copying a data cd on mac os x

Message Bookmarked

Bookmark Removed

sort of an arcane question, but i'm trying to copy some VCDs on my mac, that is, to make new VCDs. theoretically i should be able to use disk utility to make an image of the VCD and then burn a new CD using that image. i was able to do something like this on my old computer, which was mac os 9.

but when i try to make a image from the VCD in disk utility i get an "input/output error." i think there may be some kind of feeble copy protection on the VCDs? but again, i was able to copy them on my old mac.

i wonder if there's a freeware program that will quickly burn dupe copies of data CDs that might work? anyone know of anything?

thanks!!

― Amateur(ist) (Amateur(ist)), Monday, 9 May 2005 03:42 (twenty-one years ago)

MAC ... OS ... n-n-n-n-NINE

― broken down (noisemeltdown), Monday, 9 May 2005 04:09 (twenty-one years ago)

i'm tempted to go back to mac os 9 and try to figure out what it was that did that i was successfully able to copy video cds!

― Amateur(ist) (Amateur(ist)), Monday, 9 May 2005 04:32 (twenty-one years ago)

have you tried Toast?

― Amon (eman), Monday, 9 May 2005 04:39 (twenty-one years ago)

will 'dd if=/dev/cdrom of=img.iso' do any good?

(NB: I don't actually know if this works on anything, let alone OS X, but to my coffee-addled mind it looks like it *should*)

― caitlin (caitlin), Monday, 9 May 2005 07:57 (twenty-one years ago)

On a related issue, I have dled a film using bittorrent and it comprises a 792MB .bin file and a little 4K .cue file.

How can I turn this into a watchable format. Googling around suggested I use Firestarter FX, but I can't figure it out. I tried using the burn image to CD thing but it gave up after a while, spat my CDR out and said it was burned but with an error. I was expecting this as it's too big a file for a CDR. I know there's something called overburning but isn't 792MB pushing it? I don't have a DVD writer, in case that wasn't obvious.

Anyway, I don't really want to burn it to a disc anyway - I'd be happy to just watch it on my Mac.

Is this not possible?

― Alba (Alba), Monday, 9 May 2005 11:20 (twenty-one years ago)

If it's a CD image, you should be able somehow to access it as a loopback filesystem (which treats a file on your computer as if it's actually a disk)

― caitlin (caitlin), Monday, 9 May 2005 11:52 (twenty-one years ago)

Yes, that sounds about right. But how?

― Alba (Alba), Monday, 9 May 2005 11:53 (twenty-one years ago)

Um, I have no idea what the nice easy graphical way to do it on a Mac is.

The traditional command-line Unix way to do it is with a

mount -o loop

command, something like

mount -t iso9660 -o loop cdimagefile.iso /mnt/loopback

― caitlin (caitlin), Monday, 9 May 2005 11:56 (twenty-one years ago)

I had a similar problem to Alba's at one point.
This was on a Windows PC though, so I don't know how applicable to mac it'll be.
Nero refused to burn the image and I had to use a dedicated VideoCD burning package to get it to burn, I used the last free version of VCDEasy.
As I understand it, the CD data standard has different rules for the amount of video it can store compared to data, so video cd disk images can be larger than data ones. What you need is for the burning programme to understand that it's creating a video cd for it to be able to burn the image properly.

multiple x-post
I hope this helps in some way.

― Greig (treefell), Monday, 9 May 2005 12:00 (twenty-one years ago)

If you don't want to burn it just install vlc and drop the bin file on it and it will autoplay it.

http://www.videolan.org/vlc/

― svend (svend), Monday, 9 May 2005 12:52 (twenty-one years ago)

http://homepage.mac.com/major4/

this should have your answer somewhere but I have real job stuff to do
http://www.bu.edu/linguistics/UG/hagstrom/vcd.html

― TOMBOT, Monday, 9 May 2005 13:20 (twenty-one years ago)

VLC is wonderful. Amst, get your hands on a copy of Toast--I'm pretty sure it has a VCD tab.

― adam (adam), Monday, 9 May 2005 13:20 (twenty-one years ago)

CD data standard has different rules for the amount of video it can store compared to data

Basically a CD-Rom will actually hold 800 meg, but the file system uses 100 of that - meaning that the capacity of usable data is around 700 - usually your CD writing software works out the file-system data before burning to disc.

A Bin file contains both the 700 meg of usuable data and the 100 meg of file system data - the result being that every copy made from the Bin file should be indentical whichever burning software you use.

― Chewshabadoo (Chewshabadoo), Monday, 9 May 2005 14:19 (twenty-one years ago)

If you don't want to burn it just install vlc and drop the bin file on it and it will autoplay it.

Gah - and I had VLC already anyway. For some reason I just assumed it couldn't be as simple as this. Thank you! God, VLC is great.

― Alba (Alba), Monday, 9 May 2005 14:37 (twenty-one years ago)

i actually need to copy these vcds, not just watch them. i can't afford toast right now. :-(

i wonder if something else would work...

― Amateur(ist) (Amateur(ist)), Tuesday, 10 May 2005 05:51 (twenty-one years ago)

caitlin's dd thing is worth a try if you can. (dd recently came top of the list of tools that forensic scientists use when needing to take copies of disks for evidence so...)

― koogs (koogs), Tuesday, 10 May 2005 08:17 (twenty-one years ago)

(but add a bs=1024 or something to the end or you'll be there all day, copying the disk a byte at a time! 8)

― koogs (koogs), Tuesday, 10 May 2005 08:19 (twenty-one years ago)

You must be logged in to post. Please either login here, or if you are not registered, you may register here.