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[lzosimo]

Maybe someone can help me on this,
When I make an MP3 cd, I want to put the files in folders, but instead of having 11 folders (albums), I end up with 120 files (songs).
I'd also like to be able to change the order of the folders as they are burned to the CD. Example..............I want to put the albums on the CD in order of when they were released, not alphabeticaly.

Thanks in advance,

Lou

[JimH]

Recent versions have options for a lot of things, after you choose Data CD.

[lzosimo]

so your saying version 11 gives the options i mentioned, and version 10 does not?.........BTW, im using version 10.0.173

[JohnT]

There should be an options menu in the CD burning area with a folder naming scheme that you can choose, one of the choices is "Album". Folders are always alphabetical on CD's but you can choose the "Custom" option on the folder scheme menu and enter something like "[Year] - [Album]" (assuming you have the year filled in for these tracks) which will cause them to be alphabetized by year. For example "2003 - Life for Rent". You can see the resulting folder name in the "CD Folder" column in the list view prior to burning. The filenames will also be alphabetic within these folders so unless your filenames are already prefixed with a track number or something to keep them in order, you can use the "File naming" choice from the options menu and select "Prefix the list order to the CD filename" which will force them into the same order as you see in the list view.

[glynor]

Is there any chance we are going to get a "Disc Verification" feature ala Nero (and basically all other CD burning apps) anytime soon?

I have a MP3 CD Player in my car and I'd love to be able to use MC to burn the CDs, instead of the extremely irritating method I use now:

• Find various files in MC
• Rename Files From Properties to move the files (and only the files) to a temporary location I want (with the proper directory structure).
• Open Nero, import, Burn, Verify
• Rename Files again (put the files back to where they were)

I've burnt way too many coasters only to go on a long trip somewhere and not have access to the files I wanted.  It's a simple thing, but for now MC's burning features are all useless to me without a "verify" feature.

[hit_ny]

Is there any chance we are going to get a "Disc Verification" feature ala Nero (and basically all other CD burning apps) anytime soon?
.
I've burnt way too many coasters only to go on a long trip somewhere and not have access to the files I wanted.  It's a simple thing, but for now MC's burning features are all useless to me without a "verify" feature.

I asked for this during the 10.0 days and was told it was on the list.

I've been researching for a new DVD writer recently and browsed some of the stuff in the cdfreaks.com boards. What a wealth of information there is ...

.From their Media FAQ

There is a file checker in Nero, it's the "verify" option in the burn window. The Nero verify test will compare the files on the burned disc with the files on the hard drive. Various other programs are available for checking file integrity. My feeling about all of these is that they have limited value. You will see a considerable number of C2 errors being reported long before any data corruption occurs in most cases, So just because the files test OK, that doesn't mean you have a good burn or a reliable disc.

Granted they are referring there to how long the media will continue to be reliable but to be sure, you might need to actually preview the burned files on your player to know they are good. You cant do this for every cd now can you

Have you found, in your experience that if a CD passed the Nero verify test that it always played in your car player ?

[Alex B]

I have burned a lot of MP3 CDs with MC and have not encountered any quality problems (unless there has been a temporary bug that has made the burner work incorrectly).

Glynor, what burner you have and how old is it? I would suspect an unreliable drive or system configuration.

Reducing the burning speed may help sometimes. Usually I use the maximum available speed with CD-RW discs (10x in my case), but when I burn CD-R discs I reduce the speed a bit (e.g. from 48x to 24x). I have burned fine discs at 48x, but I think 24x is more secure and doesn't wear the drive out as quickly.

• Find various files in MC
• Rename Files From Properties to move the files (and only the files) to a temporary location I want (with the proper directory structure).
• Open Nero, import, Burn, Verify
• Rename Files again (put the files back to where they were)

This is my current system:

1) First I use MC's handheld function for copying (and converting if needed) my "burn playlists" to a separate folder. MC copies the files and makes new corrected playlists in the defined Handheld folder structure.

2) Then I run MP3Gain for leveling the playback volumes of the copied files.

3) After that I load the corrected playlist(s) into Playing Now and burn from there. With this system MC keeps the original track order automatically and can add sequence numbers in front of the file names (My players play the files in alphabetical order and I have not found the optional folder structure creation useful).

This is the file renaming template I use with MP3 CDs (MC adds the sequence number in the front):
[Artist]_[Name]_[Album]_[Track #]

Because I have saved the original "burn playlists" in a playlist group I can tell how many MP3 CDs I have successfully burned with this system. The count is currently 28. I can easily burn one of the old playlists again or make a new combination of two or more playlists.

[glynor]

I have great burners (a NEC ND-3550A - DVD-RW drive and a LiteOn 52x CDRW), and a very reliable system and network.  I don't burn coasters THAT often, but when it happens, I have no way of knowing through MC's interface which isn't acceptable.

Unfortunately, MC's burning interface suffers from two major deficits for me.  First, all of my media files live on network drives.  They're extremely fast network drives (the primary one is a RAID5 system in a Linux box, the network is a Gigabit LAN, and the Linux box has a PCIe Gigabit NIC so it has good throughput).  Even still, Nero caches files burnt from network drives which helps tremendously.  If there is even the slightest network hiccup while I'm burning a disc it will end up with errors.  The second problem is, of course, that MC doesn't tell me if this happens.

While fixing the network caching would be awesome, I'm not even really requesting this.  I just need MC to tell me if a disc is bad!  Frankly, even if it only happens 3% of the time (I'd say it's more like 15% when burning over the network), my only acceptable failure rate is 0% for the final product.  The only way to do that is to verify the discs after they're burnt.

[Alex B]

Network drives can certainly be problematic for MC's burner.

I think you should try the system I described. Make the Handheld folder on a local HD.

Naturally you can burn the resulting playlist as well with Nero or similar.

... until JohnT fixes these problems. (A configurable cache and a verify function would be needed. ISO image creation and burning would be nice too.)

[JohnT]

I've forgotten, what was the need for ISO image creation?
Of course MC does ISO image creation internally but I take it you'd like to create an ISO image file on the hard disk?
And by "configurable cache", I assume you mean options for caching network files and maybe files under a certain size as well.

[glynor]

John,

I would LOVE the ISO file creation feature.  I actually have one of these at work and if I could burn my MP3 discs and Video backup discs to ISO and then transport the image files in to work on an external drive (and burn them in a big batch from there) I'd be a very happy camper!!!  (Of course, that's just me and I'm only 1 customer.)  I also sometimes find myself burning a few copies of discs for one reason or another (but never all at one time), and the ability to create and store ISO files through MC directly would be wonderful.  Of course, all of this would still require a verify feature.

Alex -

I do use a system similar to what you described.  I do need the directory structure because of the way my MP3 CD Player works.  I use /[Artist]/[Album]/[Track #] - [Track Name].  That way, I can navigate on disc using the folders.  If I use them all as part of the filename in the root of the disc, my MP3 Player's screen isn't wide enough to display the full filename and I have to constantly wait for it to scroll over to see what the song title is (which can be quite dangerous when you realize you're in the wrong lane on the highway).

Soooo.... I end up using this method:

1. Open MC and create a playlist of the files I want to include on disc.
2. Select all and Rename Tracks from Properties to move them to my local "BurnTemp" folder.
3. Open Nero, drag from the BurnTemp.  Burn.  Verify.  Eject.
4. Re-open MC.  Select all those files again.  Rename Tracks from Properties again to put them back to where they belong.

I've not used MP3Gain to fix the gain on the tracks, but (assuming that MC doesn't fix these deficiencies) I will from now on.  Actually, I won't.  Since I need to recreate a directory structure, and the Rename Files from Properties tool only supports moving files not copying them (another thing that would be very handy), using the MP3Gain tool would alter the original files which I don't want.  So, I just have to deal with the randomly changing volume when I play the discs on random...

Either way.  This isn't a huge deal when you only want to burn 1-2 MP3 discs.  However, I use the same method (with a different directory structure) to burn off lots of my Images and Video files to free up space on my RAID drive.  For example, when a season of the Sopranos ends (or CSI or Deadwood), I take the whole season and burn it off onto 2-3 DVD-Rs.  I also regularly burn off sets of 4-6 Movies onto DVD-R after I've watched them.  Once a year I archive off my images to back them up. When you're using the above method to copy multiple GBs of data around (and trying to burn 20-30 discs in a sitting), it really becomes a pain (and you constantly forget to move things back to where they go).

[Alex B]

Let's try this again  

1. Open MC and create a playlist of the files I want to include on disc.

- OK

2. Select all and "Rename Tracks from Properties" to move them to my local "BurnTemp" folder.

- No, sync the playlist with the Handheld function instead. MC will copy the files to a local "Handheld" folder structure. It can also convert on the fly if needed. The original files and your database will remain intact. The /[Artist]/[Album]/ folder structure is available in the Handheld options. If the file names are not already correct you may want to fix them with usual MC tools.

2.5. - You can freely use MP3Gain since the files are copies.

3. Open Nero, drag from the BurnTemp.  Burn.  Verify.  Eject.

- Fine, but you may want to try MC too since the files are on a local HD now. As I said I have not experienced any problems recently. With your up-to-date HW it should work fine.

4. Re-open MC.  Select all those files again.  "Rename Tracks from Properties" again to put them back to where they belong.

- Not needed. You can delete the copied files.

[Alex B]

I've forgotten, what was the need for ISO image creation?
Of course MC does ISO image creation internally but I take it you'd like to create an ISO image file on the hard disk?
And by "configurable cache", I assume you mean options for caching network files and maybe files under a certain size as well.

Perhaps MC could optionally cache the complete disk to a temp folder before burning. That would minimize any network or file system congestion problems.  ISO option could just save the cache contents in standard ISO format instead of burning the disc immediately. The burn dialog could have a third mode for selecting and burning ISO files separately (besides the audio & data modes).

[glynor]

Let's try this again   

- No, sync the playlist with the Handheld function instead. MC will copy the files to a local "Handheld" folder structure. It can also convert on the fly if needed. The original files and your database will remain intact. The /[Artist]/[Album]/ folder structure is available in the Handheld options. If the file names are not already correct you may want to fix them with usual MC tools.

AHHH!  (Ding!  The light goes on.)  Since I don't have a proper Handheld, I've never even played with those functions of MC at all.  So there is a way to designate a directory on your hard drive as a Handheld in MC, and then you can use all the regular MC functions to replicate files into that "handheld" location (which is really just a folder somewhere).  That WOULD be useful!

I take it MC can't apply Album Gain (and other DSP effects) to the files as part of the Handheld transfer function (otherwise you'd just use MC for that rather than MP3Gain) as it can with the regular Burn to CD function?

However, I still think that my primary requests would be simpler and more reliable.  Essentially that MC:

• Even though the agreed upon method would cut the coaster rate signifigantly, I'm still uneasy using it in production without a verification feature.  Quite often with my video files, I delete the originals once they've been burned off to disc (that's the entire purpose of the procedure after all).  Unless I can be positive that they have been burned correctly, I won't want to use the tool (and I'll still need to go through Nero).
• Library Tools --> Move/Copy functions should be integrated with the Rename From Properties tool.  It's just more intuitive and more powerful.
• Network caching would solve the entire need for the above mentioned dance.

[glynor]

Perhaps MC could optionally cache the complete disk to a temp folder before burning. That would minimize any network or file system congestion problems.  ISO option could just save the cache contents in standard ISO format instead of burning the disc immediately. The burn dialog could have a third mode for selecting and burning ISO files separately (besides the audio & data modes).

I should mention that while ISO recording and burning would be helpful, I don't see this as really necessarily part of "MC's domain" and I can see needing to use an external CD burning app to create and burn ISO files.

I just want to be able to use MC's burn CD function to burn media discs.  It now seems that I'll be able to do so for non-critical MP3 CDs, but still not for archiving data.

[JohnT]

I've burnt way too many coasters only to go on a long trip somewhere and not have access to the files I wanted.  It's a simple thing, but for now MC's burning features are all useless to me without a "verify" feature.

Could you describe in more detail the problem you're having with creating coasters? With burn-proof technology, you shouldn't be experiencing buffer under-run errors. The term "coaster" is usually applied to an un-readable disc, but it sounds like you're talking about a readable disc that burned without errors but is missing data. This certainly shouldn't happen in MC.

[glynor]

That's exactly right.  Not buffer under-run.  Unreadable data.  I would guess that the data was burned, but due to errors in the burn process (which are unavoidable -- all CD/DVD burners make tons of errors for each burn -- most are just recoverable) sometimes the data can't be read. What more do you want me to describe?

I should say, I probably burn more discs in a few weeks than most people do in their lifetimes.  Its a big part of what I do at work (disc mastering and duplication).  My failure rate isn't huge (except when burning from the network drive as described above), but when I'm going to delete the original media I need to be able to verify that the data all burned and was readable.

I'm not sure what you don't understand.  Burning discs at high speeds sometimes results in errors.  Its not really the software's fault.  Sometimes it's the media.  Sometimes it's the drive.  Sometimes it's other things happening on the PC at the time of the burn (background tasks and whatnot).  In a perfect world I'd always burn at 1x with nothing running in the background and never burn from a network drive.  I don't live in a perfect world though... When I need to burn 65 DVD-Rs of data (as I'm doing today) sometimes I need to burn at 12x or 16x ...

[JimH]

So it sounds like it's more of a problem with the certainty of the burn than with any significant number of bad burns.  Is that about right?

[glynor]

You got it.  Even 1 failure in 3,000,000 is unacceptable if I'm going to delete the sources off of the hard drive.  (Though my rates are much somewhat higher than that, or else I wouldn't be complaining.)

[Mr ChriZ]

I've experienced badly written conversions from APE->MP3 CD and Audio CD  in the past I don't do this frequently enough to give conclusive results though.
The last time I tried it would have been about mid January.
I've actually got the same DVD-Writer as Glynor, and using
Nero I have to say it's rock solid.
Not much to go on there but I thought I'd mention it.
I'll have a play with the latest version and post the results.

[JimH]

You got it.  Even 1 failure in 3,000,000 is unacceptable if I'm going to delete the sources off of the hard drive.  (Though my rates are much higher than that, or else I wouldn't be complaining.)

So what if the "verify" lies (oops, was relying on bad intelligence) once in a while?  Don't you end up in the same place?

[glynor]

Yeah, I would be.  That hasn't ever happened to me though.  The verify reads the disc and make sure the data it reads matches the data it was supposed to burn bit-for-bit.  Now, it's possible that a different drive will read properly data that might fail on the burner (or the other way around).  However, since it's my burner, and I'm generally burning these discs for my own use I can just try it in the original burner drive if I come across a disc I can't read in some other drive.

The NEC drive is well known for being one of the best drives out there as far as having high-quality burns.  There are plenty of tests done that I could point you to if you're curious.

[glynor]

Granted they are referring there to how long the media will continue to be reliable but to be sure, you might need to actually preview the burned files on your player to know they are good. You cant do this for every cd now can you

Have you found, in your experience that if a CD passed the Nero verify test that it always played in your car player ?

I didn't even see this message since there were so many fast-and-furious replies on the topic.

Yes.  If the disc passes the Nero test, generally my MP3 CD Player will play it (as will my other drives -- with the exception of my Lenovo ThinkPad from work which only plays discs when it feels like it on every 3rd tuesday).   

I've read similar postings on CDFreaks and I'm never sure what they're talking about.  Different drives react to C2 errors differently, of course, but generally if your burner can't even properly read it's own disc, it isn't worth relying on.  As far as archiving data... No.  Optical Discs are not reliable in general, but what other real option do we have?

I'm willing to accept it if sunlight or microscopic scratches degrade my discs in 3-6 years, and I lose some old media, but not if they don't work the same day!

[JohnT]

Perhaps MC could optionally cache the complete disk to a temp folder before burning. That would minimize any network or file system congestion problems.  ISO option could just save the cache contents in standard ISO format instead of burning the disc immediately. The burn dialog could have a third mode for selecting and burning ISO files separately (besides the audio & data modes).

For future reference, I'm assuming that if we added this ISO image burning feature, it would be ok to restrict it to the ability to write the image onto blank discs only, not adding sessions to discs or importing previous sessions, etc.  Is that right?

[glynor]

That would be a-ok with me.  Multi-session discs are a waste of time and effort anyway, as they are horribly unreliable (some machines will read them and some won't no matter what you do).

I'll reserve my verification complaining this time.    

[Alex B]

For future reference, I'm assuming that if we added this ISO image burning feature, it would be ok to restrict it to the ability to write the image onto blank discs only, not adding sessions to discs or importing previous sessions, etc.  Is that right?

Usually dedicated burning programs can only load ISO files and burn them blindly. Some programs like Alcohol 120% can mount ISO files and make the contents available for OS, but that kind of functionality is not requested now.

A possibility to save burn sessions in standard ISO format would be useful in many ways. It would make possible to burn the sessions later or with another PC. Also, if the burner has problems with MC other burning programs could be tried without starting from scratch outside MC's media library.