Combining tracks from SCP images

[radiorama]

Sorry if this is the wrong thread. Is there a way to mix tracks taken from two or more .scp images into another .scp image?

Thanks,
R.

[danielj]

Sorry if this is the wrong thread. Is there a way to mix tracks taken from two or more .scp images into another .scp image?

Worth a new topic as it's not really related to the other. I don't think so directly, HOWEVER, if you use the HxC software to convert your SCPs into kryoflux stream format, each track is a separate file. You can then mix/match those and convert it back.

There may be a native way of doing it, but I'm not aware of it. I'll have a bit of a dig.

[radiorama]

Worth a new topic as it's not really related to the other. I don't think so directly, HOWEVER, if you use the HxC software to convert your SCPs into kryoflux stream format, each track is a separate file. You can then mix/match those and convert it back.

There may be a native way of doing it, but I'm not aware of it. I'll have a bit of a dig.

A very good idea, but I tried and found that all the flakey bits are lost (red bars in HxC) and tracks become somewhat shorter, resulting in higher reported rpm.

Best,
Carlo

[danielj]

Red bars in HxC are usually splices on sector or track? Quite likely these will be lost. Can you post a picture of what goes south? I'll ask in the greaseweazle group as I'm quite interested to see if there's a sensible way of doing this.

[radiorama]

Jeff the author of HxC told me that red bars mark flakey/non-flux areas. They aren't usually a problem when they are isolated, and you will tipically find several of them on good tracks. This is an scp direct from disk:

This is the same disk image converted to KryoFlux and back to SCP. The red marks were already lost with the KF conversion. The track length got a bit shorter with each of the two conversions.

C.

[danielj]

Oh, ok - yes, they're where there are splices (i.e. where a sector has been re-written). Those aren't anything to do with any protection (you'd see red sectors if they were, or other oddness). Nothing to worry about them vanishing, they're essentially being cleaned up by the conversions. You can tell it to change the bitrate if things are going a bit wonky to try and even things up? I often find the "disk" view easier to see what's going on across the entire image.

[radiorama]

My wish is to maintain as faithful an image as possible across conversions. I have different images made of the same disk, none of them perfect, but I have at least one good read of each track. My goal is to put together a good image by combining tracks from different reads. For maximum faithfulness to the original, I'd like the tracks to be transferred as-is.

Best,
Carlo.

[danielj]

My wish is to maintain as faithful as possible an image across conversions. I have different images made of the same disk, none of them perfect, but I have at least one good read of each track. My goal is to put together a good image by combining tracks from different reads. For maximum faithfullness to the original, I'd like the tracks to be transferred as-is.

Those red lines are generated by the HxC software's algorithm. Them not being there does not mean that you don't have a faithful copy. HxC's renderer isn't perfect - in fact sometimes it claims sectors are unreadable which are fine etc. I'm fairly sure only way you'd get those red marks replicated is if you wrote the sectors in the order they were re-written on the disk. I'll see if I can get Keir to pop onto this thread and lend his wisdom to things!

d.

[danielj]

Right - from Kier: use gw convert to convert the tracks, eg: gw convert a.scp a.00.0.raw

Then you should be able to use it the other way around and convert back.

d.

[radiorama]

Brilliant! I hadn't explored gw's convert option and had no idea it was so powerful. Once again, hats off to Keir!

C.