DVD RIP Tutorial Series
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DVD RIP Tutorial Series
By: gokun______________
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[OVERVIEW:]
Through this series of tutorials, I hope to help all who are interested get a better grasp of how to do DVD Rips. I offer this information AS IS and make no claims that it is absolutely perfect. These methods have worked for ME and others I know. That's the only claim that I'll make. I am assuming that you are reading this for EDUCATIONAL PURPOSES and that you LEGALLY OWN the game(s) you're trying to back up. Please, DO NOT ASK ME ANYTHING ABOUT PIRATED GAMES! I will ignore you completely. However, if you have any other questions pertaining to these tutorials, then you may feel free to ask me in the DVD Ripping forum at Zima's. I will try to make these as complete as possible however, I am human, and prone to mistakes as are we all, so I will no doubt forget to include things here and there. ;) My hope is that by the time you finish this series you have learned, by experience, most of the methods and logic that goes along with DVD Rips. And most of all, I hope you HAVE SOME FUN doing this! :) All that being said, let's get started!
[TOOLS:]
Here is an overview of the tools which we will be using. Please do not contact me asking how to obtain these tools. That is YOUR responsibility! I can not and WILL NOT give out information on how or where you may obtain ANY copyrighted materials. Thus I will try to substitute shareware/freeware programs wherever possible.
[1] a DVD ROM drive (can't read the DVD without the drive^_~)
[2] a CDR (can't burn a backup without a burner)
[3] a HEX EDITOR for editing files. I like Hex Workshop which s available as shareware. That is the program I will be using in these tutorials.
[4] Sony CD\DVD Generator software.
[5] Dreamcast Dummy File Maker Available as freeware.
[6] ISOBuster Available as Freeware.
[7] IML2ISo.EXE Available as Freeware.
[8] CDRWin or equivalent. Available as shareware.
LESSON 1: Orphen
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[OVERVIEW:]
For the sake of convenience I've decided to start with something relatively simple. Orphen lacks many of the complexities we'll encounter later on, however, I think ripping it will give you a good foundation and get you familiar with the tools we'll be using so that when we *do* get to the harder stuff, you won't have to struggle with it as much. Now that we've cleared that up, let's get started! :)
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[STEP 1] Place the Orphen DVD in your DVDRom drive.
Now, using Windows Explorer COPY all the files and folders on the DVD and then PASTE them to a temporary directory on your hard drive. Take note: Does this DVD have a volume label? Yes it does. The Volume label is ORPHEN.
TIP: I like to name the temporary folder that I copy the files into after the volume label of the DVD-this helps me remember if it has one or not! ;)
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[STEP 2] Let's see what we're dealing with. Highlight all the files and folders in your temp directory and right click. Now click on properties. Well, it's obvious that this one isn't going to fit on a cdr, but it's not *that* bad. We can deal with it. Ok, so let's decide where we can cut some space out. The general practice is to cut out the movies. Sounds like a plan; let's do that. Ordinarily ps2 movie files are named .PSS. But we don't see any of those...we do see some .MV3 files in the MV3 directory though. Voila! We found our movies. How do we know this? Well, I just know because I'm familiar with file types, but here's another way to tell: look at the directory name: MV3 is an acronym for MVE which stands for MOVIE. Guess they thought they were being sneaky, eh? ;p Another way to tell is to compare the headers of a .PSS file with the headers of the file type you're examining. You would do this using a hex editor. This may seem complex now, but later, after we've done some work with hex, it'll seem like a breeze. ;)
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[STEP 3] Ok, now let's get rid of some files...we'll get rid of: MO2.MV3, MO4.MV3, MO5.MV3, M06.NV3, M07.MV3, M08.MV3, M10.MV3, M11.MV3, M14.MV3, M15.MV3, M16.MV3, M19.MV3. Now you might ask why I chose these. Well there are a few criteria for choosing what to delete: Generally, however, you'll want to pick the largest files and delete just enough to make the total size of the game small enough to fit on an 80min cd.
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[STEP 4] Now we need to REPLACE the files we deleted. There are 2 good ways to do this. One, we can take the smallest file of a similar type and use that to replace the others by copying,pasting, and renaming it to the names of the missing files. Second, we can replace the missing movies with DUMMY files. Ordinarily this dummy file MUST be a valid PSS stream, however, in the case of Orphen it doesn't matter so we'll use a program which is readily available to make our dummy files. The Dreamcast Dummy File Maker. Using this we make a 1MB dummy file for each and all of the files we deleted. In other words, make 12 of them. ;)
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[STEP 5] Now that we have all of our files in order (compare with the original DVD to make certain that you have all the files in your temp dir that are on the DVD), and have our dummy files in place, we are ready to set up the image-ALMOST! First we need to look and see if it makes any DVD checks. Open up Hex Workshop. Once there, open up the orphen ELF or SLUS file. Should be something like SLUS_500.62. Make sure it's NOT still set with the READ ONLY attribute in Windows or Hex Workshop will not be able to open it! Once the file is open we press CTRL+F to perform a simple search. The search dialogue box opens up. From the "Type" drop down menu select "Hex Values." In the "Value" dialogue box enter this string: 02000424. This string represents the the most common DVD check string. Now, check the "Find All Instances" box and make sure that "Down" is selected as your "Direction." Click OK and hex workshop will find all the values of this string. The results will be displayed in the bottom right window of Hex Workshop. There are a few instances of the string, howevr, none of them are a DVD check. We will discuss more on how to recognize a valid DVD check later. For now, take a look at these to familiarize yourself with what one does NOT look like. Learning to recognize false leads will help you later on so please do not skip this step. ;)
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[STEP 6] NOW we're ready to set up the files for our image. Close up Hex Workshop; do NOT save any changes. Now load up CD\DVD Generator. Choose to "Create New Project" then select "CDROM Master Disc." The program will now open and drop you in the DIRECTORY menu. The program has 3 menus: VOLUME, DIRECTORY, and LAYOUT. Each has a seperate function. We will learn these as we go for convenience. First, let's click the VOLUME tab. This brings us, as one might expect, to the Volume window. Here we see inputs for such information as region, publisher, copyrights, and *Volume Label*. Under the "Master Disc Information" area enter in your SLUS name next to "Disc Name." In other words, input SLUS50062. Now in the "Volume Identifier" area, enter ORPHEN next to "Volume." You can enter whatever you want in the other areas, but I would simply leave them alone if I were you. We now click the DIRECTORY tab to take us back to the directory area. This is where we actually input our files into the program. This is also where we will create our directories which we will do first. Go to the Edit menu and choose "Create Directory." A new folder will be created; name it MV3. Now we're ready to input our files. To avoid un-neccessary troubles later on, it is always a good idea to input your files in their proper order. Minimize CD\DVD Gen and open up ISOBuster. If the only drive that has a disc in it is your DVDRom drive then the program will automatically view it. Otherwise, choose the proper drive from the drop down menu on the top left. In the Right Window of ISOBuster you will notice a descriptor called "LBA." This is the physical location of the file and how we determine what the file order is. It works as one might expect. An LBA of 1 would be the first file while and LBA of 2 would be the second, and so on. Ok, we see that the first file is GRP.BIN at LBA 24. Maximize CD\DVD Gen and simply drag and drop GRP.BIN from your temp directory into the CD\DVD Gen window. Make sure you drop it into the Root directory and NOT the MV3 dir!. Now simply do the same thing for the remaining files; Using ISOBuster s your guide drop the files into CD\DVD Gen in their proper order.
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[STEP 7] Now we click on the LAYOUT tab in CD\DVD Generator. You can also close
ISOBuster now. In the LAYOUT tab we look in the bottom window and we see the layout of our files. The first file you see listed should be GRP.BIN and it should reside at LBA 24. NOTE: CD\DVD Gen represents LBA with the descriptors "START" and "END." Start is the one you want to look at here. Let's assume, for the sake of this example that your first LBA is not at 24. We need to change that. Highlight GRP.BIN in the bottom window and right click it. Now select the "Location" option. A dialogue box will pop up. This is where you enter in the LBA you want the file at. Enter 24 and hit OK. You'll notice that GRP.BIN is now at a Start LBA of 24. Perfect! This gives us a file order which is pretty close to the original. We'll leave it at that. :)
[NOTE:] For those using the swap trick WITHOUT a modchip, you will do what is
here, but you will also highlight SYSTEM.CNF, right click, select Location, and input 12231. This will allow you to use the swap tricks like the COG and KNIFE swaps to boot your backup. Unfortunately you also stand the chance of making your image too big. If this happens you will not be able to export an IML file and you will see a negative number displayed in the time box under the LAYOUT section of CD\DVD Gen. A shortcoming of the software is that it only supports 71 Minute CDs. You can work around this by selecting to create a DVD Master Disc at startup, then continuing as normal. So there ya go. You're all set! ;) Also note that if there is already a file at or near LBA 12231 you need to drag SYSTEM.CNF *above* that file in the LAYOUT Window BEFORE you try to change the location of system.cnf.
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[STEP 8] From the File menu in CD\DVD Gen, choose "Export IML File" it will ask
you where you want to put it. Put it in the same dir as IML2ISO.exe for convenience. Name it orphen.iml. Now we can close CD\DVD Gen. You don't need to save if it asks you. We are now ready to build our ISO. From the Windows Start Menu select Programs\MSDOS Prompt. If you cannot find that, then select Run...and input "Command" and hit OK. Now that we have our DOS Window open we move to the dir where we put IML2ISo and we type: "iml2iso orphen.iml ORPHEN.ISO. This will create our ISO image.
TIP: You can skip all the DOS stuff by choosing Start\Run\Browse to the
folder where you stored iml2iso and select iml2iso exe and hit ok. Now BEFORE you run it, enter the command line arguments to the end.
Example: C:\TEMP\iml2iso.exe orphen.iml ORPHEN.ISO. Once the ISo has been created we can delete the Temp dir where we were storing the files.
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[STEP 9] Time to BURN! =) We now open CDRWin and select "File Backup and
Tools." Next we choose "Record ISO9660" from the top drop down menu. We then select our image file, ORPHEN.ISO. Now from the bottom drop down menus we select CDROMXA and MODE2. We then make sure that ONLY "Finalize/Close Session" and "Write Postgap" are checked. Now simply hit "Start" and wait for the burn to finish.
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VOILA! We just made a working backup of our first DVD! Hooray for us!! (^_~)
This was a simple example but it gave us an idea of what we're doing and how we're doing it. As always, if you have any specific questions or problems please feel free to post them on the forum. Also, for those of you looking for an alternate burning program, check out ps2man's site, where you can find a tutorial on how to back up Orphen using EasyCD Creator. His URL is http://rockzz.com/ps2man. Check under the tutorials section. You'll notice that
file order doesn't seem to matter much in Orphen. This is true. But I want you to get into the habit of lining up files in their proper order so you'll be ready when we get to some other projects down the line. Next on the Agenda: Army Men: Sarge's Heroes 2.
LESSON 2: Army Men: Sarge's Heroes 2
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[OVERVIEW:]
For our next lesson I've chosen a game which is similar, in many respects, to Orphen. We will make it fit on a CD by removing movie files, and as with Orphen file ordering isn't really an issue. However, we WILL order them as closely as possible to original so we'll be in the habit when the time comes. More importantly however, are the differences between this Lesson and Orphen. In this Lesson we will use one of the movie files on the DVD to replace the
ones we delete, and we will also encounter our first DVD check. But I'm getting ahead of myself ;). This tutorial will also be somewhat shorter than the first because by now you should be familiar with the general methods involved. Welcome to Lesson 2! =) Also, all the tab stops were getting on my nerves so I’m formatting the tutorials from this point on in a slightly lazier format. ;p
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[STEP 1] Place your original DVD in your DVDRom drive. Now make a temporary directory on your hard drive and copy all the files and folders on the DVD to your temp directory. Take note of if there is a Volume label on the DVD. In this case, there is not. Even so, let's rename our temp directory to "SARGE" so we don't lose track of it. ;)
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[STEP 2] Once more we check the total file size of all the game files by highlighting them all, right clicking and then hitting properties. Too big to fit on CD so we'll have to rip something. If we look in the FMV directory, we notice a bunch of .PSS files. As mentioned in Lesson 1, these are movie files, and our easiest targets for ripping. Looking at the files we see that the smallest PSS we have is m01.PSS. Now, remove enough of the largest PSS files so that the game files are under 650MB. Yes, I could just tell you which to delete, but I want you to learn to do this yourselves, and to use your own judgement in these situations. Now that we've made some room, we take m01.PSS and copy and paste it, renaming it to the names of the PSS files that we deleted. Now we have all our files back. We're ready to continue. ;)
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[STEP 3] Now we tackle our first DVD check! Open up Hex Workshop and then Open up the SLUS file for Sarge's Heroes. It should be called: SLUS_201.32. We now hit Ctrl+F and do a search for the Hex Value: 02000424. There will be several instances. In Orphen, we looked at some strings that were NOT the actual check. Take a look at these now and see if you can rule some of these out. TIP: If the string is halfway down the SLUS or further, it's probably NOT the check. Rule it out. ;)Now let's get a little bit of background: The first DVD check string discovered was this:
0000 9886 [8293] 0600 [40]10 0100 0424 8CC4 040C [02]00 0424.
The strings in brackets [] are the strings that are important. What this string is, very basically, is a media check. It equates to: if not the proper media then stop. Well, if we change the [02] into an [01] then we change the string to be: if not the proper media then continue anyway. Now, how each group of game developers codes this string WILL vary from game to game. However, luckily for us, the important string (0200 0424) has NOT changed thus far. This is why we do our search for 0200 0424. Problem is, there are many occurances of this string in most cases. So how do we know which one to change? Unfortunately it's more art than science. You must learn to recognize similarities with other valid checks, as well as recognizing what false leads generally look like. This is why I asked you to examine the strings in Orphen back in Lesson 1. ;) However, since we have no other strings at this point with which to compare, I'm going to give you this one. The string you want to change is:
A012 0100 0424 1300 D516 [02]00 0424 0100 0424 D25F
It is located at Offset:00018C94. If you look closely you will notice similarities to the example string that I gave you above. This is one of the reasons I chose this game for this lesson. ;) As in our first example we see that the string we want is preceeded by 0100 0424 xxxx xxxx. This is one of the similarities I'm talking about. Also, we notice that there is ONLY ONE occurance of this string in the entire SLUS. You will almost ALWAYS have only one occurance of the valid DVD check. So, we now hit Ctrl+H to bring up our "Replace" dialogue in Hex Workshop. In the first area we enter: A012010004241300D51602000424 and in the second area we enter our corrected
string: A012010004241300D51601000424.
Notice we changed the 02 into an 01. We now hit OK and Hex Workshop will stop at the first occurance, giving us some options on what to do. Since we know that this string only occurs once, we select "Replace All." We then get a message telling us that 1 occurance has been replaced. Perfect! Now we save the file and exit Hex Workshop.
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[STEP 4] Now open up CD\DVD Generator and select Create New Project, CDRom Master Disc. We open in the DIRECTORY tab as usual. Click on the VOLUME tab and enter in your Disc Name under the Master Disc options. As always it is the name of our SLUS file. In this case, SLUS20132. Now Click the DIRECTORY tab again. We now create all our directories. For this game there are quite a few. Create all the main directories first, then create all the sub-directories. NOTE: to create a sub-directory, first highlight the dir you want it inside of, THEN select Create Directory. Once all of our directories have been made, we're ready to proceed.
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[STEP 5] As in Lesson 1 we open ISOBuster to see the correct file ordering for this game.As before, drag and drop the files into CD\DVD Gen. in the order dictated by ISOBuster. NOTE: To drop a file within a folder you must first highlight that folder in CD\DVD Gen. The icon will change to an open folder when you've done it correctly. Moving right along, place all your files in their correct directories and in their correct order. Once this is done we can Export our IML file. We will call it sarge.iml and will once again place it in the same dir as IML2ISO.EXE. You can now close CD\DVD Gen and ISOBuster.
[NOTE:] Once again, those of you using the swap trick can place SYSTEM.CNF at LBA 12231. If our image becomes "too big" we simply create a DVD Master Disc Project instead.
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[STEP 6] From DOS, or from Start\Run... we input iml2iso sarge.iml SARGE.ISO. Once our ISO image has been made we can erase the files in the temporary directory.
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[STEP 7] We're ready to BURN! As in Lesson 1, we open CDRWin and select all the same settings. We then hit start and go have a cigarette(or whatever you like) while our burn completes.
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BOOYA!! We Just completed our second DVD Rip! WooHoo!! (^_~) Now we're starting to get familiar with the process. Not only do we know several ways to replace files, and several types of files we can replace, but we have also tackled out first DVD Check! Not bad for a day's work I'd say! As always, direct any questions to the DVD forum at Zima's. I am always happy to help if I see that you're making an effort! For our next Lessons we'll move to something a little more difficult: Summoner and Kessen. ;) See ya next time!
Lesson 3: Summoner
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[OVERVIEW:]
Summoner, is easy in some regards, but difficult in others to one who is inexperienced in DVD Ripping. Most importantly, it shows us how to edit and remove files OTHER than PSS files, which is information that any good ripper needs to know. Thus, I chose this game as Lesson 3. As I mentioned in Lesson 2, you should be getting fmailiar with the process by now, so I'm not going to waste much time on the details. On we go! ;)
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[STEP 1] First copy all the files to your hard drive.
Optionally you can choose not to copy music.vpp,demo.pss,and geeks.pss, but I like to copy them all just to stay organized and keep track of what I'm doing.
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[STEP 2] Now that you have the files on your drive, we decide what we're going to rip. In this case, I chose, as you probably guessed, the 3 files mentioned above. That takes the game down in size more than enough to fit on cd.
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[STEP 3] Now we need to "replace" the files we ripped. For this example, I took THQLOGO.PSS and copied and renamed it into GEEKS.PSS and DEMO.PSS. Our total file size is still good so we continue. You will notice a file in this game called MUSIC.VPP. As you might guess, this is a music file. And since even with ripping movies our file size isn't exactly where we want it, we're going to rip it out. Now we know we want to rip music.vpp, the question is how. In this particular case it's easy. We simply delete the original MUSIC.VPP then we create a Dummy File of 1MB or optionally we can simply create a 0k text file in Notepad, and we rename this new file to MUSIC.VPP. Open up the SLUS file in Hex Workshop and do a quick search for MUSIC.VPP. Doh! There it is. Delete the reference to it and replace it with an equal amount of 00s.
EXAMPLE:
MUSIC.VPP < -- original
......... < -- new
While we're here, let's check for DVD checks by searching the string 02000424. Wow! There are several instances. But upon closer examination we see that there actually are NOT any DVD checks! WooHoo!! :)
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[STEP 4] Now we're ready for DVD Gen. Load it up and use the following file order:
LBA | FILENAME
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23 , \IOPRP16.IMG
68 , \TEMP.IML
69 , \TEMP.IMS
359 , \LIBSD.IRX
372 , \MCMAN.IRX
410 , \MCSERV.IRX
413 , \MEM2MB.IRX
414 , \PADMAN.IRX
435 , \SDRDRV.IRX
439 , \SIO2MAN.IRX
444 , \MAIN.MAP
9137 , \THQLOGO.PSS
824 , \GEEKS.PSS
17450 , \SYSTEM.CNF
17451 , \SOUNDS.VPP
30054 , \CHARS.VPP
67104 , \SUMMONER.VPP
69342 , \MUSIC.VPP
69343 , \DEMO.PSS
77656 , \TABLES.VPP
81267 , \SLUS_200.74
90253 , \CUTSCENE.VPP
98059 , \EFFECTS.VPP
124629 , \ITEMS.VPP
129032 , \LEVELS.VPP
[TIP:] You can get a list like this from ISOBuster by highlighting the iso in the left window,right clicking and selecting "Copy Tree-Info to File."
Now go to the VOLUME tab and enter in SLUS20040 and export iml file. Done.
If there was a Volume Label, enter it in too(did you notice I left that up to you this time?^_~)
[NOTE:] As before you can place SYSTEM.CNF at LBA 12231 to use the swap trick.
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[STEP 5] Go to DOS window or Start\Run...and enter:
iml2iso summoner.iml summoner.iso Done. Erase your temp dir to get back some space. ;)
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[STEP 6] Open up CDRWin and select your image file and settings. Hit start.
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Voila! You now have a perfectly functioning DVD rip of Summoner.
This one was pretty damn easy, but it showed us another file type that we can rip if we don't get enough space from ripping out the PSS files, which is an important thing to know. It also gave us a chance to study the "false leads" in the SLUS to see how, even though strings might look promising, they are not neccessarily the valid DVD check. If you didn't examine the false leads, then go back and do so now. Trust me-you'll thank me later! ;) For the next Lesson, we tackle Kessen! (^_^)
Lesson 4: Kessen
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[OVERVIEW:]
Ok, I'm doing this one from memory so try to be understanding if it's not perfect. However, this is a pretty easy game to rip, so wherever I'm lacking you should be able to make up for on your own, which *is* part of the point of these tutorials after all. ;) We'll just consider this a semi-interactive tutorial;p. So anyhoo, here we go.
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[STEP 1] As always copy all the file to a temp dir on your hard drive.
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[STEP 2] Time to downsize. Well, looking at the files, our most obvious choice would be what? If you guessed the movies then give yourself 2 extra points. Delete all the movies. Don't worry about replacing them this time. (told ya this one was gonna be easy-there's a reason that it was one of the first games released^_~). Check the size. Looks good now, so let's move on.
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[STEP 3] Load up CD\DVD Gen and set up your file system. You know the routine by now. ;) At this point let's discuss something...You have the option of including a dummy file in this one. While I did not do so in my rip, a certain release group did do so in theirs, and there could very well have been a reason for that. I'm not entirely sure why they did it aside from the obvious reasons, but they did so let's do it too just to be on the safe side. Open up your dummy maker program and make a 24MB dummy file. Name this file something like 000DUM.DAT or whatever you want really, and place it in the root of your file system as the first file at LBA 28. Better safe than sorry after all. Kessen didn't hold my interest long enough for me to pllay it for longer than 5 minutes so I dunno if my version locks up some time or not. The released version does not for sure however, so we'll do it their way, as I said, just to be on the safe side. Export your IML file as usual; again, you know the routine.
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[STEP 4] OK, let's look at the SLUS file now. Open it up in Hex Workshop. Again, I'm going by memory on this one, so humor me. Remove any and all references to the movie files that you deleted and replace these references with an equal amount of 00s. For example:
movie.pss
.........
Ok, if memory serves me there isn't a DVD check in this one, but check for it anyway, and if you see one that looks REALLY suspicious then remove it. I'll double check on this tomorrow before I make this tutorial public. Now we should be all done with the SLUS so off we go.
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[STEP 5] Using IML2ISO, make your ISO file as usual. Delete the temp files when you're done.
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[STEP 6] Burn as normal. Mode 2 CDRomXA.
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Voila. I told ya this one was easy didn't I? But it does illustrate a slightly different approach to a technique we've already played with so I decided to include it to make the tutorials a bit more well rounded. ;) Next Lesson: Warriors of Might and Magic! :)
Lesson 5: Warriors of Might and Magic
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[OVERVIEW:]
This one is pretty much like some of the others we've dealt with, but with a few twists and turns here and there. Nothing major. It's always good to get in some extra practice so let's get started. :) And I'm going from memory on this one too FYI. ;)
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[STEP 1] Copy all the files from the DVD to a temp dir on your hard drive as usual. Notice that this one has a volume label. Again, the labels themselves are not extremely important in most cases, but setting them up correctly is a good habit to get into.
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[STEP 2] Time to downsize. As before, we see that the most obvious choice is the movies. Take the smallest and use it to replace the largest until the total filesize is enough to fit on a cd. I'll leave this up to you.
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[STEP 3] Now that we have a size we can deal with we open up CD\DVD gen and set up our file system. Let's make a new DVD project this time. Once again you have the option to include a Dummy file. I suggest you do so just to be safe, for the same reasons mentioned in the Kessen tutorial. Place this one at LBA 40 and make it about 40MB as you did before. Just for the swap folks, I decided to set this one up like the release so it will be ready for the swap trick. It will, of course, work with the chips as well. The first file after the dummy will be at LBA 12231 and will be system.cnf. Continue from there with the rest in their proper order(note I said proper "order" not proper "LBA").Don't forget your volume label and export iml as usual.
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[STEP 4] Ok, time to look at the LBA again. This one *does* have a DVD check. Try to find it on your own. Did you find it? The correct check is this:
0000 BFDF 0100 0424 9227 0C08 1000 BD27 0000 BFDF [02]00 0424 9227 0C08 1000 BD27
There is only one occurence of it. ;) Replace the 02 with 01 as usual. While you're here, take the time to notice similarities with other strings, and to look at your false leads. As far as I can remember, there's nothing else to be done here, so let's continue. (I will double check this before this tutorial is made public).
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[STEP 5] Using IML2ISo make your ISO image.
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[STEP 6] Burn as usual. Mode 2 CDRomXA.
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Well now. That wasn't so bad now was it? ;) Again, this one was mainly for practice. So that brings us to our next task, which will be our first really difficult one. Next Lesson: ATV Offraod Fury! :)
Lesson 6: ATV Offraod Fury
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[OVERVIEW:]
Well, it's been a long time coming but we've reached the final lesson! WooHoo!! ;)This is also going to be the most difficult rip that we've attempted. However, with as much as we've done so far, I'm sure it's nothing you can't handle! ;) By now, if you've been following the lessons like you should, you should have developed and "eye" for locating valid DVD checks. Further, you know which files you can rip and how to rip them. However, there are
some important differences in ATV as opposed to the other games which I'd like to address for a moment before we begin. First, there *is* a DVD check. Not only that, but it's kind of tricky. As always I will provide you with the proper offset, but please don't short change yourselves. Try to find it yourself first. Then look at the string I provide you and see if you were correct. Second, this is the first game we've encountered that IS dependent on the LBAs of the files. This means we're going to be doing more serious editing to the SLUS file than we've ever done before. But I'll walk ya through it, explaining as we go. After the completion of this lesson, you should be able to rip the *majority* of DVDs that are out right now. There are, however, newer games which are problematic and are going to give trouble. These include games like ZOE and Onimusha. Expect many of the next DVD titles to be released to be similar in this regard. Namely that they're going to require more and more work as the PS2 matures. As the knowledge becomes available to me, I will post Appendix updates to these
tutorials where I will give examples of how to rip these newer games. On the backburner, I currently have a ZOE appendix. This will be finished and made available when the powers that be finish ripping the game(it's a tricky one!). Lastly, you should NOT attempt this lesson until you've completed the others. I'm assuming at this point that you have read and completed the other tutorials, so I'm going to spend VERY little time on the tiny details, assuming you know what you're doing at this point. I will however spend time on the IMPORTANT details of course. ;)At any rate, we've got a good bit of work ahead of us, so let's get a move on. (^_~)
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[STEP 1] As always, copy the files to your hard drive and check for a volume label.
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[STEP 2] We now size down the image. You can use one of the "male" or "female" PSS files to replace the larger files you will delete. You know the routine. [TIP:] If you wanna be silly like me, you can substitute movies from another game. Sure fire way to freak out your friends(I have sarges heroes 2 movies in mine!^_~).
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[STEP 3] We now set up the image in CD\DVD Generator matching, as always, the files as closely as possible to the original DVD. They should be identical in this case up to the point of the first movie you changed. This will make things easier for us in the next step. (I told ya there was a reason that I was getting you in the habit!^_~). When you're done, export your IML file but LEAVE CD\DVD GEN OPEN.
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[STEP 4] Now it's time to edit the SLUS file(it's SCUS in this case). Open the file in Hex Workshop and do a search for our protection string. Many instances. Try to find the proper one yourself now. Find it? Let's see if you did! ;) The string you want to change is: A0AC 0200 0424. Though this doesn't seem very similar to the others at first, you'll notice that in our first example string we had: 040C 0200 0424. This is similarity #1. Next if we search the preceeding hex we see a 4010, also in the original string. And if we look further still we find an 0100 0424. I told ya this was a tough one. ;) So we replace the string in question and move along.
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[STEP 5] As I told you at the start, this game IS dependent on LBAs. I tell you this to save you from wasting a CD finding out the hard way. But if you'd like to see for yourself, which I encourage, burn the image as is and observe. It hangs on black screen. Generally speaking the only reason it would do this is if something was corrupt(and we know it's not),if you missed the proper DVD check(and you know you got the right one), or if it's checking a file or LBA in some manner. The most common thing would be it's checking LBAs. You should always test all possibilities however. Check for references to particular files, LBAs, offsets, file sizes, etc, etc, etc. OK, to save you the time and for the sake of this example let me go ahead and tell you. ATV contains what we will call, for lack of a better term, a "table." This table contains LBA information about each file on the DVD. The general format of this table is as follows: LBA Start Address,LBA End Address. Thus you'll have TWO entries to change for each file. Do a little experiment with me. Open Windows calculator and enter in the LBA address of the first file on the DVD. Now click the hex tab to see what the
hex value of this number is. Now, do a search for this number(040A). Chances are that you didn't find it. There's a reason for that. ATV is trying to be sneaky. They reverse the order of the hex in the table. Thus, if you had a value of 2C67 you would search for 672C.Using this information, try your search again with the hex reversed(0A04). You should now be at offset: 001CA6C8. This is the start of our table. Let's take a moment to disect...As we said the format of the table is: LBA Start address \ LBA end address. But we now see there's a little more to it than that. From the Start LBA to the End LBA there are 3 spaces. That is to say, this: 040A xxxx xxxx xxxx 040A. The in between hex is of no importance to us right now. Now the distance from the End LBA to the NEXT Start LBA is 15. That is, like so: 040A xxxx xxxx xxxx 0100 xxxx xxxx xxxx xxxx xxxx xxxx xxxx xxxx xxxx xxxx xxxx NEXT. Again, the hex for the next LBA is reversed. That's ok though, because now we know how it works! ;) Now go back to CD\DVD Gen(which I told ya to leave open) and look at your LBAs. If you matched up the files as closely as possible to the original DVD, then you won't have too much to change in the table. For the sake of example, however, let's assume that you put the first file at LBA 12231. Using Windows Calculator we see the hex value for this is 2FC7. Remember that we must REVERSE this. So our replacement hex is C72F. We now go back to our table in Hex Workshop and replace 0A04 with C72F. Because our first file is SYSTEM.CNF, which only takes 1 LBA, our End LBA is the same. So, for the second value, replace 0A04 with C72F again. You will now go on to repeat this procedure for the remaining files. I will not go into exact LBAs for the remaining files because your LBAs might vary from person to person. But,
you know how the table works, and you know how to find the entries, and you know how to determine your replacement hex for Start and End, so you're good to go on your own from here on with the table. ;) Once you have finished modifying the table, save your changes and exit Hex Workshop. You may now close CD\DVD Gen as well.
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[STEP 6] Now that we've finished with the table and the DVD check we are FINALLY ready to build the ISo image. As we have done many times we enter: iml2iso atv.iml ATV.ISO. Once the ISo is done you can remove the files in the temp dir on your hard drive.
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[STEP 7] Using CDRWin we burn our ISo just as we've done before. We now go take a nap to recover from all that work we put into ripping this one! (^_~)
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Upon waking from our nap we discover that we now have a working rip of ATV(assuming everything went according to plan^_~). WOOHOO!! We done did a hard one(doesn't THAT sound perverse!)! ;)
Well, that conclude the first set of my DVD Ripping tutorial series and hopefully we've all leaned a lot along the way. Using hands on examples, we've tackled everything from the very easy(Orphen) to the pretty damn hard(ATV) and a few in between. We've seen various ways to downsize our game, we've learned how to *better* recognize valid DVD checks, we've learned about LBA Tables, we've gotten familiar with the tools of the trade, and so on. I sincerely hope that you found this series of tutorials helpful. As always you can post your questions to the DVD Ripping Forum at Zima's (http://www.ps2ownz.com). I will do my best to answer all questions. And remember, do NOT get discouraged! As with most things in life, DVD Ripping is an acquired skill; it's a learned ability. Just keep at it! :) Hope you had a little fun along the way too. Bye!
Lesson 7: Special Mission!
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I want you to rip a DVD game all on your own! Don't pick anything TOO hard though, pick something you KNOW you can handle and rip it. Once you've done that, go rip another! ;)
End of Lessons. (^_^)
