HELP!!! Itunes and joining tracks

ttc359 · #1 November 23rd, 2003, 06:45 PM

Hi, I hope someone can help me with a problem. I am burning a cd to my powerbook (OSX). This particular cd is unique in that the music (in this case a classical piece called The Rite of Spring) is one continious long track with no interruption (this is also true of some other classicl works, like the Firebird and also some operas...). Now, on the disc it's divided into 15 tracks for naming and ease of selection, but track #2 follows track #1 w/o a break and the music is playing constantly. OK. Now I know there's a JOIN TRACKS optioin in itunes that allows me to play this un-interrupted. Fine. But when I burn a copy to play in my car (I borrowed the original cd from a friend), if I want to listen to "track" #8 let's say, I have to hold the FF button down or like 3 minutes!!!!!!!!!!!! This is bec in JOIN TRACKS it merges it all into 1 big track. I also tried the NO GAP (seconds) options in 'prefereneces- burning'. But this doesnt work. This options DOES retains the track numbers but theres a slight split second transition gap I can hear, it sounds like a "click" noise in between, so it's not really "no gap." (more like 0.5 second gap!)
Now the obvious solution I can hear you say is DONT BE A CHEAP AND JUST BUY THE CD!!!!!! Believe me, money is not the issue. Rather, I like the idea of having all my music in my powerbook. It's just a neat idea. I can play any song I want anywhere, anytime from my mac!!!!

Thanks for reading!
Tim

Satcomer · #2 November 23rd, 2003, 07:15 PM

Have you tried Quicktime (I'm not sure if it requires the Pro version)? I tried an quick experiment with mp3's(and it worked, but it doesn't save the info tags) but unprotected mp4s should work barring there are no fade outs at the end of the tracks.

**Giaguara** · #3 November 23rd, 2003, 07:24 PM

in iTunes:

choose all the music you want joined to one file, then choose Advanced > Join CD Tracks.

ElDiabloConCaca · #4 November 24th, 2003, 10:47 AM

Well, you're not going to be able to get a CD with absolutely no breaks in it with your Macintosh. When you burn an Audio CD in iTunes, there will be at least a 0.5 second gap between tracks -- that's just how the Audio CD format works with iTunes.

What you want to do is make a copy from the original CD to a blank CD, something you'll need two CD drives for. That's the only way you'll get a perfect, play-through, no-gaps CD from that original CD. Or, you're stuck using the join tracks method, which does make one, long track that you have to FF through.

You could get creative and use QuickTime to merge them all, but I don't think that QuickTime will retain individual tracks, so you'll end up with the one big track again.