HiMD Transfer for Linux, working

[cbmuser]

Hi Syrius,

I'm donating my 10 USD today. Less than 10 Euros, but I'm glad to help.

Donated 10 USD.

CBMUser, I have a question. I don't use Linux. How will this benefit those of us who prefer or are stuck with Windows?

thanks alot for your donation.

The software runs on any platform, including MacOS and Windows. However, I have yet been unable to fully compile the code on Windows (only compiled the command-line utils yet). It still needs some time but expect a working Windows-version soon. Sorry for the delay but most of us are hacking on Linux. We are still looking for people who are skilled on Windows-programming. They should be able to port and compile everything to Windows. All sources fully available.

BTW:

I talked with the editors of Linux Journal today. They will feature a small article with our project.

Adrian

[Taliesin]

Okey. Now, just one question? How can I donate my 10€????

[Syrius]

All right. Good to know you aren't thinking of leaving us non-linux literates high and dry.

I am still not sure what the benefits of this software are. I've looked all over the thread, and couldn't find them. Can you please explain to me?

[cbmuser]

Okey. Now, just one question? How can I donate my 10€????

Very easy. Just go to:

https://wiki.physik.fu-berlin.de/linux-minidisc/

and click the PayPal Donate button. Enter any amount you want to support us with.

@Syrius:

The benefit of this software is to offer a full opensource software for all MiniDisc-devices which offer NetMD or HiMD. The advantages of our software over SonicStage are:

- run on *any* operating system you want, not just Windows XP 32-Bit (we are going to switch to 64 bits soon, aren't we ?; I am already on Linux 64 Bit) but also MacOS, Solaris, Linux, FreeBSD whatever you want

- allow unlimited up- and downloads of audio-data off/to your MiniDisc-Walkman

- slim and fast code, no bloatware

- open-source code gurantees that development can still continue even if we ever should drop it; anybody else can pick up the code and continue

- open-source allows integration in Linux-distrubution like Debian and Ubuntu

If those arguments aren't striking, you must be very pleased with the limitations imposed by SonicStage.

Adrian

[Taliesin]

Hi cbmuser.

I have click the link you posted to donate, but it takes me to an error page.

Maybe something wrong in the link?

[sinus]

Hi cbmuser.

I have click the link you posted to donate, but it takes me to an error page.

Maybe something wrong in the link?

Yeah, there was some security certificate problem with me when I first visited that page. Look out for pop-ups and alike (depends on your browser) and accept the certificate. (If that is the problem.)

Edited May 22, 2009 by sinus

[cbmuser]

Yeah, there was some security certificate problem with me when I first visited that page. Look out for pop-ups and alike (depends on your browser) and accept the certificate. (If that is the problem.)

Yes, you have to add an exception for the security certificate. That's because my university cannot afford to buy a certificate which is shipped with most browsers (from Verisign), those cost a fortune . Anyway, it's not an error with the website but simply that your browser doesn't know our certificate because it was not issued by some root-organization on the web. Just go ahead.

Adrian

[Syrius]

If those arguments aren't striking, you must be very pleased with the limitations imposed by SonicStage.

Adrian

Heh, heh. Not exactly "pleased". More like "learned to live with it as if he were an annoying relative" used to it.

Thanks for the clarification. W00t for open source.

[Strungup]

More like "learned to live with it as if he were an annoying relative" used to it.

You know my Uncle Leon ????

[kino170878]

Hmm. So if you were to transfer tracks from the computer using your software to a portable MD unit are you then able to *edit* on the MD itself? Inserting tracks marks for example? Sonicstage does not allow you to do any editing after you transfer. Your program would be of huge help if it did.

[Taliesin]

And there are my 10 €€ (at last).

One question: will this software work in Windows 7?

Edited May 23, 2009 by Taliesin

[cbmuser]

Hi folks,

for your questions:

One question: will this software work in Windows 7?

Yes, it will definetely work on Windows 7. It might require a recompilation of the code, but thats not really a problem. We are currently working on the Windows-port, it's almost working now, only a issue with the libhimd DLL-file, there should be a Windows-version next week.

Hmm. So if you were to transfer tracks from the computer using your software to a portable MD unit are you then able to *edit* on the MD itself? Inserting tracks marks for example? Sonicstage does not allow you to do any editing after you transfer. Your program would be of huge help if it did.

This is something I cannot answer for sure, because we do not know the exact reason for that behaviour yet. However, we transfer the tracks onto the HiMD without encryption (like they are when recorded with the RH1 itself). There might be also a "allow editing"-bit, but we do not know yet. We will be able to answer this once we have fully unveiled how OpenMG works. As I said, if the hardware is possible of something, we will support it .

@Taliesin:

Thanks for your donation. I am already bidding on an MZ-RH1, hope I can get it this time.

Adrian

[imkidd57]

As far as I can remember from previously looking at NetMD and whether or not titles can be edited on standard MD format discs; being able to transfer back from MD -> computer or being editable are reciprocally controlled by the 'Track protect' flag. If this is set on the MD track, it can be transferred back to the PC, but not edited. If the flag is cleared, then the track can NOT be transferred to PC, but can be edited. It appears to be nothing to do with SCMS.

[cbmuser]

Hi folks,

just compiled successfully a Windows-version of QHiMDTransfer, fetch it here to test:

http://users.physik.fu-berlin.de/~glaubitz...c/qhimd-win.zip

Adrian

[baturjan]

probably no surprise, but it fails to upload files recorded on an MDLP (MZ-B10; SP and Monaural), and put into RH1. I use this system everyday with SS.

[Strungup]

probably no surprise, but it fails to upload files recorded on an MDLP (MZ-B10; SP and Monaural), and put into RH1. I use this system everyday with SS.

hmmmm I wonder where that B10 came from ?

How is it working out for you ?

[cbmuser]

probably no surprise, but it fails to upload files recorded on an MDLP (MZ-B10; SP and Monaural), and put into RH1. I use this system everyday with SS.

Yes, because the recordings made with older models than the RH1 are encrypted. We are working on that, need to reverse engineer OpenMG. Still work-in-progress.

Adrian

[sfbp]

Hello, World!

(It came up and read a minidisk)

[ozpeter]

It just comes up with loads of critical errors here and seems not to work at all (with an RH1).

[baturjan]

probably no surprise, but it fails to upload files recorded on an MDLP (MZ-B10; SP and Monaural), and put into RH1. I use this system everyday with SS.

Awesome! The speaker makes it easy for quick edits without having to fiddle with earphones. The only thing I wish it had was manual recording level. The high/low mic setting is sufficient.

I use it 5 days a week, and upload recording with RH1 to Mac (XP in VirtualBox).

[Strungup]

Awesome! The speaker makes it easy for quick edits without having to fiddle with earphones. The only thing I wish it had was manual recording level. The high/low mic setting is sufficient.

I use it 5 days a week, and upload recording with RH1 to Mac (XP in VirtualBox).

Right on ,

Macbook Pro C2D OSX Tiger , I also have Virtual Box , not if I could just find some Virtual socks , that are always missing 1 side , and get them in the Virtual box , so I can put them on my Virtual Feet , then ....... hmmm Wait no that wouldnt warm me up at night would it ?!?!?!?!?!?

dag . what is this world coming to , we arent even REAL anymore

[kino170878]

Yes, because the recordings made with older models than the RH1 are encrypted. We are working on that, need to reverse engineer OpenMG. Still work-in-progress.

Adrian

Are you saying that soon we will all be able to upload SP Atrac (292kps) to and from the PC and MD units, without any conversion?

If I understand it right then it means you're almost in possession of the SP codec itself...

[sfbp]

Are you saying that soon we will all be able to upload SP Atrac (292kps) to and from the PC and MD units, without any conversion?

If I understand it right then it means you're almost in possession of the SP codec itself...

Don't forget the SP codec lives on the MD unit (only). All the units that actually have optical out first decode it back into 1411kbps/44.1Khz std CD stereo format before it goes anywhere. Even the RH1 uploads pure PCM 1411. So at some level it is the firmware which decodes it, I think. Whether the firmware can be tricked into sending PCM over USB is a good question.

It just comes up with loads of critical errors here and seems not to work at all (with an RH1).

Now I've got it compiled and working (using NH700 initially since that's what the developers had), I am pleased to say that it works fine with encrypted PCM and an RH1. You won't get any other format (except unencrypted PCM) to upload right now though it should be possible to read the catalogue on any HiMD disk you insert. Std disks (SP,LP2,LP4) won't work at all, lot of work to be done first.

[cbmuser]

Now I've got it compiled and working (using NH700 initially since that's what the developers had), I am pleased to say that it works fine with encrypted PCM and an RH1.

What !?! You cannot upload any encrypted PCMs yet, only non-encrypted work. Try upload a track that was transfered to the RH1 with SonicStage or that was recorded with a different model, it doesn't work. The only PCMs you can upload by now are the tracks with zero keys (see the output of himdtest). Encrypted tracks require more knowledge of OpenMG.

Adrian

[sfbp]

I presumed that if it wouldn't upload tracks with encryption not installed then installing the encryption would then make the encrypted tracks be uploadable.

Sigh, to upload unencrypted tracks you still need encryption, what a bunch of saddoes are Sony!

Sorry about that.

[kino170878]

What !?! You cannot upload any encrypted PCMs yet, only non-encrypted work. Try upload a track that was transfered to the RH1 with SonicStage or that was recorded with a different model, it doesn't work. The only PCMs you can upload by now are the tracks with zero keys (see the output of himdtest). Encrypted tracks require more knowledge of OpenMG.

Adrian

Don't know how relevant this is but the company EDL has minidisc transfer software which allows you full access to change the SCMS settings (Unlimited, Copy, Original). I recall some of the Tascam professional decks which also let you change the SCMS setting between 0 and 1. EDL specially modify Sony MD data drives for use with their software. Only SP/LP/Mono MD and not Hi-MD of course but I have a feeling it's the same underlying copyright restriction that is involved.

[cbmuser]

Hi folks,

the first Windows-version I posted was broken, sorry for that. I couldn't test it myself at the moment, I did not have a Windows-machine.

Please download the file again and test:

http://users.physik.fu-berlin.de/~glaubitz...c/qhimd-win.zip

Adrian

[cbmuser]

Hello,

update:

Thanks to libsox, uploaded PCM-audio with the RH1 is now automatically converted to WAV-format. Just pull the latest code from the repo and rebuild things, note that you need libsox 14.2 at least.

A Windows-version will follow soon.

Adrian

[cbmuser]

A Windows-version will follow soon.

Here it comes:

http://users.physik.fu-berlin.de/~glaubitz...32-20090601.rar

Thanks to a guy in the German MiniDisc-Forum who has taken over the Windows-ports.

Adrian

[ozpeter]

I've tried that and the previous version but it seems to partly work.

I'm trying to transfer an mp3 file to and from an RH-1 using it.

First I use "connect" to go to the RH-1 drive - that seems fine (and the crash which previously occurred if I clicked on the folder in the drive now just brings up an error message, good).

When I click on "Download tracks onto MD" and select an mp3 track stored on my PC, nothing happens - no track is transferred - the RH-1 does not respond.

If I use SonicStage to transfer the track onto the MD, then run your program again, it shows in the list but with no title.

I can then use your program to transfer the track back to the PC but it has just a dash for a filename and the mp3 metadata is lost.

Anyway, it's looking interesting so far!

[cbmuser]

When I click on "Download tracks onto MD" and select an mp3 track stored on my PC, nothing happens - no track is transferred - the RH-1 does not respond.

You should read my postings more in detail. As I said, download is work-in-progress. It's not supported yet.

If I use SonicStage to transfer the track onto the MD, then run your program again, it shows in the list but with no title.

Does SonicStage show you the proper title name after download ? Does the walkman show the title name ? I am pretty sure that the software works in this respect and provided that a track has title information stored on the HiMD, we can recover it.

I can then use your program to transfer the track back to the PC but it has just a dash for a filename and the mp3 metadata is lost.

Well, yes. The point is, that SonicStage strips off all metadata before it transfers the file to the HiMD. All metadata thats left about the MP3 on the HiMD is stored in the tracklist-file. When you upload this MP3 with another computer with SonicStage, it will only be able to restore that metadata thats stored in that file.

Adrian

[Ronald-Pianist]

Dear friends,

thank you so much for your great work! I just came from some music jobs and check your software on my Ubuntu machine and it converted all my PCM tracks on MZ-M200 (RH-1) without problems, quickly and with perfect sound.

I am so much indebted to you and donated 10 Euros as well and hope I could give another aid soon!

You do a really great job there, so far I used Win almost only for connecting my MD, now shall say farewell to it finally

The best wishes to all of you,

Richard

[ozpeter]

Does SonicStage show you the proper title name after download ? Does the walkman show the title name ? I am pretty sure that the software works in this respect and provided that a track has title information stored on the HiMD, we can recover it.

The title does show on the RH-1 remote but not in your program nor on the transferred file.

I've also been trying to transfer some PCM files from the RH-1 to the PC and because each file transfers with the same name (-.wav) only the last one is found if I transfer a group - each file transferred over-writes the previous one. This is probably due to the same problem of the program not recognising the MD file information. I tried with the NH900 and NH1 also, and the same problems existed.

However, once this problem is overcome it should work well.

[sfbp]

Are the files unnamed on the RH1? SonicStage turns "untitled" into a date/time stamp for a name, which is what ends up on the PC.

Try naming them, anything at all, with the portable (disconnected of course). a,b,c,d,e would be good names. Then you should get a.wav, b.wav etc.

There's rename in QHiMDTransfer but it ain't working yet.

[cbmuser]

The title does show on the RH-1 remote but not in your program nor on the transferred file.

This is really weird then. Because both our software as well the HiMD-Walkman use the same source for the track information which is the TRKIDX0X.HMA-file. Do you think, you could send us a compressed copy of the HMDHIFI-folder of the affected disk ? (Just connect your HiMD to your PC, copy the entire HMDHIFI-folder to somewhere, zip it and send it to me). Please send me a Personal Message for my email address or refer to our wiki for an email address.

Adrian

[cbmuser]

Hi,

today I bought an MZ-RH1 for the project from the donations, so we can always test ourselves now. Currently we have the following hardware for testing:

Sony MZ-RH10

Sony MZ-RH1

Sharp MD-MT15 (neither NetMD nor HiMD, but can be used to create test MDs for the RH1 for upload)

Sharp IM-MT899 (NetMD)

We're working on MP3 and unencrypted PCM-downloads now. Of course, OpenMG is still being under heavy reverse engineering to support NetMD and encrypted stuff as well.

Adrian

[Taliesin]

Just a word: GREAT!!!!!!

[marcnet]

Just a quick thing:

I..errr.. borrowed some of the decryption code from this great linux project and stuck it into a beta 5 (not yet released) version of HIMDRenderer.

Now this HIMDReneder can take a PCM, HI-SP or HI-LP recorded track (i.e: a track that was not transferred *from* a computer), extract it, decrypt it and convert it.

The PCM tracks work just as they do in the linux project - (although I need to swap the byte-order, since my output converted requires Windows compatible PCM data). I extract, decrypt and convert the PCM all within my program

Once I did this it was a matter of using this on non-PCM tracks (recorded tracks that are HI-SP or HI-LP). All I do is construct an OMA header without any key data (I just use my own generic OMA header construction code). Decrypt and save the atrac data - exactly as the PCM is decrypted above. The decrypted Atrac data with the OMA header will play in Sonicstage. If it plays in Sonicstage then my program can convert it too. And it works.

So this means no Sonicstage needed for uploading tracks to the PC. However, you still need to install it as my program depends on the dlls and stuff that is installed with Sonicstage to decode the atrac data

I hope to release beta 5 for general testing - on condition:

1) I get permission from the people who made this linux project - I've used their code to decrypt the Atrac / PCM data (I already had mp3 done myself)

2) People still want my program - it has been a long time since the last update (I've been quite busy)

Edited June 8, 2009 by marcnet

[ozpeter]

2) People still want my program - it has been a long time since the last update (I've been quite busy)

It's interesting that there's not been a great deal of reaction here to this project. Personally my use of my RH-1 is for backing up to stereo the location recordings I make using other equipment (eg Korg D888 or Edirol R-44). I use the Hi-SP format as that is sufficient for the purpose. I tend to end up with loads of small files due to the unstoppable auto track marking, and whatever I use for transferring, I have to have auto file naming, as no way am I going to go through and name each track by hand.

My only gripe with SonicStage in this context is the unnecessary library stuff. I just want to copy my files from the RH-1, converting from Hi-SP to wave on the fly, to a given directory, with the files numbered sequentially. As soon as anyone offers me a reliable means of doing that, ideally without SonicStage even being installed, I'd be glad of it - but going the SonicStage route is sufficiently painless for occasional use that personally I wouldn't find it worth paying much if anything for an alternative - it's not that big a problem.

I hope that gives some kind of context as far as I, very much personally, see it. Others may have a very different perspective of course.

[kino170878]

I am no expert on reverse engineering but as an avid minidisc user I can relate to the post above mine. Whatever software appears as a result of your great efforts, if it is not simple to use or if it can't offer basic upload/dowloand from the computer then I just don't see it catching on. The moment a program comes out that can do all the basic things you would expect of it then you will have achieved the incredible.

Edited June 9, 2009 by kino170878