Building and organizing an mp3 CD
Introduction
Suppose: you want to fill a CD with mp3 songs from iTunes; you want the songs grouped in order of the number of stars (rating) or some other grouping; you want to have each group in separate folders on the CD; and, within each group, you want the songs arranged in a particular order that you choose and you want to be able to play the CD on a set-top DVD/CD player. You also want a print-out of the iTunes playlist and have the tunes on the CD organized the same as on the iTunes playlist. The following assumes the reader is conversant with programs such as Toast, iTunes, Excel, and Graphic Converter. Read everything before trying anything.
A. One-session method using Toast and iTunes (group by rating in this example):
1.
1) In iTunes put all the mp3 songs you want to burn into one Playlist.
2) Display the ratings column and rate all the songs in the Playlist from zero to five stars.
3) Click at the top of the Ratings column so that the songs are listed in order of number of stars in the Playlist.
4) In Toast, select Audio>MP3 Disc; click to make a new disc and give it a name.
5) Add as many folders to the Toast Data Content window as levels of ratings and label the folders as you like, such as, 5-star, 4-star, etc.
6) Drag groups of songs according to their rating from the iTunes Playlist to the appropriate folder in the Data Content area of Toast. Toast sorts files by file name, not in the order that appears in the iTunes Playlist, if different.
7) Open each folder in Toast and rearrange the files by inserting index numbers at the beginning of each file name so that the order corresponds to the Playlist. Use at least two digits, including leading zeroes, so that the songs will play in the desired order in set-top DVD players that also play mp3 CDs (see section D, below).
8) Burn the CD with Toast.
2. An alternative is to sort the songs by rating in iTunes, as above, and Burn directly from iTunes. iTunes adds the correct leading index number to the file name for each song as it is burned to keep the songs in Playlist order on the CD, but does not change the song's file name on the hard disk (it would be nice if Toast had a similar feature!). However, within each group sorted by Rating in the Playlist, the songs are sub-sorted by Artist. You can't change the order without sorting by the leftmost (play order) column in the Playlist and manually rearranging all of the songs in the Playlist. To get around this problem sort all the tunes by rating, create a new, blank Playlist and transfer all the songs from the first Playlist to the new Playlist. The play order in the new playlist will correspond to the rating. The play order of songs in the new Playlist can then be rearranged as desired within each Ratings group (this is easier to do than to describe!). Songs are burned from iTunes onto the CD in one group; you can't group different tunes into different folders as you can with Toast. I prefer Toast because I like to organize tunes into meaningful groups, such as by rating. Having separate groups makes navigating easier on set-top DVD/CD players.
B. Making a multi-session mp3 data CD
3. The above methods are best if one has enough songs to fill a CD in one session. But what if you want to fill a CD with songs progressively, from time-to-time as you acquire music?
4. You can't burn several sessions directly from iTunes to a CD, but Toast can burn multi-session mp3 CDs as data CDs. It is possible to record mp3s in more than one session by setting Toast's Recorder settings to "Write Session" (Recorder>Recorder Settings...>Advanced>Write Session). The advantage of this approach is that the CD can be filled progressively as more songs are acquired. The disadvantage to this approach is that each session appears as a separate volume when the CD is mounted on a Macintosh.
5. One way or another it's useful to have the sorting of the songs in the Playlist and in the folders on your hard disk to be the same before burning the songs to a CD. If they are then the Playlist can be printed or exported from iTunes and will correspond to the order on the CD. Rather than print a Playlist directly from iTunes I prefer to export the Playlist and import it into Excel. A spreadsheet can do things like sum up the individual play times to give the total play time of a group of songs or the whole CD as well as print the playlist and CD jewel case label the way I want it done, not the way iTunes thinks it should be done. The same could be done with a database program.
6. (NOTE 1) When an iTunes Playlist is exported as a delimited text file by the File>Export method, the running time of a song is exported as a number of seconds. Excel's basic time unit is a day (multiples thereof or fractions thereof). In Excel open the delimited Text file exported from iTunes. In a new column of the Excel spreadsheet divide the number of seconds for each song by 86400 (the number of seconds in a day) to yield a fraction of a day. Format the Excel cells containing these fractions using [h]:mm:ss (note the square brackets around the "h") or mm:ss or m:ss, according to the length of time involved, and Excel will display the running time in that format.
(NOTE 2) The playlist in iTunes may be exported to Excel by cut and paste. In iTunes set up the playlist with only the columns you want and in the order you want the columns to appear in Excel. Select the tunes whose data you want to export and copy the data to the clipboard. Switch to Excel and paste the data into Excel using Paste Values. When the data is pasted, times that are displayed as m:ss in iTunes get formatted as h:mm:ss in Excel (groan!), where m and ss in iTunes appear as h and mm, respectively in Excel. Each entry will look right but any mathematical operation, such as adding the running times of all the tunes, will be grossly in error. To restore the proper time format use some spare cells in Excel to divide each time as pasted by 60 (=(cell value)/60). Copy and paste (use Paste Value) these results to replace the original values. Using Paste Value overwrites the original entries without creating a circular reference.
C. Multi-session method using ISO 9660 formatted CD:
7. This second multi-session method is similar to that described in B, above, except the format in Toast is set to Data>ISO 9660. I prefer to use the ISO 9660 format if I'm going to fill a CD progressively. The ISO 9660 format is the preferred format for my set-top DVD player, a Panasonic S29, and is compatible with Windows. For our purposes the main advantage of ISO 9660 is that files added in a second or subsequent session can be "appended" to existing sessions; all sessions appear as one volume on a Mac (or Windows) desktop. If the structure of the folders containing the mp3 songs on the Hard Drive is not altered the CD can be filled progressively in multiple sessions and the folder structure on the CD will not change either. Files within folders appear sorted by file name and only new or changed files in a folder will be appended in the second and subsequent sessions. In the ISO 9660 settings of Toast choose CD-ROM XA (Select button > Settings). If Allow Macintosh Names is selected limit the length of file names to 31 characters or fewer. With Mac OS X selecting Joliet (MS-DOS + Windows) for the naming convention permits longer file names, but long file names will appear truncated in Mac OS 9. Ensure that Use Apple Extensions is not selected. A set-top DVD player interprets an Apple extension as another file, which really clutters up the player's menus. On the second and subsequent sessions make sure to select "append" when adding files to the CD when Toast asks what you want to do with the new files. If any file from one session is changed such that the "date modified" is changed, the file will be added again in the next session.
8. My DVD player is compatible with multi-session CDs. Check your manual to see if yours is compatible. See paragraph 6 to export the iTunes playlist to a spreadsheet such as Excel.
D. Adding or changing index numbers to files:
9. For proper sorting of files in a set-top DVD/CD player, each file name should start with an index number. Adding index numbers to mp3 files can be tedious if there are a lot of them to renumber; an mp3 CD may hold up to 200 titles, depending on the length of the tunes and degree of mp3 compression. Although GraphicConverter is used primarily for image editing and conversions it's slideshow and rename function can be used to sort and rename mp3 files (and presumably other file types, but I haven't tried that) by adding or changing an index number as follows:
1) Open the folder containing the mp3 files in a GraphicConverter Browser.
2) Drag the files from the Browser main window to the Drop Items panel at the bottom of the Browser window into the new order you want the files arranged. It helps to have the iTunes playlist open at the same time and a screen big enough to display both side-by-side. The files may also be dragged right or left to different positions in the Drop Items panel if necessary. The numerical position of the files in the Drop Items panel also shows in the main Browser window.
3) Control-click (or right-click) in the Drop Items panel to pop-up a contextual menu and choose Rename Drop Items...
4) When Graphic Converters Rename window opens, change the index numbers for the files as usual in GraphicConverter's Rename window. Be careful that the Change Name function is not selected. The Rename window shows the existing and new index number and file name of each file.
5) Click OK and the files' index numbers will be changed in the Browser and in the Finder.
E. Conclusion
10. On balance Toast is better than iTunes for organizing mp3 songs on a CD, especially because of Toast's multi-session capability and the ability to arrange the songs into groups/folders. The best features of both programs can be exploited to achieve the objectives mentioned in the introduction.
Introduction
Suppose: you want to fill a CD with mp3 songs from iTunes; you want the songs grouped in order of the number of stars (rating) or some other grouping; you want to have each group in separate folders on the CD; and, within each group, you want the songs arranged in a particular order that you choose and you want to be able to play the CD on a set-top DVD/CD player. You also want a print-out of the iTunes playlist and have the tunes on the CD organized the same as on the iTunes playlist. The following assumes the reader is conversant with programs such as Toast, iTunes, Excel, and Graphic Converter. Read everything before trying anything.
A. One-session method using Toast and iTunes (group by rating in this example):
1.
1) In iTunes put all the mp3 songs you want to burn into one Playlist.
2) Display the ratings column and rate all the songs in the Playlist from zero to five stars.
3) Click at the top of the Ratings column so that the songs are listed in order of number of stars in the Playlist.
4) In Toast, select Audio>MP3 Disc; click to make a new disc and give it a name.
5) Add as many folders to the Toast Data Content window as levels of ratings and label the folders as you like, such as, 5-star, 4-star, etc.
6) Drag groups of songs according to their rating from the iTunes Playlist to the appropriate folder in the Data Content area of Toast. Toast sorts files by file name, not in the order that appears in the iTunes Playlist, if different.
7) Open each folder in Toast and rearrange the files by inserting index numbers at the beginning of each file name so that the order corresponds to the Playlist. Use at least two digits, including leading zeroes, so that the songs will play in the desired order in set-top DVD players that also play mp3 CDs (see section D, below).
8) Burn the CD with Toast.
2. An alternative is to sort the songs by rating in iTunes, as above, and Burn directly from iTunes. iTunes adds the correct leading index number to the file name for each song as it is burned to keep the songs in Playlist order on the CD, but does not change the song's file name on the hard disk (it would be nice if Toast had a similar feature!). However, within each group sorted by Rating in the Playlist, the songs are sub-sorted by Artist. You can't change the order without sorting by the leftmost (play order) column in the Playlist and manually rearranging all of the songs in the Playlist. To get around this problem sort all the tunes by rating, create a new, blank Playlist and transfer all the songs from the first Playlist to the new Playlist. The play order in the new playlist will correspond to the rating. The play order of songs in the new Playlist can then be rearranged as desired within each Ratings group (this is easier to do than to describe!). Songs are burned from iTunes onto the CD in one group; you can't group different tunes into different folders as you can with Toast. I prefer Toast because I like to organize tunes into meaningful groups, such as by rating. Having separate groups makes navigating easier on set-top DVD/CD players.
B. Making a multi-session mp3 data CD
3. The above methods are best if one has enough songs to fill a CD in one session. But what if you want to fill a CD with songs progressively, from time-to-time as you acquire music?
4. You can't burn several sessions directly from iTunes to a CD, but Toast can burn multi-session mp3 CDs as data CDs. It is possible to record mp3s in more than one session by setting Toast's Recorder settings to "Write Session" (Recorder>Recorder Settings...>Advanced>Write Session). The advantage of this approach is that the CD can be filled progressively as more songs are acquired. The disadvantage to this approach is that each session appears as a separate volume when the CD is mounted on a Macintosh.
5. One way or another it's useful to have the sorting of the songs in the Playlist and in the folders on your hard disk to be the same before burning the songs to a CD. If they are then the Playlist can be printed or exported from iTunes and will correspond to the order on the CD. Rather than print a Playlist directly from iTunes I prefer to export the Playlist and import it into Excel. A spreadsheet can do things like sum up the individual play times to give the total play time of a group of songs or the whole CD as well as print the playlist and CD jewel case label the way I want it done, not the way iTunes thinks it should be done. The same could be done with a database program.
6. (NOTE 1) When an iTunes Playlist is exported as a delimited text file by the File>Export method, the running time of a song is exported as a number of seconds. Excel's basic time unit is a day (multiples thereof or fractions thereof). In Excel open the delimited Text file exported from iTunes. In a new column of the Excel spreadsheet divide the number of seconds for each song by 86400 (the number of seconds in a day) to yield a fraction of a day. Format the Excel cells containing these fractions using [h]:mm:ss (note the square brackets around the "h") or mm:ss or m:ss, according to the length of time involved, and Excel will display the running time in that format.
(NOTE 2) The playlist in iTunes may be exported to Excel by cut and paste. In iTunes set up the playlist with only the columns you want and in the order you want the columns to appear in Excel. Select the tunes whose data you want to export and copy the data to the clipboard. Switch to Excel and paste the data into Excel using Paste Values. When the data is pasted, times that are displayed as m:ss in iTunes get formatted as h:mm:ss in Excel (groan!), where m and ss in iTunes appear as h and mm, respectively in Excel. Each entry will look right but any mathematical operation, such as adding the running times of all the tunes, will be grossly in error. To restore the proper time format use some spare cells in Excel to divide each time as pasted by 60 (=(cell value)/60). Copy and paste (use Paste Value) these results to replace the original values. Using Paste Value overwrites the original entries without creating a circular reference.
C. Multi-session method using ISO 9660 formatted CD:
7. This second multi-session method is similar to that described in B, above, except the format in Toast is set to Data>ISO 9660. I prefer to use the ISO 9660 format if I'm going to fill a CD progressively. The ISO 9660 format is the preferred format for my set-top DVD player, a Panasonic S29, and is compatible with Windows. For our purposes the main advantage of ISO 9660 is that files added in a second or subsequent session can be "appended" to existing sessions; all sessions appear as one volume on a Mac (or Windows) desktop. If the structure of the folders containing the mp3 songs on the Hard Drive is not altered the CD can be filled progressively in multiple sessions and the folder structure on the CD will not change either. Files within folders appear sorted by file name and only new or changed files in a folder will be appended in the second and subsequent sessions. In the ISO 9660 settings of Toast choose CD-ROM XA (Select button > Settings). If Allow Macintosh Names is selected limit the length of file names to 31 characters or fewer. With Mac OS X selecting Joliet (MS-DOS + Windows) for the naming convention permits longer file names, but long file names will appear truncated in Mac OS 9. Ensure that Use Apple Extensions is not selected. A set-top DVD player interprets an Apple extension as another file, which really clutters up the player's menus. On the second and subsequent sessions make sure to select "append" when adding files to the CD when Toast asks what you want to do with the new files. If any file from one session is changed such that the "date modified" is changed, the file will be added again in the next session.
8. My DVD player is compatible with multi-session CDs. Check your manual to see if yours is compatible. See paragraph 6 to export the iTunes playlist to a spreadsheet such as Excel.
D. Adding or changing index numbers to files:
9. For proper sorting of files in a set-top DVD/CD player, each file name should start with an index number. Adding index numbers to mp3 files can be tedious if there are a lot of them to renumber; an mp3 CD may hold up to 200 titles, depending on the length of the tunes and degree of mp3 compression. Although GraphicConverter is used primarily for image editing and conversions it's slideshow and rename function can be used to sort and rename mp3 files (and presumably other file types, but I haven't tried that) by adding or changing an index number as follows:
1) Open the folder containing the mp3 files in a GraphicConverter Browser.
2) Drag the files from the Browser main window to the Drop Items panel at the bottom of the Browser window into the new order you want the files arranged. It helps to have the iTunes playlist open at the same time and a screen big enough to display both side-by-side. The files may also be dragged right or left to different positions in the Drop Items panel if necessary. The numerical position of the files in the Drop Items panel also shows in the main Browser window.
3) Control-click (or right-click) in the Drop Items panel to pop-up a contextual menu and choose Rename Drop Items...
4) When Graphic Converters Rename window opens, change the index numbers for the files as usual in GraphicConverter's Rename window. Be careful that the Change Name function is not selected. The Rename window shows the existing and new index number and file name of each file.
5) Click OK and the files' index numbers will be changed in the Browser and in the Finder.
E. Conclusion
10. On balance Toast is better than iTunes for organizing mp3 songs on a CD, especially because of Toast's multi-session capability and the ability to arrange the songs into groups/folders. The best features of both programs can be exploited to achieve the objectives mentioned in the introduction.