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Sony provides Hi-MD Wav Conversion Tool

smilodon500

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skierMD Newbie

skierMD

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I haven't downloaded the new tool, but so if I'm reading your posts correctly, if I make a 79 minute mix in PCM mode...when I use the program to output to WAV, it will cut the .WAV at 650 MB or does it split the recording into two tracks at the 650 MB mark?

If it does the later, couldn't you just merge the two files in Soundforge with no loss of audio?

...I haven't spend the time to read all the homebrew programs, but I will. smile.gif

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mdmd Newbie

mdmd

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My wish is to use my hi-md to make recordings longer than 74 min in a compressed format, to move them to my PC and to convert them to mp3 files; so the fact that the Sony wav-converter splits the resulting wav file in many 74 min wav files is very negative for me. At least they could put an option in their software to choose to divide the files or not!

I hope that Marcnet continues to work on his excellent HiMDRenderer (improving and enriching it, if he can), because people in Sony who work on software evidently can't do anything without putting in it something illogical.

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marcnet Newbie

marcnet

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Hey marc - is there any way to identify if they stole your technique?

One obvious way: My program uses DirectSound as a reference clock. The most obvious side-effect of this is that sound is produced during the conversion process. Ill probably get around to writing an alternate clock source one day, but its not on my high list of priorities

Oh and im about to release version 0.3 sometime tonight, or maybe tomorrow. Expect FLAC,OGG and MP3 writing options in this next release.

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DaveToo Newbie

DaveToo

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Marc is not in the USA, so the DMCA does not apply.

Minor problem: Some american lawyers are too dumb to get that...

Sometimes real dumb:

http://www.slyck.com/news.php?story=555

Niether was Dmitry Sklyarov in the USA, until he came to present at a conference: http://www.freesklyarov.org/

Additionally, DMCA is just the USA's implementation of WIPO: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WIPO_Copyright_Treaty . I suppose I should substitute WIPO for DMCA in my statement.

Business *is* infiltrating Law Enforcement. And the world's Legislative bodies.

I would be cautious.

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Latexxx Newbie

Latexxx

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One obvious way: My program uses DirectSound as a reference clock. The most obvious side-effect of this is that sound is produced during the conversion process. Ill probably get around to writing an alternate clock source one day, but its not on my high list of priorities

Oh and im about to release version 0.3 sometime tonight, or maybe tomorrow. Expect FLAC,OGG and MP3 writing options in this next release.

They don't need to stole anybody's technique because they are in control of their own formats and drm.

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Syrius Newbie

Syrius

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Well, Marc simply released a tool that uses already-existing resources in order to do what Sony's much delayed and crippled program does today. He's not claiming copyright ownership or charging royalties, so he's not infringing the law, just like a sound card with optical input connected to a MD deck with digital output is legal and falls within the terms of fair use. :happy:

Marc didn't mess with Sony's stuff, and I don't think that Sony messed up with Marc's. All is well in the world.

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A440 Newbie

A440

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Well, I finally gave Wav converter a try and I'm completely disgusted. It was a full 1GB disc of a conversation, recorded at Hi-SP, and it took more than an hour to convert and upload. Then it decided to erase most of the uploaded tracks from the disc, and it left one 51-minute track registering "Cannot Play."

Sony should just allow drag and drop of its precious .oma files, ready to be played and then converted later if necessary, rather than converting them all on the way between computers. And it's beyond insulting that Sonic Stage takes control of my precious data and then screws it up.

Sony itself may be obsolete before Hi-MD Renderer is.

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dex Otaku Newbie

dex Otaku

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Well, I finally gave Wav converter a try and I'm completely disgusted. It was a full 1GB  disc of a conversation, recorded at Hi-SP, and it took more than an hour to convert and upload. Then it decided to erase most of the uploaded tracks from the disc, and it left one 51-minute track registering "Cannot Play."

There's a reason why I've been saying for the past few months - use total recorder or analogue realtime method to back up your full recording BEFORE transferring it with SonicStage. I realise that woul have been almost 8 hours of recording to transfer in real time, bu hey - if you'd done it, you'd still have all your stuff, wouldn't you.

Also: did it do the erasure &c. while/after transferring? Or is this something the wav convertor did [which seems unlikely]?

Sorry to hear you lost your stuff, at any rate. Next time - back up first.

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Artstar Newbie

Artstar

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So in other words, I'm going to have to wait for a HiMD component deck to compliment my Sony MDS-JA30ES player and pump its optical out into my PC as well because SS will fry the disc and Sony's wav converter will suck after the 1st 74 mins of my live (and studio) recordings get uploaded.

Sony ... for God's sakes you were almost there with a functioning product until you had your blinkers put back on. STOP THINKING OF COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT! MD is the least likely of all formats to be abused for such activity en masse.

mad.gif FRIGGIN' MORONS! mad.gif

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marcnet Newbie

marcnet

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You rock, marc. You so totally rock. Are you planning on having option dialogues for quality settings et al?

No. All settings will be on the main dialog. The difference now is that you have 3 extra buttons: Processing options, Advanced options and output options. Each one will display a common group of options.

Options for the chosen encoder will be displayed in the "output options" group..

If you dont get what I mean then just wait for the release later on today :smile:

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A440 Newbie

A440

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Trying to make Sony feel bad is like trying to get President Bush to admit a mistake. Not likely.

Let me clarify a little, since I was using my terms a little loosely. I used SonicStage 2.2 to upload the mic-recorded tracks to the computer, not Wav converter (though I consider the uploading part of the Wav converter's add-on to SonicStooge, maybe I'm wrong). It got most of them, slowly.

Then, as far as I can tell, SonicStage erased the tracks it had transferred when I closed it after the conversion. It's remotely possible I clicked on something authorizing that, but I deeply doubt it--I'm very careful about this stuff.

And don't worry, Dex, I haven't been reading your posts for nothing. I did a backup first.

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skierMD Newbie

skierMD

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How come when it seems that Minidisc is about to finally get it right, all this shit happens....

...I'm getting really frustrated and I love the MD format. I don't have the time to do practice runs and patience to hope that the program works as promised. I downloaded the wav converter last night and now I'm scared of recording onto the disc via PCM because I don't want to lose an 80 min one-track mix.

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What Happend Newbie

What Happend

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I havn't bougth a Hi-MD yet and am wonder if before you do a upload you can switch the write protect. From the NetMD I own, I don't think the write laser is allowed to enable if that switch is in write protect mode.

Sorry if this has already been covered.

Trying to make Sony feel bad is like trying to get President Bush to admit a mistake. Not likely.  

Let me clarify a little, since I was using my terms a little loosely.  I used SonicStage 2.2 to upload the mic-recorded tracks to the computer, not Wav converter (though I consider the uploading part of the Wav converter's add-on to SonicStooge, maybe I'm wrong).  It got most of them, slowly.

Then, as far as I can tell, SonicStage erased the tracks it had transferred when I closed it after the conversion.  It's remotely possible I clicked on something authorizing that, but I deeply doubt it--I'm very careful about this stuff.  

And don't worry, Dex, I haven't been reading your posts for nothing. I did a backup first.

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skierMD Newbie

skierMD

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Posted

OK...made a 79 min dnb mix last night. Recorded via PCM on a 1GB disc and recorded right in my NH1. I first copied the file into sonicstage 2.2's "My Library"...which took about 60 mins. (I was worried about losing the file from talk on earlier posts) Next, opened up Wav Converter...converted the file within 1 min...on an 3.2 ghz XP machine. It does create two .wav tracks....which is really lame. However, its a non-issue for me...opened up Sound Forge and combined the two .wav files. Burned it to a cd and it sounds AWESOME!!! The sound quality is so much better than old SP....this is the first mix that I have recorded on my new NH1 and you can definitely tell the difference.

Overall, I'm pretty stoked on it. :smile: the only drawback is how long it took to transfer into Sonicstage from the player...its not exactly a high-speed upload.

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pinkgary Newbie

pinkgary

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hi. I own a mznh1 teamed with an audio technica at822 stereo mic that i've used to record a couple of gigs in london and birmingham and have no complaints about the sound (it's a big improvement on my old mzn1, which was still fine and worked solidly for 18 months recording over 200 gigs without a single fuck up).

Ii have no complaints about the up-load time (as long as it does it right, it can take as long as it likes, and it has so far [about 20 times]). The only complaint i have is with the fact that the wav converter does not recognise the affore-mentioned gigs that i up-loaded on the night i recorded them (only having two hi-md discs), or anything i uploaded before installing the tool.

Does marcnet's program convert previously up-loaded wavs?

The only reason i haven't tried it was 'cos sony are so anal and unstable in their sonic stage i didn't want anything to rock the boat, and if the sony wav converter didn't work (which it does fine on the things i've up-loaded since i installed the tool [only about 15 tracks]), i could moan at sony constantly 'till they gave me loads of free stuff!

If it does i shall risk rocking the boat, even though audition has done the job (as it did with old faithfull mzn1) already in real time. I want to examine the difference for myself (being my own music) to decide which is best.

For anyone wanting to listen to the results of my old combo (mzn1 with sony ecm907) with some tweaking in audition can go to www.katlama.co.uk and download about 15 live songs (shameless, absolutely shameless). :grin:

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pinkgary Newbie

pinkgary

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I up-loaded them with sonic stage 2.0 that came with the mznh1, i have noticed the file converter when i upgraded (at the same time i got the wav converter), but it seemed more to do with atrac cd's or summit. I'll give it a go anyway, see what happens unsure.gif

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Taaronk Newbie

Taaronk

Posted
Posted

Questoin for Marc:

You kept refering to the release being later "today" on the 8th. Today is the 12th and I was wondering if you'd released it. If so, where can I get it. Or, could you put a link on Md.org or here in the thread?

Thanks.

p.s. props on what you've got so far. I like renderer much better than sony's. Keep up the good work.

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marcnet Newbie

marcnet

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Well.... I have released it. And i have posted a link on the minidisc forum

Go to the HI-MD section of the minidisc forum. See the announcement at the very top? View it and you'll see the second post describes version 0.3

Also there is a "latest version" button on version 0.22 and 0.3. This will display a message box describing the lastest version of himdrenderer available from my site. In the case of "today" (and yesterday, and the day before) it will be 0.30

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thebarnman Newbie

thebarnman

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OK...made a 79 min dnb mix last night. Recorded via PCM on a 1GB disc and recorded right in my NH1.  I first copied the file into sonicstage 2.2's "My Library"...which took about 60 mins. Next, opened up Wav Converter...converted the file within 1 min...

I thought that that Sony's Wav Converter would not allow conversions to WAV if the source was from a digital source. Are you saying that you recorded your audio with a "MIC" or "Line In" to the PCM format on HiMD?

In that case I can see the Wav Converter working with that. Oh, and I thought that the trasfer from HiMD to computer would be faster than that. Why did it take so long?

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phaworth Newbie

phaworth

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Transferring PCM files into SOnic Stage takes only a little less than real time, so 60 minutes to transfer a 79 minute PCM recording sounds about right. I assume it's the conversion from PCM to ATRAC3 that takes so long.

Recording something in PCM only to have it get converted to ATRAC3 in SonicStage, I've already lost some sound quality so converting it back to a lossless format like WAV doesn't really help with the audio quality, just the ability to burn normal CDs.

Now if someone could figure out how to get PCM recorded data on the minidisk directly to WAV format on the PC bypassing SonicStage, we'd really be in business!

Failing that, I'm anxiously awaiting the release of the Roland R1 solid state recorder which records in several different qualities of WAV and MP3 which you then upload to your computer via USB copy, no extra software required, to do with as you please.

Pete

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dex Otaku Newbie

dex Otaku

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Transferring PCM files into SOnic Stage takes only a little less than real time, so 60 minutes to transfer a 79 minute PCM recording sounds about right.  I assume it's the conversion from PCM to ATRAC3 that takes so long.

There is no conversion from PCM to ATRAC. And my experience with transferring PCM is that is runs between 2.5-3X realtime, so a 60 minute track should only take 20-25 minutes. Mind you, that's depending on your computer, what else you have running, &c. - so mileage may vary.

Recording something in PCM only to have it get converted to ATRAC3 in SonicStage, I've already lost some sound quality so converting it back to a lossless format like WAV doesn't really help with the audio quality, just the ability to burn normal CDs.

Where did you get this idea? If you record in PCM, it gets transferred to SonicStage as PCM. There is no loss and no conversion [though there is some debate now as to whether Sony's WAV converter is watermarking its output].

If what you're referring to is SS's converting your PCM recording to atrac3/plus in order to write to an atrac3/plus CD - that's another matter entirely.

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Syrius Newbie

Syrius

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Is your software easy to use? Another words, is it point and click? I had read ealier that one had to know "commands" and that sounds like a DOS thing to me...something I'm not very good at.

Thanks,

It has a graphical user interface. If I can understand it, you can too. :happy:

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phaworth Newbie

phaworth

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Glad to hear that PCM files are transferred wihtout being converted to ATRAC3. I assumed that was what was happening because of the time it took to transfer the file, but after looking at the file size I see that it is much bigger than a similar time recording stored in ATRAC3 format.

I notice that the PCM recording was stored in a .oma file while the ATRAC3 recordings are stored in .omg files - is that the only reason for those two file extensions?

Pete

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mikehend Newbie

mikehend

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I downloaded BOTH tools (the one from SONY and the one from our friend in GB) and have not been successful getting either to work. Should I download my files to the PC using the download software supplied with my MZ-NH1 or should I use the software to find the files ON THE MD UNIT FIRST?? I open the SONY software and no files appear in the list even though I have downloaded the file and it can be played from the PC. Is there a "trick" or specific method I need to follow to get either of these to work? Suggestions are much appreciated. I purchased this unit to eventually replace my well-used Denon DAT. Thanks for being there all of you.

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dex Otaku Newbie

dex Otaku

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I downloaded BOTH tools (the one from SONY and the one from our friend in GB) and have not been successful getting either to work. Should I download my files to the PC using the download software supplied with my MZ-NH1 or should I use the software to find the files ON THE MD UNIT FIRST?? I open the SONY software and no files appear in the list even though I have downloaded the file and it can be played from the PC. Is there a "trick" or specific method I need to follow to get either of these to work? Suggestions are much appreciated. I purchased this unit to eventually replace my well-used Denon DAT. Thanks for being there all of you.

Uploads [from HiMD to computer] as well as downloads [from computer to HiMD] are done with SonicStage.

Look here for suggestions on HiMD uploading: http://forums.minidisc.org/viewtopic.php?t=6329

It's dated now as the Sony WAV convertor wasn't out yet when it was written. Still.. it might help a bit.

I'll make the suggestion I do to everyone, of course: back your recordings up first, before transferring them with SonicStage. It is now well-established that SS randomly munges tracks [unrecoverably] during uploads. The link above has suggestions for how to back up your recordings as well.

At any rate, the simplest version of what you want to do is:

1) back up your tracks [see above link for suggestions]

2) transfer them to SonicStage [if you need help with this, read your manual]

3) use HiMDRenderer or WAV converter to free your material from the evil clutches of SonicStage

4) edit and enjoy.

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