PlayStation games circulate in half a dozen formats, and that is the number one source of confusion on this system. The good news: in the vast majority of cases there is nothing to convert. This page helps you recognise what you have, and only step in when it is actually needed.
| Format | What it is | Does Recalbox read it? |
|---|---|---|
.bin + .cue |
The reference format. The .cue is a small text file describing the tracks of the .bin |
Yes — launch the .cue |
.bin alone |
An image without its track descriptor | Yes, but without the game's audio tracks |
.iso |
A data-only image | Yes — but CD audio (music) is lost |
.chd |
The .bin + .cue losslessly compressed into a single file |
Yes, and this is the format to prefer |
.ccd + .img + .sub |
CloneCD format | Yes |
.pbp |
PSP "eboot" format, several discs in one file | Yes, but not recommended (see below) |
.bin.ecm |
An ECM-compressed .bin |
No — must be decompressed |
A game made of one
.cueand several.binfiles (the audio tracks) is perfectly normal: that is how the original disc was pressed. Do not delete the extra.binfiles, you would lose the game's music.
If having several files per game bothers you in the game list, the real fix is not converting to .iso: it is to scrape your games (companion files then disappear from the display) or to switch to .chd, which gathers everything into a single file without losing anything.
.chdA .chd (Compressed Hunks of Data) gathers the .cue and every .bin of a game into one losslessly compressed file, audio tracks included. A PlayStation game typically loses 30 to 50 % of its size, and the game list stays clean.
Conversion is done with chdman, shipped with MAME, pointing at the .cue file:
chdman createcd -i "Game name.cue" -o "Game name.chd"
Graphical front-ends are plentiful too (CHDMAN GUI, Namdhc, CHD Compression Tool…) and can process whole folders in one pass.
.cueIf you only have a .bin file with no .cue, the game will usually still launch, but it is better to recreate the descriptor. Open a text editor and type these three lines, replacing the file name:
FILE "r-type.bin" BINARY
TRACK 01 MODE2/2352
INDEX 01 00:00:00
Save the file under the same name as the .bin, with the .cue extension (here r-type.cue), next to it.
For a whole collection, Redump publishes the official
.cuefiles for each system: faster and far more reliable than writing them by hand.
.bin.ecmThe .ecm extension means an ECM-compressed .bin that no emulator can read directly. It must be decompressed with ECM Tools.
.bin.ecm file, choose Open with, then Look for another app on this PC, and select unecm.exe..bin file appears in the same folder.With Homebrew:
brew install ecm
unecm "game.bin.ecm"
The ecm-tools package is available on most distributions:
sudo apt install ecm-tools
ecm-uncompress "game.bin.ecm"
You own the original discs and want a backup copy? A plain PC CD drive is enough in most cases.
Create image file from disc and select your drive..iso, you need to switch it to .bin + .cue.A few facts worth knowing:
Game (Europe).cue and Game (Europe).sbi). Redump publishes these files on each affected disc's page, along with the catalogue of protected games..PBP format: why you should avoid itThe .PBP format (PSP eboots) can gather several discs into a single file, and Recalbox reads it. It is nevertheless not recommended:
.SBI files cannot be used, so LibCrypt-protected European games are lost;To gather several discs into a single game-list entry, the right method is the .m3u file: it leaves your images untouched, allows .SBI files, shares the memory card between discs and lets you swap discs with the pad. See Managing multi-disc games with an .m3u file.
If you inherited a
.PBPcollection and want to go back: re-dumping the discs is faster and safer than trying to rebuild the.cuefiles.