Where Is TOC Located on a CD

This section provides basic information on physical location of TOC (Table Of Contents) CDs.

Every CD (Compact Disc) has a TOC (Table Of Contents) section located in the "lead-in" area on the CD. For an CD-DA, (audio CD), the "lead-in" area is located between radius 23mm and 25mm, as shown on this illustration from www.disctronics.co.uk:

CD Physical Layout - Lead-in Area
CD Physical Layout - Lead-in Area

The illustration also shows other interesting areas on a CD:

Radius 22-23mm: Inner buffer zone.
Radius 23-25mm: Lead-in area.
Radius 25-58mm: Program area.
Radius 58-58.5mm: Lead-out area.
Radius 58.5-59mm: Outer buffer zone.
Radius 59-60mm: Rim area.

The size of the "lead-in" area is about, 4,500 sectors with a capacity of about 9 MB.

The TOC in the "lead-in" area contains the total length of the recording session, a list of tracks and their starting addresses and some other information.

Note that on a multi-session CD, each session will have its own "lead-in" area and TOC.

On a recordable/writable CD (CD-R), there is an extra area called PMA (Program Memory Area) before the "lead-in" area. The PMA is located between radius 22.35mm and radius 23m.

The PMA is used by the recording process to store a temporary copy TOC, before the session is closed. After the session is closed, the TOC is written to the "lead-in" area.

Table of Contents

 About This Book

 Audio CD (Compact Disc Digital Audio or CD-DA) Format

 Audio CD (Compact Disc Digital Audio or CD-DA) Players

 Audio CD (Compact Disc Digital Audio or CD-DA) Rip Music

 WAV Audio File Format

 MP3, MPEG-1 Audio Layer 3, Encoding Format

 Burning MP3 Music to Audio CD

 Windows Sound Recorder

 ISO 9660 Standard for Data CD

 Recording Data on CD

 VCD (Video CD) Standard

 DVD (Digital Video Disc) Standard Format

TOC (Table Of Contents) on CDs

Where Is TOC Located on a CD

 "readcd -fulltoc" - Reading TOC with "cdrtools"

 "readcd -fulltoc" - CD-DA (Audio CD) Sample

 "readcd -fulltoc" - Data CD Sample

 "readcd -fulltoc" - Multi-Session Data CD Sample

 "readcd -fulltoc" - VCD (Video CD) Sample

 "readcd -fulltoc" - DVD Sample

 IsoBuster - A Nice CD GUI Tool

 MPlayer - The Movie Player

 vStrip - Rip and Manipulate DVD VOB Files

 mpgtx - Manipulating MPEG Files

 CD/DVD - File Name Extension and Format Types

 References

 Full Version in PDF/ePUB