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Old 01-26-2013, 10:01 AM   #12
mad demon
Human being with feelings
 
Join Date: Dec 2012
Posts: 72
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Quote:
Originally Posted by WyattRice View Post
Reaper does generate a checksum when rendering to DDP.

Here's the changelog.
v4.25 - July 12 2012
+ DDP support: improvements (MD5, CD-TEXT support, UTF-8/ascii conversion)
That's great. They should add that for CUE/BIN as well. And maybe stem export, etc.

Though that does not change the fact that the DDP format itself does not use checksums (neither does CUE/BIN) so if the plant will not run the checksums (or there software does not) it doesn't help.

Anyway that's why we usually zip the stuff up. That's the same as having a checksum (zip has an internal checksum, so it won't unpack damaged data). This is even better than attaching a checksum to the files because the zip program will check the checksum no matter what. With an attached checksum it is up to the software or human to check the checksum because it is not part of the DDP standard.

Also DDP is very restricted to audio CDs only and we do a lot of CD-Extra (Enhanced CDs, which have a data track in addition to the audio track) which DDP can't do ... or can it?

Quote:
Originally Posted by WyattRice View Post
DDP (Disc Description Protocol) is widely excepted now by most pressing plants as the industry standard.
Industrial standard ... like ProTools session files? ... that must not mean it is the best for the job.

However the problem is, e.g. if I have a damaged DDP file or some software screws the DDP file creation up there is no way for me to even see nor fix that. Even if I had the computer knowledge to do so because the DDP specification is not release to the general public.
With a cue sheet I can fix it myself because just like the REAPER project files it is human readable. Plus its definition can be found in Appendix A of ftp://209.113.146.144/public_ftp/cdr.pdf

But let's not to confuse or scare jake the snake anymore/any more ... either way is fine. DDP or CUE/BIN. Just make sure to zip it up so an error detection mechanism, that does not depend on someone or some software actually running the checksums, is in place.
I would recommend asking the plant which of DDP or CUE/BIN they prefer and then go with that. Because sending them a DDP when they are not familiar with it can be as fatal as sending a CUE/BIN they have never heard of.
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