Playstation ECM and APE files guide

[Lordmonkus]

***Disclaimer*** I did not figure any of the following out on my own. I do not take any credit for any of the following information. I simply found a guide on a site that we are not allowed to link to. If Brad allows me to link directly to the guide itself I will do so but not before he gives me the go ahead. Full credit goes to Zorlon the forum admin of where I got this information. ************************ So I finally got a game into my collection today for the Playstation that required some work before it would work in Retroarch. I have had to do some work in the past to some games but this one was really beyond any other. I got a game that came in both with a cue sheet, a 7z file and a bunch of APE audio files. Inside the 7z file was an ECM file. I have dealt with ECM files in the past using the unecm tool but never had to deal with APE files. After using unecm I then had to rename that file to match that of the first file the cue sheet was looking for. I then noticed all the following tracks were looking for bin files and not ape files so I renamed all the extensions from .ape to .bin which caused a whole lot of static in place of the proper audio. To fix the audio you need to use Monkeys Audio (link) to convert all the ape files to wav. After converting you will have both the ape and wav files, you can delete the ape files. You will then need to rename all the files with the wav extension to have a bin extension. You can either do this manually or use a simple bat file in the folder with all the wav files with the following command: ren *.wav *.bin To convert all the ape files using Monkeys Audio: Run it, now you will see on the left there is a big monkey head that says compress under it Hit the down arrow button on the right of the monkey head and hit Decompress, the Monkey head should change into what looks like a box with arrows pointing away from it Now drag and drop all ape files into the big space under "File Name" Now you can hit that Decompress button (picture of a box with arrows pointing away from it), just wait for it to complete Now not only should you have ape files in the folder but now there should be a wav version of every ape file you ran through the proram the ape's can be removed now and you can close the software. Now we have a cue sheet and bin files, depending on the game and how many audio track it has it can be quite a few. In this specific case I had 29 bin files. This will now work just fine as long as the file names match up with everything in the cue sheet but it is messy so let's tidy this up a bit and make it just a cue sheet and a single bin. Go get and install Isobuster (link), you do not need the paid version to do what we need to do next, the free version does everything we need. Run ISO buster Hit File then Open Image File Select the cue file (or ccd file) This should now show a list of tracks on the left Hit File then CD then Extract CD then RAW (*.bin *.iso) Change the Save Type from *.iso to *.bin In the File Name: text box, rename the output file (do not forget to change .iso to .bin on the end of it) Change the destination folder if you like then hit Save After this has completed you will then be asked to save a cue file, just hit Save A little nag screen may pop up but it's nothing major and you won't be using this tool all the time. Now you should have a nice simple working cue and bin of the game and you are good to go. Again, I take no credit for any of this at all. I just wanted to share this so that when someone comes along with the same problem they can fix it themselves

[DOS76]

You can link to the forums and guides of that site just not any of the copywrited material. Emuparadise is a great resource for the emulation community and there is a ton of useful knowledge around there. Zorlon is very helpful.

[Lordmonkus]

I'm trying to be safe about it, I know that in the past even mentioning the site as been a bit touchy. I sent Brad a pm with the link to the guide I followed so if he wants to he can edit the main post and add the link himself. That way i'm not getting myself into any trouble :D