Re: [linux-minidisc] implementing netmd support in the gui application

[John Paul Adrian Glaubitz <glaubitz@physik.fu-berlin.de>]

Hello Thomas,

On Wed, Dec 05, 2012 at 11:35:24PM +0100, Thomas Arp wrote:
> >will we be able to transfer atrac songs to Md?
> At this time only .wav files are supported for transferring to the
> md unit, atrac files have to be converted first.
> This is a hardware limitation of minidisc devices, the md unit
> itself encodes them to atrac format, but this is the same
> transferring method sonicstage uses.
> I think Michael can give more information.

This isn't actually correct. We can transfer ATRAC files via NetMD
likewise we can transfer WAV (PCM) files which are transcoded
on-the-fly by the NetMD device into ATRAC-SP.

What we can't do is encode ATRAC files ourselves as there is no known
ATRAC encoder outside SonicStage/SoundForge.

So, coming back to Maximo's question: Yes, you can transfer ATRAC
files to the NetMD device and we can do it. The tracks end up on the
Walkman as ATRAC anyway, since it's the only specified codec used for
conventional MiniDiscs. If you can't provide ATRAC yourself but PCM
(WAV files) only, the NetMD will take care of the transcoding.

libnetmd supports ATRAC as well as PCM, but I am not 100% sure about
the status quo. It might be that some sample rates are currently not
supported, I have to look at the source code again.

> 
> >  And, if so, will be
> >able to make trackmarks?I mean, I can do them in any track I record,
> >but not in one I transfer using sonicstage, and I don't know if this
> >is a limitation in hardware or just on sonicstage.
> I think this is a limitation of the DRM system in Sony's atrac
> format. Tracks transferred via sonicstage are copyright protected.
> So, editing these tracks are not allowed. If you convert them into
> .wav format first, and then using our software for transferring them
> to the md unit, it should be able to set trackmarks then. I didn't
> test this, if you want to do these tests, do them and please give
> response to us if it works or not.

It will work with tracks transferred with libnetmd/QHiMDTransfer as we
don't set the DRM flag.

Cheers,

Adrian

-- 
 .''`.  John Paul Adrian Glaubitz
: :' :  Debian Developer - glaubitz@debian.org
`. `'   Freie Universitaet Berlin - glaubitz@physik.fu-berlin.de
  `-    GPG: 62FF 8A75 84E0 2956 9546  0006 7426 3B37 F5B5 F913