Space Channel 5 '1'

[DrEaMpLaY]

I have ripped my Space Channel 5. Downsampled some files an already burned to CD. It hangs on 3rd stage loading screen identically like 1st KAL relase so i need to non-alfabetically sort files (small to end and big to near start of cd) but mkisofs is working to slow. I sort files in about 2 hour and i off it. There is a faster way to make sort in iso and add dummy file to bigger than 700mb image? (i will burn it onto 99min cd-r).

[Darkfalz]

I made my own rip of this game (PAL version) with no freezing problems. As I recall, I downsampled all music to 22050 stereo, and downsampled a few videos. I believe the cause of the freezing problem would be this, it just can't stream video and audio fast enough, no matter the sort order (I used the original sort order). Using a 99 minute wouldn't help, CD-R is just plain slow compared to GD-ROM.

Not sure about your mkisofs problem, what are sorting with? What's your command line?

[DrEaMpLaY]

Originally Posted by Darkfalz

Not sure about your mkisofs problem, what are sorting with? What's your command line?

mkisofs -C 0,0 -V CDLABEL -sort file.txt -l -o data.iso data

I using 0.0 LBA because i selfbooting games with bin2boot.

[Darkfalz]

Well I have absolutely no idea why it would take so long (2 hours!).

bin2boot sucks, imo

[DrEaMpLaY]

Originally Posted by Darkfalz

Well I have absolutely no idea why it would take so long (2 hours!).

bin2boot sucks, imo

No no, i using BootDreams (based on bin2boot). It can easly make audio/data, data(boot)/data and standard bin2boot's data/data(boot) from dir. It has also easy step by step guide - it working with 'normal' games and homebrews as well. It has auto dummy option and ip insert I using it because i cant get to work cdrecord on my PC. I tried everything :/

Two hours? I have 400Mhz processor

[Darkfalz]

I use CDRWin. I'm actually using an old version that I hacked to work with my newer CDRW. I just prefer the manual way, so I get total control. Still can't imagine why it would take so long even on 400 mhz, unless you have an ancient slow hard disk. Mine is super fast because I have always had two HDs and always built from one to the other.

[DrEaMpLaY]

Originally Posted by Darkfalz

I use CDRWin. I'm actually using an old version that I hacked to work with my newer CDRW. I just prefer the manual way, so I get total control. Still can't imagine why it would take so long even on 400 mhz, unless you have an ancient slow hard disk. Mine is super fast because I have always had two HDs and always built from one to the other.

No. I have also fast HD (not that fast as yours i think) - 30gb Maxtor.

[Excalibur007]

Originally Posted by DrEaMpLaY

No. I have also fast HD (not that fast as yours i think) - 30gb Maxtor.

What OS? If you're using something older than XP (I'm not that familiar with XP yet), make sure "enable DMA" is checked for your HD in your system's device manager. I know this seems obvious, but I made this mistake. A couple years ago, my PC seemed to slow waaaay down and I didn't know why. I didn't think to check the DMA setting... it was fine last time I looked, but it had come UNCHECKED! hehe... When I finally realized this, (I won't tell you how long it took me), it was like a new computer again. lol@myself

A quick example:
* With DMA unchecked it took about 45-50 minutes to make a 670 MB iso (that was on a 1GHZ Athlon with 512MB ram 64MB nvidia geforce4 and 7200rpm 80GB HD). It also took forever to make a large dummy file.
* With DMA checked it took less than 2 minutes to make the same iso and even large dummy files only took a second or 2.

[DrEaMpLaY]

My PC is new in my room but really old: Win98, Celeron 433 PGA, 128 SD Ram, integraded sound and GFX card - SIS620, 30GB HD Maxtor. I try DMA and post results.

EDIT: Yeah you're right. I tested it with make dummy, in the same tima copy a movie with playing winamp My mouse cursor not hangs Much faster !!! Thanks.I always used DMA but only for my recorder

[Darkfalz]

DMA is good.

[Excalibur007]

Dreamplay, I know this topic is a bit dated, but I just got around to ripping my Space Channel 5 and thought I'd give some pointers to help out with making a nice selfboot rip.

I've played my rip all the way through and beat it on Normal and Extra modes without any problems.

For ADXDATA AFS files:
I extracted all adx files and used ADX2WAV to convert to wav, (note that ADX2WAV automatically boosts the volume). I used sox to downsample to 22050 mono with polyphase filtering and then used Goldwave to boost the treble. (This counters the muffled effect you get when downsampling.) I used adxencd to convert back to ADX and relinked them back to compacted AFS files.

For VOICEDATA AFS file:
I extracted and converted to wav as above and used sox to downsample to 16000 with polyphase filtering and then used Goldwave to boost treble. I used adxencd to convert back to adx and relinked as above.

For Sofdecs:
I demultiplexed with MPEG-VCR to M1V and ADX streams,
- For audio streams:
I used adx2wav on the ADX streams then sox with polyphase to downsample to 16000 mono. Again, I used Goldwave to boost treble as above then converted back to ADX with adxencd. You can rename these as *.sfa or use Darkfalz's tool to convert ADX to sfa. Either way, S*ga Dreamcast Movie Creator can multiplex them just fine. You could also just encode the wav with S*ga Dreamcast Movie Creator, but I believe the quality is better if you downsample with sox instead and just multiplex it later.
- For Video streams:
I used tmpgenc to downsample these to 600kbit with the "CG/Animation" setting and "No motion search for still picture by half pixel". Usually, you won't get any better quality than the S*ga Dreamcast Movie Creator, but in this particular case, I found tmpgenc yielded the better result.
I used S*ga Dreamcast Movie Creator to re-multiplex these streams into sofdecs.

To finish trimming size:
There is still just over 2MB that needs cut, so I picked the R3_B3_10.M1V. The M1V's are 2400kbit on the GDROM so I used tmpgenc to downsample this one to just 2000kbit so there isn't really any noticable difference. I picked this one because it's one of the larger ones and it's not a backdrop... it's an intermission video. To cut an additional 666KB, I replaced R22.MPB with a 0byte file and relinked it to R21.MPB in the iso since they're duplicates. Don't worry about other duplicate files. There are only a few and they're just 4KB. These are better left where they're at in the file system anyway.

*** I used the original sort order when making the iso and got an image that fits perfectly at 700MB. ***

THE END RESULT:
Believe it or not, the Sofdec videos look very good at 600kbit. There is very little motion in these, so you don't get much block noise. The only one that suffers much is the Opening sofdec... and even it's not too bad. The audio that's downsampled still sounds great after using Goldwave to boost the treble, there's not really much noticable difference between the downsampled audio and the original at all. I have a pretty decent stereo system with my entertainment center and I couldn't tell much difference at all when comparing my rip with my original back to back. This is a game that I put off ripping for so long because I didn't expect to make a selfboot with decent quality. However, after doing this, I ended up with a darn good backup that's close enough to the original that I'll actually be putting this GDROM away and playing the backup now.

note: Thanks to Darkfalz for turning me on to sox for downsampling audio. It's great.

[Darkfalz]

My strategy is pick the highest bitrate videos and downsample them to the same bitrate as lower ones. Also converted the music to 22k stereo instead of 44k mono (which sucks). Though it's been ages since I did this rip and in all honesty, it's one of the few games where I always play my original (rip can lag just a tiny bit which can affect timinig, plus the music is best at CD quality).