cbmuser

You should post these questions to the mailing list here: https://lists.fu-berlin.de/listinfo/linux-minidisc#subscribe As for SP downloads, it should be possible to perform these downloads using "netmdcli" which is available on MacOS and Linux. Don't know whether we currently have Windows builds for the CLI utilities. Adrian

Hi, MacOS X users, please download the release candidates for VLC 2.0 here: http://download.videolan.org/pub/testing/vlc-2.0.0-rc1/macosx/ These versions support decrypting of encrypted ATRAC-1 and ATRAC-3 files . For Windows: http://download.videolan.org/pub/testing/vlc-2.0.0-rc1/win32/ Linux users will have compiled versions of VLC 2.0 available in their favorite distribution soon. Adrian

Because the code is still WIP. Please check this status table regularly, it still says *experimental*: https://wiki.physik....doku.php#status We just managed to successfully write a MP3 to a HiMD device and play it back: https://lists.fu-ber...y/msg00005.html This work will be finished after this years' Google Summer of Code, I am currently preparing the task lists for the students who are going to work on it! Adrian

Hey guys, sorry for not checking back here for a long time! I have had to move from country to country, so you can guess I have been quite busy. Anyway, there are several good news. 1) The upcoming major official release of VLC contains the universal OMA decryptor which allows to decrypt ALL files encrypted by SonicStage without having to have SonicStage installed or the keys backed up. Very useful for people who had to reinstall their computers and can't play back their content anymore. Fetch preview versions of VLC here: Win32: http://nightlies.videolan.org/build/win32/last/ Win64: http://nightlies.videolan.org/build/win64/last/ MacOS (Intel): http://nightlies.videolan.org/build/macosx-intel/?C=M;O=D MacOS (PPC): http://nightlies.videolan.org/build/macosx/?C=M;O=D Note: The 2.0 versions for MacOS do not play back these encrypted files at the moment due to a bug which is supposed to be fixed in the release version. 2) The free ATRAC3+ decoder for VLC/ffmpeg is nearly complete and to be expected within the next months. With this decoder, VLC/ffmpeg will also be able to play back ATRAC recordings made with the latest generation of HiMD devices. 3) We will be getting two slots for this years' Google Summer of Code again through VideoLAN. This means, development will gain another boost. 4) HiMD write support has been successfully shown to work for the first time. I was able to transfer an MP3 using "himdcli" on Linux with my MZ-RH10 and it worked! We just need to fix some bugs in this area . @THIS SUCKS: NetMD transfers already work, but there is no UI integration due to some bugs yet. Sorry, been busy. But it *does* work! Development will gain another boost during Google Summer of Code 2012. We will have two dedicated students again who will work on the project and get paid. The previous GSoC (2011) already brought major steps forward in the NetMD development (see the progress here: http://www.ohloh.net/p/linux-minidisc). So, while I would like to apologize for the slow progress, please let me tell you that we are still working on the project and it just takes an incredible amount of time and effort. I understand your frustration, but I can promise you that we are still working and we will get to the point that we will have a full-featured SonicStage replacement, cross-plattform WITH SP downloads. This years' GSoC should bring us there or at least very close to it. I promise! So, again. Very sorry for the slow pace. But we're still going strong! Adrian

Yes, the previous versions were still buggy which resulted in a crash of VLC when opening an .oma file. Also, some DLL files were missing and have now been added. More updated versions: https://rapidshare.c...r_mac64_drm.zip - QHiMDTransfer - MacOS 64-bit https://rapidshare.c...mdcli_mac64.zip - himdcli - MacOS 64-bit (command line version for HiMD transfer) https://rapidshare.c...mdcli_mac64.zip - netmdcli - MacOS 64-bit (command line transfer utility for NetMD) https://rapidshare.c...r_mac32_drm.zip - QHiMDTransfer - MacOS 32-bit https://rapidshare.c...mdcli_mac32.zip - himdcli - MacOS 32-bit (command line version for HiMD transfer) https://rapidshare.c...mdcli_mac32.zip - netmdcli - MacOS 32-bit (command line transfer utility for NetMD) https://rapidshare.c...0-git-win32.zip - Updated version of VLC for Windows with integrated decryptor (in case it didn't work for some before on Windows) The usage of netmdcli and himdcli on MacOS is not straight-forward, please see: http://www.minidiscforum.de/forum/download/file.php?id=1635&mode=view Adrian

https://rapidshare.com/files/3217379360/ffmpeg-plumbojumbo-970d362.zip - ffmpeg - Windows https://rapidshare.com/files/910579041/vlc-1.2.0-git-win32.zip - VLC - Windows https://rapidshare.com/files/790979033/VLC_oma_64bit.app.zip - VLC - MacOS 64-bit

It's probably missing some DLL files. As I said, this is just an early test version. To fix the problem, you can try the following: 1. Download the current nighly build of VLC for Windows and install it. http://nightly.videolan.org/build/win32/last/ 2. Replace the installed files in the VLC program folder with the one from the ZIP archive supplied above. I will try to reproduce the problem myself. EDIT: I just tried running that VLC version I linked on Windows 2003 Server and it worked fine. Do you get any specific error message? EDIT2: Ok, I should have read more carefully. You said, that it actually crashed upon opening one of your files. I cannot test that at the moment since I don't have any sample files right now. But you may still try the above suggestion and also check if you get any error messages. ffmpeg has to be run from the command line, it doesn't have any GUI. Adrian

Hi, for anyone who wants to try it out, here is a preview version of VLC and ffmpeg with the integrated decryptor. https://rapidshare.com/files/1586631008/vlc-1.2.0-git-win32.zip https://rapidshare.com/files/76562274/ffmpeg_win32.zip These versions of VLC and ffmpeg should be able to playback ALL encrypted .oma files (PCM, ATRAC-SP, ATRAC3), no matter whether SonicStage is installed or not. ATRAC3+ are not YET supported, as the source code for the decoder hasn't been finished yet. But anyone who has unplayable .oma files lying around on their hard drives should try this out. Adrian

Hello guys, finally some very good news from our Google Summer of Code students projects: Both students appear to have passed their tasks (it's not yet official) and have therefore achieved the planned goals. I will shortly inform you about the status of each project now. 1. Updating libnetmd The first student had the task to revive the abandoned project "libnetmd" and extend its functionality with transfer capabilities (up- and downloads) with the help of our documentation and our Python NetMD code. The idea behind this project was to provide an easy-to-use NetMD library which can be integrated into QHiMDTransfer and other software (like VLC, for example) to extend these applications with the capability to connect to NetMD devices. The advantage over our previous method of using Python scripts is that libnetmd does not require the installation of any additional software (like Python) except for a special USB driver for libusb. After integration into QHiMDTransfer, all NetMD devices can be accessed from a simple and neat graphical user interface. Both uploads (transfer from the device, MZ-RH1/M200 only) and downloads (transfer to the device, all NetMD devices) are available. Since all NetMD devices can encode SP audio on the fly, SP downloads are available as well. The input files have to be in PCM (WAV) format. There are no software SP encoders available as of today, decoding in VLC is supported however (for uploads made with the MZ-RH1/M200). The libnetmd code is not yet merged into our mainline code or QHiMDTransfer, but it is ready and will be worked on in the following weeks. You can expect updated versions of QHiMDTransfer in 1-2 months. The source code of the newly updated libnetmd version can currently be accessed here: https://github.com/AlexanderS/linux-minidisc 2. ffmpeg OMA/ATRAC improvements The goal of this task was two-fold. First task was to extend VLC with the capability to playback encrypted .oma audio files generated by SonicStage. The motivation behind this is the common problem many users of SonicStage experienced: The have a large library of audio files in SonicStage and then have to reinstall their computer for some reason or move the audio files to another computer. Since the audio files are encrypted with a dynamic key created by the installed instance of SonicStage, it is not possible to playback these files without the help of the installed version of SonicStage with a specific set of keys. Fortunately, Sony included a back door in this encryption scheme for .oma files which allows ALL .oma files to be decrypted using a known master key. Knowing this ability, we had the idea to integrate a decryption functionality into VLC and ffmpeg which was then eventually performed by the second student. After having been seriously sick for several weeks, the student finally managed to finish the decryption code. After being reviewed and polished, we can expect this decryption code to be part of one of the next releases of VLC. The decryption function has one minor disadvantage. Due to copyright reasons, it would be illegal to include the secret master key for the .oma files into VLC. This means, that VLC will not be able to decrypt .oma files by default unless a key is provided. However, this key merely consists of a series of alpha-numerical characters and will leak into the interwebs once the appropriate version of VLC has been released. It is also possible to build a "dirty" version of VLC which will already include the keys in the source code. We're thinking of distributing this version through Rapidshare (links will follow). The code changes introducing the OMA decryptor can be found here: https://github.com/plumbojumbo/FFmpeg/commit/4d63745d422f73f8bf7c1afa42db0b0e957e633f The second part of the task was to finish the ATRAC3+ decoder in VLC/ffmpeg. Up to now, only ATRAC1 and ATRAC3 decoding is supported, while ATRAC3+ is still being work-in-progess. Since most HiMD devices store audio tracks in ATRAC3+ by default, it would be very important to have a working ATRAC3+ decoder in VLC/ffmpeg as well. Since the Google Summer of Code is almost over and the student didn't manage to work on the ATRAC3+ decoder, the task will be to work on the ATRAC3+ now. The student himself has shown interest and is willing to work on the ATRAC3+ decoder. However, since this is not covered by Google Summer of Code anymore, he will be working without getting paid. So I was thinking that we might start collecting some money and donate any amount to reward the student for his work. Donations could easily be carried out through PayPal, so I will suggest him to create a PayPal account unless someone here has a better idea. In any case, I think it would be nice to support the student financially and I will jump in with 20 Euros. So, as you guys see, this years Google Summer of Code brought a lot of progress to the MiniDisc world and if things work out well, we will have a full, free replacement of SonicStage and playback capability for ATRAC1/3/3+, even if encrypted on ALL platforms (Windows, MacOS, Linux, *BSD and so on). Adrian

You guys can track the updates to the code here: https://github.com/AlexanderS/linux-minidisc Adrian

And the student is back to working. Looks like he will finish his work on time . Adrian

That is not correct. I have already said that we already have performed SP downloads and it works. You can just take any Linux or MacOS computer, install Python and our python-netmd package and easily download tracks in SP. All NetMD hardware does support SP downloads, it's just SonicStage which deliberately transcodes everything into LP2/LP4 to not give the user SP downloads. There is a checkbox in SonicStage which you can tick which will create MiniDiscs compatible with non-LP devices which actually generates SP downloads, however with a low quality by converting the tracks into LP2/LP4 first, then converting them back into PCM and then sending them to the NetMD device. All NetMD devices can create ATRAC SP from PCM data. The task of the Google Summer of Code student was to make the whole thing easier to use and compatible with Windows. I didn't say that it will never happen now, it just got postponed. Please don't panic. Things like these happen. Adrian

The development has started in June and is still work-in-progress. You can track the changes at our student's source code repository here: https://github.com/AlexanderS/linux-minidisc Unfortunately, our student hasn't done any work recently and I currently cannot get into contact with him, so things will be delayed further, sorry . Adrian

Hi guys, as some of you guys may have already heard, this year's Google Summer of Code has begun as of today and we're participating through VideoLAN (the makers of VLC) who were so kind to assign one of their students to us to work on the NetMD code. The other student is working on finalizing support for ATRAC3+ for VLC/ffmpeg including a generic OMA decryptor which will allow ALL ATRAC/PCM files saved in the oma format be decrypted and played back by VLC/ffmpeg. A very first status update has just been posted by this student on the mailing list "vlc-devel" and can be found here: http://mailman.videolan.org/pipermail/vlc-devel/2011-May/080430.html The general timeline for GSoC can be found here: http://www.google-melange.com/document/show/gsoc_program/google/gsoc2011/timeline I will keep you updated, Adrian

Please join the list. It's a bit tedious to post all the news twice, it's much easier when people interested are just following us directly . https://lists.fu-berlin.de/listinfo/linux-minidisc Latest news: https://lists.fu-berlin.de/pipermail/linux-minidisc/2011-April/msg00002.html Thanks, Adrian