Rewriting .cue files' "binary" lines

MrSkyle

Just a little question that may save me a lot of work...

I'm planning on rewriting my game library and I've recently found out that PC Engine CD games had to not only have matching .cue and .iso file names, but also feature the name correctly in the "binary" line within the .cue file (https://github.com/RetroPie/RetroPie-Setup/wiki/PC-Engine#pc-engine-cd).
Up until then I simply made sure that both files had matching names, without even opening the .cue file, but then realised the PC Engine CD required this little extra work.

My question is: regarding PSX and Sega CD games, do I also need to rewrite or match the "binary" line of the .cue files? Or simply match both .cue and .bin/.iso files' names?

mitu

@mrskyle All CD based games (are in the same situation as the PC Engine CD, since they all use the same .cue/.bin format files. If the binary (.bin) file name does not match the contents of the .cue file (filename casing is important on Linux), they won't work.

thelostsoul

My PSX library didn't (and still don't) need any extra work, as all games I put there are working out of the box. In contrast, the source where I got PC Engine games are different and I had to edit the files. If you have a big number of files, you could use scripts (batch or bash) and do the work for you automatically. But that requires a correct working script for your environment.

In general, the .cue files contain the path to the other files, so the emulator opens and looks in .cue for all related files. Thats the purpose of it. I remember I had to decode the lossless audio files to wav files at PC Engine. Here is a bit more information (but maybe it does not answer your question):

RetroPie: Playstation

The files I have are like this (I don't post whole cue files here, just a cut version.

PC Engine
FILE "Akumajou Dracula X - Chi no Rondo (SCD)(JPN)01.wav" WAVE
TRACK 01 AUDIO
INDEX 01 00:00:00
FILE "Akumajou Dracula X - Chi no Rondo (SCD)(JPN)02.iso" BINARY
TRACK 02 MODE1/2048
PREGAP 00:03:00
INDEX 01 00:00:00
FILE "Akumajou Dracula X - Chi no Rondo (SCD)(JPN)03.wav" WAVE
TRACK 03 AUDIO
PREGAP 00:02:00
INDEX 01 00:00:00

Playstation
FILE "Ridge Racer (USA) (Track 01).bin" BINARY
TRACK 01 MODE2/2352
INDEX 01 00:00:00
FILE "Ridge Racer (USA) (Track 02).bin" BINARY
TRACK 02 AUDIO
INDEX 00 00:00:00
INDEX 01 00:02:00
FILE "Ridge Racer (USA) (Track 03).bin" BINARY
TRACK 03 AUDIO
INDEX 00 00:00:00
INDEX 01 00:02:00

quicksilver

@mrskyle you could always convert your bin/cue files into chd files. Then you only have to deal with one file per game and they take up less space. Works great for PC engine CD and Sega CD.

thelostsoul

@quicksilver Thats interesting to know! I always thought CHD files are only apply able to hard disks and usable with Mame. So, that CHD file would contain all binary, audio and cue files into single one? Looking at the PC Engine page of RetroPie I can see only one of the emulators support CHD files and no one of the Playstation emulators.

quicksilver

@thelostsoul said in Rewriting .cue files' "binary" lines:

@quicksilver So, that CHD file would contain all binary, audio and cue files into single one?

Correct. You can use CHD files with PC engine CD and sega CD (only genplusx will work, cant use picodrive). I can confirm that it works great, I have not noticed any additional load times because of the compression. For dreamcast you can convert .gdi files into chd also (you have to use version 4 of chdman for compatibility with reicast). For PSX you cant use chd but you can use .pbp which are psp eboots. Psx2psp is the program to use for that.

MrSkyle

@quicksilver Cool, I didn't know that! I'm a bit wary when it comes to converting files though, since when I used the psx2psp converter, the .pbp files never came out right... Could you recommend me a CHD converter in particular?

quicksilver

@mrskyle https://www.reddit.com/r/RetroPie/comments/72kh6q/stepbystep_guide_how_to_convert_sega_cd_or_pc/

This guys guide works really good and I believe he has a download link for the chdman program. Again you have to use an older version (V4 I believe) if you want it to work with reicast. I also had some issues with the psx2psp converter but only with games that had multiple bin files. Instead of converting those myself I just found them elsewhere already converted.

MrSkyle

@quicksilver Yeah, I did the same. Took those that were already converted, the rest I went for bin/cue formats. Converting myself never went right.

Thanks for the guide! I'll give it a try later. So far I'm only interested in PCE-CD and Sega CD games.