Hi!
To explain the different behaviour in HOFA DDP Player, let me give you some technical background information:
There are two ways, how a genre can be stored in CD-Text. It can be saved as an ID code or as plain text.
When using the ID code, you only have the very limited choice of the 26 genres that you could see in the selection list mentioned above. It is not likely that this list will ever be extended and if it would, most CD players on the market would not be able to show the new entries. The only advantage of this method might be that some CD players could show the genre in different languages, but I’ve never seen a player that really does this.
To overcome that limitation, CD-Text also allows to use plain text for the genre entry. Using that method you can write anything you want.
It is also possible to use both the ID code and plain text, so that you could use one of the predefined genres and extend this with your own text.
The CD-Text binary file in a DDP image consists of several data blocks for the different entries. It only needs to contain the data blocks that are really used. For example an image can contain data blocks for the “Title” and “Performer” entries but not contain any data blocks for “Songwriter”, “Composer”, etc.
Blocks that are not used are normally left out, because on the CD there is very limited memory space that can be used for CD-Text.
It seems that Wavelab always writes an empty data block for the “Genre” entry which would not be necessary.
DDP images from HOFA CD-Burn & DDP, Triumph, GearPro, Sequoia, Soundblade or Reaper do not contain that empty “Genre” data block if genre is not used.
So what about that “unused” flag?
If a data block for “Genre” exists, it will always contain the space for the ID code and for the plain text.
- When using the ID field only, the ID has to be set to the desired value and the text field remains empty.
- When using both, the ID has to be set to the desired value and the text field is filled with the desired additional content.
- When only using the text field, but not the ID field, the ID field has to be set to 0, which means “unused”. But this only means that the ID field is unused and that the genre should be taken from the following text field. It does not mean that the whole data block is unused, as this would not make any sense.
Wavelab sets the ID field to 0 and leaves the text field empty. For HOFA DDP Player this means:
- The “Genre” column is activated because the data block exists
- The genre has to be taken from the text field, because the ID field was set to “unused”
- The text field is empty, so an empty genre column is displayed.
We will discuss if we should always hide the genre column if it is existing but empty. Maybe this will become an additional option in DDP Player Maker.
Regards,
Gregor Pogatzki
HOFA-Plugins