1995 from a supplement to Philips and Sony's 1988 Orange Book. The Blue Book defines a format for enhanced CDs that enables inclusion of multimedia data (such as video clips, text, and images) on a standard audio CD. Blue Book disc specifications include audio and other data sessions, directory structures, and image and data formats. The disks play normally on a CD-player, and display the extra data when they are played on a device with multimedia capabilities, such as a computer's CD-ROM drive, or a CD-i player.
The Blue Book specifies two sessions: up to 99 Red Book audio tracks in the first session (closest to the center of the disk), and a Yellow Book-based data track in the second session (closest to the outside edge of the disk). Other Blue Book details include the Red Book disc specification, file formats (including CD Plus information files), and an ISO 9660-compatible directory structure to organize the various types of data. The Blue Book is supported as a licensed standard definition by Philips, Sony, Microsoft, and Apple. A multisession CD, the CD+ is designed so that the data track cannot be accessed by regular audio CD players, thereby protecting them for damage.
Scarlet Book
The Scarlet Book is Philips and Sony's 1999 specification document for Super Audio Compact disc (SACD), a high-resolution audio format that features complex six channel sound. SACD disks can contain three different versions of the same material. SACD uses Direct Stream Digital (DSD) recording, a proprietary Sony technology that converts an analog waveform to a 1-bit signal for direct recording, instead of the pulse code modulation (PCM) and filtering used by standard CDs. DSD uses lossless compression (so-called because none of the data is lost in the compression process) and a sampling rate of 2.8MHz to improve the complexity and realism of sound. DSD enables a frequency response of 100kHz and a dynamic range of 120dB (the ratio of the softest to the loudest sound - 120db is also the approximate dynamic range of human hearing) on all channels. Scarlet Book details include three separate options for disc format: single-layer DSD, dual-layer DSD, or dual-layer hybrid, which includes a Red Book layer that can be played on any existing CD player in addition to the high-density layer that has the capacity to deliver eight channels of DSD. In addition to DSD and the hybrid disc technology, Scarlet Book specifications include: Super Bit Mapping Direct, a proprietary downconversion method that enables improved audio when the disks are played on an ordinary CD player; Direct Stream Transfer, a type of coding that increases data capacity; and a digital watermark to protect against piracy. According to some, SACD is a hybrid CD/DVD format, since Scarlet Book specifications are identical to those for DVD disks for the file system, sector size, error correction, and modultation. SACD is in competition with a similar product, DVD-Audio, as the format that will replace standard audio CD.
Purple Book
The Purple Book is the informal name for Philips and Sony's specification document for Double Density Compact disc (DDCD) format. By narrowing the track pitch (to 1.1 micron from 1.6 micron), and shortening the minimum pit length (to 0.623 micron from 0.833 micron), the Purple Book enables a CD to hold 1.3 gigabytes, roughly twice the capacity of a standard CD. Other Purple Book specifications include a new type of error correction (known as CIRC7), an adaptation of the ISO 9660 file format, and a scanning velocity of 0.9 meters per second.
The Purple Book-defined products are expected to be released in recordable and rewritable formats, rather than read-only. Because of the specific requirements for reading DDCD, they cannot be read by other drives currently on the market. Sony has plans to manufacture DDCD-R/RW drives that can read any type of CD, record CD-R, rewrite CD-RW, and perform all three tasks on DDCD. Some upcoming CD-R and CD-RW drives, such as Adaptec's new version of Easy CD Creator, are being designed to be DDCD-compatible.
IS0 9660
ISO (International Organization for Standardization) 9660 is the most common file and directory naming standard, written in 1988 for CD-ROMs.
Naming convention - Each file name must consist of three components: name, extension and version number. A name or extension consists of zero or more characters [A...Z], [0...9] and _ (underscore). The version number ranges from 1 to 32767. The name and extension together must consist of at least one character e.g. .000:1 is a valid ISO-9660 file name.
Interchange Levels - Three nested,
downward-compatible levels are used to record and name files on the CD ROM disk.
Level 1 - Developed with DOS file naming limitations in mind, restricts
filenames to 8 characters and extensions to 3 characters. Directory names can
have no more than 8 characters. Each file must be written on disc as a single,
continuous stream of bytes.
Level 2 - Each file must be written on disc as a single, continuous stream of
bytes. According to AXIS Corporation, no restrictions are placed on filenames;
According to Global Net Systems (GNS), the total length of the name and
extension is restricted to 30 characters (excluding the point and semicolon).
Level 3 - Again, according to the AXIS Corporation, there are no restrictions;
according to GNS, filenames and extensions cannot exceed 30 characters.