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[QUESTIONS] CUE/BIN and when it's okay to convert to ISO

Postby cueandbinguy » Fri Jul 24, 2015 8:30 pm

I realized I made some mistakes when backing up certain games. Thankfully I found out now, and not 5 or more years when it might be near impossible to make or get new backups of older games.

Some games, like Twisted Metal, Twisted Metal 2, Fable (1996) have audio tracks that go away if you convert it to ISO. I'm pretty sure that if the CUE file has anything talking about tracks or audio in it at all, then that means leave it as a CUE/BIN, correct? Some CUE/BINs I've found don't have the track or audio text, so I figured they didn't need to be CUE/BIN.

A lot of backups on this site seem to have CCD/IMG/SUB (sometimes a CUE is in there, not sure why), and I'm not sure if it's okay or not to convert those to ISO. I think the SUB is for DRM information? Kind of like MDS/MDF, where MDS contains DRM information. I've found that it's okay to convert CCD/IMG/SUB and MDS/MDF to ISO with no issues other than some DRM might require you use No-CD or a Mini Image, which is okay for me because Mini Image takes up less space and sometimes No-CDs don't work or have issues.

Speaking of space, this is why I try to convert to ISO when I can. ISO compress the best for me when using WinRAR or 7-Zip, so it's important for me to know what is safe to convert to ISO, so I can archive as many games as possible, and not ruin them when converting to ISO.

Any answers or tips are appreciated, and thank you for your time. :mrgreen:
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Re: [QUESTIONS] CUE/BIN and when it's okay to convert to ISO

Postby hfric » Sat Jul 25, 2015 2:25 am

:roll: not this again

Guess i have to copy/paste the diagram that was made for people like you.. when i find it
it was a joke about two blokes, One collecting Images from PS3/XBox360 , the other Decompresing them for Jtag/ps3 rips with ripped content
X years later Rips could not be started ... when images could in a PC emu or be re-burned on medium to work

under this a quote "Console users never learn , now they have to redump all Dreamcast/Wii/Playstation 1 and 2 to make then work on PC emus"

rips dose not work on emus *with a picture of a Chinese*

At the end a silly picture of a PC User with "F.u.c.k. consoles and their high standard of Data archiving" and then the user, tries to run a cracked game ...
a crack that was not made for her system or memory or *in bold , in font 120* was hardware pendent on a internet server glitch to run

(this diagram was made, when one user said Dragon Age 3 was cracked on PC, when it is not)



You care about what :
the game to play now = go retard iso + add crack ... be like GOG and then X years later complain why 90+ of theirs RIPS does now F work
1:1 data archive to have a working game forever till your HDD breaks = keep the original dump
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Re: [QUESTIONS] CUE/BIN and when it's okay to convert to ISO

Postby Scaryfun » Sat Jul 25, 2015 5:12 am

No need for attitude when someone is asking a simple question.
Yes, audio tracks are lost when an image is converted to iso. If it's a clone image, you can view the cue as a text file using notepad to see if there are indeed audio files, they will be listed.
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Re: [QUESTIONS] CUE/BIN and when it's okay to convert to ISO

Postby cuebinmanlyman » Sat Jul 25, 2015 6:23 am

hfric wrote:You care about what :
the game to play now = go retard iso + add crack ... be like GOG and then X years later complain why 90+ of theirs RIPS does now F work
1:1 data archive to have a working game forever till your HDD breaks = keep the original dump


I thought that the CCD/IMG/SUB or MDS/MDF step is only necessary to bypass the copy protection on the disc, after that, it's safe to convert to ISO to get (usually) the most compression. I don't modify the image, or put anything in it. That bothers me when people put a "Crack" folder and then the modified dates are messed up. I don't like RIPS, it's why I archive images and why I'm trying to make sure I understand what I'm doing. I'm okay with repacks if it's the only way because of game being Steam-only.

I don't rely on cracks either, I know they can be buggy. All cracks for Star Wars Empire at War have bug where game can slow down, other times if you have CPU ally, the ally might spam this one unit you would deploy to build something on it, but the AI would make those and only those, and never use or move them, leaving you to fight two AI alone. It only happens with cracks, is very annoying. Cracks for Star Wars Battlefront II don't work, only make SecuROM worse. Still no reliable crack for Ghostbusters: The Video Game, only temporary fix from virusek. Mini Image allows me to use unmodified EXE/DLL and still make the DRM happy, and not have to keep a massive image on disc or waste a CD (and money) that will eventually rot or even slow the game down.

I use cracks for convenience if they work, not for long term. I test each ISO to see if DRM a problem, and I put a Mini Image in each archive with the ISO, if possible, because a lot of older games require some stuff from disc so Mini Image not needed.

I understand what you're saying though. It's my understanding that CCD/IMG/SUB and MDS/MDF is only required if you plan to burn them in the future, not for mounting or emulation (unless the SUB or CUE has something necessary for emulation). I don't think people will burn forever. If I can convert to ISO and not ruin the game, or break it because of DRM, then I will do it.

Scaryfun wrote:No need for attitude when someone is asking a simple question.
Yes, audio tracks are lost when an image is converted to iso. If it's a clone image, you can view the cue as a text file using notepad to see if there are indeed audio files, they will be listed.


I noticed this with Twisted Metal and Twisted Metal 2. They are like the old PS1 games that you could put in your CD player and listen to in-game music. I remember companies trying to advertise it as a feature :lol: I think it was just the only way they could do it at the time.

I think as long as it has a track starting at all 0s and nothing more, then it's not actually needing to be CUE/BIN anymore? Like this:

FILE "FABLE.BIN" BINARY
TRACK 01 MODE1/2352
INDEX 01 00:00:00

So I was wrong about Fable, it's okay if it's an ISO. DOSbox seems to use CUE/BIN or ISO version just fine.
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Re: [QUESTIONS] CUE/BIN and when it's okay to convert to ISO

Postby Molitor » Sat Jul 25, 2015 10:04 am

[*]A game that relies on audio tracks for its music --> Keep BIN/CUE (or any other fileformat that conserves audio tracks intact) . Unless you want to rip the audio tracks as MP3/FLAC for ulterior listening (you won't be able to reintegrate them into a bin/cue file after that).
Note; some games from after 2000 still rely on CDA tracks.
[*]A game from ~1980/~2010 with no audio tracks and no copy protection of any kind --> you can convert to ISO.
[*]A game from ~1980/~2010 with a old/common copy protection - but a crack or mini-image is available --> you can convert to ISO and add the said crack on said ISO.
[*]A game from 2010+ with a nasty hardware-dependant or unusual copy protection --> there you decide whether you want to take the risk to get a crack that won't be functional on another configuration or in a few years, or to keep 1:1 copy of the game with its intact protection (and play straight from this 1:1 copy when possible, though it's gonna become rarer and rarer).

Btw; You may find easier to log into your first account and post from it, instead of making a new account for each post... ? :huh:
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Re: [QUESTIONS] CUE/BIN and when it's okay to convert to ISO

Postby Meddle » Sun Jul 26, 2015 1:40 pm

You don't actually save that much space by converting cd images to iso and then compressing them. In fact you waste more of your time doing it... so go ahead and do it if your time means nothing to you.
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Re: [QUESTIONS] CUE/BIN and when it's okay to convert to ISO

Postby oldman » Tue Aug 25, 2015 8:43 pm

I always test a bin file in Powersiso (maybe not the best idea).
I covert it ,then try the install and see if it's ok ,sometimes it works and sometimes not.
If it doesn't need to kept as an ISO I will compress it into a DAA image file which seems to achieve the same compression as 7zip thus making it good for storage.
The only downside is Daa image files can only be mounted in Poweriso ,though if you're keeping the file in storage it only takes a few secs to convert it back to ISO.
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Re: [QUESTIONS] CUE/BIN and when it's okay to convert to ISO

Postby cuebinsexyman » Thu Dec 31, 2015 3:08 am

Meddle wrote:You don't actually save that much space by converting cd images to iso and then compressing them. In fact you waste more of your time doing it... so go ahead and do it if your time means nothing to you.


I do save space, otherwise why would I say it? try RAR5 or ZPAQ max settings on 64-bit OS

EDIT
Molitor wrote:[*]A game that relies on audio tracks for its music --> Keep BIN/CUE (or any other fileformat that conserves audio tracks intact) . Unless you want to rip the audio tracks as MP3/FLAC for ulterior listening (you won't be able to reintegrate them into a bin/cue file after that).
Note; some games from after 2000 still rely on CDA tracks.
[*]A game from ~1980/~2010 with no audio tracks and no copy protection of any kind --> you can convert to ISO.
[*]A game from ~1980/~2010 with a old/common copy protection - but a crack or mini-image is available --> you can convert to ISO and add the said crack on said ISO.
[*]A game from 2010+ with a nasty hardware-dependant or unusual copy protection --> there you decide whether you want to take the risk to get a crack that won't be functional on another configuration or in a few years, or to keep 1:1 copy of the game with its intact protection (and play straight from this 1:1 copy when possible, though it's gonna become rarer and rarer).


I forgot to say thank you for that mobygames link

Molitor wrote:Btw; You may find easier to log into your first account and post from it, instead of making a new account for each post... ? :huh:


Its a secret
Last edited by cuebinsexyman on Thu Dec 31, 2015 3:29 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: [QUESTIONS] CUE/BIN and when it's okay to convert to ISO

Postby cuebinsexyman » Thu Dec 31, 2015 3:21 am

anyway, thank you all for your input. I think this is what I should do from now on:

MDS/MDF at all times, EXCEPT when there are "hidden" audio tracks.

CUE/BIN for "hidden" audio tracks.

ISO only when I come across CUE/BIN, CCD/IMG/SUB when (*only when*) being in those formats is pointless.

Anyone have any comments on this?

Also, anyone know which app is more reliable for CUE/BIN? CDRWIN?
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Re: [QUESTIONS] CUE/BIN and when it's okay to convert to ISO

Postby myloch » Fri Jan 01, 2016 4:19 pm

I would stay away from generic iso format unless pc game is without audio tracks and without drm of any kind, you can check that with ProtectionID tool.
I usually make ccd or mds/mdf images. I used to do bin+cue images in the past too (cuesheets are very useful when you have to create custom images, like when you add missing audio tracks to a previously existing image, or when you have to rip data and audio tracks separately for some reason and then rebuild original cd structure), this will not be true 1:1 images but they usually work quite well.
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Re: [QUESTIONS] CUE/BIN and when it's okay to convert to ISO

Postby wav » Mon Mar 14, 2016 12:42 pm

If you really want to understand what's going on then best to read up about Rainbow Books.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainbow_Books

Basically the audio on the bin/cues you mention is Redbook audio. Redbook is just one of the Rainbow books. Redbook audio is also what audio CDs use as well.

As far as I know I believe it's OK to convert CCD/IMG/SUB and MDS/MDF to ISO so long as they have no Redbook audio and you don't want to burn them to optical media. Most of my experience comes from PC though. If I'm wrong about this then I'm sure somebody will correct me.


cuebinsexyman - If storage space is a problem maybe the ECM tools will help.
I remember using this years ago on Playstation images. I can't remember ever using it on images of PC games but I think it works OK.
It can compress more than what other compression software can do. Usually 15 - 20%. But it's only for image files.
It seems the homepage of the person that coded it, Neill Corlett, is down at the moment.
http://www.neillcorlett.com

A search will give you other sites with downloads of it though. Also here's an archive_is of his page for ECM. It's a shame that archive_is doesn't save whole sites including downloads!
http://archive.is/gJuJl

It is a command line tool, or tools actually. You get executables for ECM and UNECM. Decompressing is easy as you just drag and drop the image onto the unecm_exe.

The ECM format allows you to reduce the size of a typical CD image file (BIN, CDI, NRG, CCD, or any other format that uses raw sectors). It works by eliminating the Error Correction/Detection Codes (ECC/EDC) from each sector whenever possible. The encoder automatically adjusts to different sector types and automatically skips any headers it encounters. Since the data skipped is nearly impossible to compress with traditional tools, the resulting ECM file will compress far better than the raw CD image.
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Re: [QUESTIONS] CUE/BIN and when it's okay to convert to ISO

Postby Meddle » Mon Mar 14, 2016 3:34 pm

With the exception that the ECM tools shouldn't be used on images that have Redbook audio or depend on various copy protections. For instance, Re-Dump uses ECM with pakkiso (pakkiso is a multi-tiered compression strategy utilizing: a bin/cue image split into tracks, ecm the data track, 7zip the data track, and finally encode the audio tracks with monkeys audio). ECM was really meant to only be used with console ISO's where CD-ROM based copy protection generally wasn't a priority. Basically ECM doesn't even attempt to deal with all the funny business (weird formatting) companies employed for copy protection on PC.
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Re: [QUESTIONS] CUE/BIN and when it's okay to convert to ISO

Postby hfric » Tue Mar 15, 2016 2:21 am

but there are some exceptions in using ECM on consoles ... like games that used anti copy schemes ... the only workaround was after re-compressing the image from ECM apply a PPF to fix the image
Code: Select all
http://www.epforums.org/showthread.php?67412-ePSXe-Anti-Copy-Protection-Patches-Archive
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