CD Duplication Myths

CD duplication is effective and versatile but there are few misconceptions.

CD Duplication Myth 1.
Duplicated CD-Rs don’t look as good as replicated CDs.

One of the great strengths of CD-R recordable media is it’s versatility. Discs can be created within the home or office environment. CD duplication is an effective way of reproducing many copies of a disc.

Nowadays printable CD-Rs are available from High Street stores. Printing on discs in this way is useful when frequently producing very small quantities of discs. With the right printer the quality can be very good. We even offer digitally printed discs for our customers in some instances. We do advise, however, that a digitally printed disc does not have a professional retail-quality finish.

Here at Alpha, we’re the only CD duplication company in the UK with screen and litho printing facilities in-house. This allows us to offer professional-looking discs on any volume.  We also duplicate on silver-backed media rather than the more common green coloured discs. The only difference that you will see between a duplicated and a replicated CD is a faint line on the reverse of the disc.

Take a look at our CD printing for yourself over on our disc printing gallery pages.

CD Duplication Myth 2.
Duplicated CDs have compatibility problems.

When CD players first became available in the eighties, they were designed to play replicated CDs. As a result of this, some players made before this change may have difficulty playing CD-Rs. CD players manufactured since the mid-nineties play CD-Rs just as well as pressed CDs.

CD Duplication Myth 3.
Duplicated CDs are not suitable for retail.

Although historically discs sold by retail were replicated, this is no longer necessarily the case.  With advances in compatibility and printing, the finished product is virtually the same however it is manufactured.

What is essential is that your product is professional enough for people to be willing to pay for. It also needs to live up to that expectation when they get it home.

Nowadays CD-R media is just as acceptable as pressed media in retail environments. If you are selling your discs via one of the High Street giants you will producing large volumes of discs. In these instances it would make sense to replicate rather than duplicate your CDs.  We can help you with that too.

CD Duplication vs CD Replication

Unless you’re already in the know, the meaning of the terms ‘CD duplication’ and ‘CD replication’ appear to be the same. In the world of CD manufacturing they are two distinct processes that are used to make multiple copies of discs.

Depending on the quantity of discs that that you need, how your discs will be used and the size of your budget, either CD duplication or CD replication is an option.  Each has it’s own advantages and each is better suited for certain applications.  We’re more than happy to advise you which we feel will be best for you project.

Here’s a short explanation of both CD replication and CD duplication and the differences and similarities between them.

CD Replication

When the compact disc was first introduced in the early eighties, it was exclusively an audio format and promoted as successor of the vinyl record as means of mass manufacture and distribution of music.

The process in which these discs were produced is known as CD replication.  The data is stored on a thin layer of injection moulded plastic called polycarbonate.  This is then metalised, giving it its reflective surface.  The whole disc is then encased in a transparent lacquer.  This process is also known as CD pressing.

CD Duplication

Compact Disc Recordable, or CD-Rs were developed a few years later than the original CDs and their primary use was for the computer user to store or back-up data.  In this way they were a successor to the floppy disc. They also had the advantage of being compatible and therefore had the added use of being a music format.

Rather than the data molded onto the disc at the time of manufacture, a thin layer of dye polycarbonate disc is coated with a thin layer of organic dye. The data is then ‘burnt’ to the layer by laser using a CD-R writer.

Of course CD-Rs are also mass produced in a factory, but unlike pressed CDs, the data is not added at this stage. Instead the polycarbonate disc is coated with a very thin layer of organic dye. The data can then be ‘burnt’ to the layer by laser using a CD-R writer.

CD Duplication vs CD Replication – How They Play

Replicated and duplicated CDs are read in exactly the same way by a CD player.  As the disc rotates a laser reads which parts are reflective or unreflective and interprets the data.  On a replicated CD, these areas are known as pits and are tiny indentation in the polycarbonate layer of the disc.  On a duplicated CD, the parts that have been burned by the laser in the  CD writer serve the same purpose as the pits.

Although original CD players were designed to read replicated rather than CD-R media, CD players manufactured since early nineties have been designed to play either.

Regardless of whether we replicate or duplicate your CDs, we guarantee high quality, faultless discs.

Blu-ray vs DVD

The fight between Standard Definition DVD and High Definition Blu-ray has become the major digital format war since the first few years of the new millennium. Except for the short lived battle between HD DVD and Blu-ray (I think we know who the winner was there) most of the “Format Wars” have been between Analogue and Digital media, with Digital coming out on top. This battle is different. It’s Digital v Digital. Disc v Disc. Which will win? Only time will see, but for now, both formats are a viable. DVD duplication and Blu-ray duplication are both options for your job. The hard part is weighing up the pros & cons of each and hopefully this article helps a little bit.

What’s the difference between DVD and Blu-ray image quality

Click for full-size image

As you can tell from the comparison above, picture quality is the most obvious difference. Blu-ray video is up to six-times the resolution of DVD video.

Any digital signal has a measurable bit rate, which is basically the speed that data is being transmitted. The clarity of Blu-ray comes from its high bit rates. DVDs can provide up to 8 Megabits per second (Mbps) which includes the video, audio and subtitles. Your SkyHD box delivers at 19Mbps. Blu-ray discs have a maximum data through-put of 54Mbps! Saying that, most assets aren’t encoded at such a high rate because the newer algorithms used to encode High Definition video and audio are much more efficient. On average, we encode video anywhere from 17 to 38Mbps, leaving plenty of room for multi-channel, lossless audio tracks and animated menu items, also exclusively available on Blu-ray.

These higher bit rates, better picture and audio quality are due entirely to the storage size of a Blu-ray disc. There are two varieties, a 25GB single-layer disc and a dual-layer, 50GB. The laser used to read/duplicate Blu-ray discs is much finer and can focus much more precisely than the laser in CD and DVD players (See below).

This makes high data output and large storage capacities possible. Blu-ray duplication allows approximately four times  the amount of storage space of DVD duplication. A full Blu-ray disc holds same amount of data as seventeen and a half duplicated CDs!

A Blu-ray laser occupies the same frequency space of blue light, hence its name.

Blu-ray Authoring

Following on from our successful CD & DVD authoring services, Alpha Duplication offer a full range of Blu-ray authoring services. Using Hollywood standard software such as Sonic Scenarist, Cinevision Encoder, Adobe Photoshop & Adobe After Effects, we are able to provide you with a HD master that is duplication or replication ready.

These services are completely in-house, making it possible for you to couple your authoring needs with disc printing, packaging and fulfilment options, saving you time AND money!

Fully Equipped for Blu-ray Authoring

After receiving an authoring brief, we collect all assets needed for disc creation. Menus are created in Adobe Photoshop and Adobe AfterEffects. Video assets are either loaded from external hard drive or captured via HDMI. Once the footage is brought in, all video assets are encoded using CineVision. This is a Hollywood-level product capable of producing results that will impress! After encoding, menus, video, audio and subtitles (if applicable) are combined using Sonic Scenarist. At this time, menu animations and pop-up menu functionality is added, if required.

We can accept footage in DigiBeta, DV-Cam, Mini DV-Cam, uncompressed video such as .avi & .mov files. DVD ready (pre-encoded) .m2v & .wav files are also acceptable. It may be possible to work with other formats such as a pre-authored DVD, compressed video – mpeg-1 files, but quality is not guaranteed and authoring time may be longer than quoted.

Thinking Outside the Box

Blu-ray isn’t just for the latest blockbuster to come out. As time goes on, we’re seeing more and more interesting and creative projects for this new format.

• One example of a simple, but effective Blu-ray disc we did was for a company that needed a showreel for an exhibition. All they wanted was some HD footage over a couple of looping animations. They had implemented that same idea on DVD and said that the High Definition version brought more people in initially to see the sharpness of the video, but stayed and eventually bought from this company!

• On the other side of the coin, the Blu-ray spec allows for some pretty fun & complex user interactions. Because there is the ability to have full-colour, interactive menus on top of full HD video, it’s a great platform for corporate training videos. You can have ‘Quiz Questions’ after each chapter, or a business presentation that features a speaker and then overlayed with financial charts and graphs.

A good analogy is to think of what you have seen on a Flash website. Navigation, simple animations background images and video… Give us a call to discuss any other ideas you may have!

Remember that we’re a duplicator,
so we can provide quantities from one to one million copies!