Hacker News

by Ryan Harman

DiscImageStudio: burn visible artwork onto CDs, DVDs and Blu-ray discs (github.com)

316 points by bpierre 15 hours ago

bmenrigh 9 hours ago

I made a CTF challenge for this year's BSidesSF CTF where players were given a CDDA audio file (just raw PCM samples) which when burned on a CD-RW would produce an image of the flag. (The idea was not for them to burn the audio, since they'd need to guess my exact CD-RW or else they wouldn't get an image readable enough to be useful. Instead they were supposed to invert the process in software and simulate what a burned disk would look like, in a way that let them adjust disk parameters rapidly until they had a readable image.)

The challenge took me a few weeks to make because "calibrating" a disk (determining the geometry of the pregroove) is incredibly sensitive.

After the CTF I tried really hard to make a repeatable calibration process with the intent of building something releasable. I even ended up measuring the details on every CD-RW and CD-R I could buy on Amazon.

But despite trying very hard, I never did make calibration patterns that were reliable enough that I felt like other people would be willing to go through the process.

It seems someone else has succeeded where I failed. Great to see!

aristofun 2 hours ago

WTF is CTF?

r4ndomname 2 hours ago

A capture the flag challenge (CTF) is a common cybersecurity challenge in which you are tasked to hack/reverse engineer/pwn a system or something else which falls into the category of abusing a system for different gains. There are different sites online for you to get into hacking and CTFs are just one category.

Retr0id an hour ago

https://ctftime.org/ctf-wtf/

echoangle 2 hours ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capture_the_flag_(cybersecurit...

apitman 14 hours ago

Throwback to lightscribe which I haven't thought of in many years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LightScribe

danielmeskin 11 hours ago

Glad I read the article, this is fascinating:

> In 2012, a LightScribe optical drive was successfully used by Maher El-Kady, a graduate of UCLA, to turn a specially prepared graphite oxide layer coated onto a DVD into graphene.[10] El-Kady and Richard Kaner, his lab professor, used an unmodified LightScribe drive. The disc was prepared by coating the disc with an aqueous solution of graphite oxide and allowing it to dry. Areas of the coating illuminated by the LightScribe laser were turned into graphene. Various shapes can be drawn, which allowed the scientist duo essentially to laser-print an ultracapacitor on graphene using consumer-grade technology.

QuantumNomad_ 7 hours ago

Sun used to say “the network is the computer”.

Now you are telling me we could potentially have “the DVD is the computer”. Imagine printing not just a capacitor but a whole PCB and soldered components, putting the innards of like a Raspberry Pi on top of a specially crafted DVD that has said single-board on one side and a readable DVD surface on the opposite side! :D

jareklupinski 4 hours ago

QuantumNomad_ 14 hours ago

I have a LightScribe compatible external CD/DVD burner. It came with a LightScribe disc that I haven’t taken the plastic off still to this day. Since it only came with a single one I could never decide which one thing to use that one LightScribe disc for, back when I was still burning things on CD and DVD.

sam1714 13 hours ago

You didn't miss much. It took 20-30 minutes each pass, plus the extra cost for the discs.

But even if you were fine with that, it came out too light under actual lighting conditions, even after you burned it twice, which defeats the use case of making it look professionally labeled. For home use, a Sharpie beat it in every way.

TurkTurkleton 13 hours ago

OptionOfT 13 hours ago

I have the same issue in video games. I always end up at the end not having used my unique items because I only have 1.

pimlottc an hour ago

serf 9 hours ago

imzadi 3 hours ago

unpleasurable 13 hours ago

xattt 14 hours ago

DiscT@2 (1), the granddaddy of them all.

This was followed up by Labelflash in 2007(2).

(1) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DiscT@2

(2) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Labelflash

jonah-archive 11 hours ago

I still have a DiscT@2 capable drive running (a Yamaha CRW-F1), though I haven't tried the imaging capability in... geez, 20 years.

Breakthrough 14 hours ago

I had one of these as well... What a trip down memory lane, thanks for sharing.

kixpanganiban 8 hours ago

This is exactly the sort of thing the 2020's are missing. Something tactile and artsy, reminiscent of the early 2000s! Well done to the author

Animats 13 hours ago

I used to have a label system called Neato, which provided round CD labels you could make on a printer, along with a tool to press them accurately onto the non-recording side of a CD-R. There were even transparent labels, so the resulting disk looked like a commercially produced disk.

linuxkernal 12 hours ago

Sadly https://www.neatolabels.com/collections/cd-dvd-labels

dd8601fn 11 hours ago

Aww, bummer. If money was a problem they should have just rubbed some AI on it.

al_borland 12 hours ago

I had one of these as well. It was pretty useful in the days when my HHD was 20GB and regularly filled up.

tamimio 15 minutes ago

This would be an absolute banger in 90s or early 2000!

anfractuosity 7 hours ago

Also see https://github.com/arduinocelentano/cdimage from a few years ago

FriedPickles 13 hours ago

I've always wondered if this could be used to create 3d holograms.

leni536 6 hours ago

Me too, but I don't think the resolution is good enough, even on blu-ray.

NDlurker 14 hours ago

Wow! Light Scribe on the data side!

jonhohle 12 hours ago

Windows 2000 & XP discs had something like this, but on the label side.

LeoPanthera 12 hours ago

Is anyone still making new optical drives?

mrob 5 hours ago

Lots of new USB DVD drives are available from brands I've never heard of. But the availability of Bluray drives is so low I suspect they're only new old stock.

dylan604 an hour ago

You should look for Blu-ray drives instead of Bluray which does not exist /s

Back around 2007 during the red vs blue HD laser format war, the spelling was hammered into me as the incorrect spelling was tirelessly brought to one's attention. Since we're going down memory lane on shiny discs, I couldn't resist bringing this one back too

truncate 11 hours ago

Probably. Bluray still exists, still a popular medium for selling games on PS/Xbox and to certain extent movies to people who like to watch on their high-end equipment.

samplatt 9 hours ago

Sony is discontinuing all the BD disc players,as well as famously discontinuing disc games for the playstation.

XBox is making similar moves but isn't committing 100% to the bit yet.

ig-88ms 9 hours ago

grishka 8 hours ago

Absolutely. And discs as well. I had an x-ray recently and asked them to give me the image so I could take it to a different clinic, and they burned it onto a CD. So I suppose optical media is sort of irreplaceable for medical applications at least.

ale42 7 hours ago

Like floppy disks were in Japan for a long time... and fax machines in other countries.

grishka an hour ago

pstuart 20 minutes ago

1970-01-01 3 hours ago

I suppose it has been awhile since LightScribe was a thing. People forget and reinvent so much these days it's funny.

echoangle 2 hours ago

This is modifying the data side, LightScribe uses the reverse label side

1970-01-01 2 hours ago

Right. So it's reinventing the thing that came before it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DiscT@2

And I suppose the other repo that does this already

https://github.com/arduinocelentano/cdimage

Larrikin 14 hours ago

Do they actually play?

krige 4 hours ago

It supports putting data files either at the inner or outer rim, but it's at the cost of image space. So yes it can play, but not much storage.

deadbabe 7 minutes ago

I bet someone will come up with breakthrough eventually that allows for both an image and a mostly readable CD.

dylan604 42 minutes ago

Sounds like a mixed mode disc where it defaults as an audio CD, but has the data portion available for data.

sourweasel 13 hours ago

I can't comment on this particular project, but I know that similar projects have allowed adding images to the unused portions of the disc. A given region of the disc cannot be both image and data, but the disc can contain an inner region of data and imagery in the outer unused portion.

jedbrooke 13 hours ago

DVD codec probably allows for a certain amount of error correction to recover from scratches, images can still look readable to humans despite a bit of noise, I wonder if there’s enough overlap there to meet in the middle and have an image that also stores data

Nition 8 hours ago

account42 4 hours ago

anonym29 14 hours ago

star graph looks very inorganic

kuberwastaken 13 hours ago

That's what happens when your project randomly blows up through a translated tweet haha

DANmode 12 hours ago

Do folks here know the data goes “into” the label through the clear plastic?

A fellow xth grader did a science project on this, and I’ll never forget it.

avra 9 hours ago

What do you mean by that? I don't think the laser writes data into the label usually. There is a reflective layer though, that will be damaged easily when scratching or peeling off the label.

alias_neo 6 hours ago

I think they're suggesting that the "data holding" layer, is actually the label, not the plastic.

The plastic is purely for protection and rigidity, the "label" is the actual functional part of the disc.

cowlevel 13 hours ago

Truly, China has overtaken the Western world in innovation.

I wonder if the disk can still hold data at the same time.