Patent ID: 7215625

Claim:
An optical disk recording apparatus, comprising: an optical pickup configured to form pits and spaces representing data to be stored in an optical disk by applying a laser beam on a data recording side of the optical disk; an image encoder unit configured to generate image encode data corresponding to pits and spaces longer than the pits and the spaces representing the data to be stored in the optical disk based on image data of a visible image; an LD control unit configured to cause said optical pickup to apply said laser beam based on said image encode data generated by said image encoder unit; and a system controller configured to form the pits and spaces longer than the pits and spaces representing the data to be stored in the optical disk, the longer pits and longer spaces being formed in an area where none of the data to be stored in the optical disk has been stored, thereby forming the visible image using the difference in reflection coefficient between the longer pits and the longer spaces.