Another use for Hi-MD Renderer?

[ksandbergfl]

I am wondering if the same principle that HiMDRenderer uses can be applied to another problem with HiMD --- I cannot transfer a song from HiMD onto any computer that the song did not originate from... my only option to get the song off of HiMD is to use SonicStage to "play" the song while recording the WAVE IN (the infamous "real time" method). These are songs that were written to the HiMD using SonicStage, not songs that the HiMD recorded via audio-ins.

I had an incident where I transferred over 100 songs to my HiMD... then my computer crashed. I re-installed SonicStage, but since it's a "new" installation SonicStage thinks the songs were transferred from another computer.... and now all my OMA/OMG files are "buried alive" in my HiMD, with no hopes of escaping other than the real-time recording method.

What I would *die* for is something like HiMDRenderer that would allow me to play a song from my HiMD, using Sonic Stage, but write the output to a WAV file *faster than real time*. I would think that GraphEdit (or whatever you used) to re-direct the output from the HiMD thru DirectX sound drivers could also be used to do this. Somehow, get SonicStage to think, while playing a HiMD song via the USB cable, that the DirectX driver is the sound card.... and write the data real fast.

Is this possible?

My fingers are crossed.....

[bhangraman]

If you think about it, since the program relies on an uploaded file it seems unlikely.

[ksandbergfl]

If you think about it, since the program relies on an uploaded file it seems unlikely.

The HiMDRenderer routes the WAV stream from the Sony OMA decoder DLL to a WAV file. That's exactly what I want to do with the tracks on my HiMD, when I play them with SonicStage. The only difference, as you point out, is that the HiMDRenderer is designed to work with a OMA file that is already on your PC. HiMDRenderer would need additional logic to intercept/re-route the SonicStage OMA decoder output.... I don't know if it can be done but I'm just curious.

[dex Otaku]

See Total Recorder.

[xispe]

it would interesting if someone would try to look inside that huge and ugly HMA file, for pieces of OMA files...

This would solve that problem...

And would lead us to even a better thing... upload files without using sonic stage.. (ok, i'm dreaming, over and out!)

[marcnet]

The HMA data does contain raw .oma data. Get an "optimized" .oma file and copy it to somewhere else on your harddrive. Then use sonicstage to copy the optimized file to your hi-md. Compare the HMD data with the *copy* of the .oma file you made.

The only thing missing is the encryption key.

[ksandbergfl]

The HMA data does contain raw .oma data. Get an "optimized" .oma file and copy it to somewhere else on your harddrive. Then use sonicstage to copy the optimized file to your hi-md. Compare the HMD data with the *copy* of the .oma file you made.  

The only thing missing is the encryption key.

Yes, i've played around with that. The file format of the HMA file is pretty simple to figure out.... the raw OMA data is broken into 4k chunks and written into the HMA file, with tags at the beginning and end. It's easy to find all the pieces of a OMA song and string them together. One thing I've tried is:

#1) create new OMA file using Sonic Stage called "blank.oma" to get a file with a proper "key"

#2) use WinHEX to copy the hex data from the HMA data file into the "blank.oma" file... replacing/overwriting the data that was in the "blank.oma"

I even got this to work!... once. I didn't take good notes and have had trouble duplicating my success. But once I get a process that I can duplicate repeatedly, I'll be sure to post my results. Maybe someone else can take this concept and find their own solution first.

[[StrangeByte]]

i wish you success!!!

but honestly, i doubt it. magicgate is an encryption that doesn't use just one step (ie the key is changed and to write or read the key you need to authenticate to the device, with is a much more difficult process to understand).

Logging the usb stream would really help. I do not own a Hi-md unit so i can't try

there have been tries to break the NetMD encryption (see minidisc.org main site somewhere) but it failed. ( again)

edit: a bit offtopic, i know... but it's really important for me... i'd buy a himd unit just to try to reverse-engineer it (though i do not know much about cryptography - which could change)