For users out there who have CISO (or CFS, ISZ, DAA) images they want to burn:
The ISO reader in PFMAP has a hidden feature that allows on-the-fly conversion from supported formats to normal ISO. This allows burning CISO, CFS, ISZ, and some DAA and UIF images without needing to first convert the image. I have not specifically tried this with Imgburn, but it has worked with other burning utilities.
From a cmd prompt:
>pfm mount somefileset.ciso
>start "" somefileset.ciso\.$media
>dvdburn.exe d: somefileset.ciso\.$media\image.iso
You can do this through explorer or your burning programs open dialog by using the "quick mount" context menu item. You will need to type the ".$media" in manually as the folder does not otherwise show up.
Now that the help is out of the way, on to the commentary.
Neil is not the author of PFM or CISO, as suggested in an earlier post. He did e-mail with questions about CISO, and the text he pasted into an earlier post was from my reply.
CISO is not the same as the CSO files created by the Playstation related ciso.exe utility. I aploligize for any confusion. File extensions and acronyms are a mess.
The CISO (Compact ISO) format exists because:
1. The existing enhanced image formats are undocumented.
MagicISO(UIF) and PowerISO(DAA) seem to actively obfuscate their formats to prevent 3rd party readers, try googling "luigi magiciso". Even the public ISZ documentation is incomplete, requiring reverse engineering work before you can independently build a reader.
2. The existing enhanced image formats were missing features I needed for SMX, self mounting executables. Specifically, the existing formats have no facilities for digital signatures, stub executables, and encryption in some of them is not implemented very well. Plus, I needed compression ratios that were better than zip/gz, and performance better than bzip2.
I do not expect 3rd party utilities to add support for CISO anytime soon, if ever. My motives for releasing the documentation and code have more to do with my disdain of software companies holding users data hostage in proprietary formats, than with a desire to see the format supported by other utilities.
Joe
