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Old Sep 12, 2009, 02:51 AM
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Metroid Metroid is offline
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Location: UK
Posts: 231
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You are right, "cue files may not give you complete information", but that is the best way around for people to contribute. EAC is widely used, cue files are becoming more and more popular. I would not expect people using another program to only get the lead-in table of contents.

VGMdb staff can always check the credibility of cue files, it is not that hard to figure out if it is credible or not, suppose VGMdb keep the files somewhere only visible for / to the staff, now imagine how many contributions VGMdb will receive of the same album, so it is up to the staff to decide whether or not is a true cue file and then leave the one they decide.

As it stands, few programs can get the table of contents from the CD, also TOC submissions would not be a good idea since it calls too much attention from media publishers and companies which might lead to future implications. That is the same reason why the EAC author removed the "Retrieve Native TOC" feature.

Quote:
The german magazin c't published an article whether EAC is or is not violating a german law against circumvention of copy protections on audio CDs. Some of the experts they asked had the opinion that the function of retrieving the native TOC is working at the limit of legality, at best. Due to that article and to eliminate any possibility of legal problems, I decided to remove that function (although I am pretty sure that it is absolutely legal). I always try to make sure to be fully compliant with german law, even if I would interpret the law absolutely differently.
Anyway, there are at least some few bug-fixes in this update, e.g. creating an image having the artist and CD title as filename will now show the file dialog properly when special characters are used.
For the next version it is still planned to add test & copy of CD images and for the version after that I will try to implement Unicode support for freedb queries and main window display and edit.
I am sorry about all this, but please understand my point of view.
Personally I think that the best combo for the majority of users is EAC + cue files + Foobar and I also think we should follow the trendy.

VGMdb could leave a default cue file, doing this users can see if it matches what they have, if it does not match then they would may submit it.

This is a TOC sample from Program 1:

Code:
CD_DA

CD_TEXT {
  LANGUAGE_MAP {
    0: 9
  }
  LANGUAGE 0 {
    TITLE "7"
    PERFORMER ""
    SIZE_INFO { 0,  1, 47,  0, 63, 68,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,
                0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  3, 133,  0,  0,  0,
                0,  0,  0,  0,  9,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0,  0}
  }
}

// Track 1
TRACK AUDIO
NO COPY
NO PRE_EMPHASIS
TWO_CHANNEL_AUDIO
CD_TEXT {
  LANGUAGE 0 {
    TITLE ""
    PERFORMER ""
  }
}
FILE "C:/7.bin" 0 03:34:47


// Track 2
TRACK AUDIO
NO COPY
NO PRE_EMPHASIS
TWO_CHANNEL_AUDIO
CD_TEXT {
  LANGUAGE 0 {
    TITLE ""
    PERFORMER ""
  }
}
FILE "C:/7.bin" 0 03:34:47 03:34:47 03:22:23
START 00:02:38


// Track 3
TRACK AUDIO
NO COPY
NO PRE_EMPHASIS
TWO_CHANNEL_AUDIO
CD_TEXT {
  LANGUAGE 0 {
    TITLE ""
    PERFORMER ""
  }
}
FILE "C:/7.bin" 0 03:34:47 06:56:70 01:08:00
START 00:01:15


// Track 4
TRACK AUDIO
NO COPY
NO PRE_EMPHASIS
TWO_CHANNEL_AUDIO
CD_TEXT {
  LANGUAGE 0 {
    TITLE ""
    PERFORMER ""
  }
}
FILE "C:/7.bin" 0 03:34:47 08:04:70 01:18:42
START 00:00:70

This is a TOC sample from Program 2:

Code:
    TRACK 01 AUDIO
      INDEX 01 00:00:00
      REM MSF: 00:00:00 = LBA: 0
    TRACK 02 AUDIO
      INDEX 01 03:37:10
      REM MSF: 03:37:10 = LBA: 16285
    TRACK 03 AUDIO
      INDEX 01 06:58:10
      REM MSF: 06:58:10 = LBA: 31360
    TRACK 04 AUDIO
      INDEX 01 08:05:65
      REM MSF: 08:05:65 = LBA: 36440
This is a CUE sample:

Code:
 TRACK 01 AUDIO
    TITLE ""
    PERFORMER ""
    INDEX 01 00:00:00
  TRACK 02 AUDIO
    TITLE ""
    PERFORMER ""
    INDEX 00 03:34:47
    INDEX 01 03:37:10
  TRACK 03 AUDIO
    TITLE ""
    PERFORMER ""
    INDEX 00 06:56:70
    INDEX 01 06:58:10
  TRACK 04 AUDIO
    TITLE ""
    PERFORMER ""
    INDEX 00 08:04:70
    INDEX 01 08:05:65
As a normal user, I would prefer the CUE file all the way. As a computer Engineer the TOC file would be a much better option but I would never discard the cue file or the way around.
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