this is to tide us over till most US dvd players can play MP3!

I used NTI cd maker pro to burn the disks. it has accepted all the different video bitrates, audio bitrates and video resolutions that ive thrown at it. i used a sony dvp-c600d 5 disk changer to play them. i used xing to encode to the VERY LOW video bitrate used - 100kb/s. panasonic wont go lower than 600kb/s.the rez i used was the regular 352x240. if u use 176x144, u can drop that video bitrate to 50kb/s. dont use actual video for this- u can, but that video bitrate will need to go up. use a signal made up of basically noise.does anybody know of a program that joins together mpeg video with mpeg audio, BUT stops the "joining" at the end of the audio, not the video? a multiplexer that could stop at the end of the audio will save u (and me!)the trouble of having to make a separate dummy video file to match the exact lenth of each song.or burning software that didnt require video- just burn the audio, would be even better! the audio bitrate used was the regular 224kb/s mp2, also encoded with xing.it would be nice if there was a burning software that would accept a still for the video, BUT let u drop the video bitrate- xing will let u use a still, but only at the regular video bitrate, which defeats the entire purpose of this. at 100kb/s video and 224kb/s audio thats 324 total, but set it to 350kb/s total to be safe.u might be able to lower that 350, but i didnt experiment. at that rate u should be able to get ROUGHLY 320 minutes on an 80min cdr.remember NTI will take just about anything, so these bitrates arent set in stone.

-- ndumu (ndumu@hotmail.com), July 10, 2000

Answers

can anybody who gets one of these to work let me know which brand and model player was used? ive gotten them to work on a number of sony and panasonic models. i tried some pioneeer and philips models also, but they sputtered terribly on the audio.ill burn it on a cdrw to try some brands that wouldnt read the cdr. just curious to know which brands and models "make the grade".

-- ndumu (ndumu@hotmail.com), July 11, 2000.

I don't know if this interest you but I have manage to make an audio cd using a CDRW media with WinOnCD37PE and also EZCD4.0. The CDRW is playable from my Panasonic VCD Standalone (SL-VP55) but wasn't playable from my older equipment which are about 6 - 7 years old.

Wonder if any other user is able to do the same and play them back on newer CD players and such.

Cheers, NT

-- NT (i1x@nightmail.com), July 12, 2000.

are u talking about a regular audio cd, that u can buy in any store? but on a cdrw instead of a cdr? as far as i know any writing software that can write an audio cd will write an audio cd on a rw. maybe im missing something here.

-- ndumu (ndumu@hotmail.com), July 12, 2000.

Yes, like an audio cd which you buy in a store.

However, it will not work on my Sony CD Player and Pioner Laser Disc Player which are both 6 - 7 years old. But these two players could playback audio CDs I made with CDR media. ?????????? beats me as to why and how ??????????

What you are missing is that usually CDRW media cannot be 'closed' by a burner and as such will not be 'seen' by a standalone player as to what type of disc it is. For any CD-ROM to playback or read from a CDRW media, you must have the corresponding software that is used to write the disc, ie Direct CD or Packet CD. However, the latest Direct CD 3.0 includes a UDF Reader in the CDRW disc itself and relieves the requirement of installing a UDF Reader in order for any system to read a CDRW disc written by Direct CD. I don't use Packet CD so I am not able to comment on it.

However when I made my experiments for VCD creation using CDRW media to test special effects, titling and the encoding before I proceed to do a final burn to CDR media, it hit me to give making an audio cd a try with CDRW media - and as they say, the rest is history.

I passed along the VCD and audio CD which I created with CDRW media to a friend but he couldn't get them to play in his Sony DVD Player which was surprising because he could playback VCD and audio CDs I made with CDR media.

When EZCD or WinOnCD tells you that the media you are using is a CDRW, hit the record or OK button anyway and let it burn the disc. For erasing, I use the CD-RW Eraser utility which comes with EZCD to blank the CDRW.

Your CDRW must not be formatted in any way for this to work. Usually for those who have Direct CD installed, the start menu will place the Direct CD icon in your System Tray and once you insert a CDR or CDRW into your burner, the dialog will appear for you to make your choice. Disable this from your start menu by

Cheers, NT

-- NT (i1x@nightmail.com), July 13, 2000.

ok. so i understood what u meant,i just thought there was some thing extra u were saying that i missed. i actually only had RWs, no CDRs, when i first got my burner, so i long ago tried audio CDs on them.alot of newer cd players,Aiwa and Phillips/Magnavox mainly,specify that they can read RWs. Some old players can and some cant. i have a portable panasonic "discman" that will only read them if i spin the disk by hand, then shut the lid and hit PLAY.i also tried that method on some other portables of various brands and it worked on some of them.thanks for the reply.:)

-- ndumu (ndumu@hotmail.com), July 13, 2000.