Another look at the omgjbox.exe problem

[ISingBass]

My sister installed SonicStage 4.2 on a fully up-to-date XP Pro machine to make ATRAC CDs for her new player and had problems from the beginning. First, the popular "omgjbox.exe has caused an error" problem, which seemed to go away after playing around with conversion options. Then we successfully burned a short CD . . . after updating the PxEngine like I found on these forums. (Thank you.)

Well, the omgjbox.exe error showed up for her again and so I decided to get further involved. I noticed a pattern pretty soon that SonicStage shut down only when she attempted to add certain songs to the CD, and the same individual songs would give the same results. It turns out that however she imported the music into the library (I guess that's what she did, because we use WMP11 normally), some protected WMA files are listed along with the rights-free WMAs and MP3s. As it turns out, it is precisely those protected WMA files that trigger the omgjbox.exe error! I haven't tested to see if every kind of protected WMA does this, but it sure looks like the filetype simply confuses the software.

Maybe there's a better way to set up SonicStage initially. I'll look into that after she's finished carefully selecting non-protected songs to go on her first disc. (She's determined to use the entire 700MB--almost 500 tracks in ATRAC) The whole process has been a major pain in the neck, and clicking through a minefield of files is destroying any bit of fun. If she mis-clicks one file, the whole thing could go up in smoke, because SonicStage does not allow saving a CD layout (another stupid programming decision).

Sony's ATRAC may be the best compressed format out there Too bad their software stinks. (I gave up on all the OpenMG software that came on my VAIO years ago.)

Looks to me like another possible cause for this error. Any thoughts about my disovery?

[aznbro85]

Dear ISingBass,

Welcome to ATRACLife Colloquium, I hope you enjoy your stay here

I hate to break it to you dude, but your finding has been found previously. In fact, on the boxes of all the sony network walkmans it states that it does NOT do protected WMAs or AAC files (only unprotected ones). It was in the late SonicStage 3.x (i think..) series in which Sony finally supported WMA and AAC. But of course, because of the wonderful thing called DRM, SonicStage is unable to transfer them to ATRAC devices.

Protected WMAs are usually ones that you ripped from Windows Media Player, or those that you download from PlayForSure networks. Because of this, i think only players that are compatible with Windows Media Player can transfer protected WMAs to the player.

The most popular place of obtaining protected AAC files is from Apple's iTunes store. These too, have it's own DRM, and as such cannot be played (stockly) in other programs.

So yeah, unless you ripped these CDs yourself without adding protection to em, Sonicstage will not be able to convert them and put them onto an ATRAC CD

[ISingBass]

. . . it does NOT do protected WMAs or AAC files (only unprotected ones).

Yes, I never thought that SonicStage would actually convert the DRM-protected files, but it should have some way of handling them, i.e. an error message that says "I can't do that," instead of quitting. (Protected and non-protected files look the same inside SonicStage.) After my sister got another "omgjbox.exe" error, she gave up and went to bed.

Through further testing I found that SonicStage will show an error message and let you keep working--if you use the "add" button (the one with the right-arrow) to add a file to the ATRAC CD. It will say something to the effect of "I can't handle this type of file. <ok button>" If you attempt to drag-and-drop an item across, which seems like the same thing, the program gives up and Windows reports "omgjbox.exe has caused an error." (Brilliant programming, eh? )

So, my revised finding is that if SonicStage has added protected files to your library, do not drag the files across to transfer files. SonicStage will quit on you and your work will be lost. If you use the add button to move selected files, then it will simply tell you that it can't use those files. No hassle.

That's my experience. Maybe it will help someone.

Thanks for the welcome. You have a good forum here.

Edit: This may not apply for all Protected content. I.e. SonicStage may let you drag-and-drop some protected WMAs and not others. That point is still unconfirmed.

Edited January 20, 2007 by ISingBass