Posted: 5/22/2011 4:15:53 AM EDT
I posted the following thread on a more technical forum however they turned out to be less helpful than GD is when asking for relationship advise.    So I'm hoping someone here might be able to help out.I'm in the need of some new software to burn MP3 CDs that I can play in my car's stereo system. I currently use iTunes but in order to get the CD formatted just right it's a multi-step process and very convoluted. The first problem is the stereo in my car does not support playlists, it plays files in alpha-numeric order. When iTunes creates a MP3 CD it renames the output file with it's playlist position number which takes care of that problem, however iTunes can not(or I have not figured out how to) create folders on the CD which I want because it makes it a lot easier to navigate to a specific song. The third problem is most of my music is encoded in 320kbps. For my CDs I would like to be able to have the files recoded into 128k so I can have more on the CD. (confused yet?) Here's the procedure. 1)Create a master playlist in iTunes with the songs in the order I want 2)Burn that playlist to DVD because it's to big to fit on a CD 3)Copy the MP3s on the DVD into a folder on my desktop 4)Create sub folders to group the songs how I want them 5)Re encode the files using CDex so everything will fit on single CD-RW 6)Burn the re encoded files to CD using Nero. Is there anyway to make this easier? Don't let me down ARFCOM. |
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Are you sure about the technical requirements of the playing unit? I have never heard of one that could interpret folders. I agree that iTunes is a less than ideal choice for burning CDs. In fact, it'll fight you the whole way. Just use one of the other programs or even what is built into Windows. You might look into CDBurnerX, CDex, or Audacity. (Both free open source programs.) The only thing I would use iTunes for is to organize and test your playlist. Once you have it done, print it and then manually change the file names to make them in order and use other programs for the job. Audacity will let you re-encode the files. CDex will let you "rip" music from a physical CD into an MP3 format you want. CDBurnerX will burn to disk in a variety of formats.
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if you have an aux plug-in on the car radio, just play/control from the device. that's how my son plays music thru an older clarion radio from his ipod.
i just copy cd's thru windows media player and use the cd changer in the car. i know it's not a fix for wanting a lot of music on one cd but i'm only in the car 30 min or so and have a great oldies classic rock station i listen to. |
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Quoted: Are you sure about the technical requirements of the playing unit? I have never heard of one that could interpret folders. I agree that iTunes is a less than ideal choice for burning CDs. In fact, it'll fight you the whole way. Just use one of the other programs or even what is built into Windows. You might look into CDBurnerX, CDex, or Audacity. (Both free open source programs.) The only thing I would use iTunes for is to organize and test your playlist. Once you have it done, print it and then manually change the file names to make them in order and use other programs for the job. Audacity will let you re-encode the files. CDex will let you "rip" music from a physical CD into an MP3 format you want. CDBurnerX will burn to disk in a variety of formats. Yes the CD player can interpet MP3 files and folders. I know this because I've been playing MP3s on CD in that player for more than 5 years, the problem is the screwed up process I need to go through to get the song play order setup exactly how I want them. It can take as long as 2+ hours to create 1 freaking CD. This doesn't include the time I spend remixing the playlist. I don't want every song in ROOT because it's very hard to navigate to a specific song when there are 100+ files on the disk and I'm drive 60MPH down the high way. With a folder structure setup the way I want it all I need to do is hit the folder navigation button a few times than the song navigation button a few times. The other issues is the player plays songs in alpha-numeric order. Meaning Song A, Song B, Song C, and Song Z will play in exactly in that which is not what I want. In order to play Song C, Song B, Song Z, Song A in that order the files need to be named 001 Song C, 002 Song B, 0003 Song Z, 004 Song A. iTunes does that automatically on the Output MP3/Data CDs, but there is no folder structure so I am required to first burn a CD in Itunes, copy the files from the CD to my desktop, create the folder strcutre how I want it then reburn via Nero. Of course this doesn't include re encoding the MP3 files from 320kps(which is how I store CDs on my PC) into 128kps so I can stuff more music onto a single disk. Quoted: if you have an aux plug-in on the car radio, just play/control from the device. that's how my son plays music thru an older clarion radio from his ipod. i just copy cd's thru windows media player and use the cd changer in the car. i know it's not a fix for wanting a lot of music on one cd but i'm only in the car 30 min or so and have a great oldies classic rock station i listen to. |
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I understand what the problem is. Get the three programs I mentioned. Learn what each can do by digging around in the menus. Stop using iTunes for this. The beginning, middle, and end of your problem is iTunes. Close it, keep it closed. Learn how to do the process without it. It's an Apple product, where there is only one way, the Apple way, to solve a problem and other ways weren't really something you wanted to do. Praise Apple. <–– snark at apple. Seriously though, there's going to be some futzing around no matter what you do, but at least you'll be able to stop using two disks for the process. Google your car stereo and the word Mp3 and find out what other people are doing. Maybe there's one program that can handle all of it at once. Get rid of iTunes if you don't have an iPod. The whole point of that program is to do iPod stuff. |
| Shouldn't you be able to use any simple CD burning software to accomplish your task? I have made hundreds of MP3 CDs with nothing more than the default apps in Linux to burn them. I haven't touched Windows in years, but I would think it should be pretty straight forward to burn a data CD with MP3s on it. I recently switched to a Alpine Media Receiver, so I just plug a USB pendrive loaded with MP3s on it. |
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Quoted: Shouldn't you be able to use any simple CD burning software to accomplish your task? I have made hundreds of MP3 CDs with nothing more than the default apps in Linux to burn them. I haven't touched Windows in years, but I would think it should be pretty straight forward to burn a data CD with MP3s on it. I recently switched to a Alpine Media Receiver, so I just plug a USB pendrive loaded with MP3s on it. And how does your stereo know which order to play the MP3s in? |
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Can you give a link to CDBurnerX? The sites google is pulling up do not look legit. i think they meant cdburnerxp.. http://cdburnerxp.se/ |
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Quoted: Quoted: Can you give a link to CDBurnerX? The sites google is pulling up do not look legit. i think they meant cdburnerxp.. http://cdburnerxp.se/ CDBurnerXP isn't going to work. It even states it's not going to work.  http://cdburnerxp.se/help/Audio/mp3cd Defining the order of the tracksYou cannot define the audio track order for CDs. This is because data discs simply have no "order”. Just as the files on your hard drive, you cannot say which file is "first” and which one is "last”. Instead, the playing device (that is, your CD or DVD player) can sort the files on the disc in any way you prefer, because the tags are also burned to disc. For example, you can have your player sort the tracks by artist or title. That is, if your player supports that feature. Unfortunately, many players seem to sort files only by file name (alphabetically). If you want to ensure a particular playback order on such devices, prefix your files with numbers, for example "01_”, "02_”, and so on. I know this and iTunes takes care of that automatically. What iTunes can not do is create sub folders unless I sort the playlist by album which is not how I want my songs ordered, nor am I going to screw up the tags by changing the album field in order to get the grouping the way I want. If iTunes could do folders by the grouping field this issue would be solved, but Apple wants people to do things exactly their way or no way at all. I hate Apple. |
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Quoted:
Quoted:
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Can you give a link to CDBurnerX? The sites google is pulling up do not look legit. i think they meant cdburnerxp.. http://cdburnerxp.se/ CDBurnerXP isn't going to work. It even states it's not going to work.
http://cdburnerxp.se/help/Audio/mp3cd Defining the order of the tracksYou cannot define the audio track order for CDs.
This is because data discs simply have no "order”. Just as the files on your hard drive, you cannot say which file is "first” and which one is "last”.
Instead, the playing device (that is, your CD or DVD player) can sort the files on the disc in any way you prefer, because the tags are also burned to disc. For example, you can have your player sort the tracks by artist or title. That is, if your player supports that feature.
Unfortunately, many players seem to sort files only by file name (alphabetically). If you want to ensure a particular playback order on such devices, prefix your files with numbers, for example "01_”, "02_”, and so on.
I know this and iTunes takes care of that automatically. What iTunes can not do is create sub folders unless I sort the playlist by album which is not how I want my songs ordered, nor am I going to screw up the tags by changing the album field in order to get the grouping the way I want. If iTunes could do folders by the grouping field this issue would be solved, but Apple wants people to do things exactly their way or no way at all. I hate Apple. its free, , just try it.. its always played mine in the order I burned them.. hell i did not know it was an issue untill this thread,, |
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Quoted: Quoted: Shouldn't you be able to use any simple CD burning software to accomplish your task? I have made hundreds of MP3 CDs with nothing more than the default apps in Linux to burn them. I haven't touched Windows in years, but I would think it should be pretty straight forward to burn a data CD with MP3s on it. I recently switched to a Alpine Media Receiver, so I just plug a USB pendrive loaded with MP3s on it. And how does your stereo know which order to play the MP3s in? It sorts alphanumerically just like anything else that reads FAT32. I generally structure my files so that each artist as its own directory, within that, each album has its own directory. The songs are left in whatever naming scheme they came in. My HU will also read ID3 tags, so that helps too. ETA: I should add that both my Alpine and Clarion unit sometimes have issues with sorting. I have a few albums that the order of the songs is all wrong, despite the files being prefixed with the track number. Based on my limited testing, it appears that the timestamp of the file may come into play (first song copied to the drive is listed first, last file is listed last). But, when you consider how new the idea of using a HU to play MP3s from a USB/CD is, its not surprising that there are bugs that still need to be worked out.
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