Copying "Soundtrack from the movie ..." CD

Some cd's come with "bonus" files, games you can play on a pc, etc. That's probably what the .exe & .dxr and other unknown files are. Typically, when you simply view a commercial music cd containing only music in WE, you see a number of .cda files of 1k size, one for each tune. You need to rip the cd; you can't just copy its contents and expect it to play on a cd player (car, etc). If you just want to clone the disk, rip to .wav files (uncompressed, not mp3's etc). I use Exact Audio Copy for this, obtainable free here

You then burn the files using any number of programs; I use Nero Express. BTW I have a copy of this very disk I got from the library, been awhile, don't recall if the original had any non-audio nonsense on it, but the copy plays fine. There's no doubt a way to clone all the contents (mixed audio/data), but some commercial cd's are actually too large to fit on a cd-r in their entirety, again I don't recall if this was the case with the disk in question.

Dan

Bill Jeffrey wrote:

Thanks, Dan. Yes, according to the label, this "enhanced CD features links and exclusive 3D screensaver" - and I have no interest in them. But there are no .cda files that I can see. There is a directory called "Saver" containing a single file called ss_setup.exe, undoubtedly the screensaver - and another directory called "Xtras" (which will not open). There are also 8 files with types .ini, .exe., .inf, .dxr, .db., .df. But nothing that sounds like an audio file. And although I was aware of the existence of .cda files on an audio CD, I never knew where the actual audio is saved.

The odd thing is that when I insert the disc, the CD drive "pumps" - rev up to full speed, hold for about a second, rev back down to zero, pause for a second, and repeat. Forever.

Puzzling. I'll try Exact Audio Copy and let you know. Thanks.

Bill

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Dan wrote:

Interesting. I don't look at each disk's files before ripping it (generally no need to), but in terms of the audio files themselves I can't recall any containing anything other than .cda's. A very good source of info which should answer any questions is

The NP alt.music.mp3 can be a good source too, been a while since I looked at the group, but generally there's a fairly high smart-ass contingent there which rears its ugly head for particularly newbie inquiries...

Good luck,

Dan

Bill Jeffrey wrote:

Back in the Way Back, when using Win9X, one feature I liked about using Nero (Full version) was that after installing Nero, there was another context menu when you right-clicked on the CD drive. It read "Volumes" and let you switch between the data volume and the audio volume. When I was pulling tracks from multiple CDs in Nero it wouldn't list the songs on mixed-mode CDs until I did this. I just checked in XP Pro, and I don't have the option. I also don't have a mixed-mode CD handy either...

Daremo

I have finally managed to rip the audio from the CD, and burn audio CD copies. I don't have a definitive answer to the original problem, but in thanks to those who were kind enough to try to help, I'll tell you what finally worked.

To review, the original was a mixed CD, audio and data. I tried ripping the audio using several different (but not elaborate) programs. These included Winamp, Windows Media Player, MusicMatch Jukebox, AudioGrabber, Sonic, and Exact Audio Copy. All of them ripped tracks 1-17 without problem, but stumbled on tracks 18 and 19. Some of them simply froze on

18, requiring a machine reboot. Some went into an endless loop of spinning the drive up and then coasting it back to zero, then repeating. Some gave error messages, some did not. One was smart enough to switch into an analog backup recording mode, but still couldn't finish the track that way.

My machines (I tried 2, nearly identical) have what is apparently a rather generic CD-ROM drive, listed as "HL-DT-ST CD-ROM GCR-8483B" in the device manager. This is what I was using for ripping. The machines also have Sony CRX216E CD-RW drives. I have always been told that CD-RW drives are fussier, and not really appropriate for mixed mode or for ripping, but in desperation I finally tried it. Most of the software packages listed above still had problems, but using the Sony CD-RW drive, plain old Music Match Jukebox 9.0 was able to pull a good copy after only a little bit of stumbling. Once I had ripped a good copy to my hard drive, burning was easy.

So what was going on? I have no idea.

Thanks for those who tried to help me.

Bill

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Dan wrote:

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