Communicating with the CD Burner
Burning ISO Multi-Session CDs
Erasing with cdrecord
Extracting Audio with cdda2wav
Copying CDs & CD-ROMs
Using X-CD-Roast
Using X-CD-Roast to burn Multi-session CDs
Automating cdrecord
Automating CD disengagement
Notes on Installation of Programs
Communicating with the CD Burner
The first difficulty in using cdrecord involves communicating with the CD burner. For an internal CD-RW or Combo drive on the Mac, you won't need to indicate driver, but for other Cd burners, you might. Enter the following command to determine what burners are supported by cdrecord:
cdrecord driver=help
Then to use the driver with cdrecord, include the following with your command-line arguments:
cdrecord driver=[name of driver] ...
Whether your burner requires the driver argument or not, it will require a target argument. To get it to work, you have to add "dev=[name of device]." The following command, which erases a CD rewritable disc, works on flat panel iMac with a built in CD-RW drive:
cdrecord blank=fast dev=IOCompactDiscServices
For the combo drive, use the following command:
cdrecord blank=fast dev=IODVDServices
Superdrives usually don't work with cdrecord. For other burners, try the following command:
cdrecord dev=help
On my flat-panel iMac, the terminal spits out the following information with I run the above command:
Cdrecord 1.11a40 (powerpc-apple-macosx6.2)
Copyright (C) 1995-2002 Jorg Schilling
Supported SCSI transports for this platform:
Transport name: SCSITaskDeviceInterface
Transport descr.: Apple SCSI
Transp. layer ind.:
Target specifier: Mac Prom device name
Target example: IOCompactDiscServices/0
SCSI Bus scanning: not supported
Open via UNIX device: not supported
Transport name: RSCSI
Transport descr.: Remote SCSI
Transp. layer ind.: REMOTE:
Target specifier: rscsi@host:bus,target,lun
Target example: REMOTE:rscsi@host:1,2,0
SCSI Bus scanning: supported
Open via UNIX device: not supported
The first line beginning with "Target example" usually provides the information needed. In the case of my computer, it is IOCompactDiscServices/0. The "/0 can be ignored.
Burning iso multi-session cds
Although theoretically you can burn multi-session data CDs in Mac OS X using Disc Copy, the resulting CDs will appear as multiple discs on your desktop — not an ideal situation, to be sure. The Open Source unix program cdrecord is a much better choice — provided you have an internal burner. (The following is partially based on a hint published anonymously at macosxhints.com.)
When you install cdrecord (via fink), several other programs come with it, including mkisofs, which we will need to burn a multi-session ISO data CD. First, create a folder on your Desktop entitled "DataCD." Place all the files you wish to burn to the CD in this file. Change the working directory of your terminal to your Desktop (i.e., enter cd Desktop). Now enter the following command:
mkisofs -J -R -V DataCD1 -o session1.iso DataCD
This will create an ISO image file of the DataCD directory entitled, appropriately enough, "DataCD1." When it's done, you can test the image by mounting it on your desktop. Mount it using Disk Copy and then look inside to make sure it has all the files you want to burn on your CD. Also, check to make sure that the image is entitled "DataCD1."
Once this is accomplished, you can burn the first session of your data CD with the following command:
cdrecord -v driveropts=burnfree -multi -data -speed=4
-immed dev=IOCompactDiscServices session1.iso
This command, with all its arguments, needs to entered as one line! If you have a Combo drive, you will need to use "dev=IODVDServices." You may also want to record at a higher speed, though lower speeds are safer. The "driveropts=burnfree" option provides buffer underrun protection on supported burners. The -immed option helps prevent your system from freezing while fixating or blanking a CD.
Yet one other issue must be kept in mind: the Mac hfs+ file system and its concomitant nuissance, resource forks. Many files on Mac systems's, as is well known, have an addition "fork." Although cdrecord supports the Mac file system, you still may run into problems, especially if you're trying to make a disc that will be readable on Windows or Linux based-PCs. You can even run into problems saving certain kinds of Mac files. I've had trouble, for instance, with package files and carbon-based installers. There are all sorts of complex strategies that you can use to try to get around this (see the cdrecord man pages for more info), but these are beyond the scope of this modest tutorial. There are a few tricks you can use, however, to secure the integrity of your files. It's a good idea, whenever burning any kind of installers or carbon-based applications to disc, to tar and compress them with an application like DropStuff. Having files in this form usually does the trick. Otherwise, if you save, for example, the installer to a Carbon Application, it will be rendered useless, just a heap of pointless files.
When the time comes to burn a second session on your disc, things get a bit more complicated. In the first place, cdrecord cannot access non-blank discs on its own. These discs are controlled by the Mac GUI. To disengage the CD from the Mac GUI, you have to dismount it, either using Disk Utility or the terminal. With the terminal, you need the disktool command and the bsdname of the mounted CD-Rom. To get the bsdname, try the df command and look for the line /dev/disk[?]0 in the output. The disk[?] will be the bsdname, i.e., /dev/disk2s0 would provide a bsdname of "disk2." Unmount the disk as follows:
disktool -u disk2 0
Any time you want to access a non-blank disc using either cdrecord or one of its sister tools, you will need to use this disktool command to disengage the disk from Mac OS X and unmount its image from the desktop.Now to burn the second session on the disc. When making your ISO image, the mkisofs program will need to read your data CD in order to know where to add the next session. This is done with the following command (make sure you unmount the CD first!):
cdrecord -msinfo dev=IOCompactDiscServices [or dev=IODVDService]
If you have burned only one session, you will get a zero and another, fairly large number — e.g.," 0,6789." If you have burned three or more sessions, you'll get two large numbers separated by a comma. You take these strings of number and place them in the following command:
mkisofs -J -R -o session2.iso -V [Volume Title]-M
IO[burner]Services -C [number string] [filename]
Again, this is entered all on one line. Let us suppose we ran the "cdrecord -msinfo" command and the output was "0,63734." I can make an ISO image of the directory DataCDs2 which I can append to my CD-R with the following command:
mkisofs -J -R -o -V SessionTwo session2.iso -M
IOCompactDiscServices -C 0,63734 DataCDs2
Once this point is reached, it is very simple to burn the appendage. The following command will work with any of Apple's built-in CD-RWs:
cdrecord -v driveropts=burnfree -multi -data -speed=4 -immed
dev=IOCompactDiscServices session2.iso
Given the complexity of the command-line syntax, some may conclude that it is more bother to use cdrecord and mkisofs to burn multi-session CDs than is worth the trouble. For this reason, I have put together a crude gui for cdrecord that works like a normal OS X program. You can download it here.
Erasing with cdrecord
Why would anyone want to use cdrecord to erase CD-RWs when it can be done so much easier with Disk Utility? Well, there are few things you can do with the cdrecord erase capabilities that you cannot do with Disk Utility. For example, suppose you want to transfer 50 MB worth of mp3 files to a friends computer. You have in your possession a multi-session CD-RW with 100 MB of free space. You append the 50 MB of mp3 files to your disc and take it over to your friend's house. He copies the files to his computer and gives you back the disc. Later you decide you don't want that extra 50 MB of mp3 files on your disc. Is there any way you get rid of them? Yes, using cdrecord, you can erase the last session. Once you have disengaged your disc from OS X, you can blank the last session with the following command:
cdrecord blank=session -immed dev=IOCompactDiscServices
In fact, using this method, you can blank all your sessions, starting from the most recent session until you work your way back to the first session. This is something you will never accomplish with Disk Utility or or even a commercial program like Roxio's Toast. Only cdrecord can pull off this trick.
If all you want to do is erase a CD-RW, the following command will work:
cdrecord blank=fast -immed dev=IOCompactDiscServices
This is only "minimally" erases the disc (although it should work fine). If you want a "complete" erase, try this command:
cdrecord blank=all -immed dev=IOCompactDiscServices
A word of warning about this blank=all version of the command. Whenever I've used it, it has caused cdrecord to more or less take over my entire computer for over 15 minutes, meaning I can't use it to do something else. So it is best to run it when you plan to be off doing something else.
Extracting audio with cdda2wav
Although iTunes is perfectly capable of fulfilling most your audio CD extraction needs, there are few little tricks that cdrecord's companion utility, cdda2wav, has up its sleeve that make it worth occasionally using it. Suppose you want to extract several tracks into a single audio file. Here iTunes will be of little use to you. But cdda2wav will get the job if you do as follows.
I have a disc that cuts up a single musical piece into 24 tracks. If I want to create a disc that contains the entire work on a single track, the only way to do is to extract all 24 tracks as a single audio file and burn that to another disc. Here's how it's done. First, enter the CD. Disengage it with the disktool command. (If this doesn't work, you may have to quit iTunes, which sometimes won't let go of the disc.) Run the following commands:
cd ~
cd Desktop/AudioThese commands cause the Audio folder to become your working directory. Now any files you extract will wind up in the Audio folder, which is where you want them. Now, to extract tracks 1 through 24 into a single file, run the following command:
cdda2wav -t 1+24 -Oaiff dev=IOCompactDiscServices
The key to this command is the option "-t 1+24." This is the part of the command that can be changed to make it fit your needs. If you want to only extract tracks 1 and 2 into a single file, run "-t 1+2"; tracks 3 through 7 can be extracted with "-t 3+7," etc. etc.
You can also extract in terms of seconds from start of CD. Suppose for whatever reason, you want to extract the first five minutes of a CD into a single file. Just run the following string of enigmatic syntax:
cdda2wav -d 300 -Oaiff dev=IOCompactDiscServices
When you run these commands, a file entitled "audio.aiff" will appear in your working directory. It is probably a good idea to change the name of this file when its finished extracting. Otherwise, if you run in extraction command in the same directory, your file will be overwritten. Unix always overwrites files with the same name, usually without giving so much as a shred of warning.
When you're finished, go ahead and burn the files with iTunes. If you want to use cdrecord, you will have to translate the aiff files into wav files. This can be done either with sox or by changing the "-Oaiff" option in the cdda2wav command to "-Owav." Then, to record at 4 speed, run the following command from the working directory of your wav files:
cdrecord -v driveropts=burnfree -immed -speed=4
dev=IOCompactDiscServices -audio *.wav
Incidentally, all audio CDs should burn at the slowest speed possible. Faster speeds can make them unplayable in certain players.
Copying complete CDs and CD-ROMs
There is nothing easier than to make a copy of a CD-ROM using Disk Copy. First, start Disk Copy and go to the "File" menu. Select from the "New" contextual menu "Image from Device." A window will emerge giving you several options: "disk0" "disk1" etc. Click on the arrow pointing at "disk1." You'll probably getting something like "disk1s1 CD_ROM_Mode _1" Select this line and press enter. This will make you an image of the CD-ROM. You can burn the image unto a disc using either Disc Copy or cdrecord. Then enter the following command:
cdrecord -speed=12 dev=IOCompactDiscServices [imagefile.dmg]
If you want to make an exact copy of an audio CD, the following commands will do the job. First, extract the audio into the "audio" directory with this command:
cdda2wav -B -Owav dev=IOCompactDiscServices
cdrecord -v driveropts=burnfree -immed -audio -dao
dev=IOCompactDiscServices -useinfo *.wav
The key to this command is the "-dao" option, which stands for disc-at-once, a command useful if you don't want little gaps to appear between tracks. If you have an audio CD that features track splices during the middle of a piece of music (not uncommon with classical CDs), recording in disc-at-once means that a gap won't appear when the music is copied and recorded on a CD-R.
Using X-CD-Roast
Recently, a GUI front-end for cdrecord, called X-CD-Roast, has appeared in the fink unstable archive. Although a so-called "unstable" and even "alpha" product, I have tested it and it appears to work fine. As of June, 2003, it even has the ability to communicate directly with your burner. Unlike with cdrecord, you don't have to keep dismounted discs from the desktop in order to use it! When X-CD-Roast opens, it confronts you with a little dialogue box, giving you the choice to stop the autodkismount-daemon (i.e., the background process that prevents cdrecord from accessing discs in your cd-rw drive):
If you decide to go ahead and kill the little autodiskmount-daemon, the following dialogue box will plaster itself on your screen, demanding your password:
Remove any CDs from your drive, enter your password, and let the program do its thing. Now X-CD-Roast has complete control of your CD-RW! The cdrecord engine that works behind X-CD-Roast's appallingly inaesthetic facade can now do what it damn pleases with the CD-Rs and CD-RWs you feed into its maw.
Are there any drawbacks in snuffing out the poor hapless autodiskmount-daemon? Well yes, there are. Your other programs, including your desktop, won't be able to access any discs you place in your drive. You may even have trouble opening your CD-RW tray — although your eject key on your keyboard should work. But if it doesn't, simply go to either the "Duplicate CD" or "Create CD" menus. There you will see, towards the upper right-hand corner, two buttons, an eject button and a load button. These buttons will enable you to controlyour CD-RW's loading tray.
After you have entered your password, X-CD-Roast will want you to set some critical preferences, so the program will know how you want it to behave. So go on over to the "Setup" menu, where you will see something along the lines as the following screenshot:
Under the various tabs, you will enter the proper settings for you CD-RW drive and select where X-CD-Roast will place the iso image files it creates. You will notice that it gives you a lot of options, including a "Use paranoia mode for audio" under the "CD Settings" tab and a "disc-at-once" mode under the "Options" tab. Of particular importance are the temporary image storage directory settings under the "HD Settings" tab and the "Tooltip help" button under the "Options" tab. Unless you set at least one temporary image storage directory, X-CD-Roast will not make iso images. The help option is also very useful in understanding what everything does and recommending how to use the various functions of the program. It enables pop-up windows whenever you put the cursor over a button or tab or other GUI functionality. When you're finished adding the settings you want, don't forget to click the "Save configuration" button before returning to the main menu.
After setting X-CD-Roast up, we can begin making our first data CD. At first, it might seem a little difficult, especially in comparison with OS X programs, which are somewhat more unintuitive. (X-CD-Roast may not be particularly intuitive, but at least it's free!)
In the main X-CD-Roast window, click on the "Create CD" button and, in the new menu, click on the "Master Tracks" button. Click on the "ISO9660 options" tab. You should see something like this:
Select the "Rock Ridge + Joliet" image type as show above. CD-R's burned using this configuration should be readable in computers afflicted with the Windows OS. Next, in OS X Finder, create a folder containing the files you wish to burn to a CD-R. Next, click on the "Master source" tab. You should see something like this:
Simply choose whichever folders you wish to burn onto disc in the "File/Directory view" window and click the "add" button. You will be greeted with the following dialogue box:
Choose the "Add with last path component" selection (otherwise, X-CD-Roast will duplicate the absolute path to the file on the CD-R that it burns, which I find extremely annoying). Then click on the "Create session/image" tab. You will be greeted with a window looking something like this:
Wait until it finishes calculating the size of your projected image. Then click the "Master to image file" button. X-CD-Roast will greet you with a dialogue box telling you when it has mastered successfully. After this task is completed, click on the "Write Tracks" button on the left side of X-CD-Roast window. Then click on the "Layout tracks" tab in the "Create CD" menu. Here's what you'll see on the screen:
Click on "track1-01.img" (or whatever your image is called) and click the "Add" button and the "Accept track layout" button. X-CD-Roast will confront you with the following menu:
The settings you want to check before you click the "Write tracks" button are, first of all, "CD-R/RW Type," secondly, "Write Mode" (use "Track-At-Once" for all data CDs), and thirdly, the "Create multi session CD" button. Then insert a blank CD-R/RW and let the program do its thing.
Using the cdda2wav paranoia library
Occassionally you want to extract audio from a CD that has somehow become damaged. You may have heard that in Linux, there is a progam called cdparanoia which helps the computers cd-rom make sense of corrupted data on the surface of a CD. Although cdparanoia has not been ported to Mac OS X, the extraction progam cdda2wav does have its own paranoia library which can easily be accessed through the X-CD-Roast interface. I've used it on a number of occassions to rip CDs borrowed from the Library and have found it to work remarkably well. Even when it can't take all the pops out, it minimizes them to such a degree that sometimes I have been able to remove them in an audio editing program such as SparkMe. As evidence, consider the following visual representations of two identical tracks, one extracted with iTunes, the other with X-CD-Roast. The iTunes one looks like this:
As you can see toward the middle of the file, there are all kinds of nasty pops and clicks. This is what the same files looks like when extracted using the paranoia libs:
This is much better. Not a single pop or click. Here we have a demonstration of why using Unix applications really can be worth the hassle.
Open the progam and go to the setup panel and click on the "CD Settings" tab. Go to the bottom entry that reads "Paranoia retries per sector" and move the slider all the way to the right. Make sure the "Use paranoia mode for audio" button is activated, as shown in the screenshot proved below:
Now insert the CD you wish to rip. Go to the "Create CD" panel and click on the "Read Tracks" button. Select the tracks you want to extract, then press the "Read selected tracks" button in the lower right-hand corner. X-CD-Roast will began extracting the selected tracks. You will find your tracks wherever you told X-CD-Roast to put them when you set up the program for the first time. You will also find two info files for every track you extract. Unless you plan to use X-CD-Roast or cdrecord to burn your extracted files on a CD, you don't need these info files and can destroy them in the terminal by first going to directory they have infested and then running the following command:
The rm command completely obliterates files (so be careful with it). The asterisk is a wildcard that stands for any sequence of zero or more files, so that all files in the terminal's working directory ending with the letters inf will be dispatched to the land of nothingness.
rm *inf
Using X-CD-Roast to
burn Multi-session CDs
Now, to burn an additional session in X-CD-Roast. Insert your cd then go to the "Create CD/Master Track" menu, disengage your CD and click on the "Update Session view." Add the files you wish to burn on the CD and click on the "Create session/image." Let the program calculate the size of session, then click the "Master to image to file" button. You should get a dialogue box asking whether you are creating a first session or an additional session. Choose, obviously, the "Additional session" button and go to the "Write Tracks" menu. Add your image to the "Tracks to write" window, accept the track layout and click on the "Write tracks" button. You will probably get the following dialogue box:
Normally, you shouldn't worry about this warning. X-CD-Roast is very fussy about multi-session burning. Any little change, however trivial, will cause it to emit this little yelp of protest. As long as it tells says you are trying to write a multi-session CD, you should be fine. Once more disengage your CD and click "Continue anyway." Hopefully, it will work. But just in case, you should probably do a few test runs on a CD-RW to make sure that your system does as well with the program as mine has.
If you play around with X-CD-Roast, you will soon appreciate how powerful an application it is. You can erase CD-RWs, delete CD-RW tracks, and pretty much inflict anything upon a poor hapless CD-R/RW that you desire to be inflicted.
One other feature that you may find useful. I prefer to give my CDs names. This is easily done in the "Create CD/ISO 9660" window, as shown below:
Just enter whatever title you like in the "Volume Id" text box before you master your image. That will give your CD the title of your choosing.
Automating cdrecord with shell scripts
We will start with a modest script that can be used to very easily erase CD-RW's. Go to the terminal and enter:
pico cderase
Now paste the following into the terminal, press <control-x>, <y>, and <enter>:
#!/bin/sh
disktool -u disk1 0
cdrecord blank=fast dev=IOCompactDiscServices
Obviously, if you have a combo drive, the last line will be <dev=IODVDServices. Once finished with the script, make it an executable file by entering the following command:
chmod +x cderaseIf it works, you can install it in one your "bin" directories, where it can be accessed by your terminal. This will usually require administrative privileges. For example, the following command will move the script into your /sw/bin directory:
Now you can test the script by placing a CD-RW in your drive and entering:
./cderase
sudo mv cderase /sw/bin
Now it should work simply by entering <cderase>. Using the same procedure, we can automate a number of cdrecord procedures and save ourselves the trouble of writing out the difficult and confusing syntax.
Next we will create a script that will erase the last recorded track on a cd-rw. Enter:
pico erase1
Now paste in the following simple script, press <control-x>, <y>, and <enter>:
Make the file executable with the chmod command. Then save the damn thing and move it to /sw/bin directory.#!/bin/sh
disktool -u disk1 0
cdrecord blank=session dev=IOCompactDiscServices
To automate some of the other functions of cdrecord, we will have to come up with somewhat more complicated scripts. But that will have to wait for another day.
Automating CD disengagement
What if you're nervous about temporarily snuffing out OS X's precious little autodiskmount-daemon? Well, then if you wish to use X-CD-Roast, your going to have to find another way to disengage your disc. There are, fortunately, at least a couple tricks that you can use to make your life a little easier if you choose to take this path. The first one, which you should use if Apple's X11 is your XWindows environment of choice, involves making an applescript application. Open the Applescript script editor and enter the line:
do shell script "disktool -u disk1 0"
Save the applescript as an application and leave it on your desktop. Anytime you want to disengage a CD from OS X, merely click on the icon. Do keep in mind, however, that there may exist occassions when the script won't work, because, for some reason or another, your CD mounts, not as "disk1," but as "disk2" or "disk3." On those occassions, you will have to return to the terminal to wrest control of your CD from Mac OS X's voracious desktop.
There's an even more efficient method if you're using XDarwin and the Windowmaker window manager. Using the keyboard shortcut functionality of Windowmaker enables you to perform the disktool command with a single keystroke. If you haven't yet accessed this feature in Windowmaker, it's tremendously easy. Just open up the Window Maker Preferences Utility (simply click on the little GNUstep icon with the green background along the leftside of the screen below). Go to the Applications Menu Definition window and enter something like the following:
Just drag "Run Program" bar from the left side of the "Applications Menu" window into the "Utils" menu. Click on it and enter "Disk Release" (or whatever you please) and press enter. Then enter the appropriate command in the "Execute Program" text box and capture it as shown, preferably with F8. Save your changes and restart Windowmaker to make your changes functional. Now any time you want to disengage a disk, all you have to do is hit the F8 key. It's still a nuisance, but at least it's a manageable one.
Note on Installation
It has been brought to my attention that some of the readers of the site are not clear on how to install the programs discussed herein. I briefly discussed the installation on the homepage, and will info on it soon. All the Unix programs discussed on these webpages, unless otherwise noted, can be installed using the program fink, which can be found here. This includes cdrecord, mkisofs, and cdda2wav.
—Last updated February 19, 2004