Rainbow Books

With Rainbow Books (English for Rainbow Books ) standards are referred to that are officially permitted for the CD. CDs, follow one of these standards may be labeled with a corresponding CD logo. Each standard is assigned a color corresponding to the color of the book cover in which it was published.

Red Book

The Red Book (English for Red Book ) contains the technical specifications of the Compact Disc Digital Audio (CDDA, Audio - CD ), and was established by Philips and Sony in 1980. It describes the first CD - standard the physical breakdown (blocks, frames with 24 bytes of capacity, etc.), the error correction mechanism and the encoding method. CDs by this standard store stereo audio with 16 -bit resolution and a sampling rate of 44.1 kHz. A CD to Red Book standard may contain a maximum of 99 tracks (tracks). Each track must be at least four seconds. Is the track pre-gap, which in standards-compliant audio CD has a length of at least two seconds must have and must have the audio quiescent level between tracks. The maximum playing time is 79.8 minutes. The maximum number of index points per track is 99, with no maximum time limit. The ISRC (ISO 3901) should be included. The audio - CD is capable of storing frequencies of up to 22.05 kHz, which also corresponds to the Nyquist frequency at a sampling rate of 44.1 kHz. The bit rate amounts to 1411.2 kbps.

Audio CDs have compared to data CDs ensure that currently only a low transmission rate of 150 kB / s ( defines the reference size 1 × speed). Due to this low demand and the consequent low number of revolutions so-called shape CDs were possible with CDs from the circle different contours and possible imbalances. ( As is common with CD -ROM drives ) when playing at higher speeds than 1 ×, the drive can be damaged. Shape CDs are now almost entirely disappeared from the market. An exception to represent the balanced business card CDs

The Red Book defines only the pure audio CD that does not use data tracks, or copy protection mechanisms. Hybrid CDs (audio tracks and a computer data track) are defined in the Blue Book (CD -Extra).

Copy-protected Audio CDs conform to a standard terminology of the books ( so not the Red Book ), as these standards are intentionally injured. This happens, for example, faulty data, which are so designed that most of the audio-only CD player are thereby not confused; see also Compact Disc Digital Audio: copy protection.

Yellow Book

The Yellow Book (English for Yellow Book ), the 1985 defined standard for a data CD ( CD -ROM) and an extension of the Red Books. It is operating system independent.

In contrast to the established in the Red Book standard for audio CDs to a CD -ROM Yellow Book according to the sectors to be addressed individually, which necessitates a continuous addressing at the beginning of each sector. Furthermore, there are two so-called recording method, one of which always only one can be used per sector.

The Yellow Book provides two modes before:

CD - ROM Mode 1

The more usual mode 1 allows a memory capacity of 2048 bytes per sector. There are in addition to the error correction already defined in the Red Book (LEC ) additional correction data (12 bytes Sync, 288 bytes FEC ) is used, which reduces the average error rate, but also reduces the user data per sector.

CD - ROM Mode 2

The CD - ROM Mode 2 contains, in contrast to Mode 1 no error correction (LEC ), which increases the storage capacity of the sector to 2336 bytes. This lack of addition of the Mode 2 was used only for video and audio data and never reached the dissemination of fashion 1 He was replaced by CD-ROM XA, which was defined in an extended version of the Yellow Book. This standard is sometimes mistakenly referred to as a CD - ROM Mode 2.

The revised version of this standard is also referred to as the High Sierra and is compliant with ISO 9660, that governs, among other things, how the data is stored on the CD -ROM.

In 1989, Philips, Microsoft and Sony first CD-ROM/XA-Spezifikation agreed in 1991 revised the so-called Extended Yellow Book published.

File Systems

The Yellow Book specifies only on low, close to the hardware level, such as bits stored on the CD. In order to ensure a largely device-and operating system-independent data storage, file system standards were introduced on a more abstract level, based on the Yellow Book: First, the ISO - 9660 standard, as an extension of it then Joliet and Rock Ridge.

Literature / Web Links

The Yellow Book was published by Philips and Sony for their licensees; it is still only available directly at Philips, for the price of $ 100 (single, 2005). However, the Yellow Book respect the content of the subsequently adopted standards ISO / IEC 10149 and ECMA 130, the latter is freely downloadable at the following address:

• Standard ECMA -130: Data Interchange on Read-only 120 mm Optical Data Disks ( CD -ROM)

Blue Book

The Blue Book standard (English for blue book) is from the year 1995 and describes the so-called Advanced music CDs ( Enhanced Music CD, Enhanced CD, CD -Extra). It is pressed CDs that contained in the first session audio data ( up to 98 tracks) and computer-readable data in a second session.

This dualism allows the Blue Book standard the manufacturer, in addition to the audio data to write additional information on the CD without the playing comfort is limited. If you play namely, computer data on an audio CD player off, so you can hear silence or, at best, a kind of white noise, in the worst case, the speaker and the hearing could be affected. Playing the accommodated in the second session computer data but already prevented ordinary CD player only access the first session of a CD. Computers, however, have access to both sessions, including all contents of the CD.

The data in the second session must have no substantive reference to the audio tracks, although they usually relate it (pictures, videos, or other multimedia content ).

Green Book

In the Green Book (English for green book), the data format for so-called CD-i media (CD - Interactive) is recorded. It was published in September 1990 by Philips and Sony. It essentially consists of an operating system ( CD- RTOS), a decoder ( MC 68000 ) and V components. The special feature is thus that it has data and an application program. The sector format is the same structure as in the CD -ROM XA. The resolution is 360 × 240 pixels. An extension enables full-screen playback of MPEG -1 ISO 11172nd

In addition, the following options exist:

• CD-I -Ready (similar to a CD-DA, enables reproduction of the audio information of the CD -I)
• CD - Bridge ( connection of CD -ROM XA and CD -i, containing the CD data by the CD-DA standard and CD -i application)

Orange Book

The Orange Book (English for Orange Book) describes recordable CD formats with multisession capability. It was first published in 1990 and consists of three parts:

The Orange Book contains the specifications for both undescribed and described for media from the above category. In addition, the data organization and recommendations are described for measuring the goodness. The Orange Book was last updated in 2002.

White Book

The White Book (English for White Book ), a standard that was initially set in 1993 by Philips and JVC for Karaoke CDs, describes the basics of video CD (VCD ) ( 1995). He was until 1998 the possibility to the website link and improve the video quality by higher-resolution formats expanded (by MPEG2).

Beige Book

The Beige Book (English for Beige Book) is the standard of Photo CD.

Scarlet Book

The Scarlet Book (English for Scarlet Book) describes the standard for Super Audio CD.

Purple Book

The Purple Book (English for Violet Book) describes the standard for the Double Density CD ( DDCD ).

• CD
• Color Book