Converting a DiVx audio stream created by CourtSmart

[mencken]

Today I received a CD containing a recording of a courtroom hearing that contains what I believe is a form of DiVx audio (not video). I've never seen anything like it before. From browsing some of the executables with a Hex viewer, I was able to determine that it was created with CourtSmart Digital Systems equipment, which is, not surprisingly a vendor of courtroom recording systems. More Hex browsing showed references to a scheme called CopySmart, which is apparently designed to protect this kind of stuff. It doesn't protect the CD from being copied, so it may be designed to protect the original files from alteration, which would make sense.

While I was able to play the audio, I would like to convert it to a Web compatible format, most likely MP3. But I'm stumped. Please excuse the detail here, but it's the only way I know to explain it.

By the way, this isn't anything illegal. It was a disk recording of a hearing made by the Baltimore City court system at our request (I work for The Baltimore Sun). We just wanted to post a clip from it on our Web site and couldn't figure out anything more sophisticated than recording the analog output and resampling it into a standard file format.

The root directory of the CD contained the folling:

00000694 (A folder)
bin (A folder)
autrun.inf
footvxd.vxd
Sessions.dat

the 00000694 folder contained three .dat files
gzidnu00.dat
gzidnu01.dat
gzidnu02.dat

Each was about 14 MB in size

The bin folder contained the following:

cplayer.exe
csvideo.exe
InstallCodec.exe
sbplay.dll
TransCDLaunch.exe

When you start up the CD, it installs a CODEC. That process asks you if you want to use DiVx 4 to play DiVx 3 media. I said yes. Once the CODEC is installed, it launches a virtually unidentifiable program that plays the audio (csplayer.exe). There's no help or other identification, other than an options menu which contains some settings for a "pedal," which sounds like it has something to do with music recording, or maybe something for transcribers.

I tried VCDGear and a couple of other programs on the DAT files, but none of them would recognize them as an audio stream. Changing the .dat extensions to .mpg and trying to launch them didn't work either.

Has anybody run into this before?

Mike Himowitz
Electronic News Editor
the Baltimore Sun

[KingJohn]

If you can hear it you can copy it, use something like www.goldwave.com to capture the audio your playing.