[oranjdisc]

I just purchased a new Pioneer DV440 DVD player, which supports VCDs and MP3s.

None of the CDs I had burned with MP3 files on them are recognized. These were CDs that were burned as data CDs using the Burner utility in OS 9. Drag and drop, and burn.

But they don't work. So I tried burning another CD of MP3s, this time using the "MP3 CD" format in Toast Titanium. THESE WORK. But when I put the MP3 CD I burned back into the Mac, it looks just like the one I burned before.

Anyone have a technical explanantion as to the difference between these? Is there some type of header burned on it, or coding that makes a DVD player (or portable MP3 player) recognize it?

I'm more curious than anything....

[babymac]

Your problem has to do with Mac vs. PC (ISO 9660) formatted CDs. I have an Apex DVD player that supports MP3 CDs. Of course, the CDs can only be in ISO9660 format. My version of Toast doesn't have an "MP3 format" choice. Instead I have to select the ISO 9660 format and use that...it works just as well. There are problems though:

You *must* use a three letter file name extension.

Generally, you are limited to 8 characters for file names.

C'est la vie! This is what we get for being "different."

[CRASH HARDDRIVE]

The 'MP3 CD' format choice in Toast IS just ISO 9660. The option is there merely for the less technical oriented to use, rather than remember to use the actual ISO 9660 option each time.

And yup, no file name extensions, PC long file names that got screwed up and not corrected on the Mac, Mac characters in file names that are illegal on a PC, file folder structures set up incorrectly are all things that will make an MP3 CD not play back correctly on other devices.

[oranjdisc]

I'm not so sure that Toast's "MP3 CD" is simply an ISO formatted disc. I mean, it retains all my file names, icons, etc. Actually, one cool thing it does is automatically add ".mp3" to the end of any mp3 file that doesn't have one. Painless and quick.

[CRASH HARDDRIVE]

Burn a disk in the ISO 9660 format. It won't get rid of your icons, filenames or anything either, as long as the Mac resource fork is intact. It won't change the filenames either, just an MP3 standalone player won't like having illegal characters in the filenames if you've used them.

Nice that the MP3 CD feature adds the file extensions, (Hopefully replaces any illegal characters too?) but it is indeed an ISO 9660 disk.

Interestingly enough, Apple's own tools like Diskburner default at HFS/ISO hybrid format for greater compatiblity. Take a disk you burned in diskburner and pop it in a PC. It'll mount fine.