boatman Posted November 23, 2008 Share Posted November 23, 2008 I have been asked if it's possible to copy the contents of a HiMD mini disc to an audio CD. Of course I said yes, but now I am regretting that. All the tracks are Taiko drumming rythms and they have been recorded as PCM. When imported through 'Sonic Stage' to the laptop they appear as .Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. files. I have tried to open these files with 'Audacity', 'Advanced WMA workshop', 'Switch', 'Wavepad' and 'WinAmp'; all to no avail. Please could someone point me in the direction of an audio package that will convert .Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. files to a format suitable for writing to an audio CD. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bruce Posted November 23, 2008 Share Posted November 23, 2008 Have you tried using VLC? It may play them - there are very few formats that it doesn't support. If it can play them, it should also be able to transcode them. http://www.videolan.org/vlc Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
billy jim Posted November 23, 2008 Share Posted November 23, 2008 Or you could go for an old school method of recording the output of a minidisc player? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Arran Posted November 23, 2008 Share Posted November 23, 2008 I have been asked if it's possible to copy the contents of a HiMD mini disc to an audio CD. Of course I said yes, but now I am regretting that. All the tracks are Taiko drumming rythms and they have been recorded as PCM. When imported through 'Sonic Stage' to the laptop they appear as .Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. files. I have tried to open these files with 'Audacity', 'Advanced WMA workshop', 'Switch', 'Wavepad' and 'WinAmp'; all to no avail. Please could someone point me in the direction of an audio package that will convert .Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. files to a format suitable for writing to an audio CD. Don't import into sonicstage. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. is Sony's proprietary DRM format and as such transference between machines is limited and editing isn't possible. The only reason I can see for importing into sonicstage is if you're using NetMD or similar, in which case the only option you might have is to use sonicstage to burn an audio CD and then rip from that into another editing program if any editing is needed. Are you sure they're PCM? If they're on MD I'd have thought they'd be ATRAC. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
boatman Posted November 24, 2008 Author Share Posted November 24, 2008 Is there a software package other than SonicStage that can import files over the USB link from a Sony mini-disc recorder? I've tried looking at it as a USB mass storage device and there's no sign of the files, just a mass of databases. I've downloaded VLC and I'll try that first. Thanks for the help so far. Update: 2008-11-24 00:52 Unfortunately VLC doesn't recognise the .Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. format, but it seems to know about .oma whatever that is. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bobbsy Posted November 24, 2008 Share Posted November 24, 2008 I think Arran is right on this one. Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. isn't an audio file format, it's Sony's copyright management system...actually designed to prevent digital copying! The file format on a mini-disk isn't PCM (or Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.), it's a compression format called ATRAC. As far as I know there aren't any transcoding systems that allow you to transfer directly from ATRAC to the .wav files you need to burn to a CD. The only method I know is to take the output of the MD deck into your PC via your soundcard---either analogue or, if you're lucky, in some form of digital. I should add the caveat that I don't keep up with hacker level "get round the DRM" software so if somebody finds you a way, I apologise in advance! While we're on this, by the way, .CDA isn't an audio file format either. In fact it's the directory format for CD tracks. The actual format you need to burn a CD is .wav (16 bit, 44.1 sampling, stereo only). Bob Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
boatman Posted November 24, 2008 Author Share Posted November 24, 2008 The MZ-NH900 which I have, has three recording modes; linear PCM and ATRAC3 at 256kbps or 64 kbps. I guess the tracks were recorded in PCM for resolution. I know that using ATRAC recording the data can be imported into .wav files as I have done that before. When I said I could do the job I assumed that's the format that was used. How wrong can one be! The most frustrating thing is that although the NH900 can be used as a USB data drive, the contents of the disc look nothing like the data I was expecting. Ah well, I suppose if Sony made it too simple they wouldn't be able to license the technology. I think I'll have to go back to the person who recorded the tracks and ask them to do it again in ATRAC format, which I can deal with. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bobbsy Posted November 24, 2008 Share Posted November 24, 2008 PCM isn't a single format. It stands for "Pulse Code Modulation" and is simply a technique for sampling analogue audio files to create digital ones. Wave files are a form of PCM with extra header information. PCM can be virtually any combination of sample rate and bit depth. The big issue for you is going to be "what can the minidisk deck output?". Most of them have rights management software built in so they will NOT output the raw ATRAC (or, in this case if you're correct, PCM) files. They mess with the output to prevent digital copying of the material, hence the OMD file extension you found. IF it is PCM and IF you can output the raw data and IF you know the sample rate and bit depth, then Adobe Audition can open raw PCM files and save them as .wav files. I suspect you will not be able to output the raw data without DCM rearing its ugly head though. Edited to add: I looked up the details of your portable MD player and, from there, followed a link to the technical spec of the "HiMD" system as used by your player. The following quote doesn't bode well: To prevent an illegal copying of digital content, “Hi-MD” incorporates OpenMG and MagicGatetechnology, already adopted in Memory Stick and Net MD for content management to ensure thatmusic content stored on a “Hi-MD” disc will be encrypted. “Hi-MD” also conforms to the Serial CopyManagement System (SCMS). Bob Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mervaka Posted November 24, 2008 Share Posted November 24, 2008 yep. for these DRM reasons I'd also look at an audio recording. if you're able to do a digital recording, do it. if you can use the source as the master clock, even better. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bruce Posted November 24, 2008 Share Posted November 24, 2008 Can your Sonicstage actually play the file? (boatman has sent me a copy of the file - mine gives a DRM error...) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
boatman Posted November 24, 2008 Author Share Posted November 24, 2008 Can your Sonicstage actually play the file? (boatman has sent me a copy of the file - mine gives a DRM error...) Yes it works fine, both with and without the MD recorder connected. I'll download the file I uploaded, to see if it's corrupted. If anyone else would like to try, the file can be found On RapidShare. Some intensive Googling this afternoon eventually came up with a link to a software package called Sound Taxi, which seems to do what I want, but it's not cheap and I haven't pursued it any further yet. Does anyone know anything about it? Update: I've just downloaded my own file again and it plays perfectly on my version of SonicStage (2.0.06.16140). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bruce Posted November 25, 2008 Share Posted November 25, 2008 I'm assuming the Sonicstage "save as WAV" doesn't work for you? (It's only in recent versions of sonicstage) If your Sonicstage can play the file you could try HiMDrenderer from http://marcnetsystem.co.uk/ - it uses the sonicstage engine. Didn't work on your file for me, due to a copy protection error. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
boatman Posted November 25, 2008 Author Share Posted November 25, 2008 I'm assuming the Sonicstage "save as WAV" doesn't work for you? (It's only in recent versions of sonicstage) No, unfortunately not for tracks recorded as 'Linear PCM'. On previous occasions I have imported ATRAC recordings as WAV files. If your Sonicstage can play the file you could try HiMDrenderer from http://marcnetsystem.co.uk/ - it uses the sonicstage engine. Didn't work on your file for me, due to a copy protection error. I'll give that a try and see what happens. As a last resort I could use 'Sound Tap' but that's going through the analogue sound card and recoding to WAV, so the quality is not too good. Update: Ya beauty, HiMDRenderer has done the trick and without any noticable degredation (well to my ears on the laptop headphone output). Thanks Bruce. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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