If I go to Windows Character Map and copy the character É , then paste it into a track name in Wavelab 9-64, it looks right. If I then go to CD Text and use the red arrow to insert that as the CD Text track name, I get a question mark.
But it works ok in Wavelab 8.5.30-64:
If I go to Windows Character Map and copy the character É , then paste it into a track name in Wavelab 8.5.30-64, it looks right. If I then go to CD Text and use the red arrow to insert that as the CD Text track name, it still looks right.
But neither WL9 or WL8 take a paste into the CD Text window directly as I expect. Pasting directly into the CD Text window I always get a question mark.
Both versions have “Restrict to ASCII” checked.
If I uncheck “Restrict to ASCII” I can paste directly into the CD Text window without a question mark.
What’s going on? And why are WL8 and WL9 different?
And if I have to uncheck “Restrict to ASCII”, what’s the downside of doing that?
I would check the DDP in another app … Sonoris for example. And/or burn a CD and run PlexTools to see what it sees.
FWIW, personally, I’m a bit pessimistic that CD players will universally and reliably read anything that is outside the ASCII ISO 646 English. You are potentially going to get “?” or a space. Even if WL allows you to enter the characters and they may be technically “in spec”.
Thanks Rat. I guess I never bothered to look up what ASCII actually meant and assumed it covered more characters for some reason. I didn’t really know it was just English characters (?), numbers and keyboard symbols. Thanks for the help.
Hi Bob, great topic. I think that the reason WaveLab 8 and 9 appear different is something that I requested or discovered. Back in WaveLab 8, I would often not see the question mark problem until after I rendered the DDP and I opened it in another app such as HOFA DDP Player Maker. Aside from accents and odd characters, sometimes copying and pasting the wrong style of apostrophe from a clients emailed track list would trigger a question mark instead of the apostrophe, then I would have to go back to WaveLab, change it to a proper apostrophe and re-render the DDP.
The problem was that WaveLab 8 was not smart enough to display the problem/question mark right away. As soon as I went back to WaveLab t edit the problematic title, sure enough, the question mark would appear and I could easily see the issue, but not until I tried to edit the title. This means that it was easy to miss problems in WaveLab 8 CD-Text with “Restrict To ASCII” enabled. You would literally have to attempt an edit to each title to trigger the question mark and see if there was a problem title.
With WaveLab 9, I asked PG if WaveLab could be smarter and show you the issue right away so it’s more easy to notice when you have an illegal character as I’m sure many of us are copying and pasting the titles rather than typing them all manually.
Anyway, I think that’s why you see the difference between WaveLab 8 and 9. Technically, they are the same but only WaveLab 9 tells you right away when there is a problem and inserts the question mark, with WaveLab 8, you have to trick it into showing you the problem which is converted to a question mark. Maybe try it by pasting an illegal title into WaveLab 8, and then trying to edit somewhere in the title. You’ll probably then see the question mark appear.
At one point I asked PG if the question mark indicating a problem could be made red so it’s easy to distinguish from an intended question mark.
I thought I’d used them in the past without problem (maybe I did), but if it’s unsafe at all I really don’t think I should.
What do the major record labels do with French, German, Spanish? I assume they usually include CD text? Do they leave off all accents and use the ASCII version of the characters? I can’t imagine they’d do anything that’s unsafe.
No problem. I hope that explains why it appears that WaveLab 8.5 and WaveLab 9 are different. They technically have the same ASCII limitations, it’s just that WaveLab 8.5 doesn’t seem to show you the question mark/error until after you attempt to edit the title…which most people would never do. Normally I just have the markers named from the clip names, and then I use the arrows you mentioned to push the marker names to the CD-Text names.
So, 99% of projects I do, I never actually do any editing in the CD-Text field, it’s more about copy/paste and using the auto-arrows to populate the fields, which is why back in WaveLab 8.5, it was easy to miss these errors until you got to the DDP Player stage and saw all the question marks.
With WaveLab 9, it will at least show the question mark/errors in the CD-Text editor right way instead of having to painstakingly pretend to edit each field to see if a question mark suddenly appears.
I’d have to check, but does anybody know if a question mark also appears in the CD-Text area of the CD tab when there is an ASCII problem? If not, that would also be good. IMO, a RED question mark would be really helpful to highlight problems.
AFAIK, the “problem” is not with the CD Text as such and what can be legally written … rather, what the average player can read and actually displays. The two can be mutually exclusive.
This issue has ben discussed for a long time now (a cursory search will confirm the truth of that), and I’m not sure what the solution is. Or even if there is one. Unless we are asked to do so, we haven’t been putting CD Text in now for quite some time. I know we are not alone. Clients sometimes change the track names at the very last minute as the record label uploads to digital before getting the CD pressed etc. I actually had a call last year from a very well known client’s manager complaining about the CD Text being “wrong” in his new car … except there wasn’t any CD Text on the CD: the car had retrieved Gracenote data. Apparently, the CD player can’t read text but retrieves internet data.
Same here. Labels do their own CD text for the most part.
But fwiw, I made a CD and a DDP with the É in Wavelab 8.0.4, and it appears fine (with correct accent) in Hofa, an old Sony CD player, the Mac command line “drutil cdtext” from a Pioneer BD drive, and in my car CD player.
But it doesn’t appear ok if I import the CD back into Wavelab 8.0.4. The É appears as a forward slash.
I also found a Sony Music commercial CD with Spanish language titles, and they didn’t use the accents for the CD Text, only for the artwork, so I guess they were being cautious.
I’d still be interested in knowing about any other major label CD’s that might do the same or different.
CD Text is only defined for unaccented ASCII and Japanese. Anything else that works is just by chance, and may break in another player. Surprising - but that’s just how it is.
CD Text is only defined for unaccented ASCII and Japanese. Anything else that works is just by chance, and may break in another player. Surprising - but that’s just how it is.