Skylaw

It has been about a year and a half since I updated my music DVDs for COMAND 2.0 - I use two separate music libraries in iTunes - one in almost nothing but higher quality formats for quick upodate of my iPod, and the other largely converted to mp3 for burning DVDs. "Libra" software helps to quickly choose between the libraries. Unfortunately, I had lost the disc image for the last burn when I changed out some hard drives, so had to start from scratch with my DVD burn library. Not too hard, I thought. I updated my playlists, ensured all songs were in .mp3 format, copied them into Toast, and burned a new DVD.

I was highly chagrined and frustrated to find that despite my computer showing and playing all of the song files on the newly-burned DVD, many of the songs were missing from my COMAND display and could not be accessed or played on COMAND. Entire Beethoven symphonies, movements to some symphonies, piano concertos, and the like were gone. I went through starting from the originals, re-recording them to CD and re-importing them as mp3; and also through converting the original AIFF and Apple Lossless files to mp3 on the hard drive. Neither process (requiring 4 days) was any more effective than the other; but conversion on the hard drive is much faster. I still lost the ability to play the music on COMAND regardless of the type of conversion, although it was written to the disc and would display and play on my computer in a variety of software.

Finally, after printing out the DVD song index using Toast and comparing it to what was displayed on COMAND, I noticed that the missing pieces had very long song titles (some over 100 characters - imported from the CDDB database). While the Mac (and Windows) can handle very long file names, apparently the COMAND DVD player cannot. The answer to this vexing problem was to shorten the file names (I set an arbitrary limit of 30 characters; didn't want to fool with it any more). When I did that and tried to write the disc, Toast informed me that not all of my file names ended in ".mp3" and they may not read on some disc players. It was an automatic batch fix, so I used it.

That solved the entire problem and all of my music became accessible on COMAND when I burned another DVD with the short file names, ending in ".mp3" (I changed them in Toast, but will likely go back and do it in iTunes to minimize the likelihood of this happening again).

Many of you will know this, but much of what is written in other strings emphasizes burning your mp3s as "data." This is true - however, Toast can be quirky on this point because of its menu labeling. I prefer to use Toast rather than iTunes to burn, because I have greater control over where my music appears in folders, and the sequence in which it appears. Here are some of the settings and steps I used:

1. I first organized my music into playlists (35 of them for this particular disc) in iTunes, ensuring that each song was in mp3 format vice any other.

2. I then set Toast to create an "Audio CD - mp3 disc" and set the lower button (by the burn button) to DVD. That's the quirk - it seems counterintuitive, since Toast has a "Data Disc" selection in its menus for burning discs - but if you use "Data Disc" you will get an "unrecognized format" readout from COMAND when you insert the disc. Using "Audio CD" and in the slide drawer of Toast, choose "mp3 disc," then selecting "DVD" in the small button next to the large burn button, will work for you. Toast will in fact burn the mp3s as data, but in a format recognizable to COMAND.

3. You cannot create a folder in Toast (at least my version - 6 - I know, time to update, but it still works) - without first dragging at least one song into the burn space (the "Drag mp3 files and folders into this area") in Toast. Once you do, a "Folder" button will appear at the bottom left, allowing you to create, add, and name folders at will. I created my 35 folders at this time, so they would appear at the root (top) level of the DVD, allowing me to display all of them by selecting the "Folder" soft key on COMAND. The folders can be sequenced in Toast either alphabetically or by number. Earlier, when I used only two folders at the top level, subfolders within them were only accessible using the arrow keys and did not display as discrete selectable folders in the COMAND "Folder" view.

4. Then I went back to my iTunes playlists and dragged the songs into the corresponding Toast folders; checked the order of them (they may still retain the numbers from iTunes and thus the playlist order may be changed when they are dragged, an annoyance - but they can be changed in Toast for the burn); shortened the titles and ensured all had ".mp3" at the end of the title - and saved the work as a Disc Image. Saving interim work as a disc image saves a LOT of grief. When I go back into iTunes and shorten the titles in the music library, changing the titles after dragging them into Toast will not be necessary; but I always work with a disc image (and save the final when complete, for future updates).

5. I then burned the 4.42 GB disc successfully, and it displays all music on COMAND, in folders and in the order that I wanted it.

Hope this saves someone similar frustration.

tgood

I've been waiting for someone to do a write up for Mac's, thanks for sharing

my06clk

Thanks for sharing your experience sky.. I know you were pulling your hair out with this as I have.

I couple of things I have done a little differently than you and have gotten good results is:

I keep a separate folder on the spare drive of my G5 that has all of the folders for my car DVD sorted by the artists name. Then I have all of their songs in that folder. Any thing less than four songs I have in a folder called Singles which has the artists name and the song in the title for display purposes.

BTW I'll have to check my titles. Some are long but maybe not 30 characters.. so I haven't encountered the title problem

Anyhow, These are all MP3 files of 96kbps to 192 but mostly 160's and 192's.I didn't strip any artwork or other encoding, they all work fine. I did notice that anything like 64kbps won't play.

Organizing this way I don't need a disk image.Besides once you edit, the old image is no good anywayz.

When ever I add an album, or song, I just drag it from my source,
( My laptop I-tunes library usually) to that folder on the hard drive. I am good as long as the count does not exceed 999. Otherwise I have to sacrifice something old for the new. I use a little utility called "Whatsize" to make sure my count stays correct. Comand ignores anything after 999 or 1000. that could be a file or a folder. Its treated the same in comand.

When using toast, I have no problems with data DVD (which is alwayz my preference because not only to I have a playable DVD for my car, I also have my format stored..)In Toast I just hit the New disc button, then drag the entire contents of my Benz Music folder into toast. Hit the DvD button and burn away. comes out perfect everytime. I have about 4.4gb of music also and about 996 total files including about 68 folders.No subfolders.

When my disk loads, I usually play random disc mode. because it randomly plays songs from different folders on the disk and if I don't want to hear it, I just hit the next button on my steering wheel and listen to the next song.

but in normal mode, right left arrows change folders, and up down arrows change songs.
Or
while a song is playing you can hit the folder button and scroll all of the folders to an artist you want, and find a song to cue and hit enter and it's there. this works in normal or random

I have a format that I know works 100% of the time now, so this is what I am sticking with.

You are very right. it is a HEADACHE getting things organized, but once it is, it is very nice. I still have my Itunes library intact because it stores things completely different than I need for Comand. Like I said, whenever I need something form my I-tunes library, I just copy it to by benz music folder.

I figure I might do two maybe three DVD's a year as I keep adding or changing the music I have in my car. 900+ of your favorite tunes go a long long way.

BTW I have Toast version 6.0.5. When you hit the new disk button, it changes to add folder. You can then add as many folders as you want without dragging a single file into toast. Plus I have had a 100% success rate in any format since the update. I've even copied movies with the DVD copy feature!!! too time consuming though.

Thanks for your post an input..Were all on the same journey with this DVD audio thing.

Skylaw

Thanks, my06clk - that's why we have a forum. Your method is useful - I'm about to update my "popular music" DVD and may give that a try. For most of it, as you point out, song sequence isn't a concern as it is with classical music.

You're correct about the edited disc image; I save a the new one under a different name each session, usually keeping only the two newest, and discarding older ones until the final burn version (the only one I keep for archive and to start the next update) - but my work is preserved for new updates that way. At least, if i don't screw it up changing hard drives....

If your music for a particular DVD is in a folder visible in iTunes, selecting the folder will also give you the number of songs.

Thanks again for sharing.

RadSteve

I want to THANK YOU for posting this helpful guide. I did it (amazed even myself). It's a tad easier with Toast 8.0.1 ( I was able to simply drag the whole playlists to the burn area and they became folders). Frankly, I still can't believe I did it without a hitch. THANKS AGAIN!

Skylaw

Thanks for your input. I upgraded to Toast 8 after my post above, and can confirm that you can drag a playlist directly into the Toast 8 burn area and Toast will create a folder with the playlist's name. I did find that it still re-ordered the play sequence, but hat was a simple fix (drag the songs back into the preferred order).