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linux-minidisc NetMD-fixes-fork

This fork integrates work related to enhancing NetMD support from several people on top of that done by the original linux-minidisc project. I have only fixed a few issues and cleaned the code somewhat; nearly all of the actual work was done by keepers of earlier forks and authors of PRs to the original project. I'm putting this up with this additional README since the original repo appears to be pretty quiet and it was rather hard to tell where to get the most up-to-date NetMD support.

The result is that downloads (PC-to-Minidisc transfers) now work without artifacts for both SP (ATRAC1) and LP2/LP4 (ATRAC3) tracks at least on an MZ-N710. The player's USB interface will still occasionally crash, but things work most of the time.

Original README is here. HiMD support should work, but since only oil barons can afford HiMD players nowadays, I have not tested it.

SP tracks will be transferred as PCM and encoded on the device. LP2/LP4 tracks must be encoded on the host into an ATRAC3 WAV file. Because there is no complete free ATRAC3 encoder available as of this writing, most users should probably use ATRAC1. See below if you want to try your luck with an experimental encoder anyway though.

Building

Building the project excluding some of the HiMD parts requires qmake, glib, libgcrypt and libusb.

Ubuntu

On a recent Ubuntu, the following installs the required dependencies:

apt-get install libgcrypt20-dev libglib2.0-dev libusb-1.0-0-dev qt5-qmake libid3tag0-dev libmad0-dev

To set up the Makefiles, run

qmake -qt=qt5 CONFIG+=without_gui

Next, run make and everything relevant should get built (this will also build HiMD-related programs, though not the GUI).

By default, the USB device will only be accessible as root. Therefore you may want to run the following commands to automatically give members of the plugdev group access to the NetMD device:

sudo cp netmd/etc/netmd.rules /etc/udev/rules.d/99-netmd.rules
sudo udevadm control -R

Also, add your own user to the plugdev group if not yet added.

Fedora

On a recent Fedora, the following installs the required dependencies:

dnf install libgcrypt-devel glib2-devel libusb-devel qt-devel ibid3tag-devel libmad-devel

To set up the Makefiles, run

qmake-qt5 CONFIG+=without_gui

Next, run make and everything relevant should get built.

Follow the same instructions as Ubuntu for the udev rules, however the plugdev group will need to be added first:

groupadd plugdev
usermod -aG plugdev [username]

MacOS

Building on MacOS should also work. You will need to have pkg-config installed.

Usage

The relevant executable will appear in the netmdcli subdirectory after compilation. If you did not install the udev rules, you will need to run the following commands as root.

Run ./netmdcli to see a list of tracks on the inserted disc. Running ./netmdcli help will show the available commands for functions such as controlling playback and editing the TOC.

Groups are supported to some degree, but the way they are stored on the disc is utterly horrible, so expect problems. Notably, the move and delete commands will not update group members' track numbers.

To download tracks, convert them to 44.1kHz 16-bit WAV format and run

./netmdcli -v send <file.wav> [<track title>]

If track title is omitted, the file name will be used. Transfer rate is somewhat under 2x.

ATRAC3

The experimental ATRAC3 encoder available from https://github.com/dcherednik/atracdenc can be used together with ffmpeg to generate downloadable WAV files. Compile the encoder and run:

atracdenc --encode atrac3 -i source.wav -o dest.oma
ffmpeg -i dest.oma -c:a copy dest.wav
netmdcli -v send dest.wav

Note on track uploads

Because NetMD happened at the peak of music industry DRM madness, its limitations are pretty bonkers. You cannot upload tracks (Minidisc-to-PC transfer) over USB unless those tracks were originally downloaded over USB. For your own recordings, you will either need to use an MZ-RH1 (the last Minidisc player ever released which removed most restrictions), or if you are not yet a millionaire, record from the analog/SPDIF outputs. The netmd/dump_md.py script may be helpful in the latter case.

If you care about upload support, there is some support in the code for it, but it probably needs work.

Troubleshooting

Minidisc player keeps disconnecting on Linux or, Minidisc player spins up, says PC->->MD, and then resets

This is likely due to having the libmtp library installed. Some programs pull this in as a dependency to be able to open MTP media players, e.g. VLC Media Player.

This library includes a udev rule that falls back to probing the device if it's not matched in it's hardware DB. This probing program may cause the USB connection of the Minidisc player to reset, thus cycling the connection.

Workarounds include uninstalling the library, creating a custom rule to work around the probe, or comment it out from /lib/udev/rules.d/69-libmpt.rules:

# Autoprobe vendor-specific, communication and PTP devices
#ENV{ID_MTP_DEVICE}!="1", ENV{MTP_NO_PROBE}!="1", ENV{COLOR_MEASUREMENT...

Things that would be nice to have

  • More reliability. Back-to-back TOC manipulation operations seem to cause the most trouble.
  • A better WAV parser. Reading track names from the INFO chunk would be nice and the current method of finding the data chunk is a bit fragile.
  • Less buggy group support, though when using SP this isn't much of an issue.
  • Support for compressed input formats and multi-file sends, though these may be better off implemented as a wrapper script.
  • Support for uploading all tracks over USB. This would require some sort of player firmware exploit. A great hacking challenge.