Optical disc and optical disc driving apparatus

An optical disc having a data recording area comprising:

• a disc substrate with grooves formed circumferentially and lands between said grooves,
• a phase-change recording film is formed in the data recording area for recording information using the leading and trailing edges of recording marks produced by a localized change in reflectivity effected in the phase-change recording film by emitting thereto a laser beam of a particular wavelength .lambda. focused by a lens of a particular aperture NA, and
• a single recording spiral is formed by alternately connecting groove recording tracks equivalent to one disc circumference and land recording tracks equivalent to one disc circumference with a track pitch p where p<(.lambda./NA)<2p,
• said recording tracks comprise an integer number of recording sectors where the length of a recording sector is sufficient to store the data written to a recording sector of a read-only optical disc and is an integer multiple of the synchronous frame length of a read-only optical disc, and
• each recording sector comprises a mirror area, and a header area preformatted with embossed pits that represent such information as address information,
• where at least the address information recorded to the header area is modulated by a runlength-limited modulation method,
• the header area comprises recorded four times a physical address area PID containing a single frequency pattern area VFO for synchronization clock generation and timing detection during reproduction, an address mark AM for byte synchronization during header reproduction and starting the detection timing, an address area Pid for holding the sector address information, an address error detection area IED for storing the address error detection code, and a postamble PA for completing modulation,
• where the four physical address areas PID are labelled PID1, PID2, PID3 and PID4 from the first PID in the header area with PID1 and PID2 offset approximately p/2 toward the outside circumference or inside circumference from the track center of a groove recording track, and PID3 and PID4 offset approximately p/2 toward the inside circumference or outside circumference from the track center of a groove recording track,
• the recording marks in said VFO are longer than the shortest recording mark of the modulation method, and VFO length in PID1 and PID3 is long enough to contain the edges of sufficient recording marks to lock reproduction clock synchronization within the VFO, VFO length in PID2 and PID4 is long enough to contain the edges of sufficient recording marks to reassert reproduction clock synchronization within the VFO, and the VFO areas in PID1 and PID3 are sufficiently longer than the VFO areas in PID2 and PID4,
• the address mark AM is longer than the longest recording mark of the modulation method and long enough to contain plural channel bit patterns of a recording mark length not appearing in the modulation bit sequence,
• the Pid is at least long enough to discriminate a number of recording sectors capable of storing user data exceeding the recording capacity of the above read-only optical disc medium,
• the IED is a length enabling address area Pid reproduction errors to be detected with an error detection rate less than or equal to a particular rate,
• the postamble PA is at least the length required by the modulation method and is a length enabling recording marks to be completed, and
• the mirror area is longer than the longest recording mark of the modulation method.