openSuse 12.3 KDE 4.10.5 k3b 2.0.2
What space is required by k3b on a 700 mb cd?
When I try to burn a 700 mb cd it shows I have 00:10 seconds
[out of 80 minutes] left, but the last song is only 1/2 recorded and that songs is
2.31 minutes long.
What does check marking "overburn" and "burn free" in settings allow me to do?
Shouldn't k3b show only the time that is allowed to me and hide the time it requires?
Thank You for Enlightenment on this subject .

Note: I tried a simulation with 10 seconds remaining and it simulated without a problem,
but when I did the real burn, I was missing 1/2 of the last song.

For Overburn see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Optical_di ... verburning
Burn free is related to handling of Buffer Underrun issues. I would definitely suggest switching both on.

As it seems you are burning an ordinary audio CD, K3b should not require any special space on the disk to store data - it should behave exactly the same as other burning software in this case.

Does K3b indicate during the burning process it is having problems keeping the buffers full?

ty for reply bcooksley

I will check out the link re: overburn

Does K3b indicate during the burning process it is having problems keeping the buffers full?

No I get no error msg during the burn process, but I do get a cdrecord error msg at the end of burning.
Unfortunately I did not get a chance to write it down, and I did not want to ruin another cd.
Is there a place they [error msgs] get recorded, that I could look?

Try looking at ~/.kde4/share/apps/k3b/lastlog.log.

The last msg in /.kde4/share/apps/k3b/lastlog.log is the "last" cd I burned, however that was successful, so nothing there.
I checked in /var/log, but found nothing there.
I guess I will have to try and recreate it.

As it seems you are burning an ordinary audio CD, K3b should not require any special space on the disk to store data - it should behave exactly the same as other burning software in this case

If this is so, then why would it not burn my cd when I still have 00:10 seconds left?

Maybe you have a problem with wodim/cdrkit?
Try to use the real cdrecord and mkisofs instead.

You can get it from the multimedia:apps repo:
http://software.opensuse.org/package/cdrecord
http://software.opensuse.org/package/mkisofs

@ wolfi323
When I checked software management, neither cdrecord or mkisofs showed in search.
I did install them as per your suggestion, but, is it because they are under restricted formats that they are not installed at OS install time?
I thought the restricted formats was taken care of by installing codecs-kde.ymp
After I installed them [cdrecord / mkisofs] they showed up in Software management search.
When I originally looked at k3b > Settings > Configure k3b >Programs, both those files appeared but I don't recall the version number.
Why would I not see them in Software Management search, if they are part of k3b?

Anyway, I won't know if this will make a difference until I try to record something, but obviously something is not right.

Both cdrecord and mkisofs are separate programs and packages, which K3b relies upon to complete it's work. They wouldn't be included in K3b itself, as they are usable by themselves separately - and are used by other burning programs as well.

Neither are restricted formats - it is a distribution fault if they were not installed at the same time K3b was...

LaQuirrELL wrote:@ wolfi323
When I checked software management, neither cdrecord or mkisofs showed in search.
I did install them as per your suggestion, but, is it because they are under restricted formats that they are not installed at OS install time?
I thought the restricted formats was taken care of by installing codecs-kde.ymp
After I installed them [cdrecord / mkisofs] they showed up in Software management search.
When I originally looked at k3b > Settings > Configure k3b >Programs, both those files appeared but I don't recall the version number.
Why would I not see them in Software Management search, if they are part of k3b?
.

Software Management only lists packages from the repos configured in your system.
Since those packages are not included in the standard repos they are not found unless you add a repo that contains them.
But you are able to see them now because they are installed (and if you used the 1-click install, the repo should have been added to your system).

Normally on a standard openSUSE installation wodim (aka cdrkit) is installed. This is a drop-in replacement for the original cdrecord and friends, so k3b did find the programs. But wodim/cdrkit might have bugs that the original cdrecord does not have, as it is derived from an older version.

openSUSE does not contain cdrecord by default, only wodim/cdrkit, because of license and security concerns.
There are efforts to getting them addressed to make cdrecord the default again, see here for more information:
https://bugzilla.novell.com/show_bug.cgi?id=550021

ty wolfi323
That explains a lot. I will make a note to install them [cdrecord and mkisofs] on a new install, along with codecs-kde.ymp.
I should know in the next two weeks if it has solved the problem.
My husband will have another compilation ready to go by then.