Inhabitants, Maqiupai and the future of GOAT DC Homebrew

[Rand Linden]

Something seems odd... I'm surprised that any plant would have trouble with a multisession disc (or even more complicated formats) in general.

By mastering software, I meant what is used at the plant, not what you've used to create your gold disc.

(Typically) your "gold disc" disc is read into their machine (usually a Winbox) on a standard CD/DVD drive and stored in its entirety.

The software then processes all the data to check it for compliance with ISO formats -- those are the errors that you're probably hearing about.

Once that's completed, the software prepares all the data for the actual "cutting" process (basically a large metal sheet is lasered bit-by-bit by a seperate, and very expensive, machine)

That metal sheet then goes through a few iterations of mirroring and replication to create your "stampers" -- other thin sheets of metal that are pressed against the molten polycarbonate to shape the plastic. There's a whole "family" sequence used to name the different iterations of the plates -- father, mother, daughter...

The reason it's done this way is because the plates wear out and once they're worn, they're useless -- so for large pressing runs, multiple stampers are created, and extras are made just incase (much less expensive to make a couple extra plates at the same time, rather than having to do the whole process from the start).

FYI, there's only a couple mastering packages out there (maybe three) -- and the ones I've used have "rules" that can be toggled on/off easily, so that shouldn't be a huge hassle in the end (if all else fails).

The bigger issue is that you're getting anything but "warnings" in general -- *VERY* few discs that are pressed have absolutely NO spec-errors -- but they're almost always really really (really) insignificant things that are mostly "no one even had any idea that the data is supposed to have this here!?" kind of thing.

See if you can track down what the exact errors were -- most of them are readily fixed -- unless, of course, the problem was a physical error in reading the media; In that case, I'd suggest trying darker coloured dyes and recording at the slowest speed you can set your machine to.

Rand.

[WRAGGSTER]

The Dreamcast does seem to prefer it when you burn at speeds of 1x and 2x.

[goatdan]

Again, the masters worked and there was no problem with them whatsoever. I know that the ones that we sent out were burned at 1X. The problems were:

a) Alcohol 120% has a problem with burning between music and ROM tracks. This problem does not show up without the high-powered CD mastering hardware, but is still a serious error. The first masters failed because of that error -- NOT because it was a multisession disk.
b) The problem with the disks that were actually pressed again did not have to do with the fact that they were multisession. It has to do with the system automatically changing "errors" that it found that to work on a Dreamcast, it needed to be correct.

The pressing company is working on finding a way to turn off the error checking, which has as much to do with having the lawyers write a new agreement to allow people to do that as it does with actually turning it off. Once that is ironed out, hopefully today, we won't run into these problems again.

[BlackAura]

What software was used to prepare the masters for Feet of Fury?

[goatdan]

The second time they were burned using CDRecord by Dan Potter, who created them the exact same way that he did Feet of Fury. In fact, the masters for all three games may have been made on the exact same hardware. Looking into it, the only reason that Feet of Fury worked and these two didn't was purely luck.

[S. Thompson]

Quick question: For future GOAT Store releases will error checking just be disabled when the discs are pressed? I mean, is there any way to fix this sort of problem without disabling the error checking...?

Well, hey, if this doesn't work out we can just go over to Japan and beg Sega to help us out while their security guard personel kindly kick our asses... No, seriously... let's do it.

- Fuzmeister

[goatdan]

For future releases, error checking will either be disabled or the molding machines will use some sort of other method to guarantee that nothing goes wrong. This will not happen again from us.

[Barret7sc]

Here is my question, though, maybe Rand or someone can answer it.

Ok, first off, here is my understanding of how the DC MIL-CD format works.

1) you have an audio session, containing one or more audio CD tracks.
2) You have a data session, containing a mostly standard ISO filesystem, except that the DC bootsector is tacked onto the front of the data track.

Would the Mastering Software (at the plant) be objecting to the odd DC bootsector at the beginning of the data track, expecting to see ISO data instead?

Or am I completley wrong about how the dc boots the discs.

Anyways, what software is good for creating multisession cd's, Nero dosent want to do it, DJ does not want to either. CDRecord works, but its command line and tedious

-B

[goatdan]

Barret, as far as I understand it you pegged the problem -- that because of that bootsector, the software nicely "changes" it for us and therefore screws it up. We are still working on finding the test results though, as we aren't 100% sure that is what happened.

[Rand Linden]

Without more information about the mastering facility, the "errors" in question and the software being used at the plant, it'll be tough to diagnose the problem -- I do have a question, though: Is this the same engineer who created your previous disc?

You may feel comfortable with the risks involved in disabling the error checking, but I'd give it a 50/50 chance that your mastering engineer really has no clue why there's a problem, and his current hypothesis is that it's changing the data to remove "errors".

Of course, it's always possible that their software is infact doing something horribly wrong, although it's surprising that the other disc worked just fine if it was done with the exact same process.

Are you able to disclose (in ballpark terms) roughly how much you're being charged for the mastering ?

Rand.

[goatdan]

Rand,

These two releases were made in an identical way as Feet of Fury, down to Dan Potter creating the final masters using the exact same process for us. The pressing company used the exact same manufacturing eqiupment as last time. There is no simple or obvious answer to what went on...

But the masters worked. And the finals don't, although if I compare the data in a general way on a PC, they both look identical -- I can see the same stuff. The problem has to come in with the actual molding process, and both us and the pressing company fully admit that we are not sure of exactly what went on. The disks were being carefully examined by the pressers to see of any changes that may have been made, and after that report is finished we may have an answer, or we may not. Quite unfortunately, it boils down to the fact that we do not have any answers yet that are fully satisfying.

I've been playing phone tag with the company all week, as my regular job keeps having meetings when I get calls and my contact keeps being in them when I call her. Once this is cleared up, we'll all know more.

Mastering for us is part of the our package deal with the pressers. The pressing company is doing all of the scanning and researching for us for free. I definitely trust them on this.