Having fits trying to burn MP3's to a cd!

Hi all - as the user name implies, I'm so green, grass is jealous. I was at the apple store recently before our long trip (that I wanted to burn cd's for, and still need), and the "genius" said that if my car will play them, that the AAC (or ACC, I forget which) will hold almost twice as much as if they were MP3's. Not that 8 hours or so of MP3's is a bad thing...! Ok, I load up some music in itunes in a playlist as he showed me, then click burn. I tried it both as an audio cd and as MP3's - and neither one would even handle a simple 66 song test run. Needless to say, if I burned the MP3's on my old PC, I would get between 150 and 170 songs easy on it, but even when I reduced it to about 30 songs, it still told me I needed multiple cd's. What in the world am I doing wrong!? Obviously a trip back to the genius bar would help, but we're traveling thru areas where there are no apple stores at all! Please help? This is a brand new MBP 15", and I'd give other specs if I could remember them. Tell me if there's something specific that I need to let you guys know so you can teach me how to burn! I have something like 14,000 songs in MP3 format, so they're already ready to burn (at least in theory)! Thanks in advance.

I would do it from within your music folder wherever it is located in Finder.
Select the music files or folders that you want and right-click. Then choose "Burn to Disc" and it should work as long as your selection isn't larger than the disc and the disc is compatible.

Hi as far as i am aware if you want to burn onto disc you can do it in either format AAC/MP3. what i do is create a folder in lets say desktop and drag the playlist into it from iTunes this should work ok but i have really only had about 100 songs on a 700mb disc. Once all in just highlight the folder and burn folder. Good luck

Thanks to you guys for the advice. What if the music is on an external hard drive? I have some on the mac hard drive, but I've been tweaking, rearranging and sorting the songs on the portable hard drive - so either I have to reload/import/whatever the term is - from the portable to the mac OR just use the portable to burn from. More advice please before I tackle this again?

My advice would be to get all of you music into one place that you want to work with.
I'm pretty sure you can do what u need to do from an external hd but you will need to let iTunes know were to look.
You might have to go into iTunes preferences and and redirect the folder path. I have tried all of this redirecting in the past and although it can be done I would advise having all of your music in one place. It makes everything much easier to work with if you use iTunes. Good luck

Well, the biggest problem seems to be working thru itunes. If it's possible to do it without going thru itunes, perhaps it will work/burn as it should. If it can't get 150-170 songs on the disc, it's not working right. And nothing I can do IN itunes will work right. I mean 7 discs or so to do 66 songs!? Really!?!? I don't think so...

something sound out of place here,make make sure that when you come to burn the discs that you haven't got the settings for a normal audio disc to be created or a data disc. Also check the compression settings for the other formats and make sure that they are all quite high. To get iTunes to read from an external HD try opening iTunes/preference/advanced then try to change the file path.

Wow, I'm disappointed to see that every single answer here (except f1mac) is completely wrong.

Making an MP3 music disc in iTunes is ridiculously easy, but what you're probably missing, greenasgrass, are two important bits of info:

1. Only songs that are already in MP3 format can be burned onto an MP3 disc.
2. You really need to make a playlist FIRST.

You CAN convert songs that are not in MP3 *to* MP3 in iTunes, but that's quite time-consuming. Easier to make a "smart playlist" by type that shows all MP3 song.

Next, assuming you don't want all your MP3-format songs on the disc (or have too many), make a playlist with roughly eight hours or so of MP3 songs.

Next, select the playlist and right-click to choose "burn playlist to disc," choose "MP3 disc" from the options offered and away you go. Simple.

Hi all - as the user name implies, I'm so green, grass is jealous. I was at the apple store recently before our long trip (that I wanted to burn cd's for, and still need), and the "genius" said that if my car will play them, that the AAC (or ACC, I forget which) will hold almost twice as much as if they were MP3's.

Click to expand...

The "genius" was totally wrong. First off, AACs are not half the size of MP3s, they are about the same size (but sound slightly better imho). Second, there are NO car stereos that support playing AAC format songs burned on data CDs that I know of or have ever heard of. Total pipe dream there.

What I think he may have been saying (or trying to suggest) is that while MP3 CDs pack a lot of music on a single disc, why go through all that effort? Why not just connect an iPod to the car stereo (via an adapter if necessary) and have access to your full library regardless of format?

Chances are high your car stereo has either a cassette (so you can use a cassette adapter), or a radio (so you can use a FM band transmitter on a "dead" frequency to wireless play iPod songs on the car radio) or an AUX jack on the front or rear of the head unit to directly connect the iPod (some units may require connections in the back of the unit, which a car audio tech will have to do for you).

I used to burn a lot of MP3 CDs back in the day, but that's long gone now.

Hi,

As has been said create a playlist (MP3) and just burn to disk.;D a small example.

oldscribe - that's exactly how I did it the several tries I made when I couldn't get even 30 songs on the disc. All the songs I have are MP3, nothing is anything else, so that should make things a tad easier (in theory) Chas. But I've done the other steps you mentioned, except the compression thing - don't know where to find it to check it. If possible, I would like to burn directly from the portable hard drive if it can be done. I want to make the switch to Mac completely, but keep finding things that I just don't know how to do, or like this project, just can't seem to make it work as easily as I used to on PC. I know - it's not that PC is actually easier, it's the old "comfort zone" thing, the comfortable old pair of shoes you just can't throw out...

Anyway, if you guys can walk me thru this in S.I.M.P.L.E. steps - I would sure appreciated it! Got a lot of miles yet to drive on this trip, and would like to have my long playing cd's. No, we don't actually want an ipod or any other device for the songs... Just the cd's - we're old school I guess.

f1mac - if I have the mp3's on the portable, why would I need to put them into itunes only to drag them to the desktop? Could I somehow just go straight from the portable to the burning?

Hi,

I am a little mystified, but regarding burning from external HD, plug in the HD drive then put a blank CD/DVD into the Mac drive. When the question box pops up click OK. Now you should have a disk Icon on the desktop, open it. Now drag the music tracks you want from the EX drive into the new open disk folder. Once done close the folder and right click the disk Icon on the desktop and select burn.

Hi greenasgrass first off i am almost sure that your right in what your saying about keeping them on the external hd and just dragging them into a folder on desktop . I would also like to say that i am also new to the mac world i only bought my mac in february but i am completely converted now, You really do have to get rid of everything pc (windows) don't be holding onto them i have had more enjoyment learning new things, iTunes/safari,pages,iPhoto all of the other fantastic apple programs in the last 8 months than the last 8 years with a pc. So please forgive me if i get some things wrong but i am still learning myself.

Hi greenagrass,

If you used the route I discribed above that method will not create a playable/ bootable music CD just a data disk, you need iTunes > Playlist etc. Drag the music from EX drive into a play list and burn. You do not have to add this music to your libary.

WOW, I did one 152 song disc!! I knew that it wasn't completely full, but it was sorted with the songs I wanted on that particular disc. I'm trying for a second success right now... Update coming soon. Thank you all!!!!

good luck i would also like to say that if you are a serious music collector like myself then i can highly recommend a program called tuneup its an add-on program that works only with iTunes

So what does "tuneup" do? I've only tried one time so far, but failed at actually playing music with itunes. I tried playing the cd I had just burned, but couldn't figure it out, so I popped it out and checked it in my PC... I'm sure that playing music on itunes must be incredibly simple and it probably is a major accomplishment to even make it complicated, much less fail at it Feeling stoopid...

As explained previously, TuneUp is an add-on program that helps properly tag music files. If you're not having a problem in that area, just ignore TuneUp.

As for iTunes itself, there's really nothing to it. To play a song, select the song and push the VERY LARGE play button on the upper left side of the window (or even more simply, double-click the song).

There are several tutorials on Apple's web site that show you how to use the various functions of iTunes. Start here: Apple - iTunes - Tutorials - Learn about all things iTunes.

Thank you Chas (for making me feel even more stupid - or as my hubby says "stooooopid"). No seriously, next time I'm on the mac (stuck with the pc for the next couple of days while out of town now), I'll certainly try finding the VERY LARGE button you mentioned I'll be able to go to the link you provided though even on the "dreaded pc"!

I am really looking forward to being a total sell out to mac soon - I don't really feel that the transition will be too tough. I'm ok with using Page and Numbers, and the fact that it plays nicely with Office is the deal sealer for those programs. Other than that learning curve, the rest is mostly stuff that shouldn't be too hard to transition to quickly. I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE the one-on-one program. Only slight rub is that the closest apple store is a 2.5 hour drive one way, so we will likely plan ahead, take the rv and make a day of it. The "teachers" I've met so far are perhaps a bit quirky (nerdy?), but know their stuff and make it easy to learn... I'm sold so far for sure!

FWIW, the Windows version of iTunes and the Mac version are functionally identical, so you can "practice" on the PC.

And, chas_m not withstanding, the play button is not THAT large (albeit you are probably going to be slightly embarrassed when you see it).