The trouble is that the plastic is so soft that attempts to clean usually just add more scratches. I have a microfibre cloth here to keep the scanner polished. Generally avoid ever touching my CDs and so religious on that that most of my disks are clean as they day they were purchased. In fact, MB is often the reason I have opened some booklets for the first time in 30+ years!
The same microfibre cloth or the cloth from my glasses will be used to polish off thumb prints from the CD.
If a disk is bad I’ll get the washing up liquid out and some warm water. Always remembering to clean a CD “like spokes on a wheel”. Never polish in a circle as you’ll make bad scratches. When a scratch is 90 degree angle to the laser playing the CD it is ignored. If the scratch follows the path of the laser you have trouble! (Just like with vinyl really)
Worst are those old PDO disks in the double fatbox cases with the evil foam!! The Horror!! Melted foam nastiness eating the CDs! ARGH! Lost a Monty Python disk that way. Just nothing could be done to separate foam from CD. Others I have caught before the main rot kicked in.
I’m gonna pull some of my oldest rotten\rusty CDs out later and look at them closer with that microscope…
Don’t point a microscope at the scratches as they will only get scarier! Scratches are not too bad for a CD when they are still low numbers of them.
I started repairing my Packaging type dilemma and ended up with Encore Series and and the release country issue. As there were some US shows with US release country I didn’t change that, only added XW where it was missing. But then there were European Tour releases with release country US too.
I changed to XW and threw some Encore CDs on the scanner (4800dpi, one scan with 9600dpi!).
I added 3 scans to the respective releases: (I promise, it’s the last time, I talk about Encore Series! ) Summer 2003: 06.11.03 Dallas, TX The Warm Up Tour – Summer 2007: 20/06/07 Eden Project · England Back to Front Winter 2014: 08.12.14 Aberdeen, UK
For Summer 2003 Mould and Mastering SID belong to Crest National, Hollywood, CA
My Warm Up Tour CDs have no visible Mould SID (up to 9600dpi) and an unknown Mastering SID. Printed beneath the Mastering code is the same Company name as before - Crest National … eventually another plant?
On Back to Front CDs no Mould or even Mastering SID is visible, on none of them.
I ordered more Encore Series CDs and @IvanDobsky’s microscope…
These CDs will not be re-released and are only available as long as on stock. Even some shows listed to be sold, are no longer available, but you have to attempt to buy it to find out. Some of the shows are not even listed (sold out some time ago). But there will be a digital release of all shows on bandcamp!!!
But first I have to buy a few more CDs to document the physical releases. Or, I have the feeling I will have to …
EDIT: LR66/67/68/69/70 are mastering codes of a plant acquired by Crest National, also California. So they are at least manufactured in the US. But probably I should set them XW too.
EDIT 2: Or better British indeed? Probably all shows after the first one were sold and shipped from the UK. Maybe all physical releases should be GB. The digital releases will be XW.
Careful with getting too large… there is a stage where you are not really gaining anything but file size. I stick to 600dpi as that is usually still larger than the screens in my house.
I think you are coming to a sensible point here. Ultimately Peter has these CDs stacked up in his garage in the UK and sends them out in the post when they are ordered. Distribution from the UK. With the California printed CDs it would not surprise me if separate printing press is involved for the Americas to cut down on shipping costs.
Leave it with your “best answer for now”. And if you suddenly come across a large stack of USA disks with different artwork then you have a different puzzle for another day.
Oh, and you didn’t really want me to look at the Summer 2003: 06.11.03 Dallas, TX because I’ll just point out your forgot to rotate an image again…
I didn’t upload these. It was only to make sure not to miss anything. In general a 600 dpi scan shows the Mould SID pretty clear.
There was no separate release, those from IFPI registered plants are all made in USA. But there’s one more thing I remembered lately. There the second “label” printed on all Encore Series CDs - themusic.com. This American distributor themusic.com covers the American market, while Realworld does distribution in the UK and Europe. This collaboration goes back to the first Encore Series. So it will be best to set all CD releases to US+UK releases.
This will not happen. I had correspondence with Realworld support. There was only one production line for each show and the artwork is the basic layout for each tour with date and place stamped on the front for each individual order. So every CD cover is at least a little bit different from any other.
I can remove it completely. There’s another image uploaded - 600dpi, cropped, rotated. It’s not necessary to rotate this one.
No, I think I wasn’t very precise. On every single cover and medium are both label names printed. All CDs are from the same manufacturing plant. Realworld and themusic.com share distribution and thus I think this will be 2 release events of the same release. But of course themusic.com should be added as second label.
When I scan something I want it to be the only scan anyone will ever need, for all screen sizes into the far future. The Internet Archive then generously offers downsized versions for us.
What do you think would be a resolution to achieve that?
I do the scans with 600dpi now. I started with 1200dpi, but that’s more than a minute scanning time with my scanner. Only the hubs I do with a higher resolution.
Hahaha - yeah I love you and your 60MB PNG images. Or are you the guy with the 120MB images? Great when downloading a boxset with 20-30 scans. Picard hates it and sits there and sulks for 30mins as I only have 200mbps broadband.
As you say - “only scan ever needed” - so that means you are at least cropping them properly unlike some lazy editors. Thank you.
Absolutely happy for your work - but it is funny to see Picard freak out due to me always downloading “all artwork”. One day Picard will catch up and handle that kinda stuff better.
I look at my 50" TV screen where art is dsiplayed. And I look at the biggest resolution monitor I have available in the house. And a 600dpi scan is above those by some way. 600dpi is the max at Discogs. And it is a recommended standard here.
IMHO 1200dpi and above just adds a ton of storage that isn’t needed. For a HUB it is different as the image will get zoomed and cropped.
But I also see the logic of PNG images. Even though I stick with 80% jpg images as that adds efficiency to most covers as generally they tend to be a similar colour.
That’s what I do too, but IMO anything higher than 600 dpi only highlights the imperfections of the printed sources that are already visible at 600 dpi. Hence I do all my scans at 600 dpi and save them as raw/unedited PNGs for archival purposes.
But so far I only upload versions that are cropped/edited and scaled down to 300 dpi to the CAA, because the original scans (of CD artwork) are 20 to 40 MiB each - and I don’t want to slow down Picard for users like @IvanDobsky (and myself) that download all the images at maximum quality
For high quality PNG images Picard gives you only the alternative to download a 1200 px JPEG - which is a huge gap in quality.
I would definitely upload all my archival PNGs if it would not hinder my own tagging process, but 1200 px is too small for my purposes and so far I found no better solution than being egotistical: Keep the highres for me and upload PNGs with a reasonable size for tagging.
If there would be more download options offered by the CAA, I can still upload them and replace the old ones.
I don’t so far. I try to crop very carefully, but for esthetical reasons they should be cropped. For documentation it would be better having them raw/unedited. If I add them additionally, it would more than double the size of the uploads. But there’s no reason keeping them to myself as I’m in possession of most of the scanned CDs.
@IvanDobsky - that’s why I added at least one scan image of back+spine+front in 1200dpi raw/unedited (and not rotated )
I do love the quality pictures. I’d never want to stop those that do this. Just it is funny when Picard gets stuck like that hauling in a juggernaut load of images as the 32-page booklet arrives in glorious quality.
This is why I don’t go mad on my own scans. History doesn’t need to see the grain in the paper, it needs a sharp image to see the smallest text and maybe print it. I use 600dpi and save to 80% JPGs. A little bit of JPG compression saves a huge filespace with no noticeable image damage.
Interesting idea. Isn’t the MB Wiki editable by all? May be worth a new thread to discuss. There are probably loads of tips we could share about reading odd codes on CDs and rear covers. A MB table of SID codes is a neat idea.
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