Developers

GEARWorks is a software library that can enable you to add powerful CD or DVD recording, reading, or playback capabilities to your product.

GEAR licenses this software to commercial software developers or high-technology equipment manufacturers for a wide variety of applications.

Software developers use GEAR's GEARWorks SDK (Software Developers Toolkit) to implement these functions.

The GEARWorks code library provides functions (complete software modules) which the main application calls to perform CD and DVD related tasks. The main application can also get answers from the functions that GEAR provides.

GEARWorks includes the GEAR drivers, which provide the software interface to any CD or DVD drive (CD-ROM, DVD-ROM, CD-Recordable, DVD-Recordable, etc.) that is connected to the user's system.

This driver interface provides the connection between your software application and the user's operating system and hardware. GEAR's high-level functions make the programming of powerful capabilities a simple task. Your application software provides the user interface; GEARWorks does all the work.

GEARWorks is more than just a code library. Every GEARWorks customer gets continuous support and regular updates.

GEAR's dedicated application engineers help you provide the most reliable and trouble-free CD and DVD functionality to your customers for years to come. As new drive models are introduced, GEAR's staff continues to perform compatibility testing, providing updates to GEARWorks to insure your product continues to be compatible with the latest hardware platforms.

GEARWorks provides high-level functions to build the track and subcode structures needed to deliver fully compatible CD-Audio, CD-ROM, Video CD, DVD-Video, or DVD-ROM titles.

GEAR has developed these powerful, yet easy to use functions over the past 17 years. In no time at all you can plug our years of hard work into your application.

The GEARWorks SDK is compatible with most major software programming environments, including Visual C/C++, Borland C++, Visual Basic, GNU, and Sun Forte. A .NET managed code version of the GEAR SDK is under development.

• GEAR’s engine supports every CD or DVD drive available, through any drive interface (IDE, SCSI, USB, Firewire).
• GEAR has developed sophisticated auto-detection systems which enable your software to locate drives and learn the drive’s capabilities.
• The engine is multi-threaded, with a powerful set of functions that allow you to completely and seamlessly integrate the authoring, reading, and recording capabilities that you desire into your application. For instance, your software or system can show the user all connected CD or DVD drives, whether media is present, whether the media is recordable or eraseable, whether eraseable media is formatted, and what reading and recording speeds are available for each media type.
• All drive features are accessible and controllable, including all subcode flags and channels on CDs (for support of functions like CD-text, for instance), or reading control data on DVDs.
• Discover and control read and write speed settings for CD-R/RW, DVD-R/RW, DVD+R/RW, DVD+R Double-Layer and DVD-RAM media.
• Format and erase CD-RW, DVD+/-RW media.
• While recording, you can provide feedback on each step of the process and an accurate progress indication. A powerful set of multi-threaded functions can interrupt the process to provide status or to abort a function in process.
• GEAR’s complete system allows you to provide the highest level of fault-tolerance, as well as complete read and compare verification of recorded content. GEAR lets you configure read and write buffers and supports all drive buffer-underrun protection technologies.
• GEARWorks creates the disc file system with total accuracy to ISO, UDF, and all disc format specifications.
• When released, our new .NET managed code wrapper provides support for integration with Windows Media formats.

The GEARWorks engine is also the world’s most portable disc engine, supporting all of the leading operating system environments for PCs, Midrange / Open Systems, and embedded devices. GEAR’s code library is available for immediate implementation on Windows, Mac OSX, Unix, and Linux platforms on a wide variety of hardware platforms. GEAR provides custom libraries for implementation on any embedded OS and processor platform.

The GEARWorks engine is implemented using the GEARWorks SDK, which includes the following components:

• GEARWorks Dynamic Link Library
• Library file, to be linked in your own application
• GEARWorks Module Libraries - normally Dynamic Link Libraries
• GEAR license file containing the customer license for the allowed modules and features
• Configuration files for older drive/recorder configuration settings
• Jukebox configuration settings (optional)
• C source files (header files) containing the data structures, constants, functions, etc.
• Sample applications in Visual C++ and Visual Basic
• GEAR device drivers - GEARAspi.DLL and GEARAspi.VxD driver for Windows 98 and ME, GEARAspi.DLL and GEARAspiSys.Sys driver for Windows NT 4.0, GEARAspi.DLL and GEARAspiWDM.Sys driver for Windows 2000 and Windows XP
• Installer files for GEAR.wrks, including source code (Installshield)
• README.TXT - details on recent updates to GEARWorks
• GEARWorks Technical Specification (Developer's User Manual)

Technical support is provided directly from GEAR's experienced Application Engineers, over the phone, by fax, through private web discussion forums, by e-mail, instant messaging, video conference, or as required - in person at your location or ours. Each GEARWorks licensee is given all the support necessary to assist with implementation and debugging of CD and DVD functionality and support for new disc drives and media types as they become available. Regular updates of GEARWorks are provided as part of every license agreement.

To see why this is a dream system for developers of data storage, multimedia, and other powerful software and systems, Get the Works!