I was wondering if you guys are making a database of PS3 games? I tried searching the forums and google but all I find are posts in the history section of the forum with people who have posted their info. And if you are, is there a guide somewhere that will tell me exactly how to dump games to comply with your standards so everyone gets the same info in their dump?
- RiMMER
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Yes, PS3 submissions are accepted. Even though not a guide, but you can try reading this thread to get some insight.
Thank you. The PS3 link for discs must have been down when I was looking for it earlier because there was nothing there which is why I want sure if you were accepting them. But now I see the games listed. But anyway, I was talking about dumping my PS3 games using Gaia Manager since I just recently put CFW on my PS3. But after reading that thread you linked to it seems like you aren't accepting games that are dumped that way because it removes the encryption making it no longer 1:1. So I guess I can't help out after all. I will try and do some research and see if I can possibly dump a PS3 game using the Blu-ray drive in my laptop and get the same results as someone else who has already submitted the same game.
- RiMMER
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Yes, as you properly figured out, encryption must be intact, so Gaia Manager won't really help in any way.
As far as I know, the PC blu-ray drives either work, or not. So just put the game disc inside the drive, boot up the latest IsoBuster and check out whether the disc is present, or not. If it is, try dumping it easily as any other DVD, for example.
If it works, your dump should be good, but it still would be nice if you could find at least 1 disc which is already present in the database and compare your results to make sure the drive reads as it should.
Good luck!
5 2011-04-16 09:37:40 (edited by Jackal 2011-04-16 11:35:40)
RiMMER wrote:
Yes, as you properly figured out, encryption must be intact, so Gaia Manager won't really help in any way.
I'm not sure if that's true. The dumps that we have now could turn out to be useless and maybe can't be decrypted in the future. What we are waiting for is some method that allows us to create decrypted/descrambled (layer decryption removed and all other properties staying intact) ISO's. It's no use preserving the encrypted images unless we have a way to decrypt them (without needing the disc again).
AFAIK, Gaia manager and all other tools so far can only create file-based (jailbreak format) backups and no sector-based ISO.
- RiMMER
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Jackal wrote:
It's no use preserving the encrypted images unless we have a way to decrypt them (without needing the disc again).
So why are we submitting the DVD-Videos to the database? Those are encrypted and useless too.
7 2011-04-16 11:56:02 (edited by Jackal 2011-04-16 12:01:55)
RiMMER wrote:
Jackal wrote:It's no use preserving the encrypted images unless we have a way to decrypt them (without needing the disc again).
So why are we submitting the DVD-Videos to the database? Those are encrypted and useless too.
I don't know about that.. if you can extract them with isobuster without read errors, VLC should be able to circumvent the analog protection and play them without scrambling/artifacts?
If they are really useless then they should be removed I guess.
I don't think we should decrypt discs.
This way, they are not 1:1 bit-perfect copies of the originals... which should be the aim for this project.
Decryption is a step that should be done by e.g. emulators or dedicated programs from the original, unaltered disc-images.
Plextor: PX-755SA, PX-130A; LG: GDR-8164B, GGC-H20N; Lite-On: LH-20A1P; NEC: ND-2510A; Pioneer: BDC-TD03; Sony Optiarc: BC-5500S
- RiMMER
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Jackal wrote:
VLC should be able to circumvent the analog protection
Well, you answered your own question, I guess. Those discs are encrypted and you cannot really convert them to anything else, only play using VLC, as it can go around the encryption. In the future, the same may happen to PS3 discs, so if you agree with encrypted DVD videos, you should agree with encrypted PS3 games. Either both, or none.
Jackal wrote:
AFAIK, Gaia manager and all other tools so far can only create file-based (jailbreak format) backups and no sector-based ISO.
Yeah, Gaia manager doesn't create ISOs. From what I understand it decrypts the files and copies them to the PS3 hard drive. Then I use an FTP program on both my PS3 and my laptop to copy the files over to my computer. I was hoping that there would be a way for me to convert the folder into an ISO and then get the data from it through HashCalc but as we said before it would still be a decrypted ISO.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't there a similar issue over at No-Intro regarding NES roms? Like should the roms they make the database from be headered or non-headered. Non-headered would be 1:1 but be useless in emulators where as headered would not be 1:1 but would work in emulators. Is that kind of like the dilemma we are in now?
No-Intro has more problems with NES roms than that 
The dat contains already checksums for the roms without header and with clrmame you use a special header xml file that tells clrmame to ignore the first 16 bytes when calculating crc32 and stuff, which is in fact the header.
There could be roms without headers, but then each emulator would need an internal list which game uses what mapper (afaik Nestopia does this).
The other "problem" with NES roms is that they contain different types of roms for a single game, like a PRG and CHR rom, but No-Intro only uses the combined romdata.
Anyway, back to PS3.
The decrypted files do not retain any of the original structure of the medium it was read from. And that is the real problem.
Uhhmmm...Xbox 1 actually has the same problem. Correct? Hence the layout files http://layouts.xbox-scene.com/
Clutz450 wrote:
I was hoping that there would be a way for me to convert the folder into an ISO and then get the data from it through HashCalc but as we said before it would still be a decrypted ISO.
It's easy enough to replace the encrypted files in the iso with the decrypted files, however editing the iso header to reflect the new contents is a question mark (maybe nulling the hashes works? who knows, there's no iso loader to test it on), and you'd need to dump the disc as both an encrypted iso and decrypted files.
Even if it worked, you'd end up with a decrypted iso which would basically be a tarball to store the decrypted files. If an iso loader ever exists, it would have to be able to decrypt itself, so obtaining a decrypted iso is useful only for compression.
Hopefully one day, given the encrypted iso header and decrypted files (or decrypted iso), it should be possible to encrypt the files and rebuild the encrypted iso (convert from jailbreak to redump when given the encrypted iso header). And given the encrypted iso, be able to spit out the hash table in the header (or encrypted iso header for simplicity) and the decrypted iso.
PS3Dec (decrypt ps3 images), PS3DumpCheck (check integrity), GetKey (dump PS3 metadata), DatSplit (split redump dats), GPack (compress related images together)
A little over my head but thanks for trying to explain it.
RiMMER wrote:
As far as I know, the PC blu-ray drives either work, or not. So just put the game disc inside the drive, boot up the latest IsoBuster and check out whether the disc is present, or not. If it is, try dumping it easily as any other DVD, for example.
So I finally got a free moment to see if the Blu-Ray drive in my computer but unfortunately it didn't see the disc in IsoBuster. In case anyone is interested, I have an Optiarc BD ROM BC-5500S4 drive.
Since this thead has gotten off topic from the original question of do you or do you not take PS3 submissions, I was wondering if there is a thread on what drives work and what ones don't work. Also, is there an active thread discussing whether or not to accept decrypted dumps from Gaia Manager. Because if it is ever decided that they will be accepted, then I would like to know right away so I can start contributing.
- RiMMER
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Clutz450 wrote:
Since this thead has gotten off topic from the original question of do you or do you not take PS3 submissions, I was wondering if there is a thread on what drives work and what ones don't work. Also, is there an active thread discussing whether or not to accept decrypted dumps from Gaia Manager. Because if it is ever decided that they will be accepted, then I would like to know right away so I can start contributing.
These are some difficult questions, because:
PS3 games are still rather "new" - they are not "endangered' and need no preservation
Not many people have BluRay drives or PS3 consoles with linux and required knowledge to dump games
The easiest answer is that "yes, redump accepts PS3 dumps which are 1:1 copies of the original media, therefore the encryption must be intact."
Unfortunatelly, the fact whether such dumps are useful or not isn't really important right now. If this community is about preserving data, nobody cares you won't be able to use that data to play the game. Sounds strange, but that's what you'll get answered every time you ask.
A new backup manager has been released which is capable of PS3 Blu-ray ISO dumping:
http://www.cobra-usb.com/
Making game backups
1. Start Cobra USB Manager from the XMB.
2. Insert the game to backup. It will appear at the beginning of the games list.
3. Select it, press circle, and choose the destination device from the list.
4. You will be asked if you want the dump in iso or in the standard format. Choose the desired
option and wait for the copy to complete.Pros and cons of iso format compared to the standard directory based format:
Pros
· Support of backups with files bigger than 4 GB on external drives is possible. Iso files with a size
bigger than 4 GB are split in parts.
· Less files on hard disk, it can help to reduce fragmentation.Cons
· It is a less standard format for ps3 backups.
· It always requires a ps3 disc game inserted.
Perhaps this can create proper dumps. :-)
Their solution however includes a USB dongle which is needed to actually run the manager.
Hopefully something similar will be released as freeware soon.
Hi.. thanks for letting us know about this.. I hope someone will be able to reverse engineer the software and see how it works 