Topic: WAV to Minidisc Linear-PCM (HI-MD) madness

[andromedanwarmachine]

Hello Team,

not sure where to post this, but with a flurry of MD related discussion at the moment in this neck of the woods, I'll try here!

I'll cut a long story short.

I am recording a longterm serialised audio project on HI-MD and occasionally archive it to CD through Sonicstage/HI-MD music transfer. (for PC at that time.)

Last night I thought it would be hilarious to download HI-MD music transfer for Mac 2 from Sony..  (I am now doing post-production in Mac) Incredibly, it works and gives functionality to the footage that was previously locked inside the HI-MD discs.

Whilst tidying up the disc, which was still in the MD machine through the software on the Mac, I deleted stuff I did not intend to. I have the material already backed up onto a CD through the aforementioned archiving process and so loaded it to the Mac and tried to drag it back onto the original MD so as maintain a complete copy in the original media. Music Transfer for Mac wouldn't support it as the the material on the HI-MD is .WAV where as the imported archived material was showing as AIFF. Thinking this could be the way that iTunes interferes with the process, I imported the files from the archived CD into ProTools and then bounced 'em back to the desktop which produced .WAVs but Music Transfer won't accept them.
The MD machine starts to whizz-up and a transfer window appears but then the process stalls; "information cannot be written" I get as a message.

Is this as good as it gets with Music Transfer for Mac (I'm not expecting much) or have I missed something in files types; is there still a chance??

I saw the thread the other day about the open source HI-MD NET python transfer software...

Thanks

JimP
 

[sunjan]

So your issue is that you can't write WAV files from the Mac to the Hi-MD?!
 

I guess the python tools might work. If the don't, it's probably due to some proprietary Sony black magick.
Maybe you can playback the WAV on the Mac, go optical out and re-record them in realtime on another Hi-MD if nothing else works. 

[andromedanwarmachine]

Thanks Sunjan,

it all seems a bit silly really- HI-MD is such a half baked format (but it's the highest I've got until I get my Nagra in the spring) and I was over the moon thinking that I had complete functionality with the Music Transfer 2.0 software from Sony but I guess I was happy too soon!
It's my own fault- I highlighted four dud tracks on the disc to delete from the computer and deleted them but whilst watching on the screen, nothing appeared to happen. So I deleted them again and then nothing appeared to happen so I had a closer look; the four files had deleted the first time and the highlighted area over them transferred to the next four in the list! So when I hit DELETE again- the next four dissapeared- and then the highlighted area moved onwards again!!

Of course the footage is important enough for me to have already backed it up and I was just trying to get a restored complete copy on the original media. I don't suppose I can complain- I am now able to export the HI-MD footage from the machine and then import it into ProTools!! Which is like going into space! So being able to go the other way is an unnecessary bonus and perhaps a step too far.

I adjusted the import settings in iTunes and then imported the lost files from the backup audio CD and then made a New Playlist combining the two sources (archive CD and HI-MD) in iTunes to create a complete listing. The files were all .WAV and then (following a separate thread on here) burned the lot to a DVD -R (as combined it's nearly a Gig of audio) and it worked very well.


Thanks for your help...


JimP