Name And Cd Track Changed To An Obscene Name After Burn

[watermeadows]

I'm new to both Mac an Toast 10 Titanium, having just decided to cross over from Microsoft at great cost. I've been working an an audio project in Sound Studio 4 and decided to burn the final stereo product, 1 track, yesterday. The final burn product resulted in an obscene CD and track name and tried to force it into Itunes.

This only happened on on versions 5-7 of my product but not earlier versions. I have checked security of every element of the track and there is no problem. My anti virus detects nothing too.

I have just created another version 8 edit and burn names have returned to normal. The corrupt named CD's show up as normal on my partners Mac and they show up on CD player as they should. This is part of an urgent college presentation and I was pretty annoyed when I went to Roxio professional support I was expected to lay out my credit card details and pay £35.

 

Can someone kindle explain what is going on and am I to expect this in future.

[theoldarchiver]

My guess is that the CD title and track name come from Gracenote CDDB (Wiki), the online database that should help naming CDs and tracks, based on characteristics of CDs, like track duration. No names are stored on the audio CDs (except for optional CD-Text, which isn't read back by computer drives). The CDDB allows (or did allow anyway) uploading of names for custom CDs, so the database could be 'polluted' by someone else's CD, which may happen to match your CD characteristics by chance.

Gracenote discontinued their web interface, so it isn't as easy to check their database as it used to be.

 

Audio CD names that have been identified and/or named on your computer are also stored locally, so that could be a second possible source. Loading such a CD into another computer would not access that local database, thus it would not get named or not get named the same.

[watermeadows]

Thanks for your reply. I have located the band who produced the obscene name tracked which was also revealed on my audio CD - it's length is almost identical to my track length. How does that account for trying to force track into ITunes? I've programmed my preferences for Quick Time? Also, I've now edited the track and it has gone back to how it should be. Do you know how I can stop this happening again. I don't use my notebook for leisure music.

[tsantee]

Thanks for your reply. I have located the band who produced the obscene name tracked which was also revealed on my audio CD - it's length is almost identical to my track length. How does that account for trying to force track into ITunes? I've programmed my preferences for Quick Time? Also, I've now edited the track and it has gone back to how it should be. Do you know how I can stop this happening again. I don't use my notebook for leisure music.

Go to Dougscripts.com and find the CD Text to CDinfo applescript. Once installed you can use it in ITunes to transfer CD Text information for a Toast-burned audio CD to the cdinfo database the iTunes uses for describing artists/albums/tracks. Unfortunately, Toast isn't allowed to update that database file when it burns audio CDs so this applescript is the easiest workaround.

[watermeadows]

Thank you for replies which I have just picked up. Have been to college today and someone had a look for me there - he put my 'obscene' name cd into his mac OSx 5 (mine is OSX6 and he got the same obscene name on his mac. He checked out the code and it was embedded in the CD. We went to my library preferences and found a file called CD Info.cidb (which he also had on his mac - opened it in txt format and found a load of peoples names and all sorts of stuff along with part of my intended CD name and the Obscene name was in there too. We deleted the file. It is possible that at the time my Itunes was open when the original 'corruption' occurred - my helpers was open when corrupted name occurred. Since deleting this file the audio Cd now shows up as 'audio cd' . Although the code still obviously remains in it. I am yet to test this by reburning the same file again. This time I shall disconnect from the internet and ensure Itunes is closed before doing it.

 

Even when I burn another file which does not corrupt I am unable to burn the file with the CD name or file name on it - but the txt does show up on a CD player.

 

I haven't ruled out your advice on Dougscripts, it makes perfect sense - just a bit nervous about doing it. Will have a look in next couple of days when i have a mo.

 

Thank goodness I did not submit the corrupted CD name to my assessors!

[tsantee]

Thank you for replies which I have just picked up. Have been to college today and someone had a look for me there - he put my 'obscene' name cd into his mac OSx 5 (mine is OSX6 and he got the same obscene name on his mac. He checked out the code and it was embedded in the CD. We went to my library preferences and found a file called CD Info.cidb (which he also had on his mac - opened it in txt format and found a load of peoples names and all sorts of stuff along with part of my intended CD name and the Obscene name was in there too. We deleted the file. It is possible that at the time my Itunes was open when the original 'corruption' occurred - my helpers was open when corrupted name occurred. Since deleting this file the audio Cd now shows up as 'audio cd' . Although the code still obviously remains in it. I am yet to test this by reburning the same file again. This time I shall disconnect from the internet and ensure Itunes is closed before doing it.

 

Even when I burn another file which does not corrupt I am unable to burn the file with the CD name or file name on it - but the txt does show up on a CD player.

 

I haven't ruled out your advice on Dougscripts, it makes perfect sense - just a bit nervous about doing it. Will have a look in next couple of days when i have a mo.

 

Thank goodness I did not submit the corrupted CD name to my assessors!

The cdinfo database file on your Mac is managed by iTunes. Whenever you insert and audio CD in your Mac the first time, the OS (and iTunes) automatically link up to the online CDDB to see if there is album/artist/track info there for a disc that has the same number and length of tracks. Anyone can upload information to CDDB. So someone uploaded the obscene info using a CD that had identical parameters as yours. If you correct that information in iTunes (or in Toast) and insert the burned CD you too can upload your information to CDDB. When there are multiple matches the next person to insert that CD for the first time will be asked which track information they want to access.

 

None of this has anything to do with how Toast burned your audio CD. Toast writes CD Text information to the disc which is what you've entered in the Toast window. However, Macs (and iTunes) do not read CD Text. Instead they go for the online CDDB for that information. The advantage of the applescript I mention is it automatically imports the CD Text info from the disc and overwrites anything iTunes currently has in its place. If you prefer you can manually enter the correct information in iTunes and that also overwrites whatever was there before.

 

You can see the CD Text information that was written to the disc by inserting the CD, launching Toast and choosing Show Disc Info from the Recorder menu. The information will appear in a window. Toast does read CD Text.

 

The reason this is such a hassle is that the audio CD format is not a computer format. The audio CD specs were created before there were CD players in computers, much less CD burners. CD Text was created later as a way to get track information on a CD that could be read by high-end audio CD players that are equipped with that technology. The online CDDB is a clever workaround but some people just like making other people's lives miserable by uploading garbage. It may be possible for you to contact CDDB to report the offending entries. I've never attempted to do that.

 

If you do decide to download the applescript from dougscripts (you'll see hundreds there) it will appear in the iTunes script menu that is between "Window" and "Help" in the menu bar. It's possible that menu may not appear until you install a script. Simply insert the Toast-burned audio CD and choose the CD Text to CD info item in that menu and your work is done.

[watermeadows]

Thanks for all your helpful comments. I now reburned CD entering all the text info in Toast 10. Turned off airport as I do not want my private work going onto any database. CD burned fine but does not display any text info on the computer (it does in CD player). CD just shows up as Audio Cd on computer. Can you kindly help with that? Or shall I make a new posting?

[tsantee]

Thanks for all your helpful comments. I now reburned CD entering all the text info in Toast 10. Turned off airport as I do not want my private work going onto any database. CD burned fine but does not display any text info on the computer (it does in CD player). CD just shows up as Audio Cd on computer. Can you kindly help with that? Or shall I make a new posting?

Did you read the extensive post I made? You can either enter the info manually in iTunes or use the CD Text to CD Info applescript from dougscripts to transfer the information from the CD to iTunes. As I pointed out, iTunes doesn't read CD Text which is what Toast burns to the disc. Also, you don't need to worry about any information you burn to the disc being automatically uploaded to the online database. That only happens if you deliberately choose to upload it. I suggested that you might want to do that so there is a different set of information there than the offensive one. But you don't have to do that and it won't happen just because you are connected online.

 

If you don't want information downloaded from the online CDDB you do need to be disconnected from online the first time you insert an unrecognized audio CD in your Mac. That way you force iTunes to show the generic information. After you enter your information in iTunes the audio CD will no longer be unrecognized so you don't have to worry about your Mac being online the next time you insert the audio CD.

 

Addendum: Maybe you should burn your audio CDs using iTunes rather than Toast in the future. When you burn CDs in iTunes the cdinfo database is automatically updated by iTunes so it shows the correct info when you reinsert that CD. Toast is not allowed to do this which resulted in an unrecognized audio CD which in turn caused the Mac to download info from the online database. If manually entering the information or using the applescript to transfer the CD Text info is a hassle, then just burn audio CDs with iTunes.