How To Create/Burn ISOs and VCDs

Let's start with the basics and assume you know nothing about ISOs. I guess the first thing your asking is: What is an ISO anyway? Well, literally ISO stands for International Standards Organization but that name tells you nothing. Suffice it to say that this committee came up with Standards by which CDs could be measured and therefore would work world-wide. Now when we refer to ISOs, it's in the sense of "an exact duplicate copy of a CD". That's right! An exact copy that can then be burned on to a new disk. ISOs come in 2 main forms (with a third less common form): the .iso form and the .bin/.cue form. The third less common form comes from Nero Burning Rom Software, but I won't go into that here since it's rare in the ISO world. As should be noted, .iso comes in 1 single file and .bin/.cue comes in 2 files. The .cue file holds the track information about the .bin file that will get burned. You can edit the .cue file using a simple text editor like Notepad. This may become necessary on occasion when the person who has created the .bin file left a location to the .bin which doesn't exist on your harddrive. Please see down below in the burning section for more details. Also note that the size of the file does NOT MATTER. You CAN burn a file bigger than 650MB!!! As long as the file isn't longer than 74 minutes (Audio files may appear big but once they are burned they compress in size). Now let's get to the meat and potatoes of burning!

To start with, you should be familiar with some common software and what it can do:

1. CDRWin - Used to produce .bin/.cue files and to burn these files onto CD. Should be noted that earlier versions of the software work better than the newest as the cracks are very unstable for the newer versions.

2. Fireburner - Used to produce .iso files and to burn .bin/.cue files onto CD. Much more stable than CDRWin and the new version comes with a built-in utility called BinChunker which will allow you to extract files out of the .bin file.

3. EZ CD Creator - Can directly burn .iso files right to CD. Can also create .iso files from CDs.

4. Nero Burning ROM - Another program which can burn .iso files and create them as well.

How To Burn An ISO Image

A. Working with .iso files

1. All that is necessary is to open your favorite CD Burning Software (EZ CD Creator, Nero Burning Rom, WinOnCD, etc.) and tell the program you wish to create a Data CD (some programs you'll tell that you are creating an ISO). Direct the program to the .iso file and tell the program to start burning. These programs recognize the .iso form and will burn the CD with the correct contents. It's that easy!

1. First with FireBurner: Open the program and click on the Visual Cue Burner/BinChunker words. When the new window opens, right-click the blank new window and choose the Load Tracks From *.CUE option. Guide the program to the .cue file and choose OPEN. The program loads the file to the screen. Again, right-click the file and choose the Burn/Test Burn option. Uncheck the Test Burn choice on the resulting window to skip the testing, choose OK and away you go!

2. Now with CDRWin: Open the program and click the Record Disc button. Now click the Load Cuesheet button found on the new window. After the Cuesheet has loaded, simply click the Start Recording button and away you go! (you may also wish to change some of your settings, but that's for advanced users who don't need this tutorial)

I've Done What You Said But I Get An ERROR!

So you got an error ey? Sometimes this happens due to the cue file that was created. Here Are 2 common errors and how to correct them:

Unable to load cuesheet. File XXX.bin not found. - This error (the wording might be slightly different in the two programs but easy enough to recognize) is caused by a faulty .cue file. To correct it, open the .cue file using Notepad. Look for the line which reads FILE "C:\Dir\XXX.bin" BINARY. The guilty culprit is the C:\Dir\XXX.bin portion. Simply edit it to read FILE "XXX.bin" BINARY without the drive letter or directory. Just make sure that the .bin and .cue files are located IN THE SAME DIRECTORY.

Cuesheet Error on Line #. Previous File not a multiple of the specified blocksize!! - This error could have 2 causes. The first is simple...check to make sure that the .bin file is in the same directory as the .cue file! The second cause is more serious...it means your .bin file is corrupt. Let's go into a little discussion about modes and blocksizes and you'll see where this error arises from.

Basic principles about ISOs: Data and Audio tracks on an ISO are stored differently. Just as on any CD which contains both types of information, the Data portion is the first Track followed by 1 or more Audio tracks. The data is stored in one of two forms: Mode1 or Mode2. Mode1 data has blocks in the size of either 2048 bytes (Cooked) or 2352 bytes (RAW). This type of data comes from standard CDROM Model. Mode2 data comes from CDROM-XA Model and can be in sizes of either 2336 bytes or 2352 bytes. When you look at the .cue file when it's loaded you will see which mode is being used and the number of blocks of data. This is how the program keeps track of the size of the .bin file (and which method to use to burn it). If you see for example (a simple example for sure) that you have a Mode2/2352 ISO and the number of blocks is 10000, then the program knows that the ISO should be 23,520,000 bytes big. So, if the program doesn't find the right size....then you get the error above and it means your .bin file is corrupt. Don't worry! When you create an ISO file, the correct mode will be chosen based on the CD your copying.

How To Create An ISO Image

I prefer to use CDRWin for this function, but Fireburner works just as well. CDRWin instructions note when something is specific for PSX Game backup copying.

CDRWin:

1. Open program and choose Extract Disc/Tracks/Sectors to Image File button.

2. On the next screen use these settings:
a. Extract Mode: Disc Image/Cuesheet
b. CD Reader: The appropriate CDROM which contains the disc to copy recommend using your burner to extract from since it catches more hidden sectors, etc better than the normal CDROM drive
c. Image Filename: C:\Dir\XXX.bin (wherever you want to put it and name it...as long as the name is 8 characters or less and uses the .bin extension)
d. Reading Options Section:
I. RAW
II. Error Recovery: Ignore
III. Jitter Correction: Disable
IV. Subcode Analysis: Auto if you have a single Mode 1/Mode 2 track (shown in the track window to the left) or a single Mode 2 Track with 1 Audio track. Fixed if you have multiple Audio Tracks present.
V. Data Speed: 1X recommended for PSX games Max for other CDs
VI. Audio Speed: 1X recommended for PSX games Max for other CDs
VII. Read Retry Count: 50

3. Hit START and away you go!

Fireburner: (creates .iso files)

1. Copy the contents of the CD to your Hard Drive

2. Open program and choose File System Builder

3. Drag and Drop all files and folders from the hard drive (Explorer) into the Fireburner window that opens

4. Click the Build ISO 9660 File System

5. Save to the desired directory, with the desired filename (.iso)

6. Click OK and away you go!

Make sure that you get a complete burn free of errors before doing anything with the file(s). Now you may wish to use WinRAR to split the huge file into 15MB files (see WinRAR for instructions) so you can distribute these files. Also use an SFV program to record the CRC checks of all rar files when your done so folks can check their files for accuracy. Please note that this tutorial is the way I do things. Doesn't mean that's it's the absolute best way to do things or the right or wrong way. It's MY way :) Hope it helps you out! Any questions or changes to this tutorial should be emailed to me (see my profile for my email address)

Now On To Burning VCDs

This section will introduce you to burning different types of VCD formats onto disk. First let me start by introducing you to the different formats. Available at the moment on the scene (and able to be burned onto CD) are: .mpg (otherwise known as MPEG), .dat, and .bin (yes the dread .bin hiding files again !!). All the information presented here can be found at VCD Helper, a nice site with great info. So onto the burning!

1. Burning an .mpg image

A. Using EZ CD Creator:
1. Launch Video CD Creator. Not Easy CD Creator!!
2. Under "Edit" choose "Add Item". Select your .mpg-file. Click "Ok".
3. A box will appear on the left with your .mpg file. Drag the box and drop it on the right hand pane (under Contents of Video CD Layout, the Sequences tab).
4. Before creating the CD, make sure that you have free discspace! You will need the size of the .mpg in free discspace!!!! (often more than 500MB!!) You can change the path to where the tempfile is stored. Default is c:\windows\temp. The tempfile path can be configured under "File" -> "Preferences".
5. Choose "Create CD from Layout..." under "Video CD".
6. The CD Creation Setup window will popup, configure your burning and hit "OK"!! IMPORTANT: Before hitting "OK" check that the CD being created is two or more tracks under "Summary". If it is only one track it is not a true VCD, and must be repaired. See Repairing an .mpg below for help.

B. Using Nero Burning Rom v4.0.5.0
1. Launch the Nero program, close the Wizard, and select "File" -> "New".
2. Select "VideoCD" and click "New".
3. Locate your .mpg file in the File Browser pane and drag and drop it over to the lower pane on the Video1 left side (the Track, Time, etc. pane).
4. Check the time. It should be exact same as the movie.
5. Rename the CD anything you'd like by clicking on New under the Video1 window then pressing F2.
6. When ready to burn, choose "File" -> "Write CD".

2. Burning a .dat image

A. All that is necessary is to first convert the .dat to an .mpg file by using VCDGear and then burning it by one of the methods above.

3. Burning a .bin image

A. You can use CDRWin or Fireburner as mentioned above in ISOs to burn these directly onto the CD OR you can convert the .bin file to a .mpg using VCDGear. You simply open VCDGear, drag and drop the .cue file into the InputFile box, choose the directory and name (.mpg) to store the new file, and click the Convert button. You can even edit the .cue directly in VCDGear with the Edit Cue File button. IMPORTANT NOTE: If you're using any version of VCDGear prior to v1.5 then you must edit the .cue file to remove any line which starts with FLAGS.

Repairing an .mpg file

To repair an .mpg file, try the steps listed below. They contain links to the programs mentioned.

1. Check if the .mpg is a renamed .dat by renaming the .mpg to .dat and try to convert it using VCDGear. If it fails it is an .mpg

2. Always try different burningprograms to burn the .mpg with. If one doesn't work, try another one.

3. Try to fix the .mpg with MPEG-Corrector. Just open your mpg and try to make a new working (hopefully!) one.

4. Try to fix the .mpg with VCDGear. Use -mpg2mpg -fix.

5. Try to fix the .mpg with iFilmEdit 1.4.5+, just insert the mpg file and hit "Record" then "Make".

6. If nothing of the above works and you really want the .mpg to be a true VCD you have to use Panasonic MPEG Encoder and re-encode your movie into REAL VCD-format. Just open your .mpg file and select VCD format(PAL or NTSC) and hit "Encode". It will probably take many many hours...