Can One Use Dvd Discs To Store And Play Audio,(Not Music)?

[anotheoldgit]

I need to store a large quantity of radio episodes as MP3s onto discs, so as to play them on my CD player.

If I use CD-R discs I can only record two half hour episodes onto one disc.

Could I use DVDs and if so how many more half hour episode could I place on these?

[hc4361]

Fistly a cd player will not play dvds.

Other than that, yes, you can record .mp3 files (and photos) on to dvd.

[TonyV]

But you could use your TV DVD to play them. Something in the back of my mind remembers something about R+ and R- discs

[hc4361]

You'd need to check the dvd player recognises .mp3 files. Most do, but not all.

[TonyV]

Capacity depends on which type of DVD disc you use this may help
http://h71036.www7.hp.com/hho/cache/315534-0-0-225-121.html

[The Builder]

Using Mp3 compression, aog, you should be able to put way more than 1 hour of audio on to a CD. Probably nearer 9 or 10 hours.

A 4.7 Gb DVD would store around 7 times that amount, but wouldn't play in a standard CD player.

[bhg481]

AOG - I think you are getting your formats mixed up, as it sounds like you are creating Audio CDs starting with MP3 files.

If you create an Audio CD from MP3 files the CD will NOT contain MP3 files but they will have been converted to a format specific to audio CDs. Put a professional music CD into your computer and "explore" it and you will see what I mean.

If you simply copy MP3 files onto a CD then, as The Builder says, you will get many hours of audio onto a CD (I can easily get 255 music tracks onto one CD, around 12 hours). The drawback is that not all CD players will play CDs containing MP3 files.

[anotheoldgit]

bhg481

What these tracks are, are old radio Dad's Army audio episodes.

From the site on which they were, one just had to click on them and they were downloaded in MP3 format, I then grouped them into one folder, then in Widows media player I moved them to burn to disc,and it was this that divided them into twos ready to burn.

How else could I have done it, should I have first compressed them as suggested by The Builder, if so how do I go about that?

[anotheoldgit]

Each MP3 file is about 6MB in size.

[bhg481]

MP3 files ARE compressed AOG - it's the way you've created the CD that is the problem.

I don't usually use Windows Media player for creating CDs, so I'm not completely familiar with it, but I suspect it thinks you want to produce an Audio CD that will play on ANY CD player, so it creates it in the correct format for that and an audio CD will only hold around 80 mins of audio ie, not quite enough for 3 x 30 min episodes.

What you need to know is whether your CD player will play MP3 files or whether it will only play "Audio CDs". Since CDs are quite cheap nowadays the easy way is to try it.

Find the folder containing your MP3 files and copy them onto a CD - you should be able to get a couple of dozen episodes on 1 CD. You will then have to "finalise" the CD before you can try to play it on your CD player. (If you have CD writing software on your computer you can use it to create a "data CD" NOT an "Audio CD" - I know it's audio that you're putting on to it but the computer needs to think it's just data). My domestic CD players won't play MP3s but my DVD player will as will my car CD player