A set of scripts for archiving audio CDs built around cdrdao.
- Carl Wilson [email protected]
- Toni Sant [email protected]
This project is supported by a SPRUCE award.
arcCD is designed to archive at risk and decaying audio data on CDs. Such a process involves the development of a workflow model to ensure that the data on the audio CDs being archived is preserved in the most appropriate way for long-term storage and easy access for further use.
The workflow model proposed through early adoption of arcCD on a relatively small collection of mainly hand-made audio CDs, includes the following steps:
- Disk Imaging (stabilizing the data)
- Cataloguing
- Data Ripping (normalising the data)
- Catalogue access
arcCD addresses the first two steps in this workflow model and provides all the necessary preparation for ingest of the stabilized data into a catalogue, along with normalized versions of the indivual audio files on each CD being preserved.
[x] This is the first process executed by arcCD. A disk image is created as a BIN file with a unique ID assigned by the arcCD user.
[x] Initial meta data is derived from an INFO file created by the arcCD user containing the disk title, artist name, and individual track titles. This is compared to a TOC file generated by cdrdao for the BIN file created during the process of disk imaging.
[ ] arcCD combines the information from the respective individual TOC and the INFO files into a CUE file containing all the essetial metadata for the BIN file. The current version does not do this.
[ ] Individual BWAV files are created from the BIN file through a bchunk process.
[ ] This step in the work flow relates to the way/s an end user will browse and/or search the catalogue. An initial exploriation on this is being conducted by Darren Stephens at the University of Hull's Scarborough Campus ([email protected]), who is developing a way for the CUE files related to the individual BIN files to generate wiki pages outputting all the essential metadata associated with each disk image in a human readable user-friendly format.
All files processed by arcCD are placed in a folder called arcCD in the user's default music folder.
arcCD performs a checksum on all the files created during the imaging and ripping process to ensure data integrity throughout the process.