What's a good program to use to make customised disk labels?

I've always liked 'Sure Thing CD/DVD Labeler', which surprisingly enough you can find at www.surething.com. With this you can create some really impressive effects effortlessly. It includes lots of templates, clip art and text effects, and you won't even have to worry about measuring your jewel cases/DVD boxes because that has been taken care of too.

Even if you plan to download ready-made covers from the internet rather than design your own in Sure Thing CD/DVD Labeler, it's still worthwhile importing them into an empty template as this ensures that they will be resized correctly. Without a template or a dedicated label creation application, this often has to be done manually because the covers are far too large to fit inside a standard jewel case or DVD box.

If you still need convincing that this is the best tool for the job, perhaps you'd be interested to know that it won a People's Choice Award for 'Best Application 2001', so I'm not the only one who appreciates it.

It's free to download the 'try before you buy' version and this allows you to test it for 15 days.
Just time for one more tip before you go - what I do when I'm making a cover for a DIY music CD is use one of the freeware utilities mentioned in my 'data cataloguing' blog entry to create a list of all the tracks on it, and then copy and paste them into Sure Thing. The latest version of Sure Thing may even have a similar built-in feature, I can't be certain, but if not, this is a huge time saver!

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Is there a way of checking my DIY CDs for corruption once I've burnt them?

Yes, there are many utilities available which will perform such a test for you. My favourite is 'CD Check'; a freeware tool which be found lurking amongst Fusion's apps collection.

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What is over-burning, and how do I do it?

Over-burning is a term used in reference to cramming more data onto a CD-R than the capacity should theoretically allow. It is used when the CD you wish to copy has marginally more data on it than will fit on a 74 or 80 minute CD-R. Often this is done in a deliberate attempt by the software manufacturers to make duplication of their products more difficult. If an original CD has been over-burnt you will have to follow suit in order to make a backup and get everything to fit. Note that I use the word 'marginally' above; you cannot go on expanding the capacity of a CD indefinitely. A good rule of thumb is to set the limit at about an extra 4 minutes when using a standard 74 or 80 minute CD-R.

Not all CD writing software supports the over-burning feature, but I know for a fact that Nero is definitely one of the ones that does. OK, enough rambling. Here's the procedure you need to follow: open Nero and select 'options' from the 'file' menu followed by 'expert options'. Now check the box that says 'allow over-burn' and set the maximum capacity of the CD you wish to oversize. When you attempt to over-burn your next CD, Nero will check to see if you really want to go ahead with this. Just tell it, "yes, I'm not mad and I know perfectly well what I'm doing", and commence burning while singing, "burn baby burn, disco inferno!" (OK, so the last bit's optional, ahem!).

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How can I apply copyright protection to my home made CDs?

There are one or two programs available which will allow you to do this, but Free Lock is the one that stands out above the rest. It runs from a deliberately damaged floppy disk, altering the layout of a CD image prior to recording and thus making the resulting copy very difficult to duplicate for the average end-user (no copyright protection system is unbreakable, no matter what the authors would have you believe). What's more, it's not called 'Free' Lock for nothing! For other alternatives I'd suggest performing a search for 'copy protection' at Game Copy World.

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