Are ISO+OGG (or similar) CD-ROM images supported?

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Neville
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Are ISO+OGG (or similar) CD-ROM images supported?

Post by Neville »

I'm asking because I own a huge collection of those. I made them to save harddisk space and to use them with DOSBox. These images usually consist of a BIN / ISO file for the data and one or more OGG files for the compressed audio tracks, plus a CUE file describing the order, duration and filenames for each track.

This is one of them:

FILE "01 Pinball 3D-VCR.iso" BINARY
TRACK 01 MODE1/2048
INDEX 01 00:00:00
FILE "02 Pinball 3D-VCR.ogg" MP3
TRACK 02 AUDIO
PREGAP 00:02:00
INDEX 01 00:00:00
FILE "03 Pinball 3D-VCR.ogg" MP3
TRACK 03 AUDIO
INDEX 01 00:00:00
FILE "04 Pinball 3D-VCR.ogg" MP3
TRACK 04 AUDIO
INDEX 01 00:00:00

Apart from this being very convenient, it would be great if both DOSBox and PCem settled on an standard to preserve CD games with audio tracls.
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omarsis81
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Re: Are ISO+OGG (or similar) CD-ROM images supported?

Post by omarsis81 »

I don't think PCem would support OGG, but I never tested it...
For games with Audio tracks you'll find BIN or WAV format, but not OGG. It is a very bad idea to preserve games with lossy audio tracks
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leilei
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Re: Are ISO+OGG (or similar) CD-ROM images supported?

Post by leilei »

omarsis81 wrote: Sun 29 Apr, 2018 7:26 pm It is a very bad idea to preserve games with lossy audio tracks
Tell that to GOG. About all of their CD image games are an obfuscated bin/cue with compressed audio tracks (and sadly some of them wipe the data track clean)

I did once try to make myself ogg images (for similar massive space saving reasons) and they never seemed to work with DOSBox
Neville wrote: Sun 29 Apr, 2018 6:13 pm Apart from this being very convenient, it would be great if both DOSBox and PCem settled on an standard to preserve CD games with audio tracls.
A standard like an image format? I swear by ccd/cue/bin/sub. Would be nice for CCD sheets to be emulated so all my cdillo/safedisc'd games could read right along with .sub reading for cd audio de-emphasis...
EluanCM
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Re: Are ISO+OGG (or similar) CD-ROM images supported?

Post by EluanCM »

CD-audio also has very basic error correction (most data tracks use more of the sector for extra error correction/detection).
When I found out that a RIP that had no errors in it had a different hash when ripped in another drive, I went on to re-rip my entire collection with another drive to double check everything and resorted to all sort of polishing methods and Exact Audio Copy settings to ensure that the two drives ripped with the same hashes. Still not a 100% method but good enough. (And the rips with different hashes had no audible differences anyway)
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Neville
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Re: Are ISO+OGG (or similar) CD-ROM images supported?

Post by Neville »

leilei wrote: Sun 29 Apr, 2018 10:42 pm
I did once try to make myself ogg images (for similar massive space saving reasons) and they never seemed to work with DOSBox
The only method that seems to work for me is 1) Ripping the CD with TurboRip, a freware program designed with PC Engine CD games in mind. 2) Compress the audio tracks from WAV to OGG and modifying the CUE file to reflect the changes (replacing every instance of WAVE to MP3, and then every instance of .wav to .ogg).

Works like 90% of the time. Sometimes TurboRip mis-identifies the data track for another format, and others the game detects it's not the proper CD, which means you need to find a deprotected game EXE elsewhere.
Last edited by Neville on Mon 30 Apr, 2018 12:57 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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leilei
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Re: Are ISO+OGG (or similar) CD-ROM images supported?

Post by leilei »

EluanCM wrote: Sun 29 Apr, 2018 11:55 pm Still not a 100% method but good enough. (And the rips with different hashes had no audible differences anyway)
Trial and error's always a huge part of the CD ripping process. Sometimes you'll desire some of these error corrections....

I've a particular older game (1993 Win3.1 CD game) that refused to rip properly or even show its file system to windows with the real disc, until I threw it at CloneDVD and then for the first time in DECADES i've accessed the cd in image form with no problems at all and the game runs as fine as it can be (when played through PCem that is).

While this may read like a testimonial for CloneDVD it's not a recommendation. I'm not even sure if it's around since their recent incident. Everyone has their preference for software.
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Neville
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Re: Are ISO+OGG (or similar) CD-ROM images supported?

Post by Neville »

I think we're deviating a little from the original topic... is OGG audio decompression possible -or desirable- to be added in PCem? No matter if ISO+OGG is faulty as a game preservation process, I'd still like to use all those dumps I made for DOSBox with PCem.
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SarahWalker
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Re: Are ISO+OGG (or similar) CD-ROM images supported?

Post by SarahWalker »

Possible? Yes. Desirable? I think not. I'd rather not pull in OGG/MP3/whatever decompression libraries, as well as the relevant cuesheet handling code, when you can already load the images via Daemon Tools or similar and use them through that.
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Neville
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Re: Are ISO+OGG (or similar) CD-ROM images supported?

Post by Neville »

Understood.
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