CD Text Format
**************

     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.

Encoding and Decoding CD Text
*****************************

Top-Level CD Text Categories (Pack Types)
=========================================

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: CD Text Categories

Additional notes regarding Pack Types:

  * Pack Types 0x8a to 0x8c although not specified are reserved for potential future use.

  * Pack Types 0x86, 0x87, 0x88, 0x89, 0x8d (Disc Identification, Genre Identification, Table of Contents, Second Table of Contents and Closed Information respectively) apply to the whole disc, and cannot be attached to individual tracks.

  * Pack Types 0x80, 0x81, 0x82, 0x83, 0x84, 0x85, and 0x8e (Performers, Songwriters, Composers, Arrangers, and Message Area respectively) have to be attributed to each track if they are present for the whole disc.

  * Pack Type 0x8f (Block Size Information) describes the overall content of a block and in part of all other blocks.

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.

Pack Contents
=============

Packs are stored in CD in the sub-channel of the Lead-in of the disc. The file doc/cookbook.txt of the libburnia (http://libburnia-project.org/) 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:

bits 0-3
     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.

bits 4-6
     Block Number (groups text packs in language blocks)

bit 7
     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.

Text Packs (0x80--0x85, 0x8e)
=============================

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).

Miscellaneous Pack Types (0x86, 0x87, 0x8d)
===========================================

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: 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.

TOC Pack Types (0x88, 0x89)
===========================

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?

Block Size Information Type (0x8f)
==================================

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: 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: 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)

Higher-Level Encoding
*********************

This part gives examples of two ways to input CD Text for burning.

Sony Text File Format (Input Sheet Version 0.7T)
================================================

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

CDRWIN Cue Sheet with CD Text
=============================

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

Acknowlegement
**************

Thanks to Leon Merten Lohse.

List of Tables
**************

References
**********

 1. Correspondence with Leon Merten Lohse in libcdio-devel@gnu.org, December 2011.
      Mail archives at http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/libcdio-devel/2011-12/index.html

 2. SCSI Multimedia Commands --- 3 (MMC-3), Revision 10g, November 12. 2011.
     Google for mmc3r10g.pdf See especially Section 5.23 (READ TOC/PMA/ATIP Command), see Table 237 (TOC Track Descriptor Format, Q Sub-channel), Annex J (CD Text format in the Lead-in Area) and Sections 4.2.5.3 (Mode-5 Q).

 3. ``Materials describing the procedure of the procedure of authoring and mastering for creating CD TEXT disks on equipments develooped by Sony HAV Company'',
     http://www.sonydadc.com/file/cdtext.zip which was previously found on Sony's web site circa 2007. You may be able to get this from the ``Wayback Archive'', such as http://web.archive.org/web/20070204035327/http://www.sonydadc.com/file/cdtext.zip

 4. Cue-Sheet Syntax http://digitalx.org/cue-sheet/syntax

 5. libburnia project http://libburnia-project.org See doc directory in that project.

 6. libcdio source code http://www.gnu.org/s/libcdio

 7. cdrecord source code ftp://ftp.berlios.de/pub/cdrecord/alpha

 8. cdrecord manual page. http://cdrecord.berlios.de/private/man/cdrecord/cdrecord.1.html

 9. Specification of the EBU Subtitling data exchange format,
     Appendix 3. February 1991 http://tech.ebu.ch/docs/tech/tech3264.pdf

     Contains CD Text Language codes shown in table:languages.

 10. Genre codes http://helpdesk.audiofile-engineering.com/index.php?pg=kb.page&id=123