Grafburn cd burner - new version 0.10.1

[Nathan F]

Version-0.8 is available, but is only for Puppy-2.14 unless you also install Plinej's upgraded ffmpeg package.

ftp://texasangel.org/pub/puppy/pet/Grafburn-0.8.pet
from the changelog:
0.8 -
* Added decoding support for mp4 and m4a via faad2
* Added decoding for wma format
* Simplified the existing code in the audio encoding stage
* Removed the rox popup window from the audio cd creation stage
* Updated some dialog windows and main help
* Now packaged in PET format
I also fixed one or two other small bugs. You can now call grafburn from the command line, which was broken before (the main window would appear, but would not do anything else). During audio conversion, if one of the files does not decode or encode properly the source file will be retained, where is was deleted in previous versions. If you want to try out the m4a and mp4 support you will have to install faad2. Check elsewhere in the forum, there are a couple of different packages available for it. I was going to add support for aac decoding also but it failed with all of the aac files I tried, let me know if there are any failueres with mp4 or m4a.

Nathan

[zigbert]

Nathan. Thanks for your reply. I'll check it out.

Sigmund

[Nathan F]

Somewher along the line I introduced a bug in the burning and blanking dialogs, so I have to release a bugfix. The bug, found by Yogi here on the forum, causes Grafburn to complain that the drive is already mounted, because it cannot find the correct drive. I also made one or two minor improvements while at it but nothing earth shaking.

ftp://texasangel.org/pub/puppy/pet/grafburn-0.9.pet

Note that this bug is reproducable 100% of the time in the 0.8 version so if you have any intention of using Grafburn you must upgrade.

Nathan

[kevs]

Tried new version in 2.14 - most impressed. Simple interface and I could make an audio CD easily from wav file.

Pleasing feature coud set speed for CD to 48x and got a fast repro.

SMALL REQUEST - could the DVD speed chooser be enlarged please to 8x and maybe 16x to allow for the new disks and drives My DVD can write at 8x given suitable disks.

This looks and feels like the burner I have been looking for.

Thanks for the excellent work.

[Nathan F]

could the DVD speed chooser be enlarged please to 8x and maybe 16x

Yes, that's an easy one to implement. For now you could add it to your configuration manually byt editing $HOME/.config/grafburnrc and replacing whatever speed setting is there with the one you want.

I've been working on a lot of other things lately but am still tinkering a bit here and there with Grafburn. The latest work involves direct copy from one disk drive to another, but it will take some doing to get it right because there is no one command line tool that can do this right in every case. It requires cdrdao to copy an audio cd, which is not in Puppy, so I have to set it up to determine what is on the disk and react accordingly. Without cdrdao you will have to rip the disk to wav first. Data cd's are not so much of a problem.

Anyway, when I do upload a new version I will include the additional speed settings.

Nathan

[WhoDo]

ftp://texasangel.org/pub/puppy/pet/grafburn-0.9.pet

Note that this bug is reproducable 100% of the time in the 0.8 version so if you have any intention of using Grafburn you must upgrade.

Thanks, Nathan. It's in Puppy 2.15CE Alpha being uploaded this weekend.

Cheers

UPDATE: Oops! Spoke too soon. Grafburn-0.9.pet won't install in Puppy 2.15CE (2.14 core). Ran it several times. I elect to install at the dialogue and PETget manager appears to start but then aborts shortly thereafter. Any ideas?

UPDATE2: Curiouser and curiouser? PETget didn't register Grafburn-0.9 but when I run Pupbegone it tells me Grafburn-0.9 is installed and gives me the option to remove it!?!?

[Nathan F]

Not sure if this is the package or the installer at this point, WhoDo. I'd just copy the files manually to be sure at this point. Since Grafburn is now part of Puppy perhaps I should release updates as a dotpup that does not register with the package manager from this point forward? Maybe.

Nathan

[WhoDo]

Not sure if this is the package or the installer at this point, WhoDo. I'd just copy the files manually to be sure at this point. Since Grafburn is now part of Puppy perhaps I should release updates as a dotpup that does not register with the package manager from this point forward? Maybe.

Turns out that Grafburn-0.9 most definitely IS installed. The help file, where I usually go to check the version number, is showing 0.8, but the included change log clearly shows it is 0.9

I have no idea why it isn't registering with PETget. Dotpups created with MU's dotpup wizard are being registered, and other dotpets have found their way into the list. It's a mystery alright.

Main thing is that the update is in the Puppy 2.15 CE Alpha for this weekend. We can worry about the other stuff for the first Beta.

Thanks again, mate.

[Nathan F]

Sure thing. I may release a minor update with only one or two enhancements, but not for another couple days. One minor bug and a feature request. Feel free to use 0.9 though, it seems to be solid as a rock in most ways.

Nathan

[Nathan F]

I've uploaded version 0.9.1 to the first post in this thread. This is minor update in some ways. I fixed two small bugs in the preferences and iso creation stages for better reliability. I also added 8x and 16x speed setting for burning dvd's, for those with really new hardware.

In another respect this is a major update, however. I included the prototype function to enable direct copying from one disk drive to another. It is also possible to copy a disk if you only have one drive.

If you have two drives available then this can function in two ways. The preferred method is using cdrdao, which can be installed via petget or another package I created recently. This is the fastest method, and the only way to copy an audio cd. Audio cd's do not have a filesystem and cannot be mounted or otherwise read in a normal fashion, so they must be ripped first using either Pbcdripper or another similar application. However, cdrdao can directly copy the data from an audio cd to a blank disk in another drive.

If you do not have cdrdao installed you can still copy data cd's and dvd's (not yet sure about dvd video), but it will happen in two steps and so be a little slower. First it will use dd to copy all of the data off the source disk into a temporary iso file, and then it will call Grafburn's existing burning script to burn the iso. In this case, unlike other cases, the iso is deleted after burning.

Basically, to get the most out of the copy function I highly recommend installing cdrdao.

If you only have one drive available then Grafburn can still do a copy, provided it is not an audio cd. For audio cd's you will have to rip the tracks first. This is a limitation of the command line tools available and the fact that an audio cd has no filesystem. For data cd's it will function the same as if you were running without cdrdao installed, that is it goes in two steps.

This is in no way a finished stable release in light of the new functions, so I would recommend against adding it to our CE edition for the time being, at least until some testing has been done. In all other respects the application is finally approaching what I would consider a 1.0 release. I released it in dotpup form again because it is now part of Puppy as of 2.14, so it is best to install it this way so as not to confuse the package manager. The dotpup does register with petget but has a slightly different name so it should be left alone, but you will have to uninstall it first before installing the next update. I also created an unleashed tarball for use in Puppy-unleashed.

As usual, bug reports here are appreciated as well as any other feedback. In particular please let me know how the copying feature works for you since that is brand new.

Nathan

[WhoDo]

This is in no way a finished stable release in light of the new functions, so I would recommend against adding it to our CE edition for the time being, at least until some testing has been done.

Agreed. I will wait to hear from you that you believe it is stable enough to be included before adding it to the Beta.

Thanks, Nathan.

[Jeff]

Any chance of adding under Prefs button option a line for El-torito disk images (*.img) within the directory to be burnt. And then an option to burn that directory as is - I tend to use a file manager to set up the directory first.

Regards
Jeff.

[Nathan F]

El-Torito - I could look into it but make no promises how long it will take me to add. I need to study how it is done first.

I could also let the user decide not to have the window pop open, that makes a lot of sense. Once you know how the program works you wilkl probably always set ip up beforehend anyway.

Nathan

[mrpeabody]

Anybody using grafburn for audio cds? I have been trying to make an audio (wav) cd, using the "audio" mode of grafburn. (Apparently it still burns in the "iso" format.) The files seem to be on the disk, but my Bose player can't read the disk.

I did have some success with mp3 files, using grafburn. However, that was using the "data" mode of grafburn, not the "audio" mode. My Bose player was able to find the mp3 files, even though in the "iso" format.

Hope you can make sense of this confusing post!

Thanks in advance.

[Nathan F]

The audio functions are a bit primitive but they work for me. That does not mean I don't want to improve them. However, if you scan the thread you will notice that more than half of the posts are mine, meaning I have not had near enough testers for this. If you're willing to put a little effort into testing it I'm willing to put some effort into improving it.

As far as the status right now, here are some tips.

• * To burn a normal audio cd you must have a directory with nothing but audio files, anyother files at all, or any unsupported formats and it will revert back to "iso" mode.
  * The tracks must either be wav files or they must be converted to wav as part of the process. Currently Grafburn can handle mp3 and ogg without additional programs. Other formats can be handled with additional codecs.

The most likely reason I can see for the program reverting to "iso" mode is that there might be something like an album cover in the same directory as the audio files. I can thinkof a couple ways to code around this but that is how it is implemented at this point in time.

Nathan

[mrpeabody]

here's what's happening: when I select "audio" mode, and step through the choices, when it gets to the point where it tries to burn the cd- a console-type window comes up. Almost immediately, the window disappears. So I assume it is giving me an error message, but no time to read it.

Using ^S I managed to see some of the message, but not the last few lines. It seems to be invoking cdrecord, which I had trouble with before with this same USB burner. It does recognize my h/w (model) but says: cdrecord: There are unsettled issues with Linux-2.5 and newer. Try Linux-2.4 or Solaris. (I am running Puppy 2.14)

Funny thing is, it seems to blank the cd ok, and seems to make the iso disk ok. Do they use a different driver?

Thanks-
Scott

[Nathan F]

No it is using the same 'driver', but cdrecord is being invoked a different way. Try this in the console and let me know what happens.

Code: Select all

cdrecord -pad -v dev=[yourburner] -dao speed=[yourspeed] [path_to_directory]/*.wav

Replace everything in the brackets with appropriate values for your setup, ie 'dev=/dev/hdc' and 'speed=4'.

This is the command grafburn is using to burn an audio cd, which as I said is working on my machine. But cdrecord is known to be a bit flaky and has in fact been forked by the Debian developers because of various issues. If we can't get it working reliably I may add in code to use cdrdao rather than cdrecord, if it is installed. Of course it could be thatI might just have to adjust the script somewhere.

Nathan

[mrpeabody]

Thanks Nathan- here's what I got:

cdrecord: Drive does not support SAO recording
cdrecord: Try -raw option
cdrecord: Illegal write mode for this drive

BTW- its an HP CD-Writer+ 8290

[Nathan F]

Try this. Replace the '-dao' part of the command with '-raw' and see what that does.

Nathan

[mrpeabody]

It works!