dolphinboy

i received an HP pavillion n5445 laptop for x-mas and it has a cd burner and dvd player (shared). i had never used computers for recording music, although i do have a cd recorder with my stereo but it takes a lot of time.

i posted here and was recommended to record my own cds with a 196 bitrate. i've been doing that for close to 10 days. no problems with that.

so i make my first playlist and go to burn a cd tonight. i used a CDR (Music) to record with. that's the kind that needs to be used when recording with the stereo cd burner, but it also says it can be used in the computer. it's an 80 minutes max and my playlist is at about 75 minutes.

so i start the windows media player to recording and it makes it through 15 of the 19 songs and then closes...it doesn't even finalize properly and "will not fit" pop up on all the songs and the cd drawer pops open. i figure maybe it's a song and shift things around and try again. it does the same thing...right after the 15th song, which is also a different song this time around. so it can't be a problem with that song.

i am pretty hot now. so i put in a CDRW, not wanting to waste another disc because although they didn't finalize properly the cds wouldn't record anymore even with the free space it should have had. well, the CDRW goes through the whole process and it records ALL 19 songs perfectly.

i totally can't figure what is wrong. i think maybe it's the audio cdrs, so i pop in a regular cdr and it happens again. what could this be? does anyone know what is happening or what i might be able to do to figure this out and correct it?

please help me if you can...thanks.

tygloalex

Sounds like cheap CD-R's, anyway you might want to try to move this over to the Computer Forum, those guys are geniuses.

AtlDVD

One - if you are making CD mixes on your computer extract them as .wav files not mp3's.

Use full CD quality wavs..

Second - make sure if they are mp3's that you are buffering them before burning - turn this on in your software

Third- lower the buring speed down - if you are at 8x go to 4x - make sure nothing else is hogging up memory while you are burning

AtlDVD

oh yeah-

most CD-RW discs are burned much much slower than CD-R's'' so that could explain why those worked..

basically turn buffering on and lower the speed down

mikehunt

disable all other running programs, especially ones that access the harddrive, such as always running virus scanners (like Mcafee VShield)

dolphinboy

Thank you, Thank you, Thank you.

I'm ALMOST there as far as taking your suggestions. I have reduced the speed to 4x and I will close anything else down so nothing is hogging the memory.

I don't know much about how to do these things, so please bear with me. I found the buffering options (I think) in the performance menu of Windows Media player. The options are:

Network buffering
use default buffering (recommended)
or
Buffer for ___ seconds

The use default buffering is selected, but isn't this for recording from the internet? How would this effect my CD recording? I don't see buffering options anywhere else.

Finally, I'm pretty sure Windows Media Player makes them into MP3s (although the files end in .wma) and I have no idea how to turn them into wav files just before or during recording. I don't see that option anywhere.

Could you PLEASE help me finish things off here based on the changes I've made and the info I've given you? I'd really like to get this fixed or working.

Thanks

dolphinboy

I went out and bought a new CDR package from a different company. I slowed the speed down and I think the buffering was on, although it seemed to be only for downloading music. I turned off all other programs and tried again. It got through the WHOLE CDR!!!! Thanks!

I believe it's automatically converted to wav by windows media player as there is no other way to do it. Mp3s don't play on cds and in regular cd players, right? So since my CDR is playing music it has to have been converted from mp3 to wav. yes?

I have no idea why super technology made me need to slow the speed and not even be able to surf the net while I'm waiting, but I'll take it if it works.

One last question. Am I wasting/using additional HD space when I burn a CD? I mean the music is stored in my computer in certain files, but are those files duplicated when I burn a whole new cd or does it just convert the files temporarily and then burns them into the CDR and the files that were converted go back to being smaller mp3s after the process? Do you know what I'm asking? Now that I've created a CD, do I need to go into my HD and delete any space the conversion uses up?

Thanks to everyone again.

mikehunt

is DMA enabled on your burner?
right click on my computer->properties->device manager->double click on the drive and check the settings

dolphinboy

I tried to do this. XP is harder to figure out. I got as far as device manager. I clicked on the DVD/CD rom drives and then Toshiba DVD SD-R2102. I right clicked on that there were properties, general, dvd region, volumes, and driver. Nothing to check the setting or that said DMA. What is DMA and I'm I even looking in the right place to find it?

Thanks.

ok, it's direct memory access. i've found that out, but still can't seem to find out if it's disabled/enabled or why that is important or what to do about it.

mikehunt

not sure on XP
but I forgot to enable it once after a reinstall of windows and I got nothing but coasters out of my burner.
enabling it allows devices to by pass the cpu to access memory (I think I'm remembering that right). Basically it allows better performance and transfer of data, which is important for a burner. It needs a steady, constant stream of data when burning