Important American Hero update

[Stone]

Hi all,

 

Good and bad news on American Hero, I'm afraid. I've been learning that it's astonishingly difficult to get byte-perfect copies out of today's hardware - it seems that CD recorders rely much more on their error-correction than I was banking on. The long and short of it is that every AH CD I've burned so far contains small flaws on the main data track, which manifest as short breaks in the audio (around 1/10 secs each). While it may not sound a lot, this is enough to drop a syllable from a word, and though everything is still easily intelligible it can be slightly frustrating and confusing to hear the words skipped in this way. Video is not affected, nor is the game engine, as far as I can tell. The skipping doesn't usually occur in the same place twice, so playing the game through more than once will enable you to understand everything with no problems.

 

The good news (for you) is this: in recognition of the fact that the copies aren't as close to perfect as I'd like, I'm dropping the price to £3 per CD. Hopefully this will lower people's expectations to the point where they won't mind

 

Regards,

 

Stone

[jaysmith2000]

Hi all,

 

Good and bad news on American Hero, I'm afraid. I've been learning that it's astonishingly difficult to get byte-perfect copies out of today's hardware - it seems that CD recorders rely much more on their error-correction than I was banking on. The long and short of it is that every AH CD I've burned so far contains small flaws on the main data track, which manifest as short breaks in the audio (around 1/10 secs each). While it may not sound a lot, this is enough to drop a syllable from a word, and though everything is still easily intelligible it can be slightly frustrating and confusing to hear the words skipped in this way. Video is not affected, nor is the game engine, as far as I can tell. The skipping doesn't usually occur in the same place twice, so playing the game through more than once will enable you to understand everything with no problems.

 

The good news (for you) is this: in recognition of the fact that the copies aren't as close to perfect as I'd like, I'm dropping the price to £3 per CD. Hopefully this will lower people's expectations to the point where they won't mind

 

Regards,

 

Stone

 

Hey Stone,

 

I haven't had any trouble burning copies of American Hero using Clone CD. You should download the eval copy and try it out.

 

On a seperate note, I have to update my web-site again...."it" arrived safely.

 

Jason

 

Jason

[Stone]

I haven't had any trouble burning copies of American Hero using Clone CD.  You should download the eval copy and try it out.  

 

I did, but it can't burn below 8x with my burner, and gave much the same results. I'm using CDRECORD at the moment as it allows me more control over individual aspects of the burn process.

 

On a seperate note, I have to update my web-site again...."it" arrived safely.  

 

Good

 

Stone

[Thunderbird]

Hi all,

 

Good and bad news on American Hero, I'm afraid. I've been learning that it's astonishingly difficult to get byte-perfect copies out of today's hardware - it seems that CD recorders rely much more on their error-correction than I was banking on. The long and short of it is that every AH CD I've burned so far contains small flaws on the main data track, which manifest as short breaks in the audio (around 1/10 secs each). While it may not sound a lot, this is enough to drop a syllable from a word, and though everything is still easily intelligible it can be slightly frustrating and confusing to hear the words skipped in this way. Video is not affected, nor is the game engine, as far as I can tell. The skipping doesn't usually occur in the same place twice, so playing the game through more than once will enable you to understand everything with no problems.

 

 

What end of the process is failing to work? If it's the read side of the process then you're pretty much screwed because you'll never be able to read a clean image to make a copy from no matter what. If it's the write end of the process then you could at last resort take a clean read of the image and have a glass master made from the data.

[Matthias]

Hello!

 

What end of the process is failing to work? If it's the read side of the process then you're pretty much screwed because you'll never be able to read a clean image to make a copy from no matter what. If it's the write end of the process then you could at last resort take a clean read of the image and have a glass master made from the data.

 

 

But wasn't it said that not every company is able to produce correct glass masters ( IronSoldiers2) ?

 

But you are right: a glass mastered production run seems to be feasible,

at least for this huge amount of pre-orders Stone got in his AH-thread.

 

Matthias

[Paolo]

By the way, Stone, try to use CloneCD: I used it for backup-ing my Jag CDs, and I even managed to backup HoverStrike2, that I bought used and with some scratches!

[Hyper_Eye]

Have you tried Blindwrite?

[LinkoVitch]

What drive do you have STone? I know that Clone CD works best only with certain drives that will read and write RAW data and subchannel without modification.

 

The dives I have heard are good for this are 12x Plextors and Lite-On drives.

 

I have a Lite-On here, so if you want to send me a Clone-CD image of the disc I can try and run one off with my drive and see how that comes out for you?

[Stone]

OK, I'll try and answer all the questions at once...

 

My drive is a Samsung CD-R/RW, model SW-216B. It does all the usual stuff (including subchannel, RAW mode and JustLink to stop underruns), think max write speed is about 32x for CD-Rs. I'm reading the tracks as CD-quality audio using Nero Burning ROM. The read process takes place at an average speed of 2.3x, this seems to be the lowest my drive can go.

 

I'm fairly certain the error is in the read process, though I've confirmed with other people that the data tracks are all the same length, padded the same way and so on.

 

CloneCD is not the source of or solution to the problem. CDs burned with an image made with the version I have (4.2.0.2) exhibit the same problem.

 

Making a glass master would be one way around it (if my existing copy can be cleaned up enough to make one from) but I have no idea about how to go about this, and I'm really not bothered enough to do so It would be a large investment upfront, and though I'd probably get it back it suits me better to make them individually this way, for the moment. I really don't have the time to chase around finding a company to do it before JFUK

 

It's really not a huge deal (and some of the CDs have skips only in non-speech places on the first run through, so you may even be lucky and not have it affect you at all!) but I feel bad about it so I reduced the price. You aren't missing out, trust me on this

 

Stone

[LinkoVitch]

I don't think I am missing out, just trying to help you perfect the process

 

From earlier discussions on here the Jag uses the whole of the Audio Track including the CRC section to increase size of the disc. Coul dit be that when reading it in, Nero is disregarding part of the data and recreating it when writing? Are you reading writing with TAO-96 ?

 

If you verify a CD you write does it pickup the defects, or just say it's perfect?

[Stone]

IFrom earlier discussions on here the Jag uses the whole of the Audio Track including the CRC section to increase size of the disc.  Coul dit be that when reading it in, Nero is disregarding part of the data and recreating it when writing?  Are you reading writing with TAO-96 ?

 

When I dump the tracks and pad them the same way as someone else whom I trust to do the rip correctly, the data comes out the same size. There is a small (20 bytes?) region of crap at the beginning of each track, but I removed it as part of the editing process.

 

I don't know about TAO-96, I'm just using "audio-format" burning. The batch file I use contains the following:

 

cdrecord dev=1,0,0 speed=2 -pad -multi -audio 01.wav

cdrecord dev=1,0,0 speed=2 -pad -multi -audio -nofix 02.raw

cdrecord dev=1,0,0 speed=2 -pad -audio -nofix 03.raw

cdrecord dev=1,0,0 speed=2 -pad -audio -eject 04.raw

 

The ID is because I have an IDE drive. The -multi creates seperate sessions for the first and second tracks (with the remainder of the data going in the second session). -audio makes it audio-mode recording, -nofix prevents the session being closed and -eject ejects the CD at the end. Hardly rocket science, but that didn't stop me making 2 coasters getting it right

 

If you verify a CD you write does it pickup the defects, or just say it's perfect?

 

I don't know how to do this. I used ISOBuster to check the session layout was correct as I refined the batch file, then left it alone. I don't know if there's a verify feature as one of the freeware options, I'll have to check.

 

Stone

[LinkoVitch]

I think Nero 5.5.x offers TAO-96 . I think this refers to the amount of sub channel stuff it reads into the image.

 

Nero is king of CD software in my books!

 

The verify is also an option of Nero, you can ask it to verify the disc against the data on the HDD.. wondered if the software you were using offered the same features...

[Stone]

I think Nero 5.5.x offers TAO-96 .  I think this refers to the amount of sub channel stuff it reads into the image.

 

There should be no subchannel data beyond what is required by the audio format, as the tracks were always intended to be simple Red Book format.

 

The verify is also an option of Nero, you can ask it to verify the disc against the data on the HDD.. wondered if the software you were using offered the same features...

 

I very much doubt it offers enough configurability to choose what speed to read the data off the CD during the comparison - in a format offering no error-correction I'd be very suspicious of read errors during the verification CD read causing a false negative verify. I'll check it out later though.

 

I do have a DVD drive on this PC as well, but I wasn't using it as it has given me weird errors in the past with not recognising a disk is in the drive if it doesn't like the format. A disc-to-dics verify could work as well I suppose, but again, read errors during this process could easily cause confusion, and I wouldn't expect the discs to be byte-perfect aganst each other at any rate.

 

I'll check the verify options, but I'm not too hopeful...any further ideas?

 

Stone

[LinkoVitch]

I think Nero 5.5.x offers TAO-96 .  I think this refers to the amount of sub channel stuff it reads into the image.

 

There should be no subchannel data beyond what is required by the audio format, as the tracks were always intended to be simple Red Book format.

 

This is what I initially thought, but this would also imply that there was a CRC cod ein the subchannel so the system woul dbe able to correct minor errors. However it seems that this is not the case and the extra sub channel was actually used for data (well thats what was said I think ).

 

Does sound a bit unlikley as you would expect the whole thing to be completely screwed if this were the case.

 

What is YOUR master? is that a CD-R or a glass mastered disc?