Hardware Preparing my GameCube disks for Nintendon't, need a batch conversion app

[Cyber Akuma]

Ok, so I want to convert my disk images of GameCube ISO games to trimmed versions, problem is I need one that can do batch conversions so I don't have to do all my games one-by-one.

After much searching, the best I could come up with was an app called GameCube ISO Tool. While it doesn't really do batch conversions, since it supports commandline, I was able to write a .bat script to do it.

But then I ran into another very very VERY annoying issue with it...... it keeps renaming my ISO files! I can't find an option anywhere to disable this behavior, and it seems dead-set on doing it. In fact, I am pretty sure this is a bug, because even when I specifically set the filename I want it to save it as manually, AND I can see it in the logs it understood my command for what filename I want it to be saved as.... it still overrides all this and saves it as whatever it wants the file to be named instead.

So I am practically pulling my hair out at this point. Is there an app that will trim a batch of GameCube ISOs at once while NOT renaming them to whatever it feels like without any option to disable that behavior?

 

[Clutz450]

I know this thread is almost a month old but are you still looking for help with a batch script for GameCube ISO Tool? I had the same issue a while back and after a lot of trial and error I finally was able to create a batch script to convert all my games in one shot. I posted my results in the Nintendont thread if you want to read it. https://gbatemp.net/threads/nintendont.349258/page-508#post-5047629 Let me know if you need help with it.

What do you mean it keeps renaming your ISO files? It's supposed to do that. Every single one of your ISOs need to be named "game.iso" unless it is a second disc then it would be named "disc2.iso". And each one of those games will be in it's own folder with it's game name and game ID. It has to be this way. Out of all my searching following what I wrote on the Nintendont thread is your best option.

 

[Arecaidian Fox]

My question would be if you really do need to trim your ISO files. You have less chances of crap going sideways if you use 1:1 rips. Even if it's something small like a 128GB external hard disk, you should have more than enough for a huge batch of GameCube and Wii titles.

 

[Clutz450]

I agree. 1:1 rips are really the best. My Discex script in that same post I linked to does exactly that. The only thing I didn't like about Discex was that I couldn't figure out how to make it save my ISOs into a folder with gamename and gameID. It would only put them in a folder with their gameID. It's more of a preference thing for me though. The games work just the same with only the gameID in the folder.

 

[Cyber Akuma]

Yes, I do really need to trim them, they went from taking over 300 gigs (Which is more than my trimmed Wii images take) to around 180 gigs.

I wound up using an older build of Gamecube ISO Tool and a batch script to do it, since the latest build (Build 7) has a bug where it force-renames them regardless of what filename you choose.

The only thing I didn't like about Discex was that I couldn't figure out how to make it save my ISOs into a folder with gamename and gameID. It would only put them in a folder with their gameID. It's more of a preference thing for me though. The games work just the same with only the gameID in the folder.

I ran into that problem too, and was able to use Wiimms ISO Tool to do exactly that.

You can read about that here: https://gbatemp.net/threads/mass-rename-folder-creation-for-nintendont.399770/#post-5737185

 

[Arecaidian Fox]

Yes, I do really need to trim them...

It might be prudent to check what ISOs you have against a compatibility list for trimming, and trim only the ones that give a stable result. I know I've seen this list before, but unfortunately I cannot seem to find it at the moment to give a link. But even then you're not completely guaranteed to have a successful result, especially across different devices (i.e. a trimmed ISO that works in Dolphin might not work on Nintendont). At least that's my experience. If I can be nosy, may I ask what the situation is that requires you to make this amount of room?

 

[Cyber Akuma]

Simply because they take far too much space for a USB drive to my have my Wii and GC collection untrimmed.

Also, isn't the trimmed part just simply junk data to fill up the areas of the disk that the game doesn't take up? While I understand the Wii is different, my backup launcher (USB Loader GX) by DEFAULT trims Wii games when I ripped the disks to my HDD, and I never had an issue. Why would the absence of junk data make any difference? Some GC games are very very tiny, several are under 100MB... in fact I recall this one Japanese-only GC game that is under a MEGABYTE! Leaving them at 1.5GB is a pretty big waste of space.

 

[Arecaidian Fox]

Simply because they take far too much space for a USB drive to my have my Wii and GC collection untrimmed.

Also, isn't the trimmed part just simply junk data to fill up the areas of the disk that the game doesn't take up? While I understand the Wii is different, my backup launcher (USB Loader GX) by DEFAULT trims Wii games when I ripped the disks to my HDD, and I never had an issue. Why would the absence of junk data make any difference? Some GC games are very very tiny, several are under 100MB... in fact I recall this one Japanese-only GC game that is under a MEGABYTE! Leaving them at 1.5GB is a pretty big waste of space.

I will agree it is silly to have all of that empty data just to fill the disk. But if I remember correctly (and if I'm wrong, correction is welcome) scrubbing out the empty data can result in changes to internal address values for the game. This can either not happen, happen but only break things like Action Replay/WiiRD codes (since they rely on address values), or happen and make the game crap a brick any time it looks for something to load. There are also many different degrees of broken that land in between those three.

 

[Cyber Akuma]

I don't think it should. I admit I am no scholar on how the GC works, but as I said, it's just garbage data to fill in the unused parts of the disk, it's just empty. The game shouldn't be accessing anything there, because there is nothing really to access. And address values would be something that would be in the console's RAM, not something on the disk itself. The disks (I would assume) should be accessed on the filesystem level, not the physical level, accessing them on the physical level doesn't make sense.

 

[nintendarium]

1:1 copy is future proof.
do not mess with that.
the reason of trimming was that in 2009 500gb hdd were pricy...so the need to save space to fit more iso in same space...
1TB hdd now costs not that much
I know i'm not giving you a solution, but this is really an advice from a person that tried already your idea but then realized that having a 1:1 copy is the best way.
also i prepared my second wiiu with a 1TB hdd , soon or later we will have wiiu hombrew emultors, so having more space is the best advice.
if ever we got dreamcast emulation on wiiu (is that possible technically considering that is a risc power pc core CPU ?) i will switch to a 2TB hdd ehehe

 

[CheatFreak47]

I don't think it should. I admit I am no scholar on how the GC works, but as I said, it's just garbage data to fill in the unused parts of the disk, it's just empty. The game shouldn't be accessing anything there, because there is nothing really to access. And address values would be something that would be in the console's RAM, not something on the disk itself. The disks (I would assume) should be accessed on the filesystem level, not the physical level, accessing them on the physical level doesn't make sense.

Yeah, sure it shouldn't cause things to break, but it is a proven fact that it does break some games.
And those very games work fine untrimmed. It's just how it is. The mere fact that the distinction has to be made proves there's something going on with either the trimming itself- or the way the software/hardware is handling the trimmed images.

The other thing you fail to consider is that there's a distinct possibility that potentially important parts of the image content are getting dismissed as dummy data and getting pulled out of the disk, when they shouldn't be. It's probable that it's the trimmer's fault, rather then Nintendont.

These issues existing at all depreciates ISO trimming.

I will agree it is silly to have all of that empty data just to fill the disk. But if I remember correctly (and if I'm wrong, correction is welcome) scrubbing out the empty data can result in changes to internal address values for the game. This can either not happen, happen but only break things like Action Replay/WiiRD codes (since they rely on address values), or happen and make the game crap a brick any time it looks for something to load. There are also many different degrees of broken that land in between those three.

Actually, It probably has to do with the way the ISO trimmers we use shave data out of the images. It's probably why some game work when scrubbed with one tool but not another, for example, Kirby Air Ride breaking when scrubbed by DMToolbox but working fine when scrubbed by GCIT.

 

[Arecaidian Fox]

In reply to the last few comments, my original point was that a good amount of them (but by no means a drastically large number) do break when trimmed, regardless of the specific cause . Really, as @nintendarium mentioned here, the best solution is more storage space and to keep your 1:1 ISOs. I still run GameCube games and homebrew off of the 128GB SD card I have slotted into my Wii, leaving my 500GB external hard drive for the Wii games. This was when Dios Mios was a thing and it wouldn't always play nice with USB drives. I never changed it to have the convenience of having everything (sans homebrew) on one drive because I like having the space to be able to use 1:1 rips. It's really, plainly, just a good idea.

 

[Cyber Akuma]

In reply to the last few comments, my original point was that a good amount of them (but by no means a drastically large number) do break when trimmed, regardless of the specific cause . Really, as @nintendarium mentioned here, the best solution is more storage space and to keep your 1:1 ISOs. I still run GameCube games and homebrew off of the 128GB SD card I have slotted into my Wii, leaving my 500GB external hard drive for the Wii games. This was when Dios Mios was a thing and it wouldn't always play nice with USB drives. I never changed it to have the convenience of having everything (sans homebrew) on one drive because I like having the space to be able to use 1:1 rips. It's really, plainly, just a good idea.

I would say that the specific cause is VERY relevant. As CheatFreak47 mentioned, it really shouldn't cause them to break, and that some games break only on certain trimmers. If that is the case, then it is certainly the trimmer which is the problem, not the game itself being unable to run trimmed. Again, this is entirely junk data, there is no reason removing junk data would cause this, so the trimmer must be doing something wrong if it does cause such problems.

I honestly don't believe just tossing more space at the issue is the solution, that's just brute-forcing it essentially, especially when it takes nearly double the amount of space to store them untrimmed and only a handful are effected. I don't have my new harddrive in yet (My current one barely has enough to store just my Wii games, since when I last used my Wii methods to load GameCube images from SD or USB still didn't exist yet) but when I do I will be performing some tests on some of these supposedly incompatible games in the Nintendon't compatibility list. I noticed that the list in most cases doesn't mention which trimmer or what software was used, and in a few cases where it did mentioned only some outdated trimmers caused issues, a few of them were updated just a few months ago... while most of them haven't been touched in years, the version of the trimmer used is very relevant.

There seems to be a huge mantra of "Just follow what everyone else does" in the Wii homebrew community. I especially experienced this when I asked specific questions about some of the outdated homebrew, namely in relation to IOS/CIOS files on my Wii, and was essentially ignored... several times... and just told to "follow X guide"... even when I brought up that the guide/tools in question attempted to perform several actions that people generally recommend one NOT do... such as replace actual IOS slots with CIOS ones and that 99% of it was not relevant to me as my Wii was already hacked and I only needed to update the last two or so years of homebrew.

While I am at it, can anyone recall any specific games they did have issues with trimmed so I can also try to test these if I have them? Right now I only have the Nintendon't compatibility list to go by.

 

[VashTS]

Enough propaganda about shrunken ISOs!!! Most work fine only some need to be 1:1.

The best way to do what Op is asking is DiscEX with a batch script. Maxternal made a quick java app to rename the to titleid folder names a while back st my request. That's the way I did it. Still takes a while.

 

[nintendarium]

While I am at it, can anyone recall any specific games they did have issues with trimmed so I can also try to test these if I have them? Right now I only have the Nintendon't compatibility list to go by.

very few in reality and most important of them skies of arcadia , metroid and kirby that "may" fail...
as i wrote mine is not a solution is only an advice, i made also trimming of those games at time , so i'm not siding 1:1 becasue of "faith"...
reading your post i would change my advice now in : make a 1:1 copy to store safely somewhere, and then make a trimmed copy to use on console.
just to know how many GC games you gonna rip/trim?
i cant' count more than 70 games that is worth playing on GC , unless you have a huge collection of discs that would be not a big loss of time doing that manually in reality...

 

[GreyWolf]

Gamecube discs have a boot area that has the game's apploader, information about the game and the executable on it and another section that has data the game uses when it's running. It also has an index to indicate where on the disc in the data section the game's other files are. The the data section is laid out to optimize loading them from an optical drive. It is laid out with tools from the developer kit that do things like make sure streaming audio files start at the beginning of a sector, large files are generally put at the end of the disc, etc.

Moving those to a different area can affect the game executable accessing them the way it expects to.

 

[Cyber Akuma]

Gamecube discs have a boot area that has the game's apploader, information about the game and the executable on it and another section that has data the game uses when it's running. It also has an index to indicate where on the disc in the data section the game's other files are. The the data section is laid out to optimize loading them from an optical drive. It is laid out with tools from the developer kit that do things like make sure streaming audio files start at the beginning of a sector, large files are generally put at the end of the disc, etc.

Moving those to a different area can affect the game executable accessing them the way it expects to.

Every game system does that, it's how optical disk storage works. A disk image keeps that data intact though, you are removing junk data after all the usable data.

 

[nintendarium]

Every game system does that, it's how optical disk storage works. A disk image keeps that data intact though, you are removing junk data after all the usable data.

still that can cause problems like games cited ...
your choice .

 

[nerubii]

batch discex -c all gamecube iso
disc 2 iso will hv a folder name appended a 2.

export a database out using wii backup manager.
"import" into excel
cli the gamecube or games directory, dir /b >list.txt
open the txt file, copy n paste to another worksheet in the same workbook as the database, column A.
on the next column, do formula vlookup or index match, whichever you like, to pull the title from db using gameid; column B.
you can combine all into a single column with a long formula otherwise continue reading on.
next column, C, copy below line, select cell C1, paste into the formula box, retype the quotes in excel, press enter, double click on cell C1 bottom right corner bold dot, it should fill the column with the formula
="ren """&$A1&""" """&$B1&" ["&$A1&"]"""

copy column C, replace all text in list.txt, save file, rename to ren.bat and run this batch file.