Nuevas herramientas para filtrar y digitalizar cintas

Cómo pasar juegos a diferentes archivos, herramientas, software.
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Re: Nuevas herramientas para filtrar y digitalizar cintas

Mensajepor pacomix » Dom 08 May , 2016 6:10 pm

De todas formas sería más sencillo si enumerases los títulos porque así podría decirte cuáles me suenan. Por ejemplo, la compañía inglesa Elite sacaba casi todos los juegos desprotegidos, pero en "Frank Bruno's Boxing" les dio por usar un método de pulsos simples que a Denis y a mí nos pilló por sorpresa y nos costó descifrar.
En mi hilo de ventas de juegos de disco y cintas puedes ver toda mi colección que tengo "a mano". Solo tienes que decirme qué títulos quieres que digitalice y por las tardes iré poniendo a volcar.
Tengo montado (¡por fin!) mi chiringuito y dispongo ya de mi PC de preservación. ¿Qué me recomiendas para digitalizar? Tengo un Windows XP. Si al estar metiendo audio por la entrada de micrófono se reproduce algún sonido en el PC. ¿Se graba también o tan solo es lo que le entre por la entrada de micrófono? ¿Algún programa para "calibrar" el volumen de entrada y que no distorsione?

¡Saludos!

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Re: Nuevas herramientas para filtrar y digitalizar cintas

Mensajepor cngsoft » Lun 09 May , 2016 1:15 pm

En mi hilo de ventas de juegos de disco y cintas puedes ver toda mi colección que tengo "a mano". Solo tienes que decirme qué títulos quieres que digitalice y por las tardes iré poniendo a volcar. [...] ¿Qué me recomiendas para digitalizar? Tengo un Windows XP. Si al estar metiendo audio por la entrada de micrófono se reproduce algún sonido en el PC. ¿Se graba también o tan solo es lo que le entre por la entrada de micrófono? ¿Algún programa para "calibrar" el volumen de entrada y que no distorsione?
Son muchos packs, cribarlos costará un montón. A bote pronto elegiré seis cintas: "Arkanoid" (Speedlock simple), "Arkanoid 2 Revenge of Doh" (Speedlock compuesto temprano), "Elektra Glide" (Speedlock simple pero no del todo estándar), "Super Hang-On" (Speedlock compuesto temprano), "Terminator 2" (Speedlock compuesto tardío) y "Trivial Pursuit" (sistema UnilODE, siempre problemático)

Para digitalizar sirve cualquier programa de edición de audio; http://waveshop.sourceforge.net/ es gratuito y funciona bien, y durante la grabación te muestra la intensidad de la señal mediante una barra de color, que conviene que esté siempre en el intervalo amarillo (verde: demasiado débil; rojo: demasiado fuerte). Que se mezclen el audio de salida y el de entrada depende de cómo configures la tarjeta de sonido; lo típico es ir a Control de volumen, ir a Propiedades, elegir los dispositivos de grabación correspondientes y marcar como "mudos" aquéllos cuya señal no quieres ver mezclada en la grabación. Como con otras muchas cosas, todo es tantear; yo tiendo a subir el volumen del casete al máximo y bajar el del mezclador de entrada de audio del ordenador hasta que la señal deje de estar roja.
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Re: Nuevas herramientas para filtrar y digitalizar cintas

Mensajepor cngsoft » Dom 03 Jul , 2016 1:02 pm

Buenos días. Mientras intento sacar adelante el proyecto de fin de carrera, aquí tenéis algunos descubrimientos recientes:

http://cngsoft.no-ip.org/blog/blog71.htm

He intentado ordenar todo lo que he descubierto de las cintas grabadas con el método Speedlock tanto para CPC como para Spectrum, que fue donde realmente se utilizó por primera vez y donde se produjeron la mayoría de los cambios.

Algunos métodos son a efectos prácticos equivalentes entre ambas máquinas, por ejemplo V.1 y V.2 solamente difieren en la longitud del byte de identidad (ID) y esta diferencia puede implementarse trivialmente cambiando el valor de partida del registro que lo carga, lo que permitiría leer V.2 en un Spectrum y V.1 en un CPC, y simplifica el desarrollo de CSW2CDT; lo mismo ocurre en V.3 y V.4.

Pero mientras que las cintas de Speedlock para CPC son relativamente predecibles, las de Spectrum me han dado varias sorpresas. ¿Alguno de vosotros tiene experiencia con cintas de Spectrum? ¿Sabéis más del asunto?

EDIT: por si el sitio web no funciona, copio y pego la tabla.

V.0 (Spectrum) 1984: Daley Thompson's Decathlon
* complex pilot: identical short tones, 2-edge separators and 2-edge SYNC
* ~2000 baud
* 7-bit ID
* simple bytes: no internal separators

V.1 (Spectrum) 1985: Bounty Bob Strikes Back, Highway Encounter
* complex pilot: four different short tones, 2-edge separators and 2-edge SYNC
* ~2000 baud, 6-bit ID
* simple bytes: no internal separators

V.2 (CPC) 1985: Highway Encounter; 1986: Alien Highway, Batman, Donkey Kong, Mercenary; 1987: Arkanoid, Head over Heels
* complex pilot: four different short tones (five in "Mercenary"), 2-edge separators and 2-edge SYNC
* ~2000 baud, 5-bit ID
* simple bytes: no internal separators

V.3 (Spectrum) 1986: Alien Highway, Tarzan; 1987: Leviathan, Head over Heels
* complex pilot: four different short tones, 2-edge separators and 2-edge SYNC
* ~2000 baud, 6-bit ID
* complex bytes: 42-edge internal separators

V.4 (CPC) 1986: Tarzan; 1987: Combat School, Gryzor, Renegade, Wizball; 1988: Guerrilla War, Renegade II: Target Renegade
* complex pilot: four different short tones, 2-edge separators and 2-edge SYNC
* ~2000 baud, 5-bit ID
* complex bytes: 42-edge internal separators

V.5 (Spectrum) 1987: Athena, Combat School, Wizball
* simple pilot: one long tone and 16-edge SYNC, no separators
* ~2000 baud, 6-bit ID
* complex bytes: 42-edge internal separators

V.6 (CPC) 1988: Arkanoid II: Revenge of Doh, Operation Wolf; in general, all Speedlock tapes for CPC after 1988
* complex pilot: four different short tones, 2-edge separators and 2-edge SYNC
* ~1600 baud, 5-bit ID
* complex bytes: 42-edge internal separators

V.7 (Spectrum) 1987: Gryzor; in general, all Speedlock tapes for Spectrum after 1987
* simple pilot: one long tone and 16-edge SYNC, no separators
* ~1600 baud, 6-bit ID
* complex bytes: 42-edge internal separators
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Re: Nuevas herramientas para filtrar y digitalizar cintas

Mensajepor dlfrsilver » Mié 25 Ene , 2017 9:40 pm

Hello Guys, i've heard here and there that some people want to get access to the new tool chain for tape processing.

The problem is as follow : Such a tool needs some tests and refining. This means helping Cesar by sending him or uploading WAV dumped from tape in order to confirm and validate that the encoding scheme he is working on works correctly, either on the filtering and encoding side, as well as the reversing from CDT to CSW, and from CSW to WAV.

I have uploaded 700 wavs from games i own or got access from tierce people, but that's not enough. Cesar needs more of them to be sure that the tool is reliable enough for a public release.

The equation is easy : no help, no wav = delayed released of the tool. Cesar just can't take all the horse workload on himself alone (and i don't own all the tapes sold on Amstrad CPC <XX )

Samp2cdt was horribly buggy and making bad CDTs from the start, with timings and constants coming from nowhere, making bad speedlock CDT, and so on.

Csw2cdt is the luck we all have waited for. I'll let you voice your opinion or simply your thoughts on that matter.

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Re: Nuevas herramientas para filtrar y digitalizar cintas

Mensajepor cngsoft » Sab 01 Abr , 2017 7:14 pm

Buenas tardes.

Por fin he hecho pública la primera versión del paquete de herramientas CSW2CDT. Dlfrsilver, el mismo que ha sido mi alfatester durante muchísimos meses, ha escrito los manuales en francés e inglés.

http://cngsoft.no-ip.org/csw2cdt.htm

De momento no publico las fuentes porque son un caos y un desastre :-( No dudéis en avisarme de cuantos problemas puedan surgiros al usar CSW2CDT, y tampoco os cortéis para preguntarme vuestras dudas.
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Re: Nuevas herramientas para filtrar y digitalizar cintas

Mensajepor deepfb » Sab 01 Abr , 2017 8:48 pm

¡¡Hombre, muchas gracias!! :-D

Como esta noche voy a tener un rato libre, voy a probarlo. ¡Gracias! :-)

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Re: Nuevas herramientas para filtrar y digitalizar cintas

Mensajepor dlfrsilver » Sab 01 Abr , 2017 10:34 pm

¡¡Hombre, muchas gracias!! :-D

Como esta noche voy a tener un rato libre, voy a probarlo. ¡Gracias! :-)
Hola Amigo, please tweak your recording settings first :)

* ALWAYS USE the LINE-IN input port, NEVER the microphone input port. The noise is just bleeding from this port, and it makes impossible to process WAV files.

* ALWAYS USE FIXED SOUND PARAMETERS inside Goldwave, always check your sound recording level and set it via the sound volume button on your tape deck/recorder/drive whatever.

Check the PDF instruction manual joined to this point (anyone who wants to make good dumps and with the cleanest possible way :D

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Re: Nuevas herramientas para filtrar y digitalizar cintas

Mensajepor deepfb » Sab 01 Abr , 2017 11:57 pm

Hola Amigo, please tweak your recording settings first :)
Merci beaucoup, Denis! I have never produced a .cdt -I even guess nobody has ever dumped tapes in el Estado español yet!-, so I will neatly follow your advice :-P

No, en serio, ¿qué me estás contando? :-D

Regards

Jaime (AKA alt, AKA deepfb)

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Re: Nuevas herramientas para filtrar y digitalizar cintas

Mensajepor dlfrsilver » Dom 02 Abr , 2017 12:53 am

Hola Amigo, please tweak your recording settings first :)
Merci beaucoup, Denis! I have never produced a .cdt -I even guess nobody has ever dumped tapes in el Estado español yet!-, so I will neatly follow your advice :-P

No, en serio, ¿qué me estás contando? :-D

Regards

Jaime (AKA alt, AKA deepfb)
Good evening Jaime ;)

I have carefully examined the dumps you sent to Cesar, and those are..... impossible to process :(

I mean, none of them. I used all the tricks in the book i know, with no luck :

Removing the noise : destroys the sound data, which renders the WAV totally unusable.

Remove light hum : diminish the noise, but cut the sound data by the same occasion.

Remove the initial noise : remove noise _AND_ sound at the same time.

Conclusion : there's too much noise in the wavs, and the sound data is way too high, both noise and sound data are colliding, making the tool unable to process the WAV.

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Re: Nuevas herramientas para filtrar y digitalizar cintas

Mensajepor pinace_es » Dom 02 Abr , 2017 12:23 pm

Muchas gracias César por publicar la herramienta :D

En cuanto tenga un rato la empiezo a probar.

A mí me pasa igual que a Jaime, llevo haciendo volcados y CDTs desde 2001. Me gustaría que Denis me dijera si mis volcados tienen también mucho ruido o no. Hay unos cuantos que le he pasado a César.

Lo del tema de hacerlo desde el LINE-IN es un problema para mí... debido a mis circunstancias personales tengo que hacer los volcados en una tablet con Windows 8 y utilizo un adaptador que va al puerto USB y que sólo tiene entrada de micrófono y entrada de auriculares. Además utilizo Audacity en vez de Gold Wave, no me gusta Gold Wave [emoji14]

De todas formas leeré de cabo a rabo las instrucciones e intentaré hacer los volcados lo mejor posible [emoji6]

Gracias César y gracias Denis [emoji122] [emoji122] [emoji122]
Saludos.

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Re: Nuevas herramientas para filtrar y digitalizar cintas

Mensajepor dlfrsilver » Dom 02 Abr , 2017 2:20 pm

Muchas gracias César por publicar la herramienta :D

En cuanto tenga un rato la empiezo a probar.
OK :)
A mí me pasa igual que a Jaime, llevo haciendo volcados y CDTs desde 2001. Me gustaría que Denis me dijera si mis volcados tienen también mucho ruido o no. Hay unos cuantos que le he pasado a César.
Your dumps have a lot of noise unfortunately :/ Tape dumping requires to use the Line-In input of a sound card. The microphone input is just a catastrophy as it bleeds the noise and deforms the signal.

I tried to process your own dumps, and it's a no go :/
Lo del tema de hacerlo desde el LINE-IN es un problema para mí... debido a mis circunstancias personales tengo que hacer los volcados en una tablet con Windows 8 y utilizo un adaptador que va al puerto USB y que sólo tiene entrada de micrófono y entrada de auriculares. Además utilizo Audacity en vez de Gold Wave, no me gusta Gold Wave [emoji14]
A windows 8 tablet is not suited at all for dumping. You absolutely need a PC with a line-in input port (a dedicated port made for sound recording).

Next, and it's a personal opinion, Audacity is OK for recording voice, but not tape sound data. It doesn't offer the abilities needed to dump correctly and also to set the sound levels ideally.

Goldwave is unfortunately the best suited tool of the two. I tried them both :/
De todas formas leeré de cabo a rabo las instrucciones e intentaré hacer los volcados lo mejor posible [emoji6]

Gracias César y gracias Denis [emoji122] [emoji122] [emoji122]
Thank you, i'll wait to see what you can do :)

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Re: Nuevas herramientas para filtrar y digitalizar cintas

Mensajepor deepfb » Dom 02 Abr , 2017 11:25 pm

I have carefully examined the dumps you sent to Cesar, and those are..... impossible to process :(
When César asked for some Ópera tape dumps, those tapes where in cpcmaniaco's house since he was scanning the covers & inlays by then. I think we dumped them with a walkman-to-usb tape player, which is sometimes useful as César can tell you -I think last time he was in Madrid, Rafa and him managed to dump some tapes successfully with this same device.

At home I have other tape players which I use on a day-to-day basis: a Scisys SV-1400 and two Philips, D6350 and D6450 (the first one has polarity control and the second one pitch control, but it's not commonly used on Amstrad tapes). Using different tape players allows me to dump tapes without tweaking the azimuth alignment, as you may know. Also, I switch between them depending on the recording level of the tapes, and even the manufacturer of them: I know it's better to use the D6450 to create a proper .wav of Sygram or PPP magazine-covertapes, but the Scisys is superior in order to dump tapes produced by CBS (Erbe, MCM). Of course I use Goldwave and the line-in connector, on a computer dedicated to it (no other programs are running at the same time I am recording the sound).

I do know which is the best recording level to create a .cdt (or a .tzx, or a .tap) and I do know which tools where at hand until now. Even more, my procedure was similar to that used by César (I processed the .wav through a Butterworth filter using CSW for ZX Spectrum, then converted it back to .wav... César's tool is definitely much quick to use, and handy!). As I told César, the only thing I missed on his alpha version was CDTcheck to check the CRC of standard blocks and note its name down, and CPCTape's Studio-like-utility to swap blocks between .cdts.

I am really glad you have finally managed to make a working tool to dump tapes. I congratulate you for finally creating a program that will allow us to dump tapes that where impossible to make work on an emulator unless you loaded them as .wav. But I am not so happy with the secrecy you have followed these years, when I asked César again and again to have his program and test it myself too. And I am not definetly happy if you try to give me lessons on how to do something I have been doing quite successfully for years -at least, with the tools and knowledge I had at hand/or I have been able to develop -not with your help, until recently. So many thanks for your work, but please don't be so patroniser with us :-D

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Re: Nuevas herramientas para filtrar y digitalizar cintas

Mensajepor dlfrsilver » Lun 03 Abr , 2017 12:36 pm

When César asked for some Ópera tape dumps, those tapes where in cpcmaniaco's house since he was scanning the covers & inlays by then. I think we dumped them with a walkman-to-usb tape player, which is sometimes useful as César can tell you -I think last time he was in Madrid, Rafa and him managed to dump some tapes successfully with this same device.
Indeed, i confirm that César did effectively some dumps of his own tapes via a walkman to usb-tape player indeed.
At home I have other tape players which I use on a day-to-day basis: a Scisys SV-1400 and two Philips, D6350 and D6450 (the first one has polarity control and the second one pitch control, but it's not commonly used on Amstrad tapes).
In fact the main rule is simple and easy : less possible noise before filtering the WAV. But i agree that not all the tape recorders are suited for tape dumping.
Using different tape players allows me to dump tapes without tweaking the azimuth alignment, as you may know.
My hint : there's no need to tweak the azimuth alignment. Each tape has its own sound level, and you must make varying the sound level not on the recorder side, but on the sound tool recorder side. That's really how things must be done.

My own tape recorder has always the same sound entry level. Everything is driven accordingly from goldwave. that's how i get perfect, low noise WAV dumps.
Also, I switch between them depending on the recording level of the tapes, and even the manufacturer of them: I know it's better to use the D6450 to create a proper .wav of Sygram or PPP magazine-covertapes, but the Scisys is superior in order to dump tapes produced by CBS (Erbe, MCM).
I don't understand the idea or the reasoning behind this. You normally should be able to dump ANY tape with ANY working tape recorder.
Seriously, do you see me changing my recording hardware when a collector send me 90 tapes to dump in 2 days ? No, i set the right sound level PER tape. And it works everytime, so if it works for me, it should works for you :D
Of course I use Goldwave and the line-in connector, on a computer dedicated to it (no other programs are running at the same time I am recording the sound).
Ok, then i don't understand how your signal can be this much full of noise and bleeding noise. I asked César to let me check the dumps you did.

I'm sorry, because i sound or my words seems to be hard or not nice at all, but truth must be said :

just by looking the signal of your wavs indicate the settings you use for recording are incorrect. I know you dumped a lot of tapes, and i have no idea of how you achieved to make CDT out of them, it's an entire mystery to me :shock:

And you know like me that the tools used to process the tapes afterwards need to seperate or distinguish what is noise from what is data.
I do know which is the best recording level to create a .cdt (or a .tzx, or a .tap) and I do know which tools where at hand until now.
I apologize : I just can't agree with you on that point. The recording level of the dumps you did is more than 2 times higher than needed, and this brings a problem : the noise gets mixed up with the sound data.

Samp2cdt is fucking disgrace to anyone in the CPC communauty, and since day one. César could explain you that not only it calculates the timings of the tapes out of nowhere, but even worse, most schemes are incorrectly supported.

Never mind too the buggy and useless tools we used for CDT reversing back to WAV......

Ubercassette is unsuited for the CPC, never mind the timings support, and also the schemes support.

that's the root of the creation of CSW2CDT. Right now, all the speedlock schemes are completely supported and correctly this time, now the timings are picked from the WAV dumped and injected in the CSW, and finally used in the final CDT.

The reversal of the CDT is also working correctly, as we tested it on 1000 tapes dump i did on a real CPC 464.
Even more, my procedure was similar to that used by César (I processed the .wav through a Butterworth filter using CSW for ZX Spectrum, then converted it back to .wav... César's tool is definitely much quick to use, and handy!).
My procedure is the following : i first make a WAV with the lowest possible noise, so when i pass it thru the CSW filtering tool, i get a CSW that is incredibly clean, making right away a CDT that doesn't need to be clean up afterwards.

I'm happy that what César did in term of UI is indeed very quick to use and handy. I asked him to create an the UI due to the huge amount of tapes i had to dump and process. As you know maybe, Loic Daneels regularly sent me an industrial quantity of original CPC tapes to dump. this means 2 things : 1) no time for fiddling with the hardware 2) no time for using the command line.

the UI is really very pratical, and i hope everybody will find it so :)
As I told César, the only thing I missed on his alpha version was CDTcheck to check the CRC of standard blocks and note its name down, and CPCTape's Studio-like-utility to swap blocks between .cdts.
Ok let me bring my own view on this statement. There is no more need for CDTcheck. CSW2CDT is doing the job already. If you process a tape that use custom Amstrad CPC blocks, if the filtering was made correctly, you will get the CRC OK inside the log. So CDTcheck is made completely redundant and useless. CSW2CDT will not flag a block as OK if this one is wrong or incorrect. you will get -- instead of OK.

Since CSW2CDT is equipped with a cleaning routine (-5), there's no more the need to use even Tapir or CPCtapeXP for moving blocks.

The internal IA recognize automatically which type of protection or encoding system is used.

The only thing you have to take care of, is the entry WAV sound level and noise. CSW2CDT will never process correctly a WAV where the noise level is too high, as i have been able to see in your dumps or those of other people.
I am really glad you have finally managed to make a working tool to dump tapes. I congratulate you for finally creating a program that will allow us to dump tapes that where impossible to make work on an emulator unless you loaded them as .wav.
I am the one who has asked to Cesar to do something about the tapes. Samp2cdt was just a source of problems, and César was aware of those, we had numerous chats about this matter.
But I am not so happy with the secrecy you have followed these years, when I asked César again and again to have his program and test it myself too.
Many people (aside you) have hammered me or César to get access to the tool. But the tool was not mature enough. We had a big number of regression during the 2 years of the development of CSW2CDT, and i was personally AGAINST any release, not only César, because the tool was not mature enough.

Since the dumps you did were not good enough, (i'm sorry to tell it, and i hope you won't get vexated about it), but truth has to be said one end for all :(

This would have been another problem to deal with. You can't tweak, refine and enhance such a program with bad/noisy/filthy dumps.

CSW2CDT has the excellent support you noticed because all the dumps i sent to César were the best he could possibly have in input to test the program during his infancy.

It's even probable that Samp2cdt failure was due to the fact that the program was tested with wrong or bad dumps.
And I am not definetly happy if you try to give me lessons on how to do something I have been doing quite successfully for years -
you did a lot of CDT, there's no questions about that. But look at the glass in the opposite side : Kukulcan had to clean up a lot of the spanish tape dumps (and my own ones too !) because the CDTs were dirty. He spent a lot of time on cleaning them, and i helped him with my own tapes, as well as those submitted by you and our others spanish friends.

It's not about giving a lesson, i feel myself not very pleased to have such a chat or discussion, because i knew you would not react well (who would ?).

But you can turn around things in every possible way : you did a lot of dump, OK, but the WAVs i saw were just done..... in a careless manner.

Just to illustrate, if i want to get the same result as you, i just have to pull up the sound level on my recorder to the maximum, and then do the same in goldwave.

We are in 2017, i started to dump tapes in 2003, and during these years i have found the best possible parameters, allowing to make the best dumps (almost as good as if i had an industrial tape recorder).

César could confirm himself the quality of the WAVs i did. It's not words, it's effective.
.....at least, with the tools and knowledge I had at hand/or I have been able to develop -not with your help, until recently.
We used the same tools. CSW from Ramsoft and Samp2cdt. If you developed a tool for tapes, i'm not aware of it, and i never heard about it.
So many thanks for your work, but please don't be so patroniser with us :-D
Thank you very much Jaime :) In my name and César's ; I'm not patronising with you at all Jaime, it's a difficult chat to have, because i know that people feel bulied or brutalized since i talk about settings and quality of the dumps, this hurts people personally because quite a number thinks they're doing it fine. I recognize that Samp2cdt due to its bugs and uncareness, allowed to do things that would normally be not possible to do.

For instance, since CSW2CDT inject the timings from the tape, this means that if you feed in it a very noisy WAV, the timings will possibly be wrong, and this means that in the end the CDT will have a defect. shame : there is no possibility to ensure the timings are OK. The CSW must be good and fully working. Next, it's not because you can load a CSW inside CPCE that it could be processed, indeed, if it contains too much noise, the encoder will have troubles to make a good CDT.

I know for a fact that there is no generic solution or a good set up. I try to do my best to help people to use the best possible parameters, but it changes depending of the tape recorder you use. That's why i always use the same tape recorder, otherwise you have to change each time your settings, and that's too problematic and it takes too much time.

In the end, don't take it too much personal ; I have to say that all the spanish people i talked with are very nice. Either Rafa, yourself or Mauricio, you're very cool guys :)

Salutations amicales :)

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Re: Nuevas herramientas para filtrar y digitalizar cintas

Mensajepor deepfb » Lun 03 Abr , 2017 2:10 pm

I will try to take it not so personal, although it's quite difficult...
just by looking the signal of your wavs indicate the settings you use for recording are incorrect. I know you dumped a lot of tapes, and i have no idea of how you achieved to make CDT out of them, it's an entire mystery to me :shock:
(...)
The recording level of the dumps you did is more than 2 times higher than needed, and this brings a problem : the noise gets mixed up with the sound data.
(...)
The only thing you have to take care of, is the entry WAV sound level and noise. CSW2CDT will never process correctly a WAV where the noise level is too high, as i have been able to see in your dumps or those of other people.
(...)
Since the dumps you did were not good enough, (i'm sorry to tell it, and i hope you won't get vexated about it), but truth has to be said one end for all :(
(...)
But you can turn around things in every possible way : you did a lot of dump, OK, but the WAVs i saw were just done..... in a careless manner.
...even more, since I wrote this:
When César asked for some Ópera tape dumps, those tapes where in cpcmaniaco's house since he was scanning the covers & inlays by then. I think we dumped them with a walkman-to-usb tape player
I think I have only provided César with five or six 'takes' of tapes in the last years -these were taken from Ópera games and I uploaded them to some Google Drive or cloud storage, I can't remember. Those six 'takes' were made on this device I am talking about, in a careless manner -I agree- since Rafa was by then scanning the tapes and I hadn't them -the tapes- at hand.

This may explain how me (and Pinace, or Abraxas) have produced *thousands* of .cdts that work, even when those .wavs had a very high sound level. I know my english is not so good, but I think my previous message was clear enough for you not keeping the patronising mood.
We used the same tools. CSW from Ramsoft and Samp2cdt. If you developed a tool for tapes, i'm not aware of it, and i never heard about it.
Again, it seems very difficult to understand what I write:

at least, with the tools and knowledge I had at hand/or I have been able to develop -not with your help, until recently

The tools -> I had at hand
The knowledge -> I have been able to develop
My hint : there's no need to tweak the azimuth alignment. Each tape has its own sound level, and you must make varying the sound level not on the recorder side, but on the sound tool recorder side. That's really how things must be done.
I am glad you are so confident in your methods. But since I am a stubborn ignorant, I will keep my method to dump tapes that were not manufactured with professional tools.

As the wise guru you are, I am sure you know that there were some spanish and portuguese publishers (Sygran, PPP, Software Editores, Powersoft Portugal, etc) that produced their tapes using amateur methods, but I am sure that the success dumping them is just based on the sound level.
you did a lot of CDT, there's no questions about that. But look at the glass in the opposite side : Kukulcan had to clean up a lot of the spanish tape dumps (and my own ones too !) because the CDTs were dirty. He spent a lot of time on cleaning them, and i helped him with my own tapes, as well as those submitted by you and our others spanish friends.
Could you please explain what does that cleaning process consist in, and put an example of one of my dumps in which you had to do so? Many thanks! :-)

And don't take the 'wise guru' characterisation as personal, it is not! :-D

dlfrsilver
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Re: Nuevas herramientas para filtrar y digitalizar cintas

Mensajepor dlfrsilver » Lun 03 Abr , 2017 3:10 pm

I think I have only provided César with five or six 'takes' of tapes in the last years -these were taken from Ópera games and I uploaded them to some Google Drive or cloud storage, I can't remember. Those six 'takes' were made on this device I am talking about, in a careless manner -I agree- since Rafa was by then scanning the tapes and I hadn't them -the tapes- at hand.
Ok, this explaining that.
This may explain how me (and Pinace, or Abraxas) have produced *thousands* of .cdts that work, even when those .wavs had a very high sound level.
Yes, but as i said, samp2cdt is not encoding correctly even basic amstrad CPC blocks. It doesn't use the timings from the tapes, but instead calculates false values.

Yes, thousands. I had to ask to César quite a number of times help because many of those CDTs were not clean. Have you noticed that Kukulcan on CPC power was cleaning them ?
I know my english is not so good, but I think my previous message was clear enough for you not keeping the patronising mood.
Your english is perfectly good :) I'm not in a patronizing mood at all, i'm just _very_ shy about having such a conversation, because it's not really pleasant.
Again, it seems very difficult to understand what I write:

at least, with the tools and knowledge I had at hand/or I have been able to develop -not with your help, until recently

The tools -> I had at hand
The knowledge -> I have been able to develop
Yes the tools you got at hand like me (Samp2cdt, tapir, Tzx2wav, etc)

I have built myself my own knowledge, because in 2003 absolutely no informations filtered out on the net. I remember searching endlessly just to find nothing.

My own knowledge led me to notice that most dumps available on the net either on the english side or the spanish side were dirty, hence all the problems to pass them in CDT.

Unfortunately, out of having someone else's hardware handy, it's impossible to write a generic method for making good dumps.

This is also maybe a reason why there was no good tutorial on the net.
I am glad you are so confident in your methods. But since I am a stubborn ignorant, I will keep my method to dump tapes that were not manufactured with professional tools.
Oh i have not said that :roll: It's just that the new tool will mecanically force you to change your settings, because it can't deal with this amount of noise.

And don't worry, it happened quite a number of time that César also came to me asking for a redump, because there was too much noise in some of my dumps.

I then changed my settings, and got the wanted result.
As the wise guru you are, I am sure you know that there were some spanish and portuguese publishers (Sygran, PPP, Software Editores, Powersoft Portugal, etc) that produced their tapes using amateur methods, but I am sure that the success dumping them is just based on the sound level.
The method used for producing tapes has no importance to me. All those years of experience and experimentation taught me that they key is just setting the right sound volume in goldwave before starting the dumping.

Just to illustrate, Loic Daneels sent me quite a number of spanish tapes..... which were.... hum hum.... in a very bad or poor shape.

exactly like those you cited above. with the right sound level, i make them in one pass. The main difficulty with the spanish tapes (Opera soft, topo Soft, Positive, PPP, dinamic, Zigurat, just to name a few of them), is the low quality of the tapes used, the fact that the signal on those are not this good these days, and that they are prone to have some bitrotting.

This was the main problem i encountered when dumping those tapes.
Could you please explain what does that cleaning process consist in, and put an example of one of my dumps in which you had to do so? Many thanks! :-)
I will post some examples of CDT that Kukulcan has cleaned tonight (i'm at work, and i can't go on CPC-power).

but to say it simply, a CDT with CPC blocks must have 2 CRC bytes, followed by 4 'FF' bytes and then 8 trailer bits.

many tapes Spanish contributors (as well as me or others) did had either 3 'FF' and 1 'FE and then X trailer bits, and a block was 264 or more bytes inside a CDT, when a clean bloc is only 263 bytes.

I had to give him a hand because almost all the CDTs were dirty.... and the task was too much for one person.

Otherwise, it's more complicated to clean the CDTs when a game is using a custom scheme. For instance, the gremlin 1 scheme needs only 2 trailer bits at the end of each blocks, or when a game uses a scheme with blocks without any CRC (hexagon tape protection for example, but this one has an internal CRC inside each blocks buried under the encryption and compression).
And don't take the 'wise guru' characterisation as personal, it is not! :-D
Of course not ahaha :mrgreen: !

warm cheers :)


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