10 replies to this topic

[KenMan]

Ok, our band has just completed our first album, and I'm the one that's supposed to record the actual cd to send off to be duplicated / replicated.

My question is this, I want to create an audio cd of the highest quality...but also have the track titles / album art, and album name details recorded onto the cd with the music so that when someone loads it into their computer, windows media player or real one player knows the album name and track titles automatically as well as displays the album cover art (as windows xp does when recording into the folders on the hard drive when ripping music).

How do you get all that on a cd?  Is this a separate process?

I'm sorry of my ignorance to this, but you have to start somewhere I guess.  I have read about cddb...which I'm thinking has something to do with this.

Thanks for any help at all,

KenMan

Edited by KenMan, 12 October 2006 - 01:19 PM.

[Beerman]

KenMan, on Oct 12 2006, 04:17 PM, said:

Ok, our band has just completed our first album, and I'm the one that's supposed to record the actual cd to send off to be duplicated / replicated.

My question is this, I want to create an audio cd of the highest quality...but also have the track titles / album art, and album name details recorded onto the cd with the music so that when someone loads it into their computer, windows media player or real one player knows the album name and track titles automatically as well as displays the album cover art (as windows xp does when recording into the folders on the hard drive when ripping music).

How do you get all that on a cd?  Is this a separate process?

I'm sorry of my ignorance to this, but you have to start somewhere I guess.  I have read about cddb...which I'm thinking has something to do with this.

Thanks for any help at all,

KenMan

First thing, congrats and best luck.
I don't proclaim to understand the process of making audio cd's but I am under the assumption that these are not 'burned' as us home audiophiles make cd's but are made another way (pressed???).  I think we have a guru who may know more about this.  I know what you want to accomplish and I'm not sure EMC can do exactly what you want but am curious myself.

[KenMan]

Beerman, on Oct 12 2006, 01:25 PM, said:

First thing, congrats and best luck.
I don't proclaim to understand the process of making audio cd's but I am under the assumption that these are not 'burned' as us home audiophiles make cd's but are made another way (pressed???).  I think we have a guru who may know more about this.  I know what you want to accomplish and I'm not sure EMC can do exactly what you want but am curious myself.

Thanks Beerman.  If the guru you mention knows anything at all, I'll be checking this post often.  I'd appreciate you passing the info along.  Thanks a lot.  Take care, Ken  

[lynn98109]

KenMan, on Oct 12 2006, 02:33 PM, said:

Thanks Beerman.  If the guru you mention knows anything at all, I'll be checking this post often.  I'd appreciate you passing the info along.  Thanks a lot.  Take care, Ken  

I'm not the one mentioned, but can add a few bits.

There are 3 kinds of CDs:

• commercially pressed discs, which have the pits and lands physically pressed into the metal
  
• CD-Rs, which have the pits and lands created by "cooking" a dye with the laser - not quite as permanant as commercially pressed, but pretty reliable
  
• CD-RW, which have the pits and lands created by melting and recrystalizing an aluminum alloy with the laser - an the alloy promptly starts to de-crystalize, taking all the data with it

So you want to find someone who will make pressed discs, if you can afford it and are making enough.  CD-Rs aren't as good, and some drives and players have more trouble reading them (and even more trouble with CD-RWs).

Dave has the info on the history of CDs and mp3s, and apparently I didn't save it from the old boards.  But the short form is that CDs don't have a place for the extra info, altho some of it can be put in as CD text IF the player can read it.

I think you need to somehow contact Gracenote about getting the CD into cddb.

Lynn

[d_deweywright]

KenMan, on Oct 12 2006, 05:17 PM, said:

Ok, our band has just completed our first album, and I'm the one that's supposed to record the actual cd to send off to be duplicated / replicated.

My question is this, I want to create an audio cd of the highest quality...but also have the track titles / album art, and album name details recorded onto the cd with the music so that when someone loads it into their computer, windows media player or real one player knows the album name and track titles automatically as well as displays the album cover art (as windows xp does when recording into the folders on the hard drive when ripping music).

How do you get all that on a cd?  Is this a separate process?

I'm sorry of my ignorance to this, but you have to start somewhere I guess.  I have read about cddb...which I'm thinking has something to do with this.

Thanks for any help at all,

KenMan

You're looking for a couple things here.  Windows Media Player and Real Player get their information on-line through CDDB for WMP, and possibly a Real Player site for Real Player, as you suspect.  I've never really done any work with CDDB to load information there, so I don't know how you go about getting your album art up  there.  At one point, users were able to upload artist/title/track information with a utility provided by CDDB, and possibly the album art too, but I don't think that happens that way anymore.

For a commercial Audio CD, the best you'll have is CD-Text, which will include track/title/artist information, but no album art.  To have a CD with the album art on it, you need to create it as a CD-Extra disc, which you can do in EMC 9.  The Audio Tracks get recorded first, then a Data Track with the extra files.  A standard Audio CD player (home or car stereo) should play this okay, but is not strictly an Audio CD, it can't be labelled as a "CDDA", it will have to be called a CD-Extra disc.  When one of those discs is put into a CD drive on the computer, the Data track is typically all that is seen.  If you include .MP3 or .WMA files of your track in the Data Track, then those can be played on the computer, I'm not sure how the Audio tracks would be accessed otherwise.

I think you'll want to get in touch with the plant that you'll have pressing your CDs to see if they will even do a CD-Extra disc, or whether they would want to stick with a standard CDDA (CD Digital Audio) disc.

Hope that helps!

[rich86]

I have some experience with "Enhanced CD's", so I will add some thoughts to what Dave has told you.
As already pointed out, an "enhanced cd" (sometimes referred to as "cd-extra) is a multi-session cd with standard digital audio tracks in the 1st session, followed by a data file track in the 2nd session.  You can put pretty much any types of files you want in the 2nd session.  A computer defaults to the last session written on a disc, so it sees the data files.  However, if you are running a cd music player program, it will go to the audio track session and play the music.  If you load this cd in a car, home or portable cd player, it will only see the first session on the disc and play the music.

CD-Text is your best bet to provide disc title, artist, track names, etc. although not very many players recognize cd-text.  You can enter all this information (and more) into the cddb.db (and therefore associated web-site) via Creator Classic by having the burned disc loaded up, and clicking "tools" - "cddb disc info" and entering or editing data.  At least that is how it works in V.7 - I haven't done this in V8, but expect it is similar.

Edited by rich86, 13 October 2006 - 09:42 AM.

[KenMan]

Thanks to all of you for that great information!  I had no idea that commercial cd's were physically pressed.  I thought that was just an urban term or whatever.  No wonder they seem to last longer before going bonkers.  I guess I need to find out if diskfaktory presses or just does cdr's.

Diskfaktory is who we've chosen to do our duplication and they said that if you give them a disc with that extra info, then it will be on the final as well.  That's kind of what started all this was when I found that out.  I don't understand why I can't just get THEM to handle the cdtext and the cddb stuff, but anyway, I'll look into that cd extra stuff.  Thanks a lot.  I'm gonna re-read everything you wrote to make sure I didn't miss anything.

Also, for anyone who's interested, I'll report what I learned from GraceNote tech support yesterday.  I called them and got in touch with 'Julie Holabird' from their tech dept.  She said that it's something you do AFTER the fact with them, that it's all based on algorhythm's to 72bit detail.  She said that when I get the final cd from diskfaktory, that I can then use my audio app (if that app supports and uses gracenote) to update the album information and it sends the data to gracenote's database.  I told her I'd be using Itunes and she said that's perfect.  I'm going to list both of her email replies so that it may help someone else.  The first is in response to my question about how to submit my album track info in itunes and the 2nd is how to submit album art, like windows media player creates when you rip a cd and it puts a thumbnail into the root folder for that artist.

==============
1st email:
==============

Hi Kenneth,

Thanks for calling.  It would be great to have you submit your band's new CD to our database. To reiterate, in order to submit, you need the final pressing (duplication or replication) of the CD and a licensed application.  A licensed application is simply a software application that is licensed to use our service.  We recommend submitting as soon as you have the pressing back and prior to any distribution.

As we discussed, you already have iTunes, so you can use that licensed software application as a submit tool.

Just place the CD into your CD ROM drive, and the software will come to our service to try to identify the CD. If it's not identified you type in the required fields (see below), then go to the Advanced menu and click Submit CD Track Names.

  
Once a CD's track listing is in our database, anyone playing that CD in their licensed player will have it recognized by our service.  It may take a couple of days for a new submit to show up in the player but once it does, you know it's in the service.  The web site search is compiled less frequently and only from the most queried CDs in the service, so please be patient.

You should fill in at least these fields:

Artist Name
Album Name
Track Titles
Year of Release
Genre
Label Name (they do not have this field, but we do - so if you want this on your record for other applications to display, or if you want me to "lock" these details for you, you can write me back later with that detail.)

With iTunes you'll need to put the CD back into your CD ROM drive (a couple of days after submitting to us) and go back to the Advanced Menu and click Get CD Track Names.  That's the re-query button that forces iTunes back to our service to look for updates. Otherwise that particular application holds your original (no match) look-up in its "cache" on your computer.

You'll know whether your submit has made it into the service when you receive back your titles.  Other applications automatically notice an update and would not need this step.

Let me know if you have further questions, or run into difficulties with your submit.

Sincerely,

Julie Holabird
Gracenote (originally CDDB) Support
jholabird@gracenote.com
http://www.gracenote.com

=============
2nd email:
=============

Hi Ken,

Well anyway you did this - email, phone - you would have ended up with me - I'm the entire support department here!

And as I mentioned, we are the recognition source for iTunes, Winamp, RealPlayer, Yahoo, Sony, Creative, Roxio, Samsung, Pioneer, Panasonic and others, but not Windows Media Player. That's a Microsoft product and you'll need to contact Microsoft directly.

Now, while we do not store cover art in our database, different developers that use us for recognition may pull cover art from different sources. One major source is a company called Muze. If you go to their contact page, the second half of the page is for artists.
http://www.muze.com/...ntact/index.htm

They will provide you instructions on how to get them your cover art for your CD.

Sincerely,

Julie Holabird

jholabird@gracenote.com

Gracenote Support

Edited by KenMan, 13 October 2006 - 04:50 AM.

[KenMan]

Actually, I just found another place on diskfaktory that says they do not support cdtext unless I specifically ask for it.

http://www.diskfakto...m/help.asp?Q=23

So maybe I just need to do a standard redbook cd and forget about all this other stuff.  I guess it could wind up being a compatibility problem too.

Also, I found this about cddb, which means I need to mail in a master for sure:
http://www.diskfakto...m/help.asp?Q=22

This also confirms what I found out from gracenote.  At least that's settled.    

[rich86]

KenMan, on Oct 13 2006, 06:01 AM, said:

Actually, I just found another place on diskfaktory that says they do not support cdtext unless I specifically ask for it.

http://www.diskfakto...m/help.asp?Q=23

So maybe I just need to do a standard redbook cd and forget about all this other stuff.  I guess it could wind up being a compatibility problem too.

Also, I found this about cddb, which means I need to mail in a master for sure:
http://www.diskfakto...m/help.asp?Q=22

This also confirms what I found out from gracenote.  At least that's settled.    

A couple of added thoughts:
1.  enhanced cd's are very commonly produced and released by the music industry.  the music industry these days also commonly releases commercial cd's that include cd-text.  there have been no significant compatibility porblems, as long as the music company involved does not try to impose any copy protection nonsense on the cd (Sony created a huge debacle for themselves not too long ago doing this).  Just be sure to thoroughly test any executables you include in the data session to be sure they run reliably.
2.  the first email message you quoted is how it works with the Roxio EMC suite via Creator Classic as far as communicating the information you enter about a disc in your drive to the Gracenote cddb both on your local machine and their website.
3.  although it is true that commercially pressed cd's have broader compatibility and reliability over the long term than burned optical media, I have had very few problems with properly burned, decent quality, optical media (cd-r or cd-rw). You should be able to make a proper "master" including the "enhanced cd" session and cd-text on cd-r media and have it professionally duplicated.  The one thing you want to avoid is any form of labeling on the disc that entails adhesives.  Do not use stick on labels on burned cd or dvd media.  They can cause problems down the road.  If you want to make cd-r's with professional looking labels, buy cd-r media with an inkjet compatible surface, and print them on a capable printer (Epson offers a number of models).

[KenMan]

Thanks Rich.  I appreciate those extra tidbits of info!

[d_deweywright]

rich86, on Oct 13 2006, 01:41 PM, said:

A couple of added thoughts:
.
.
.
The one thing you want to avoid is any form of labeling on the disc that entails adhesives.  Do not use stick on labels on burned cd or dvd media.  They can cause problems down the road.  If you want to make cd-r's with professional looking labels, buy cd-r media with an inkjet compatible surface, and print them on a capable printer (Epson offers a number of models).

I'll agree.  You may find that whoever you're looking at for duplicating or pressing your discs also offers printing them at the same time.