Can you Read 3DO CD's on a PC?

Is there a tool/plug-in/program that is available to read a 3DO CD on are PC? I would like to see the Video quality they have.
 
Is there a tool/plug-in/program that is available to read a 3DO CD on are PC? I would like to see the Video quality they have.

There is a way to read them yes... I think Linux has a file system for reading them for example... but barring that, if you make an ISO there are some programs (I have one here somewhere) that will read files out of the ISO but IIRC the program was a little hard to find.

Beyond that, the WC3 3D0 movies are almost (with some minor things changed that make them not work in HCl's WC movie viewer) the same format as the PC version. The main difference is that they used better compression technology so the resulting video had improved clarity and coloring, and none of those "sticky" pixels. I don't remember if the resolution is changed or not (I don't seem to recall that it is) but either way you cut it it will look better than the PC version.

There is a 3DO sampler disk ISO with the WC3 demo on it that you can download from the CIC. If you can figure out how to run it you can have a look.
 
Yes the better quality is why I want to see it. I bought the disks but couldn't get FreeDO to work for me. I know my machine is strong enough so I'm trying to figure another way view the videos. I don't have Linux but I have been thinking of doing it for a while. What program is there for Linux?

Unfortunately I can't see the disk in Windows to even make an ISO. Ideally I would love to pull out all the videos and burn them to DVD with some sort of viewer for them.
 
Yes the better quality is why I want to see it. I bought the disks but couldn't get FreeDO to work for me. I know my machine is strong enough so I'm trying to figure another way view the videos. I don't have Linux but I have been thinking of doing it for a while. What program is there for Linux?

Unfortunately I can't see the disk in Windows to even make an ISO. Ideally I would love to pull out all the videos and burn them to DVD with some sort of viewer for them.

It's a good goal, though at the moment I'm not sure that there's a player that will play the videos in their native format. The codec is similar to the PC version but the container isn't. THere's a few other slight differences. HCl was looking into it a little but he was concentrating on the PSX version first. He's been busy with some personal matters, but I've been meaning to get back to him about this.
 
Was looking at this myself a few weeks back for similar reasons to my desire to decode the segacd audio, but had no real luck. you should be able to make an iso of the cd tho with nero or magiciso which should (hopefully) be visible (unlike the cd itself)
 
I definately would like to see that done.

I think know someone with Nero. I'll have to ask to see if he can try to make an ISO of it.
 
Nero doesn't work on the 3DO disks.

What App did you use in Linux to make an iso?

Making an iso in Linux is actually rather easy, and every distro comes with an app to do it. Your basic UNIX 'cp' copy command. ;)

All you need to know is the device node of your cd drive. For example, on most of my systems, my cdrom is symlinked to /dev/cdrom. With the CD in the drive, I just issue

cp /dev/cdrom ~/image.iso

This will grab the entirety of the data track on track 1, and drop an iso of it in your home directory. To rip the audio tracks after it, I'd recommend 'cdparanoia'.

The problem comes in the form of some game console CDs actually having data on multiple tracks, which most computers are not set up to read. I'd suggest CDfs for this:

http://users.elis.ugent.be/~mronsse/cdfs/

What this filesystem does, when a CD is mounted with it, it will mount the cd as an abstract. Any data tracks will show up as .iso files in the mount point, and audio tracks as .wav files. .iso files can then be mounted with the loopback filesystem, with either technique.

A word of warning. I haven't used cdfs in a while, and it hasn't been touched in a while, it may have suffered from a little bit of bitrot.
 
Thanks. I'm loaning the disks to a friend who is learning Linux to see if he can make the iso with what you said. <crossing fingers.>
 
Ok an ISO was made and using another program I was able to extract the files. It looks like the videos are in some *.bun format. I'm nut sure what format that is yet. Any clues anyone? I know CakeWalk uses it but I think that's only for audio.

Edit:
I just noticed this thread .

http://www.crius.net/zone/showthread.php?t=20381&highlight=Wrapped+BUNs

Yeah, the Bun Format is like the Tre format but with a few differences. The video files in the 3DO version of WC3 are nearly the same format ( a few technical differences were chronicled by MultimediaMike). There's enough differences so that they aren't interchangeable and the video files withing the BUN have an MOV extension instead of MVE (they aren't quicktime).
 
Very interesting. So how were you able to extract the movie files from the BUN file?

Honestly, HCl and Mike did most of that part. But If you download the WC3 demo disk ISO the videos are already not in a BUN.
 
I extracted all the movies from "Super Wing Commander" for 3DO, but they're still in that strange *.mov format i'm unfamiliar with. The only readable files AIFs, but there is not much to listen to so my simple question regarding a complicated task is: Are those files similar to those from Wing Commander 3 for 3DO? Or more specifially: Is there a way to play/convert them?
 
I extracted all the movies from "Super Wing Commander" for 3DO, but they're still in that strange *.mov format i'm unfamiliar with. The only readable files AIFs, but there is not much to listen to so my simple question regarding a complicated task is: Are those files similar to those from Wing Commander 3 for 3DO? Or more specifially: Is there a way to play/convert them?

We're working on a converter... Not entirely sure if they're the same as WC3 3DO but I don't see why they would be much different. I'd have to take a look at the file in a hex editor to tell if the SWC are much different but my guess is that they're probably similar.

The main thing we're trying to tell right now is if there's any benefit to using the WC3 3DO movies over the PSX ones since we already have a converter for the PSX files.
 
No doubt about that, i just didn't want to start a new thread for Super Wing Commander. I've got the MAC and 3DO versions and been trying to rip the cutscenes for quite a while now. i tried fraps and camtasia, but my Mac emulator lacks music and the 3DO emulator has awful sound.
Here's a cutscene if anyone wants to take a look at it.

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=Q3L4ZASD
 
No doubt about that, i just didn't want to start a new thread for Super Wing Commander. I've got the MAC and 3DO versions and been trying to rip the cutscenes for quite a while now. i tried fraps and camtasia, but my Mac emulator lacks music and the 3DO emulator has awful sound.
Here's a cutscene if anyone wants to take a look at it.

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=Q3L4ZASD

Yeah, I've played around with "dirty" conversion methods. I say as much because anytime you are playing with screencapture you inherently add in extra artifacts/compression which is why it's good to be able to decode the files natively. Theoretically the 3DO may not have the same color depth capabilites of the PSX so it remains to be seen if there are other improvements that make it better than the those versions within the files and hardware. Of course that doesn't help you with the SWC files so it will be cool to have clean rips of those at least. have you looked at the MAC SWC files? I might be interesting to see how those compare to the 3DO files as well. If you can find the same cutscene on each, what kind of extension does the MAC version use and how does the file size compare?
 
Filesystem for 3do CDs

Operafs: http://www.stack.nl/~svdb/operafs/ here is a kernel module that allows you to read 3do cds. you'll need a 32-bit linux install to use it. Frankly freedo is horrible. The best way to view 3do games is still on a 3do. I bought one off the net this year. they're pretty easy to get. just google 3do console and forums or ebay to find one. If you're an awesome programmer then you could use the opera plugin and write your own 3do movie format decoder but its out of the difficulty level of most laymen. I was playing around with mac swc for a while. the speech is all raw .riff files and is easy to rip. the music is quicktime midi from WAY old quicktime eg quicktime 2.0. The movies are an ancient format .MooV and nothing I can find so far has been able to open them let alone convert them.
 
The movies are an ancient format .MooV and nothing I can find so far has been able to open them let alone convert them.

If you can open the video file with a hex editor, we should be able to tell how it's arranged and if it's at least similar to the other formats we have. If there's a small sample file, you could upload it for us to have a look at.
 
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