Permission is granted to copy, modify, and distribute it, as long as the references to the original information sources are maintained. There is NO WARRANTY, to the extent permitted by law.
Copyright © 2011-2012 Thomas Schmitt scdbackup@gmx.net.
Copyright © 2012 Rocky Bernstein
CD Text provides a way to give disk and track information in an audio CD. This information is used, for example, in CD players to provide information about the audio CD.
This document describes the information available in CD Text, and how to decode and encode it.
CD Text information is grouped into blocks, each one in a particular language. Up to 8 languages (or blocks) can be stored.
Within a block, there are 13 categories of information, called Pack Types.
The CD Text categories are identified by a single-byte code. See table:categories.
0x80: Title 0x81: Performers 0x82: Songwriters 0x83: Composers 0x84: Arrangers 0x85: Message Area 0x86: Disc Identification (in text and binary) 0x87: Genre Identification (in text and binary) 0x88: Table of Contents (in binary) 0x89: Second Table of Contents (in binary) 0x8d: Closed Information 0x8e: UPC/EAN code of the album and ISRC code of each track 0x8f: Block Size Information (binary)
Table 1.1: CD Text Categories
Additional notes regarding Pack Types:
The total size of a block’s attribute set is restricted by the fact that it has to be stored in at most 253 records with 12 bytes of payload. These records are called Text Packs described in the next section. Since information such as the Disc and Genre Identification is often the same across mutiple tracks, a compact way to repeat identical information is provided.
Packs are stored in CD in the sub-channel of the Lead-in of the disc. The file ‘doc/cookbook.txt’ of the libburnia distribution describes how to write the CD Text pack array to CD, and how to read CD Text packs from CD. If you are just interested in a more high-level access CD Text information without having to understand the internal structure, you can use libcdio’s CD Text API for getting and setting fields.
The format is explained in part in Annex J of (MMC-3), and in part by Sony’s documentation cdtext.zip.
Each pack consists of a 4-byte header, 12 bytes of payload, and 2 bytes of CRC.
The first byte of each pack contains the pack type. See table:categories for a list of pack types.
The second byte often gives the track number of the pack. However, a zero track value indicates that the information pertains to the whole album. Higher numbers are valid for track-oriented packs (types 0x80 to 0x85, and 0x8e). In these pack types, there should be one text pack for the disc and one for each track. With TOC packs (types 0x88 and 0x89), the second byte is a track number too. With type 0x8f, the second byte counts the record parts from 0 to 2.
The third byte is a sequential counter.
The fourth byte is the Block Number and Character Position Indicator. It consists of three bit fields:
Character position. Either the number of characters which the current text inherited from the previous pack, or 15 if the current text started before the previous pack.
Block Number (groups text packs in language blocks)
Is 0 if single byte characters, 1 if double-byte characters.
The 12 payload bytes contain pieces of zero terminated data. When double-byte text is used the zero is a double byte, otherwise it is a single ASCII NUL.
A text may span over several packs. Unused characters in a pack are used for the next text of the same pack type. If no text of the same type follows, then the remaining text bytes are set to 0.
The CRC algorithm uses divisor 0x11021. The resulting 16-bit residue of the polynomial division is inverted (xor-ed with 0xffff) and written as Big-endian number in bytes 16 and 17 of the pack.
The text packs are grouped in up to 8 blocks of at most 256 packs. Each block pertains to one language. Sequence numbers of each block are counted separately. All packs of block 0 come before the packs of block 1.
The limitation of block number and sequence numbers imply that there are at most 2048 text packs possible.
If a text of a track (pack types 0x80 to 0x85 and 0x8e) repeats identically for the next track, then it may be represented by a TAB character (ASCII 9) for single byte texts, and two TAB characters for double byte texts. This is desirable because there is a somewhat limited amount of space for CD Text — 256 * 12 bytes which may have to accomodate up to 99 tracks.
The two binary bytes of pack type 0x87 are written to the first 0x87 pack of a block. They may or may not be repeated at the start of the follow-up packs of type 0x87.
Pack types 0x80 to 0x85 and 0x8e (Title, Performers, Songwriters, Arrangers, Message Area and UPC/EAN code respectively) contain a NUL-termintated string. If double-byte characters are used, then two zero bytes terminate the text. Of these, all except the last, 0x8e or UPC/EAN code, are encoded according to their block’s Character Code. This could be either as ISO-8859-1 single byte characters, as 7-bit ASCII single byte characters, or as MS-JIS double byte characters.
Pack type 0x8e is documented by Sony as:
UPC/EAN Code (POS Code) of the album. This field typically consists of 13 characters.
This is always ASCII encoded. It applies to tracks as “ISRC code [which] typically consists of 12 characters” and is always ISO-8859-1 encoded. MMC calls these information entities “Media Catalog Number” and “ISRC”. The catalog number consists of 13 decimal digits. ISRC consists of 12 characters: 2 country code [0-9A-Z], 3 owner code [0-9A-Z], 2 year digits (00 to 99), 5 serial number digits (00000 to 99999).
For pack type 0x86 (Disc Identification) here is how Sony describes this:
Catalog Number: (use ASCII Code) Catalog Number of the album
So it is not really binary but might be non-printable, and should contain only bytes with bit 7 set to zero.
Pack type 0x87 (Genre Identification) contains 2 binary bytes followed by NUL-byte terminated text.
You can either specify a genre code or the supplementary genre information (without the code) or both. Neither is mandatory.
Categories associated with their Big-endian 16-bit value are listed in table:genres.
0x0000: Not Used. Sony prescribes this when no genre applies 0x0001: Not Defined 0x0002: Adult Contemporary 0x0003: Alternative Rock 0x0004: Childrens' Music 0x0005: Classical 0x0006: Contemporary Christian 0x0007: Country 0x0008: Dance 0x0009: Easy Listening 0x000a: Erotic 0x000b: Folk 0x000c: Gospel 0x000d: Hip Hop 0x000e: Jazz 0x000f: Latin 0x0010: Musical 0x0011: New Age 0x0012: Opera 0x0013: Operetta 0x0014: Pop Music 0x0015: Rap 0x0016: Reggae 0x0017: Rock Music 0x0018: Rhythm & Blues 0x0019: Sound Effects 0x001a: Spoken Word 0x001b: World Music
Table 1.2: Genre Categories
Sony documents report that this field contains:
Genre information that would supplement the Genre Code, such as “USA Rock music in the 60’s”.
This information is always ASCII encoded.
Pack type 0x8d Sony documents say:
Closed Information: (use 8859-1 Code) Any information can be recorded on disc as memorandum. Information in this field will not be read by CD-TEXT players available to the public.
One can however read this information with an MMC READ TOC/PMA/ATP command. (See Section 5.23 of mmc3r10g.pdf).
This field is always ISO-8859-1 encoded.
Pack type 0x88 records information from the CD’s Table of Contents, as of READ PMA/TOC/ATIP Format 0010b. See Table 237 TOC Track Descriptor Format, Q Sub-channel of MMC-3.
This information duplicates information stored elsewhere and that can be obtained by an MMC READ TOC/PMA/ATP command.
The first pack of type 0x88 (Table of Contents) records in its payload bytes as follows:
0 : PMIN of POINT A1 = First Track Number 1 : PMIN of POINT A2 = Last Track Number 2 : unknown, 0 in Sony example 3 : PMIN of POINT A2 = Start position of Lead-Out 4 : PSEC of POINT A2 = Start position of Lead-Out 5 : PFRAME of POINT A2 = Start position of Lead-Out 6 to 11 : unknown, 0 in Sony example
The following packs record PMIN, PSEC, PFRAME of the
POINTs between the lowest track number (1 or 01h) and the highest
track number (99 or 63h). The payload of the last pack is padded
by zeros.
Using the .TOC from Sony documents as an example:
A0 01 A1 14 A2 63:02:18 01 00:02:00 02 04:11:25 03 08:02:50 04 11:47:62 ... 13 53:24:25 14 57:03:25
Encoding the above gives:
88 00 23 00 01 0e 00 3f 02 12 00 00 00 00 00 00 12 00 88 01 24 00 00 02 00 04 0b 19 08 02 32 0b 2f 3e 67 2d ... 88 0d 27 00 35 18 19 39 03 19 00 00 00 00 00 00 ea af
Pack type 0x89 (Second Table of Contents) is not yet clear. It might be a representation of Playback Skip Interval, Mode-5 Q sub-channel, POINT 01 to 40 See Section 4.2.6.3 of MMC-3.
The time points in the Sony example are in the time range of the tracks numbers that are given before the time points:
01 02:41:48 01 02:52:58 06 23:14:25 06 23:29:60 07 28:30:39 07 28:42:30 13 55:13:26 13 55:31:50
Encoding the above gives:
89 01 28 00 01 04 00 00 00 00 02 29 30 02 34 3a f3 0c 89 06 29 00 02 04 00 00 00 00 17 0e 19 17 1d 3c 73 92 89 07 2a 00 03 04 00 00 00 00 1c 1e 27 1c 2a 1e 72 20 89 0d 2b 00 04 04 00 00 00 00 37 0d 1a 37 1f 32 0b 62
The track numbers are stored in the track number byte of the packs. The two time points are stored in byte 6 to 11 of the payload. Byte 0 of the payload seems to be a sequential counter. Byte 1 always 4? Byte 2 to 5 always 0?
Pack type 0x8f summarizes the whole list of text packs of a block. So there is one group of three 0x8f packs per block. Nevertheless each 0x8f group indicates the highest sequence number and the language code of all blocks.
The payload bytes of three 0x8f packs form a 36-byte record. The track number bytes of the three packs have the values 0, 1, 2.
For the format of this pack type see table:block-pack.
Byte : 0 : Character code for pack types 0x80 to 0x85: 0x00 = ISO-8859-1 0x01 = 7 bit ASCII 0x80 = MS-JIS (japanese Kanji, double byte characters) 1 : Number of first track 2 : Number of last track 3 : value 3 means CD-TEXT is copyrighted, value 0 means CD-TEXT is not copyrighted 4 - 19 : Pack count of the various types 0x80 to 0x8f. Byte number N tells the count of packs of type 0x80 + (N - 4). I.e. the first byte in this field of 16 counts packs of type 0x80. 20 - 27 : Highest sequence byte number of blocks 0 to 7. 28 - 36 : Language code for blocks 0 to 7 (tech3264.pdf appendix 3)
Table 1.3: Block Size Information Type
Table table:languages specifies the language codes that are referred to in bytes 28-38 of table:block-pack.
0x00: Unknown 0x50: Sranan Tongo 0x01: Albanian 0x51: Somali 0x02: Breton 0x52: Sinhalese 0x03: Catalan 0x53: Shona 0x04: Croatian 0x54: Serbo-croat 0x05: Welsh 0x55: Ruthenian 0x06: Czech 0x56: Russian 0x07: Danish 0x57: Quechua 0x08: German 0x58: Pushtu 0x09: English 0x59: Punjabi 0x0a: Spanish 0x5a: Persian 0x0b: Esperanto 0x5b: Papamiento 0x0c: Estonian 0x5c: Oriya 0x0d: Basque 0x5d: Nepali 0x0e: Faroese 0x5e: Ndebele 0x0f: French 0x5f: Marathi 0x10: Frisian 0x60: Moldavian 0x11: Irish 0x61: Malaysian 0x12: Gaelic 0x62: Malagasay 0x13: Galician 0x63: Macedonian 0x14: Iceland 0x64: Laotian 0x15: Italian 0x65: Korean 0x16: Lappish 0x66: Khmer 0x17: Latin 0x67: Kazakh 0x18: Latvian 0x68: Kannada 0x19: Luxembourgian 0x69: Japanese 0x1a: Lithuanian 0x6a: Indonesian 0x1b: Hungarian 0x6b: Hindi 0x1c: Maltese 0x6c: Hebrew 0x1d: Dutch 0x6d: Hausa 0x1e: Norwegian 0x6e: Gurani 0x1f: Occitan 0x6f: Gujurati 0x20: Polish 0x70: Greek 0x21: Portuguese 0x71: Georgian 0x22: Romanian 0x72: Fulani 0x23: Romanish 0x73: Dari 0x24: Serbian 0x74: Churash 0x25: Slovak 0x75: Chinese 0x26: Slovenian 0x76: Burmese 0x27: Finnish 0x77: Bulgarian 0x28: Swedish 0x78: Bengali 0x29: Turkish 0x79: Bielorussian 0x2a: Flemish 0x7a: Bambora 0x2b: Wallon 0x7b: Azerbaijani 0x45: Zulu 0x7c: Assamese 0x46: Vietnamese 0x7d: Armenian 0x47: Uzbek 0x7e: Arabic 0x48: Urdu 0x7f: Amharic 0x49: Ukrainian 0x4a: Thai 0x4b: Telugu 0x4c: Tatar 0x4d: Tamil 0x4e: Tadzhik 0x4f: Swahili
Table 1.4: Language Codes
Note: Not all of the language codes in table:languages have ever been seen with CD Text.
Using the preceding information, we can work out the following example.
42 : 8f 00 2a 00 01 01 03 00 06 05 04 05 07 06 01 02 48 65 43 : 8f 01 2b 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 06 03 2c 00 00 00 c0 20 44 : 8f 02 2c 00 00 00 00 00 09 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 11 45
decodes to:
Byte :Value Meaning 0 : 01 = ASCII 7-bit 1 : 01 = first track is 1 2 : 03 = last track is 3 3 : 00 = copyright (0 = public domain, 3 = copyrighted ?) 4 : 06 = 6 packs of type 0x80 5 : 05 = 5 packs of type 0x81 6 : 04 = 4 packs of type 0x82 7 : 05 = 5 packs of type 0x83 8 : 07 = 7 packs of type 0x84 9 : 06 = 6 packs of type 0x85 10 : 01 = 1 pack of type 0x86 11 : 02 = 2 packs of type 0x87 12 : 00 = 0 packs of type 0x88 13 : 00 = 0 packs of type 0x89 14 : 00 00 00 00 = 0 packs of types 0x8a to 0x8d 18 : 06 = 6 packs of type 0x8e 19 : 03 = 3 packs of type 0x8f 20 : 2c = last sequence for block 0 This matches the sequence number of the last text pack (0x2c = 44) 21 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 = last sequence numbers for block 1..7 (none) 28 : 09 = language code for block 0: English 29 : 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 = language codes for block 1..7 (none)
This part gives examples of two ways to input CD Text for burning.
This text file format provides comprehensive means to define the text attributes of session and tracks for a single block. More than one such file has to be read to form an attribute set with multiple blocks.
The information is given by text lines of the following form: purpose specifier [whitespace] = [whitespace] content text [whitespace] is zero or more ASCII 32 (space) or ASCII 9 (tab) characters. The purpose specifier tells the meaning of the content text. Empty content text does not cause a CD Text attribute to be attached.
The following purpose specifiers apply to the session as a whole:
Specifier = Meaning Text Code = Character code for pack type 0x8f "ASCII", "8859" Language Code = One of the language names for pack type 0x8f Album Title = Content of pack type 0x80 Artist Name = Content of pack type 0x81 Songwriter = Content of pack type 0x82 Composer = Content of pack type 0x83 Arranger = Content of pack type 0x84 Album Message = Content of pack type 0x85 Catalog Number = Content of pack type 0x86 Genre Code = One of the genre names for pack type 0x87 Genre Information = Cleartext part of pack type 0x87 Closed Information = Content of pack type 0x8d UPC / EAN = Content of pack type 0x8e Text Data Copy Protection = Copyright value for pack type 0x8f "ON" = 0x03, "OFF" = 0x00 First Track Number = The lowest track number used in the file Last Track Number = The highest track number used in the file
The following purpose specifiers apply to particular tracks:
Track NN Title = Content of pack type 0x80 Track NN Artist = Content of pack type 0x81 Track NN Songwriter = Content of pack type 0x82 Track NN Composer = Content of pack type 0x83 Track NN Arranger = Content of pack type 0x84 Track NN Message = Content of pack type 0x85 ISRC NN = Content of pack type 0x8e
The following purpose specifiers have no effect on CD Text:
Remarks = Comments with no influence on CD Text Disc Information NN = Supplementary information for use by record companies. ISO-8859-1 encoded. NN ranges from 01 to 04. Input Sheet Version = "0.7T"
An example cdrskin run with three tracks:
$ cdrskin dev=/dev/sr0 -v input_sheet_v07t=NIGHTCATS.TXT \ -audio track_source_1 track_source_2 track_source_3
The contexts of file ‘NIGHTCATS.TXT’ used above is:
Input Sheet Version = 0.7T Text Code = 8859 Language Code = English Album Title = Joyful Nights Artist Name = United Cat Orchestra Songwriter = Various Songwriters Composer = Various Composers Arranger = Tom Cat Album Message = For all our fans Catalog Number = 1234567890 Genre Code = Classical Genre Information = Feline classic music Closed Information = This is not to be shown by CD players UPC / EAN = 1234567890123 Text Data Copy Protection = OFF First Track Number = 1 Last Track Number = 3 Track 01 Title = Song of Joy Track 01 Artist = Felix and The Purrs Track 01 Songwriter = Friedrich Schiller Track 01 Composer = Ludwig van Beethoven Track 01 Arranger = Tom Cat Track 01 Message = Fritz and Louie once were punks ISRC 01 = XYBLG1101234 Track 02 Title = Humpty Dumpty Track 02 Artist = Catwalk Beauties Track 02 Songwriter = Mother Goose Track 02 Composer = unknown Track 02 Arranger = Tom Cat Track 02 Message = Pluck the goose ISRC 02 = XYBLG1100005 Track 03 Title = Mee Owwww Track 03 Artist = Mia Kitten Track 03 Songwriter = Mia Kitten Track 03 Composer = Mia Kitten Track 03 Arranger = Mia Kitten Track 03 Message = ISRC 03 = XYBLG1100006
A CDRWIN cue sheet file defines the track data source (FILE), various text attributes (CATALOG, TITLE, PERFORMER, SONGWRITER, ISRC), track block types (TRACK), track start addresses (INDEX). The rules for CDRWIN cue sheet files are described at http://digitalx.org/cue-sheet/syntax/ [4].
There are three more text attributes mentioned in the cdrecord manual page for defining the corresponding CD Text attributes: ARRANGER, COMPOSER, MESSAGE.
An Example of a CDRWIN cue sheet file:
CATALOG 1234567890123 FILE "audiodata.bin" BINARY TITLE "Joyful Nights" TRACK 01 AUDIO FLAGS DCP TITLE "Song of Joy" PERFORMER "Felix and The Purrs" SONGWRITER "Friedrich Schiller" ISRC XYBLG1101234 INDEX 01 00:00:00 TRACK 02 AUDIO FLAGS DCP TITLE "Humpty Dumpty" PERFORMER "Catwalk Beauties" SONGWRITER "Mother Goose" ISRC XYBLG1100005 INDEX 01 08:20:12 TRACK 03 AUDIO FLAGS DCP TITLE "Mee Owwww" PERFORMER "Mia Kitten" SONGWRITER "Mia Kitten" ISRC XYBLG1100006 INDEX 01 13:20:33
Thanks to Leon Merten Lohse.
CD Text Categories
Genre Categories
Block Size Information Type
Language Codes
This document was generated by r on March 5, 2012 using texi2html 1.82.
The buttons in the navigation panels have the following meaning:
| Button | Name | Go to | From 1.2.3 go to |
|---|---|---|---|
| [ < ] | Back | Previous section in reading order | 1.2.2 |
| [ > ] | Forward | Next section in reading order | 1.2.4 |
| [ << ] | FastBack | Beginning of this chapter or previous chapter | 1 |
| [ Up ] | Up | Up section | 1.2 |
| [ >> ] | FastForward | Next chapter | 2 |
| [Top] | Top | Cover (top) of document | |
| [Contents] | Contents | Table of contents | |
| [Index] | Index | Index | |
| [ ? ] | About | About (help) |
where the Example assumes that the current position is at Subsubsection One-Two-Three of a document of the following structure:
This document was generated by r on March 5, 2012 using texi2html 1.82.