Reading the mixed-mode CD discussion reminded me of the mutant I just encountered. It’s an ancient data-only CD with tiny .mov files stitched together by a 32-bit QuickTime wrapper that I can no longer run. It has no audio tracks, but it bears the Enhanced CD logo all over it and the packaging. I think I turned over every rock I could find in the docs, and any time I saw “Data CD” there was just the phrase with no docs and no link; any time I saw “Enhanced CD” it was about sorting data-track-first from data-track-last.
I keyed it as Data CD but am 99.6% not confident in this. I needed to put something there as I disambiguated it as a 2-disc set but there was no second medium. Happy to change it to something better (preferably with a link for guidance).
welcome to the forums, emmadilemma, love the name~
that is an odd duck indeed, lol
my first thought would be to enter it as an Enhanced CD, but I could also see an argument to be made for Data CD too.
to my understanding, Data CD typically refers to a CD-ROM (y’all correct me if I’m wrong), and is usually used for entering video game soundtracks, but could be used for other non-red book CDs, such as audiobooks on MP3 CDs (as I just discovered…). I don’t often work with Data CDs myself, but that’s my experience.
that said, I believe since it says “Enhanced CD” on the packaging, I’d enter it that way. I have found that Enhanced CDs usually use .mov for videos, and that may be a standard (unsure tho).
there is also the fact that most of the releases in that group are Enhanced CDs… the first disc is not an Enhanced CD, I assume?
Easy first: The first disc is a pure audio CD. Put it in a drive and you get only audio files, no multi-mode, no Enhanced CD logo on the disc.
The second disc also mounts as a single volume, which Linux calls VolumeLabel. I hadn’t noticed before, but Nautilus calls it “Video CD.” There’s a single 173.4MB DAT file in an “mpegav” folder. There is a VCD folder with four small .vcd files in it. There is a “source” folder that contains that boatload of small .mov files that correspond to the segments that I called tracks. Those .mov files are playable and contain both audio and video. There’s no cdda folder.
So this is likely a VCD. Which means it’s not actually an Enhanced CD notwithstanding that logo everywhere? Nautilus suggested I open it with Handbrake but Handbrake didn’t see anything usable. Is there another tool I can use to run this?
(And to close the loop with the edit notes - I have the timings because I once did get the contents out in one track, and I measured the times from that rip.)
The cover they show as the front cover for the CD+VCD is not mine, though my catalog number is definitely MED-300. The other MED-300 release they list has my cover, but is shown as an audio-only release (and why are they both the same catalog number?!).
I tried to link the correct front cover and back cover, but I just got more copies of the same image in this post.
My front cover is the one they list for the audio-only MED-300, with a white background.
Your second CD is a VCD, then.
VCD folder contains the playback control (PBC) metadata, like chapters, interactivity, etc.
VCD don’t always have chapters in their PBC, but where did you find the durations from? From the companion .mov files?
Alternatively, you can simply play the VCD (in PBC mode) with a hardware or software player, where you will be able to see the chapter durations.
If the source/*.mov files are same videos, splitted same as MPEGAV/*.DAT in PBC mode, then I see why they called that an Enhanced CD.
They invented an Enhanced VCD, actually!
You should set Video CD as medium type, now, instead of Data CD.
What software to use to play VCD.
Old software DVD players did play them, like Power DVD, etc.
Maybe VLC can play them, too.
Enable PBC mode to play the content with its chapters, at least.
I used to author many personal VCD in the past, very long time ago, using VCDImager and I still have a hardware VCD player (some DVD / Blu-ray players also are able to play VCD and SVCD in PBC mode, my Pioneer does as well).
Anyway if you upload some scans, make sure it is 100% exactly identical as your edition, including text placement and size, photo framing, package dimension aspect ratio, etc.
Several editions with same catalogue number and barcode, it happens.
It seems like Jesus himself may have answered your question already so I’ll allow myself some light derailing - strange coincidence, I just added a ‘emma dilemma’ artist to mb recently. Also, does your blog not have an rss feed? How are we meant to follow it
edit: huh, it looks like a feed is there, but it wont load into Feedly. I don’t know enough to assess the problem, but might be worth updating or replacing the plugin or w/e and seeing if that does the trick
@jesus2099 There will be some time jitter at the moment because I read the times manually (see quote) - I had once gotten this into a single file, and read off the times and titles as it played. Hopefully I can get this into a player that will give me definitive answers.
(And to close the loop with the edit notes - I have the timings because I once did get the contents out in one track, and I measured the times from that rip.)
I’ve filed the edit to set the medium to VCD. I do need to replace the image in the correct shape, but I had grabbed the Discogs square one as a placeholder as I haven’t yet had time to re-scan the box - I just needed to get the picture right so we could see what I’m dealing with. And over the years I’ve lost obis but haven’t discarded slipcases, so yeah, I never had seen that.
Which begs the question: what I see as the front image isn’t actually the right front image, and I don’t have the slipcase. Am I better off just deleting the cover art altogether? Otherwise I’m uploading something that’s the right shape but not the actual front image, and then in a decade’s time there will be another thread trying to figure that out…
It sounds like this CD has both Video-CD stuff and data-CD stuff, right?
If that’s the case, it might be appropriate/better to list it as 20 tracks, to indicate that there’s (although maybe you haven’t confirmed this) 10 VideoCD “tracks” (VideoCD doesn’t really do tracks, as I understand it, but, it may have 10 logical sections) and 10 .mov tracks.
If I’m understanding this, not quite, but it’s confusing and I haven’t dealt with VCD much at all.
There’s no .mov file that contains anything that’s not on the VCD stream (which yes, didn’t have tracks but logical sections) - that I did confirm. So there’s only ten things. They are either sections of the VCD stream, or .mov files, depending on how you’re looking. (There are actually far more .mov files than there are logical sections; sometimes two or three sub-minute .mov files comprise a visual section.)
What I don’t get is that it doesn’t sound like a VCD should be using .mov files. So maybe this content is duplicated in VCD and in a QuickTime wrapper. I’ll have a better look at it tonight.
That’s what annotations and notes are for. Leave annotation to say slipcase is lost. And on the “front” image add a comment describing what it actually is. Then within the next decade someone else can upload that missing slipcase.
I would still mark it as “front” for now as many people loose slipcases.
A question that comes to mind – what is the total size in Megabytes of all the .mov files?
If they had enough space on the 650MB CD to put two copies of everything–one VCD copy, and one .mov copy, that would probably be easier than creating something that has two “interfaces”/“views” to the same video data.
A complete duplicate would fit. The mpegav .dat file is about 150MB. I didn’t measure the .mov files but I assume they’d sum to less than that - I would expect even ancient QT compression is better than prehistoric MPEG-1 or whatever dat .dat file is.
That’s what I was expecting, so thanks for filing the delete, you beat me to it.
Eventually I’ll upload the rectangular not-front cover as an Other and make a comment, but that’s even lower in the queue now… the inner booklet has a different cover that was in the Discogs image pile. It’s different, and it’s square, so the pic I had uploaded definitely couldn’t be for Booklet.
Looks like I got raked over twice. The tag that’s supposed to insert the feed link didn’t work, which I fixed, but of course it’s corrupt somehow. Thanks for letting me know (honestly!). It’s, uh, in queue.
Thank you everybody, it loads in VLC! Alas, it loads as a single track, which matches my rip from back in the day.
@jesus2099 Should I just burn the track/segment info, since it’s not official, and key it as an 18+ minute video track whose name I don’t know? Although they stamp the Enhanced CD logo all over the box and booklet, nowhere is the video mentioned; it might have only been on the slipcase.
OK I have a lead. Feedly hit the site in an unexpected way, got a 403, and proceeded to blast it from a dozen IPs which landed it in a DDoS sand trap. I don’t have Feedly myself so it’s tricky for me to directly validate, but I’ve poked a hole and am watching.
Alas, it loads as a single track, which matches my rip from back in the day.