User guide: CD based games

1. Getting Started
2. Importing
3. Supported Formats
4. Cue Sheets
5. How to Dump a Physical CD

Help

• My cue sheet or CCD won't import
• I have no music at all, only sound effects most of the time
• I only have a single .BIN or .ISO file
• I have a multi-disc game
• I have an .ECM or .APE file
• I have a .CHD file from Archive.org
• I have a .MDF and a .MDS file
• I have a .SBI file

Getting Started

Compressed archives (such as .rar, .zip, .7z, etc) are NOT supported for CD-based games — you must uncompress them first.

Importing

Dumped copies of CD-based games must be loaded in with Cue sheets or CloneCD files only.

Simply drag and drop a .cue or .ccd file into your library and OpenEmu will add all associated files along with it from the same folder. If a game is made up of multiple discs, please follow the multi-disc guide instead.

Please make sure you are importing valid files by carefully reading the sections below.

Supported Formats

PC Engine CD/TurboGrafx-CD, PC-FX, PlayStation, Sega Saturn (using Mednafen)

• CUE+BIN, both single and multiple .BIN tracks
• CUE+IMG, CUE+ISO
• CUE + BIN/IMG/ISO + CDDA tracks with WAV/OGG/FLAC. MP3 is NOT supported.
• CloneCD CCD+IMG+SUB

Mega CD/Sega CD (using Genesis Plus GX)

• CUE+BIN, CUE+IMG, CUE+ISO
• CUE + BIN/IMG/ISO + CDDA tracks with WAV/OGG. MP3 is NOT supported.

Cue Sheets

A cue sheet is a plain text file with a .cue extension containing metadata used to describe the layout of a CD, normally accompanied by one or more data files dumped from the original disc.

Below demonstrates how a cue sheet could be written for a PlayStation game with CDDA, depending on how it was dumped.

Single binary track

FILE "Castlevania - Symphony of the Night (USA).bin" BINARY
  TRACK 01 MODE2/2352
    INDEX 01 00:00:00
  TRACK 02 AUDIO
    INDEX 01 50:55:45

Single binary track — pregap length and subcode flags

FILE "CASTLEVANIA.BIN" BINARY
  TRACK 01 MODE2/2352
    FLAGS DCP
    INDEX 01 00:00:00
  TRACK 02 AUDIO
    FLAGS DCP
    PREGAP 00:02:00
    INDEX 01 50:53:45

Single binary track — pregap start time with INDEX 00

FILE "Castlevania - Symphony of the Night (USA).img" BINARY
  TRACK 01 MODE2/2352
    INDEX 01 00:00:00
  TRACK 02 AUDIO
    INDEX 00 50:53:45
    INDEX 01 50:55:45

Multiple binary tracks. Data track + separate file for each audio track (common with Redump)

FILE "Castlevania - Symphony of the Night (USA) (Track 1).bin" BINARY
  TRACK 01 MODE2/2352
    INDEX 01 00:00:00
FILE "Castlevania - Symphony of the Night (USA) (Track 2).bin" BINARY
  TRACK 02 AUDIO
    INDEX 00 00:00:00
    INDEX 01 00:02:00

Single binary track with WAVE audio track file

FILE "Castlevania - Symphony of the Night (USA) (Track 1).iso" BINARY
  TRACK 01 MODE2/2352
    INDEX 01 00:00:00
FILE "Castlevania - Symphony of the Night (USA) (Track 2).wav" WAVE
  TRACK 02 AUDIO
    INDEX 00 00:00:00
    INDEX 01 00:02:00

How to Dump a Physical CD

Try Redump's CD dumping guide.

Help

Q. My cue sheet or CCD won't import

It is important that cue sheets are saved as plain text, without "smart quotes" or "smart dashes" and that tracks do not contain hardcoded paths, only filenames.

Open your cue sheet in TextEdit or another plain text editor and verify that the filename for BINARY:

• matches the filename of your .bin/.img/.iso file and is in the correct case
• has an extension: FILE "CASTLEVANIA.BIN" BINARY and NOT FILE "CASTLEVANIA" BINARY
• does not contain a hardcoded path: FILE "C:\WINDOWS\DESKTOP\CASTLEVANIA.BIN" BINARY

If using a CloneCD .ccd, you must also have a .img and .sub with matching filenames.

Q. I have no music at all, only sound effects most of the time

It means you have a bad dump or the cue sheet is missing correct CDDA track information. There is no solution but to obtain a proper dump.

Q. I only have a single .BIN or .ISO file

It is strongly recommended to simply obtain another dump that is packaged properly.

This is considered a bad/incomplete dump. It is necessary your game dump has an associated cue sheet because they are used to describe data and audio for the disc. Attempting to create your own without knowing the layout of the disc and how it was dumped, especially for a game that uses CD Audio (CDDA), will only result in problems.

Q. I have a multi-disc game

You need to create a .m3u file containing the filenames of all the cue sheets for the game. The file must be saved in a folder together with all the cue sheets and their associated files in order for them to be automatically imported. Also, the cue sheets for the game must not already be pre-imported in your library. Note: Mega CD/Sega CD is not supported.

Example:

1. You have a multi-disc game such as Chrono Cross with two cue sheets Chrono Cross (USA) (Disc 1).cue and Chrono Cross (USA) (Disc 2).cue.

2. Now create a .m3u file by opening up your favorite plain text editor and copy and pasting the filenames of your cue sheets, one per line appearing as:

   Chrono Cross (USA) (Disc 1).cue
   Chrono Cross (USA) (Disc 2).cue
   

Note: For CloneCD rips, only add the .ccd filenames to the .m3u file.

3. IMPORTANT — Save the file as plain text (if using TextEdit, select "Make Plain Text" from the Format menu) with a .m3u extension, for example Chrono Cross (USA).m3u

4. Import only the .m3u file into your library as normal and the cue sheets will be automatically imported. It will appear in your PlayStation library and you can load it.

Folder containing all Chrono Cross files/
└╴Chrono Cross (USA) (Disc 1).bin
└╴Chrono Cross (USA) (Disc 1).cue
└╴Chrono Cross (USA) (Disc 2).bin
└╴Chrono Cross (USA) (Disc 2).cue
└╴Chrono Cross (USA).m3u    <-- import this file

Now, when you reach a point in-game where you must swap discs, select the required disc from the HUD control bar "Select Disc" menu like so:

Q. I have an .ECM or .APE file

Dumps with .ecm and .ape are compressed data and audio tracks. These files must be uncompressed before they can be used.

Our example will use a cue sheet named Castlevania - Symphony of the Night (USA).cue with the contents and files:

FILE "Castlevania - Symphony of the Night (USA) (Track 1).bin" BINARY
  TRACK 01 MODE2/2352
    INDEX 01 00:00:00
FILE "Castlevania - Symphony of the Night (USA) (Track 2).bin" BINARY
  TRACK 02 AUDIO
    INDEX 00 00:00:00
    INDEX 01 00:02:00

Castlevania - Symphony of the Night (USA)/
└╴Castlevania - Symphony of the Night (USA) (Track 1).7z    <-- uncompress this file
│ └╴data.bin.ecm
└╴Castlevania - Symphony of the Night (USA) (Track 2).ape

ECM

The .ecm file must be decoded and renamed to match the BINARY track filename from the cue sheet.

1. Download unecm (via the Command-Line Pack v1.03 by Neill Corlett)
2. Uncompress cmdpack-1.03-macosx-x86_64.tar.gz and copy the unecm file to the same folder as your game with the .ecm file

• If you have the Homebrew package manager, you might also use brew install ecm

3. Open your cue sheet in TextEdit or another plain text editor and notice the filename of the BINARY track and also the .ecm filename in your folder. e.g. Castlevania - Symphony of the Night (USA) (Track 1).bin and data.bin.ecm

4. Navigate to your game's folder in Terminal. Follow guides here or here to do this.

5. Decode your .ecm. In Terminal, enter the following command and press enter, making sure to add the correct filenames:

   ./unecm "data.bin.ecm" "Castlevania - Symphony of the Night (USA) (Track 1).bin"

APE

The .ape file must be converted to PCM and renamed to match the AUDIO track filename from the cue sheet.

1. Download X Lossless Decoder (XLD)
2. Open XLD.app — the application is not signed, so you must right click and select Open
3. Go to XLD > Preferences menu and set the Output format to PCM (little endian)
4. To convert your file, just click on Open from the File menu, and navigate to your .ape file
5. The converted file will be named, for example, Castlevania - Symphony of the Night (USA) (Track 2).pcm which must then be renamed
6. To rename, right click on the .pcm file and select Get Info. From the Name & Extension section, change the file extension from .pcm to match the corresponding audio track inside the cue sheet, presumably .bin, resulting in Castlevania - Symphony of the Night (USA) (Track 2).bin

Q. I have a .CHD file from Archive.org

Some CD dumps are stored in a MAME/MESS-specific format capable of multiple layers of compression (LZMA/zlib/FLAC/Huffman) called CHD (Compressed Hunks of Data or Compressed Hard Disk images), containing a .cue and .bin file. These files must be uncompressed with chdman before they can be used. Two methods are listed below:

1. 1. Install Tools for MAME via Homebrew.
   2. Navigate to your game's folder in Terminal. Follow guides here or here to do this.
   3. Extract your .chd

      1. For single files: In Terminal, enter the following command and press enter, making sure to add the correct filenames:

         chdman extractcd -i "sonic cd (usa).chd" -o "sonic cd (usa).cue" -ob "sonic cd (usa).bin"

      2. For multiple files: In Terminal, enter the following command and press enter: touch convert.sh

         Open convert.sh with an editor of your choice, enter the following and save:

         for file in *.chd; do
            chdman extractcd -i "${file%}" -o "${file%.chd}.cue" -ob "${file%.chd}.bin"
         done

         In Terminal, making sure you are still in the correct directory (with the .chd files), enter the following and press enter: bash convert

2. 1. Download and install the SDL2 framework for OS X.

   2. Download a pre-compiled version of MAME 64-bit (x86_64) from SDLMAME

   3. Uncompress the .zip file and copy the chdman file found inside the "tools" folder to the same folder as your game with the .chd file

   4. Navigate to your game's folder in Terminal. Follow guides here or here to do this.

   5. Extract your .chd. In Terminal, enter the following command and press enter, making sure to add the correct filenames:

      ./chdman extractcd -i "sonic cd (usa).chd" -o "sonic cd (usa).cue" -ob "sonic cd (usa).bin"

Q. I have a .MDF and a .MDS file

These are an alternative format to iso/bin images created by some software like Alcohol 120%. They are very easy to convert into .bin/.cue.

1. Install a command-line tool named mdf2iso using either macports or homebrew.

   $ brew install mdf2iso

2. In the directory with both .mdf and .mds files, run the following command to convert into .bin/.cue.

   $ mdf2iso --cue name_of_file.mdf

3. This will generate compatible .bin/.cue files in the same directory, with the same name as the original image.

Q. I have a .SBI file

Hundreds of PAL region PlayStation games used LibCrypt, a copy protection mechanism that stored non-standard data in subchannels on the disc. If missing from a backup, this crippled games by disabling input (Ape Escape), impossible difficulty (Lucky Luke: Western Fever), mysterious bugs (Spyro: Year of the Dragon) or freezing at boot (Resident Evil 3: Nemesis) or during a level (Wip3out).

Dumped copies that use cue sheets require additional .sbi subchannel data files in order for these games to work.

Download .sbi files for affected games from redump.org by first choosing your game and then finding "SBI subchannels" at the top of the page.

Drag and drop the .sbi to import it alongside your game. IMPORTANT — The .sbi file must be named exactly as the base filename of your cue sheet including case e.g.

• Ape Escape (Europe).cue and Ape Escape (Europe).sbi
• Wip3out (Europe) (En,Fr,De,Es,It).CUE and Wip3out (Europe) (En,Fr,De,Es,It).SBI

Note: multi-disc games such as Final Fantasy VIII, Final Fantasy IX, Galerians and Parasite Eve II must have all .sbi files for each disc imported.