Identifying any CD

Last week in Gearhead I discussed how CD identification services such as Gracenote and freedb, in conjunction with applications like WinAmp, figure out which CD you have just loaded. The data from these services allows the application to accurately fill in the header tags when you rip the disk to MP3 files.

It occurs to me that there should also be an online database to identify nonaudio disks. You could insert a disk, maybe an application-installation CD, and your disk-inventory program would use an algorithm like CDDB1 (but hopefully better) to create a fingerprint.

The fingerprint would be submitted to what we’ll call wthitd.com (“What the Heck Is This Disk”) which would look it up. If the look-up failed it would ask you to submit a description (title, vendor, tags, date, version, etc.). If the search succeeded, wthitd would send you the data for the disk. Finally, if there were competing entries (which, given a better fingerprinting algorithm, wouldn’t happen) you would be asked to choose.

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Last week in Gearhead I discussed how CD identification services such as Gracenote and freedb, in conjunction with applications like WinAmp, figure out which CD you have just loaded. The data from these services allows the application to accurately fill in the header tags when you rip the disk to MP3 files.

It occurs to me that there should also be an online database to identify nonaudio disks. You could insert a disk, maybe an application-installation CD, and your disk-inventory program would use an algorithm like CDDB1 (but hopefully better) to create a fingerprint.

The fingerprint would be submitted to what we’ll call wthitd.com (“What the Heck Is This Disk”) which would look it up. If the look-up failed it would ask you to submit a description (title, vendor, tags, date, version, etc.). If the search succeeded, wthitd would send you the data for the disk. Finally, if there were competing entries (which, given a better fingerprinting algorithm, wouldn’t happen) you would be asked to choose.

Your inventory program would then add an entry data to your local database and assign a number for the disk. You could then print out a label with the number, stick it on the disk and file the disk with the other 10,000 you have, but now with the knowledge that as long as everyone replaces the disks they remove from the library (hah!) you will be able to find any disk you have. OK, so who wants to work on this project?

The other disk-identification technology I mentioned last week is something called CD-Text, a specification released in September 1996 and backed by Sony. For lots of information on the specification check out The Unofficial CD Text FAQ.

Not all audio CDs use this technology and not all CD drives can create CD-Text data. According to the Wikipedia entry on CD-Text: “CD-Text is an extension of the Red Book Compact Disc specifications standard for audio CDs. It allows for storage of additional information (e.g. album name, song name, and artist) on a standards-compliant audio CD. The information is stored either in the lead-in area of the CD, where there is roughly five kilobytes of space available, or in the Subchannels R to W on the disc, which can store about 31 megabytes. These areas are not used by strict Red Book CDs.”

If you want to burn CD-Text you’ll need to find software that supports the feature. For example, Ahead Software’s Nero can do this, while the excellent Virtual CD software I wrote about a few weeks ago also supports some uses of CD-Text, but there are a few limitations.

With iTunes 7.0 and later there's the ability to have iTunes export playlist data to CDs as CD-Text when burning, but the feature is disabled by default (to switch it on, on the iTunes menu go to Preferences | Advanced | Burning). See the Wikipedia article for a nonexhaustive list of programs that support CD-Text.

Ripping software also has to know how to read the CD-Text data if it is available. So, for example, if you use Winamp you need to install a plug-in, and the only plug-in I know of to do this is one created by a Matthias Jentsch.

Finally, I seem to keep running into really weird problems with Windows, Word and Outlook. Check out my Gibbsblog post on the topic.

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