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2.20pm
31 March 2008
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I was wondering if I could call on the collective wisdom of you good people. On various parts of the web there are download files for the all 77 editions of Beatles Book magazine (eg http://octaner.blogspot.com/20…..d-rom.html, or search beatles book rapidshare/megaupload for more).
Unfortunately these involve burning the files to CD and accessing it as a CD Rom, which is pretty archaic technology nowadays. Does anyone know of a way to convert the CD Rom files to pdf or simple text/image files? If so do let me know.
4.59pm
13 November 2009
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Ok, I found this program: Contenta DCR Converter It works for PC and Mac, it's free, and it works – without any stupid watermarks.
5.44pm
31 March 2008
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Unfortunately the free trial does carry a watermark.
About six months ago I spent ages looking for a service that could convert this material but drew a blank. It's a shame the person who digitised the Beatles Book issues decided CD Rom was the most effective way of doing so.
5.49pm
13 November 2009
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Really? Rats. I didn't see it on mine. I'll keep looking. 
Edit: I see it now. It's black on black in the photo I checked.
11.34pm
13 November 2009
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I give up. It won't even play as a cd rom. The files don't want to convert to anything (.pdf, .bmp, .swf, .png, etc). It won't open in Kodak Easyshare, Picassa, vlc, internet explorer, quicktime. I just don't get it.
9.32am
31 March 2008
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Glad it's not just me. It's frustrating, getting so close to all that great content and not being able to view it. Oh well, hopefully at some point someone in the know will stumble upon this thread and enlighten us. Maybe we need a Windows 95 machine.
12.54am
13 November 2009
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I think I might have a solution to convert it into a more useful format. You know those how-to videos on various types of software? I don't see why it should't work for this.
Edit: Success! It might not be the most elegant solution, but it works! It should look better if I raise the quality – this is just a test.
1.37am
13 November 2009
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skye said:
I think I might have a solution to convert it into a more useful format. You know those how-to videos on various types of software? I don't see why it should't work for this.
Edit: Success! It might not be the most elegant solution, but it works! It should look better if I raise the quality – this is just a test.
I always love reading this kind of thing written in the early 60s. They went on about the Beatles new fame but had no idea what was yet to come. I especially love reading articles or quotes where the author/speaker says the Beatles are a passing fad or aren't very good – EPIC FAIL! 
1.39am
13 November 2009
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Here is one at a higher quality. Is it legible?
10.00am
31 March 2008
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Just about. Thanks for that. Let me know how you did it and I'll see if I can convert the whole lot to pdf.
McLerristarr – my uncle once photocopied me a load of Beatles articles from old NMEs, Melody Makers and other 60s music papers. I don't have them anymore, unfortunately, but I remember reading a track-by-track review of Revolver in which two writers were generally bemused by some of the songs, though interestingly they liked Tomorrow Never Knows. Music journalism in the 60s was a lot safer and more polite than it is nowadays, and they'd get excited about things like the jazz influence on Got To Get You Into My Life.
"I was let down by Don't Let Me Down" is another quote I recall. I wish I still had them now. I might ask my uncle for the originals – I could add them to the blog here.
10.20am
13 November 2009
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Joe said:
Just about. Thanks for that. Let me know how you did it and I'll see if I can convert the whole lot to pdf.
McLerristarr – my uncle once photocopied me a load of Beatles articles from old NMEs, Melody Makers and other 60s music papers. I don't have them anymore, unfortunately, but I remember reading a track-by-track review of Revolver in which two writers were generally bemused by some of the songs, though interestingly they liked Tomorrow Never Knows. Music journalism in the 60s was a lot safer and more polite than it is nowadays, and they'd get excited about things like the jazz influence on Got To Get You Into My Life.
"I was let down by Don't Let Me Down" is another quote I recall. I wish I still had them now. I might ask my uncle for the originals – I could add them to the blog here.
That would be cool. 
I once borrowed a book from the library on the 1000 greatest singles of all time or something, there were quite a few Beatles singles. In the book, it had a short quote about the single from a review around the time it was released – the author deliberately chose mostly bad reviews to prove how wrong journalists can be. I can only remember two. There was a Beatles one that sounded sarcastic as it said something along the lines of "George Harrison is the only guitarist I know that can pull off a guitar solo without making it sound planned." and "I like the drummer – whatever his name is." The other one I remember was a review of '(Just Like) Starting Over' by John Lennon basically said John's idea of rock was outdated and the guitar was "wimpy". I wonder whether journalists who make those kinds of reviews about songs/albums/artists that become popular ever stick by what they said or whether they pretend they always liked them.
11.07am
14 October 2009
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I have everyone of the Beatles Book in it's original state (albeit the reprints from 1976) but I don't fancy PDF-ing them all – sorry 
11.14am
13 November 2009
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Dream killer. (
)
12.48pm
14 October 2009
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skye said:
Dream killer.
Well it WOULD be a killer that's for sure – I'd go blind and the scanner would explode
12.09am
13 November 2009
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Just digging this up to see if anyone has any ideas on how to cleanly extract images from this CD-ROM. I've refined my technique, but it is a tedious process. Anyway, here are some sample pages from issue 20.
As you can see, the quality isn't as good as it could be, and believe me, it looks a lot better on the CD-ROM.
Ideas?
2.33am
27 February 2010
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It's a ".ISO" archive? If it is, you can open and extract the info inside with 7-zip.
3.03am
13 November 2009
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No it's an executable file. Here's what I'm looking at:
3.17am
8 April 2010
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Well, you could always just open up the CD rom, and then take a screen cap. Unless that's what you've been doing, in which case… Is there a way to go into the resources of the file and find the image files?
3.18am
1 May 2010
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Skye, can you print-screen the content of one of the folders?? It seems the files are there. If I know the extension, I might figure out how to extract them.
4.18am
13 November 2009
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Paulrus said:
Well, you could always just open up the CD rom, and then take a screen cap. Unless that's what you've been doing, in which case… Is there a way to go into the resources of the file and find the image files?
I was hoping you could tell me.
Screen caps aren't hard but there's 77 issues, 14 pages each. I basically make a 20 second video (it won't let hit print screen), break it up into individual shots, delete the extras and crop the remaining. Like I said, tedious.
mithveaen said:
Skye, can you print-screen the content of one of the folders?? It seems the files are there. If I know the extension, I might figure out how to extract them.
Here you go.
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