#CD-ROM Mastering?
18 messages in this thread
Is there any CD-ROM mastering software for the Amiga? If not, what are my
options for getting an ISO 9660 CD-ROM with >8.3 character file names
pressed? Is it possible to use a PC to generate CD-ROMs with >8.3
character file names? Other than run UNIX on a PC, I mean. ;^)
I know I have to go through CBM to get a CD32 title pressed.
-Jerry
There are a few options. Mail snapper@bix.com for info on software he
sells for mastering CD-ROMs, if that is really what you want.
Unless you are planning to do this often, what you really want is to take
a gig HD, fill it the appropriate amount, and mail it to someone who will
return a bill, the drive, and a gold disk of the drive image.
— Dale L. Larson, Intangible Assets Manufacturing
— INTERNET:dale@iam.com
"if that is really what you want"
I'm not sure I really want to burn a couple hundred custom disks, but
I may have to. I hope we can mass produce one CD-ROM and put the
customized data on floppy to install on each client's HD, but if the
data turns out to be too large for the customization we would have to
burn a separate CD-ROM for each customer. I'm just trying to find
out what the options and costs are right now.
I could get by with a PC and 8.3 character file names, but I thought
that if there was Amiga based software it might support the Rock
Ridge protocols for longer file names.
Thanks,
-Jerry
CATS has CDROM mastering software available to CD32 licensees. You might try
that as well.
andy
We have been sending tapes to CATS to make CD32 discs. We are looking
into the possibility of burning our own if we need to. I will ask them
about mastering and premastering software.
Thanks,
-Jerry
You're welcome. The software works pretty well. I used it for awhile to back
up my hard drives. (and I wrote some of the pieces 🙂 )
andy
I just got some preliminary information on the CD software and
pressing services available from CATS. Sounds like a tremendous
bargain compared to what I've seen on PC, Mac, and UNIX. This could
be fun… Nah! With the way my luck has been going, it will probably
be another nightmare. "This is really simple and we've never had any
problems with it before and there are millions of people using it
every day and I don't know why this is not working for you Mr.
Thompson." It's because I am electrostaticly challenged, that's why.
It's not that bad to use; the BuildCD software supports multisession
discs, which basically allows you to practice again and again on a
disc until you get your procedure down right. (That feature saved me
lots of gold discs during development of the software 🙂 )
And on the Amiga, you can move the mouse while a build is going on and
not mess up the CD burn…on the Mac this isn't necessarily the case
🙂
"the BuildCD software supports multisession discs, which basically
allows you to practice again and again on a disc until you get your
procedure down right. (That feature saved me lots of gold discs
during development of the software"
Ahh, that does sound good. I was a little worried about going
through those gold discs like candy (or even chocolate chip cookies!)
during development. But I refuse to believe this is going to be easy
or, relatively, inexpensive. Sure it works fine for everyone else.
Me, I'll spend $5,000 and six months and wind up with a stack of
shiny coffetable coasters.
The thought of a Mac user bumping his mouse and trashing an hour long
CD-ROM burn does cheer me up, though.
Let me qualify the multisession thing…you probably won't be able to
take advantage of it for your development, except to verify that your
setup to burn the CDROM is working. (which is what I was working on)
There are image creation issues and filesystem issues that will
probably prevent you from making any extensive practical use of
multisession discs. However, it will allow you to verify your setup,
and work though hardware problems, cable problems, etc. while ruining
only a single disc.
If you plan to make CD32 / CDTV bootable discs in particular, then you
do need to use CBM's mastering software. But you're also agreeing to
pay $2.25 a disc. I don't know of any reason why you couldn't make a
CDTV/CD32/Amiga disc containing Amiga programs in ISO-9660 format…
except for the booting aspect. But if you've got a floppy on the
CD32/CDTV system, you could boot from that, right?
If a Mac or PC-based CDROM mastering system is $6K-$8K, the royalty on
less than 3,000 discs would equal the cost of the system. Without
your own mastering system, you could simply send a tape image to any
CDROM service bureau and get a one-off for about $300. Working with
a hard disk image of the CD is fine for development, unless your
application is so time-sensitive that you need to emulate the
slowness and access times of the disc. And no matter how you slice
it, a small press run of CDs will cost $1-3, depending on count and
features. You're going to spend money, no doubt.
Do you know of any service bureau that will take video tapes and
create MPEG CDs?
I'm sure CATS has a list of such…
Hmm, no, I don't. There's a lot of CD-savvy people in the CDROM
Forum, and the CDROM Vendor forum. I know I picked their brains for
weeks every time I wrote my CDROM articles for AmigaWorld.
I think CATS is doing this now, but only for CD32 discs. That's who
we are planning to use. If you leave a message in the CDROM and
PHOTOCD forums, the CD-ROM service bureaus will be more than glad to
provide you with information and quotes. There are also several
information files in the CDROM forum and a CD-ROM.faq file which
lists CD-ROM service bureaus.
There's Commodore's, but you pay a $2.25 royalty per disc if you use
it, regardless of whether it's a CDTV / CD32 title or not. At least
several of the PC-based mastering systems do not handle anything
better than 8.3 names, usually as a result of whatever method you've
used to move the files to the mastering system itself. There are
Unix-based systems in common use, too – the Young Minds systems come
to mind. Mastering services may have this system. There's also the
"Rock Ridge" extensions, which let you hide Unix-like filenames
within an ISO-9660 disc. And any Mac-based system will press a disc
with ISO Level 2 names, meaning up to 32 chars. Officially, these
filenames are upper-case, but most systems let you ignore that. This
is what happens on CDTV/CD32 discs.
Thanks a lot for the info on mastering and CD-ROM formats. That actually
cleared up a lot of questions I was having. I'll check with Xetec and
Asimware and see if their drivers support ISO Level 2 names.
We may have to get a CD Writer to burn CD-ROMs for PC's and I was
thinking, hey, if we're going to have a machine here, I wonder if I could
make personal Amiga backups archived onto CD-ROM. You know, just a small
sampling of my own thoughts, musings, and witicisms. I think I could get
it down to a "best of" 3 volume set. ;^).
-Jerry