Reviving CD-ROM material [was: Re: Livecode and interactive video]

Richmond richmondmathewson at gmail.com
Sun Jan 23 09:18:14 EST 2022


I have a good dozen CD-ROMs which my boys got a lot of mileage out of 
when we stayed in the UAE.

The first thing to do is to extract all the media - and this can be a 
right-pain-in-the-bum as quite a lot of
these CDs were authored using MacroMedia products where the media are 
embedded in a way which seems
to make them inaccessible.

After that . . .

Run up LiveCode stacks that mimic the FUNCTIONALITY of the original CDs 
(this is surprisingly easy).

I have a horde of Dorling-Kindersley CDs that contain stuff that really 
rocks (well, up to the point
that media authored for a Mac Performa 5700 is of a far, far lower 
quality and size than what is
the norm nowadays).

I wrote to them twice and they never bothered to reply

they did not "essentially" ignore me: they IGNORED me. This is nonsense 
as, presumably, there is no obvious way
they can make the odd bob out of ancient CD-ROMS; and if they had a bit 
of nous they might realise that they could
climb into bed with you to mutual advantage . . .

so I would merrily chant my favourite mantra:

"abandonware, abandonware"  and make sure that anything I did with media 
ripped off from those

CDs was splattered with disclaimers and released on a not-for-profit basis.

Richard Gaskin will probably now come after me with the castrating 
irons.  :)

Even if he doesn't, his knowledge of what-you-can and what-you-cannot 
get away with is
both invaluable and far, far more extensive than mine it.

On 23.01.22 14:57, Graham Samuel via use-livecode wrote:
> I know I’m old enough to be the father of the average LiveCoder, and maybe the grandfather of quite a few, so I clearly remember CD-ROMs. I had a favourite cross-platform one which contains some very attractive material, and I have often thought of reviving the contents using either an LC standalone, or (as is presumably now possible), an LC-generated web app. Sadly I have never been able to have a sensible conversation with the copyright owner (they’ve essentially ignored me), so this would begin as a private project. I’m still wondering what the best technical approach should be. The material includes videos (not interactive) and synchronised text and audio files. After thinking about it for years, I still think it would be fun to do.
>
> Has anyone any ideas about how to approach this conversion (or re-purposing, or whatever term you want to use)?
>
> Graham
>
>> On 21 Jan 2022, at 19:56, Jim Lambert via use-livecode <use-livecode at lists.runrev.com> wrote:
>>
>> A quarter of a century ago, we called this Interactive Multimedia.
>> It was usually delivered on a CD-ROM.   Ask your parents! ;)
>>
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