Making selfboot image including cdda tracks?

[Whirlinurd]

I have a question how I can create a selfbootable image that includes several extra audio tracks. Maybe someone knows how I can include them in the creating of the new image or some way to add them after the .cdi image is created by the selfboot procedure.



Thanks.

[STC-Fan]

I was having a go at it myself - if you check the "Dumping GD-ROM discs..." topic in this subforum, you'll see the crude method that I used (summary: convert a raw ripped game data ISO to BIN, then literally join the ripped audio tracks in a seperate BIN file from the game onto the beginning of the data file, since the CDDA comes before the game data) which completely failed.

Inserting the CDDA tracks into a self-boot CDI would be more pratical, but I don't know of any program that can do this. Since inserting the audio tracks would probably require them being converted them to WAV (if you have them ripped in a single RAW or BIN format file, which are technically the same thing anyway ) and then being seperated into their respective tracks.

It's highly unlikely that any program out there could do this; only way I could see any program being able to do it automatically (and accurately!) is if it analysed the table of contents (TOC) file from whatever DC game the audio is from, matched the LBA values & running time lengths / gaps between each track to the RAW/BIN (or WAV) file, and then cut each of the tracks to their respective seperate files.

Once you've got around that, it'd then be a lot more viable to make something to inject the individual tracks before the beginning of the data track (and obviously adjust any relevant disc layout details in the CDI so that everything can be correctly read - this is where my crude BIN/CUE method falls apart, because joining two files together with the "copy /b" command typically doesn't adjust the disc layout details for you, and so it doesn't work at all when mounted - like having to write the damned CUE sheet in the first place isn't hard enough ).

[Whirlinurd]

yes, I have thought of these possibilities myself not knowing if I could get it to work. The simplest idea I had was from earlier rips where the audio tracks were in mp3 format and then converted to wav with the supplied program. Finally the inject.exe also supplied, injected these numbered tracks through a configuration file into the .cdi image. This configuration file had all of the LBA values of every seperate audio track that should be inserted. This method was used when a release was made as small as possible. So converting the audio tracks to mp3 took away most of the filesize.

If I could calculate all of these LBA values for my own rip then a small adjustment to the configuration file of this inject.exe would do the job for me. Now the tricky part is how to calculate these LBA values that come after the actual data within a .cdi image for every .wav track that must be added.

The second thing that could be a problem is that the original gamedisc started with track 01 (data) -> track 02 (audio), etc. When made selfboot it becomes track 01 (audio, 4sec) -> track 02 (data) -> track 03 (audio), etc. If a game calls for a specific audio track in the game for a specific level then the wrong audio is played because all are moved one track, right? The most perfect disc layout would be track 01 (data), track 02 (audio), etc, track 1? (audio, 4sec). Using the data, audio selfboot method. But I am not really concerned that this will be a problem for most games.

It seems that this could be somewhat mindboggling to figure out. It surely is something that I want to get working eventually. :-)

[spunky]

try bin2boot or EchelonSelfBootTut, thats all...

[Whirlinurd]

Thanx spunky. I knew of this echelon selfboot tutorial. I followed all of the steps required to build a selfboot disc with cdda tracks. The only problem I had was with step 9 and 10 where the cdda tracks are numbered as track02.wav, track03.wav, etc. In step 10 it says "copy track03.wav track01.wav". This should now have 3 4-second dummy tracks as Tracks 1 - 3, and have real CDDA from 4 -> End. But as numbered in step 9 this isn't right as track03 is original music audio so when copied it just gets duplicated to track01.wav and does not gives the dummy tracks as the tutorial states.

So I just used 1 dummy track followed by the cdda tracks and eventually the data track. The game booted but did not work in chankast. I will try it with 3 dummy tracks and will see if it helps but since the game booted I can not explain why it needs the 2 extra dummy tracks. Maybe someone can expain this?

[spunky]

which game is it?

[Whirlinurd]

The game I used is Gauntlet Legends. I've checked the Chankast compatability list and it says that this game gives a black screen. So did my final version after it booted. I thought that the reason that it didn't worked was because I left out the 2 extra dummy audio files but it seems that it's just a compatability issue with Chankast. Since I didn't tried it on a real dreamcast I am not 100% sure yet but since it doesn't work in Chankast it doesn't really matter yet.

[spunky]

i think is not a iso or audio track problem, because it works on a real dreamcast. i think chankast has problems to play the video files (*.m1v), maybe you can try to replace with 0-byte files or something else.

[Whirlinurd]

That could be the problem but seems to be somewhat far fetched. As I see with most or not all games is that they use softmpg format to play media and .m1v is MPEG1 video. I haven't seen any game that doesn't play this in chankast. It seems that the games only crash when the software programming isn't compatible with Chankast.