Burn Multiple Data Tracks

[Squirtle]

Hi guys,

Yesterday I saved the tracks from a SVCD I had ... this created two files, Track No01.nrg and Track No02.nrg.

My question is how the heck to you burn these back to CD? I can't find support for it anywhere ... the only option being to burn single tracks.

Thanks for any light you can shed on the matter.

SQ

[cfitz]

What are you trying to do? Copy the complete SVCD? Copy only selected segments from the SVCD?

If you are trying to copy the whole SVCD, don't extract the tracks one by one. Just use the 'copy CD' option of Nero.

If you are trying to copy only selected segments, don't extract them to nrg files. Instead, rip to mpg files. Then compile a new SVCD with the desired segments, using the extracted mpg files.

VCDEasy ( www.vcdeasy.org ) is a very nice, and free, program for ripping/creating/burning VCD and SVCD discs.

If you really want to get into video on optical discs, I suggest doing some reading at www.vcdhelp.com

cfitz

[Squirtle]

Thanks for the reply.

Sorry if I was unclear before. What I wanted to do was make an image of 2CDs on my HD so I could give the CDs to someone else & reburn myself a copy later on. Discjuggler kept crashing so in a rush, decided to use Nero. I saved the 2 tracks of each CD assuming I could burn them back easily later on. Seems this isn't the case.

Does anyone have any ideas how to burn 2 .nrg files per CD? I've tried extracing the files withing them (using Isobuster & WinIso) but with no success.

[cfitz]

Let me see if I have this right. You borrowed 2 CD's, and from each of those two CD's you extracted two tracks to separate .nrg files. That makes a grand total of 4 .nrg files. You want to recreate the original CD's, but that requires burning the contents of two .nrg files onto one CD (twice, once for each CD), which you can't do.

This may be a stupid question, but why did you end up with two .nrg files per CD in the first place? Why didn't you image the entire CD into one .nrg file for each CD, so that you end up with a grand total of 2 .nrg files - one per CD?

Back to the problem at hand. What is in each of the .nrg files? What should be in each of the .nrg files, based on what you were trying to image at the time you created them?

I just made a sample SVCD disc, and burned it to a .nrg file. I didn't have any trouble extracting the mpg file within it. I was able to do so with both IsoBuster and VCDEasy. Exactly what errors are you seeing when you attempt to extract files from the .nrg images?

Have tried mounting the .nrg image using Nero's Image Drive?

cfitz

[Squirtle]

Yeah that's right

Didn't remember about the image writer when I did it so only used the 'Save Tracks' function thus creating an image for each of the CD's tracks.

When I open the first files they show the contents of a SVCD but the movie file is very small, the second files cannot be opened. Neither can they be mounted in DeamonTools or Nero's Drive Image.

So Nero has no way of burning two saved data tracks back to a single CD?

Thanks again for your help thus far.

[cfitz]

Okay , try this. This isn't perfect, and there must be a better way, but since you only have a couple of images to recover, it just might work:

1. Get a blank disc and put it in your burner. This disc won't be usuable when you are done with it, so use a CD-RW if you don't want to waste a disk.

2. Open Nero, and select File->Burn Image. Choose the "Track No01.nrg" image file in the file dialog.

3. Burn the image, being sure to use "Track At Once" and being sure to uncheck the "Finalize Disc" option.

4. When the burn finishes and the disc ejects, just push it back in again.

5. Again select File->Burn Image, but this time choose the "Track No02.nrg" image file in the file dialog.

6. Burn this second image (to the same disc), again being sure to use TAO mode and uncheck the "Finalize Disc" option.

7. Close Nero, and open IsoBuster

8. Select the disc you just burned. You should see two sessions on it. Expand session 2

9. Right-click on Track 02, then select "Extract Track 02"-> "Extract User Data (*.tao, *.iso, *.wav)"

10. The extraction will proceed to 99%, stall for a few moments, and then an error dialog will pop up, stating that there is an unreadable sector. Select "Quit".

11. Another dialog will pop up, stating extracting was aborted, and asking if you want to delete the file. Click "No"

12. Find the file you just extracted. It will be named "Track 02.tao". Rename it to "Track 02.mpg". If you had the same luck I did, you will now have an mpeg-2 file containing the video you originally extracted from the SVCD (minus, perhaps, a couple of frames at the very end - I couldn't tell that anything was actually missing in my test)

13. Open Nero again, and start a new SVCD compilation. Drag the "Track 02.tao" file into the compilation window, then burn the SVCD to CD-R. This CD-R will be the real deal, so you can use CD-R (although you might want to practice by burning to CD-RW or yet another image file first).

I hope this works for you. And next time burn the complete image!

cfitz

P.S. I used Nero 5.5.9.17 and IsoBuster 1.1

[Squirtle]

Tried that but Nero said the second track was too large to fit on the CD, even with a 90min CD-R.

I tried burning to the image recorder but that doesn't allow you to append tracks.

Also tried using VCDGear to convert the .nrg file to mpeg but that didn't work either, it said it couldn't find the mpeg file within the second track.

I'm totally at a loss what to do now, you'd think if Nero lets you save data tracks like this you'd be able to burn them back to CD.

[cfitz]

Tried that but Nero said the second track was too large to fit on the CD, even with a 90min CD-R.

Did you enable overburning?

I tried burning to the image recorder but that doesn't allow you to append tracks.

Yes, that is why I suggested writing to CD-RW.

Also tried using VCDGear to convert the .nrg file to mpeg but that didn't work either, it said it couldn't find the mpeg file within the second track.

I also haven't had any luck trying to extract the mpeg directly from the Track No02.nrg file.

I'm totally at a loss what to do now, you'd think if Nero lets you save data tracks like this you'd be able to burn them back to CD.

You certainly would, wouldn't you? This "functionality" seems to be a one-way street: sure you can rip a track to .nrg file, but then you can't do a damn thing with that file. Maybe it works okay for simple data tracks.

I will let this simmer in my mind, and if I think of anything else I will post it, so check back. Sorry I couldn't help so far.

cfitz

P.S. I know this is somewhat futile, but did you at least go through the motions of submitting a help request to Nero?

[cfitz]

Okay, I thought I tried this combination before and it didn't work, but maybe I didn't. Anyway, it seems to be working now and is easier and cleaner than my earlier procedure:

1. Open Nero and choose the image recorder as the burner

2. Burn the image file "Track No02.nrg" to a new image file (call it "recover.nrg" just for the purposes of clarifying these instructions).

3. Close Nero,

4. Mount "recover.nrg" using Nero ImageDrive

5. Open IsoBuster, and select Track 01 from Session 1 from the mounted recover.nrg image.

6. Right-click "Extract Track 01"-> "Extract User Data (*.tao, *.iso, *.wav)"

7. This time there should be no errors at all

8. Find the extracted "Track 01.tao" file, and rename it to "Track 01.mpg". You now have the original mpeg2 file that was on the SVCD.

I hope this variant works for you this time.

cfitz

[Squirtle]

Yeah, enabled overburning up to 99minutes

Tried doing it on a 80min CD-RW & failed to resorted to a 90min, that also failed

I also emailed Nero's tech support section 2/3 days prior to posting here. No reply then & none still now.

Nightmare.

[cfitz]

I also emailed Nero's tech support section 2/3 days prior to posting here. No reply then & none still now.

Two or three days?!? My, you are living in a dream world... You will be lucky to get a reply in two or three weeks.

In the mean time, please give my revised procedure a try.

cfitz

[Squirtle]

Well f**k me! It worked!!!

Thanks sooo much mate! When I first saw that last method I thought, no way, that looks like such a bodge but it worked without a hitch! Amazing!

If there's ever anything I can do to return the favour gimmie a shout.

Just out of interest, how did you know to try that? Was it something you've done before or just an idea you had?

[Squirtle]

With regard to the burning the image as an image bit ... how did that work? Did it just kind of encompass the track in the shell of a disc? (If you know what I mean.)

[cfitz]

Just out of interest, how did you know to try that? Was it something you've done before or just an idea you had?

<snip>

With regard to the burning the image as an image bit ... how did that work?

It was just an idea I had - I had never done it before. In fact, I had never saved a track with Nero before or used IsoBuster at all. (The fact that someone who has never used the program before can download it and immediately put it to good use is really a testament to the author of IsoBuster. I am often amazed and pleased with the utilities people create.)

Anyway, my thinking was that the .nrg files created by saving a track aren't complete CD images and must be missing some information that would be required to create a complete CD. Thus, other programs such as IsoBuster don't know what to do with them.

Rather than figuring out what exactly the missing information is, I thought I would just let Nero take the saved track .nrg file (which it presumably knows how to handle) and burn it into a complete .nrg image file that does contain all the required information. Then third-party utilities like IsoBuster would be able to make sense of it.

The really weird thing is that opening recover.nrg directly as a file from IsoBuster doesn't cut it. You need to mount it with ImageDrive and access the simulated disc. Apparently ImageDrive is doing something special to help out. But on the other hand it isn't doing everything, because mounting "Track No02.nrg" directly in ImageDrive and trying to extract the mpg from that simulated disc using IsoBuster doesn't work either.

Well, that was my thinking. I can't say whether or not it is completely accurate, but at least it allowed you to get done what you needed to get done. I consider everything that I have told you here to be nothing but work-arounds, but I'm glad I could help anyway. Sometimes a work-around is all that is needed.

cfitz

[Squirtle]

Good thinking

Thanks again mate, I'm very grateful.

[Squirtle]

Finally got a reply back from them ...

Hallo,

save tracks is for Audio ripping not fot other Dataformats.

Cheerful regards

Vjekoslav Katic
technical support manager

Ahead Software AG

-----Ursprungliche Nachricht-----
Von: --- --- [mailto:---.---@ntlworld.com]
Gesendet: Mittwoch, 20. November 2002 09:03
An: techsupport@nero.com
Betreff: Burning Multiple Data Tracks


Hi,

Yesterday I used the 'Save Track' feature of your program to save a SVCD
disc to my harddrive. This created two .nrg files for tracks 1 and 2.

My question is, how do I go about burning these back to a CD? There
doesn't seem to be support for it.

Thanks,

---.

Yeah, thanks a lot.

[Spazmogen]

And that's what www.cdrlabs.com is all about: members helping members.

Well done cfitz.

Thanks for the 2 links you provided too. I'm getting back into S/VCD's after being away from them for about 2 years.

[cfitz]

Finally got a reply back from them ...

Well, at least we know a little bit more about that particular feature now. Thanks for sharing their belated response.

Thanks for the 2 links you provided too. I'm getting back into S/VCD's after being away from them for about 2 years.

You are welcome. Can I direct S/VCD questions your way now?

cfitz