Patent ID: 8064302

Claim:
An optical disk drawing apparatus comprising: a receiver that receives pixel data of an image to be drawn on an optical disk; an image data generator that generates image data by frame-formatting the received pixel data; a drive signal generator that generates a drive signal indicative of irradiation timing for any one of a write level, an erase level, and a read level based upon the generated image data; an image data identifying unit that identifies a first control signal indicative of a gradation degree for every pixel contained in that image data; a first time period specifying unit that specifies a time period for irradiating the laser light of the erase level as a first time period based upon the identified first control signal; a gate unit that supplies the drive signal indicative of the erase level within the specified first time period, and supplies the drive signal generated in a time period other than the specified first time period; and a laser irradiating unit that irradiates laser light at the timing indicative of the supplied drive signal, wherein the image data contains a second control signal which indicates a mode difference of gradation degrees for every pixel between an image indicative of the image data and a predetermined image, the image data identifying unit identifies the second control signal, the optical disk drawing apparatus further comprises a second time period specifying unit that specifies a time period during which a rewriting operation is not performed based upon the identified second control signal as a second time period, the gate unit supplies the drive signal indicative of the read level to the laser light irradiating unit within the specified second time period, the gate unit supplies the drive signal indicative of the erase level to the laser light irradiating unit within a time period which is defined by a time period other than the second time period and is involved in the first time period, and the gate unit supplies the generated drive signal within a time period which is defined by a time period other than the second time period and other than the first time period.