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Topic: CDi ready - drive not reading cdi cd (Read 3407 times) previous topic - next topic
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CDi ready - drive not reading cdi cd

Hi!  I am new here, so if I am posting in the wrong forum, I apologize, just point me in the right direction.

I have recently begun to rip all of my old CDs into mp3s (a few hundred, so it will take me a while).

I came across a cd (the cranberries - doors and windows) that is supposed to be a cd-i disc.  On the front cover, they say, "RAINBOW CD-ROM product compatible with: CD AUDIO * WINDOWS * MACINTOSH * CD-i * DIGITAL VIDEO".  I did a little research - Philips pushed this like others pushed ENHCD and CDExtra. 

Basically, track 1 is data (yes, BIG warnings to not play the first track in your audio player).  The back says "This disc is fully compatible with all CD-i players displaying this symbol".  The symbol liiks like the compact disc audio words in a rectangle, but instead of "audio", it is "Interactive".  This was supposed to be a future-proof type of thing - any CD-i player could play any CD-i cd.

I have a drive that EAC shows as Optiarc DVD RW AD-7173A 1-03.  When I look that up, it goes to Sony Optiarc information.  In the compatibility section of the tech specs, this model lists CD-i Ready.  When I put in the disc, I can rip it with EAC, but I do not get a menu for the interactive part.  What's more, I can not see anything on the drive through Windows Explorer.  I remember opening this successfully back in the day (a few PCs ago), like back in Windows 95/98 days. 

While I rip my CDs, I also copy off the movies, etc from the multimedia areas, if present.  Typically they are small (by today's standards) little movies, but just the same, I paid for them, so I would like to see them.

Any ideas on how to get to the data on this one?  Is CD-i Ready not going to help me with a CD-i disc? 

CDi ready - drive not reading cdi cd

Reply #1
While I don't have any experience with CD-is, a quick search reveals this -

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Book_%2...ive_standard%29

It mentions that "CD-i" and "CD-i Ready" are two distinct formats, written to the disc in a different way. I'm not sure if there's any way to rip specifically the CD-i and/or CD-i Ready parts, or if you could even find any program today that will be able to play them.

But, since the disc says it should be readable in a PC, that means it's got a standard data-CD ISO 9660 filesystem on it somewhere, which you should be able to rip. EAC isn't going to do this for you in any way, it's only for ripping audio tracks, not data. You should start by using something made for ripping .ISOs, like Nero Burning ROM. Although Nero costs, there's free .ISO rippers too - I'm just not sure which ones to recommend since I've been using Nero so long.

CDi ready - drive not reading cdi cd

Reply #2
...there's free .ISO rippers too - I'm just not sure which ones to recommend...


On Windows I recommend ImgBurn. It's pretty decent and, most importantly, free.
The Loudness War is over. Now it's a hopeless occupation.

CDi ready - drive not reading cdi cd

Reply #3
While I don't have any experience with CD-is, a quick search reveals this -

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Book_%2...ive_standard%29

It mentions that "CD-i" and "CD-i Ready" are two distinct formats, written to the disc in a different way. I'm not sure if there's any way to rip specifically the CD-i and/or CD-i Ready parts, or if you could even find any program today that will be able to play them.

But, since the disc says it should be readable in a PC, that means it's got a standard data-CD ISO 9660 filesystem on it somewhere, which you should be able to rip. EAC isn't going to do this for you in any way, it's only for ripping audio tracks, not data. You should start by using something made for ripping .ISOs, like Nero Burning ROM. Although Nero costs, there's free .ISO rippers too - I'm just not sure which ones to recommend since I've been using Nero so long.

Interesting!  Thanks for the link!  I saw in EAC that track 1 was listed as data, so that made me wonder if I could rip it as an ISO, but then what?  Maybe look at it in an ISO reader like MagicISO?  Or somehow just rip track 1 and then get it to burn as a data disc instead of audio disc?

So, looking at CDi Ready:
CD-i Ready is a compact disc format based on the CD-i format. CD-i format and CD-i Ready format use different techniques to get audio CD players to skip over the CD-i software and data. CD-i Ready places the software and data in the pregap of Track 1. Standard CD-i format places the software and data into ordinary tracks, but omits the tracks from the table of contents.

If my player is CDi-Ready, you would think it could read the track 1 pregap.  I have a few CDs that have Hidden Track One songs that I can not seem to extract with EAC.  I thought this player does not do HTO... Or maybe they all can read from sector1 forward, but they restrict reading based on the format?  So for green-book formatted cds, it will read the pregap of track 1, but if it is a red-book formatted cd, then it will not allow the reading of track 1's pregap?

Thoughts?

CDi ready - drive not reading cdi cd

Reply #4
...there's free .ISO rippers too - I'm just not sure which ones to recommend...


On Windows I recommend ImgBurn. It's pretty decent and, most importantly, free.

Thanks, I use ImgBurn for a few other things.  Giving that a try, I first tried to create an image from the disc.  It seems to have gotten stuck at the beginning.  In the log it gets past displaying Source Media info, Read Speed, and then Destination info.  The last line in the log is "File Splitting: Auto".  The status line at the bottom of the main window says "Analysing Tracks... (Session 1, Track 2)".  And it seems stuck.  I keep hearing the head move once every 9-10 second - a quick sound like re-reading a sector or something.  I was able to rip tracks 2,3,4,5 and 6 with EA with no problems or delays, so I am not sure what ImgBurn is doing.  Finally cancelled after 8 minutes of nothing.

ImgBurn discovery shows:
TOC Information:
Session 1... (LBA: 0 / 00:02:00)
-> Track 01  (Mode 2, Form 1, LBA: 0 / 00:02:00)
-> Track 02  (Audio, 04:11:33, LBA: 235625 / 52:23:50)
-> Track 03  (Audio, 04:46:28, LBA: 254483 / 56:35:08)
-> Track 04  (Audio, 02:41:02, LBA: 275961 / 61:21:36)
-> Track 05  (Audio, 03:31:21, LBA: 288038 / 64:02:38)
-> Track 06  (Audio, 05:15:34, LBA: 303884 / 67:33:59)
-> LeadOut  (LBA: 327543 / 72:49:18)

How can I just extract track 1 as data?



CDi ready - drive not reading cdi cd

Reply #5
Does anyone know if something like Alcohol 120 would be able ot rip the data track and then allow me to mount the image to see the files. or write it back to another cd as data?