Incorporating Redump discs into TOSEC-ISO

[Ansarya]

I know it would be a massive amount of work processing and properly renaming the redump.org releases into the TOSEC-ISO sets, but if that work was done and dates and all the other information was accurately added according to the TOSEC standard would there be any objections to using their rips as a basis for additions to the TOSEC-ISO dats?

I am happy and impressed with the number and breadth of their dumps, but their naming standards are paltry and I'd much prefer the TOSEC way. However, I don't want to do a bunch of work if there's some fundamental or institutional objection or resistance which would cause it to be rejected. I assume it's just that it's a ton of work and no one has taken it on yet, but just to be sure...

Thanks,

--Ansarya

[NLS]

This (and other similar) ideas have been discussed before.
There is some other project also that intended to incorporate everything else, but that guy is more talk than anything else nowadays.
The issue is amount of work needed, vs. Real Life (TM), as all these are hobby projects.

Note that TOSEC is maybe the only "justified" project to incorporate others as it is mainly a cataloging project, not so much CD ripping nowadays AFAIK (again: AFAIK).

[Ansarya]

As long as there is no philosophical objection then. I'm not proposing that anyone else do the work, and I know with my limited time I won't make a huge dent, but I can try to start getting some of them moved into the TOSEC sets though.

One additional question: when the TOSEC-ISO sets already include a version but it's bin/cue and the redump version is iso but they are rips of the same disc or some similar situation, how do I handle that? We don't want to collect the same thing twice or more but we don't want to punish people for having a different version of the same data.

A similar question arises regarding the RVZ format for GameCube and Wii. It is way more efficient and the file sizes are much smaller than the ISO versions, although I haven't managed to find if the rips are singular and unique (like you always get the same file for the same disc), and neither TOSEC nor Redump use it yet despite its advantages. Any thoughts on its viability for inclusion in TOSEC?

[Cassiel]

There is no philosophical objection, fantastic you picking up the mantle. Anything you can contribute will be very much welcome.

Bit of history, TOSEC-ISO had a very specific well, spec (EAC based), which was accepted at the time (best of knowledge at the time) but in hindsight wasn't as robust as should be (we are talking YEARS, maybe decades now, ago). World has moved on, Redump doing fabulous work. There was 'a guy' NLS is referring to who started a side project using the TOSEC name (without permission I might add). Lots of talk, lots of noise, annoyed a lot of people in the community unfortunately, but got some dumps out there (in a somewhat proprietary format). Some of them are in TOSEC-ISO now. Whole side project seems to have died of now.

If you want to bring Redump rips in, absolutely go for it.

No RVZ though please... its just a 7z derivative.... proper/real dumps only. 

[Ansarya]

Awesome! I've started my spreadsheet and am tracking down dates for the Acorn Archimedes.

I'll ignore and forgo the RVZ files; I was just curious about it although I've already converted all my RVZ files to ISO and gotten rid of them. I just liked that they were much smaller than a 7zipped iso for the same data (I guess they know how to compress the junk data better).

I'll try to prepare some basic dat updates in the next couple months.

Thanks for the encouragement!

(I can't believe redump doesn't even put a year on their files )

[mictlantecuhtle]

I dumped 99% of the Redump Acorn Archimedes stuff, so can help you out with pictures of the discs, cases, etc. for additional details.

[Ansarya]

I dumped 99% of the Redump Acorn Archimedes stuff, so can help you out with pictures of the discs, cases, etc. for additional details.

That would be great!

It would make identifying them and filling the proper TNC flags much faster. Please send me a link or let me know how to get those scans/pictures from you. I really want to use Acorn Archimedes as a first dat because it's not too big, but not super small so it makes a great test case.

I appreciate your help on this.

[Cassiel]

That's great Ansarya!

mictlantecuhtle super helpful and great guy but don't let him know... only get a big head

Yeah, from what I remember (this is completely off the top of my head) Nintendo added 'padding' to their discs just to mess with people dumping them, i.e. making them way bigger than needed to be to make them harder to share. The padding was very randomized too making it very inefficient to compress. Someone worked out the algorithm they used to create this 'junk' data and so made a tool to convert between a full dump (with padding) and a RSV (so they named) format with that padding stripped out. Very clever, but not really something we want to catalogue. Again, this is all from my admittedly often spotty memory.

[Ansarya]

I totally get that we want to archive the actual discs but that doesn't make a 100mb rvz file versus a 4.5gb 7zipped iso any less frustrating when I've already got 10 hard drives shoved into this computer