Why would you ever put a recordable DVD upside down into the DVD drive? To directly label a LightScribe disc, of course!

It may be intuitively obvious to some, but it definitely was not to me. I'm currently burning DVDs for the models that attended the March 1 Chicagoland Strobist Meetup and thought it would be nice to use LightScribe to etch one of their pictures on the front of the DVD. I've had a LightScribe-capable drive for a few years but have never actually used it in such a way.

After creating the label with Nero Cover Designer (a part of Nero 8 Ultra Edition), I began the LightScribe process and was greeted with the error "LightScribe disc information is not recognized. Please ensure that the disc is a LightScribe disc." I scratched my head and like all things with computers, tried the process three or four more times in hopes that something different would occur. Of course, the same thing happened over and over again despite me doing absolutely nothing different. That is the definition of insanity right? I may be in for a rough road ahead.

A quick Google search turned up this post on cdfreaks.com where the poster mentions his CD being inserted upside down in the drive. Huh? Upside down? However, after thinking about it for a few moments it made sense. When the disc is inserted right side up, it is written to on the bottom of the disc. Inserting the disc upside down would then result in the label of the disc being written. A quick flip of the disc and Nero Cover Designer was happy as a claim and nineteen minutes later out popped my first ever directly labeled LightScribe disc.

If you have a LightScribe-capable drive and want to get started with some high quality templates and free software, look no further than lightscribe.org. lightscribe.org provides drivers for Windows, OS X and Linux, software for direct labeling of LightScribe discs, pre-made templates and even quick how-to guides for some of the more popular commercial solutions out there.