iTunes, playlists, and MP3 burning
Jul 15, '02 09:26:28AM
Contributed by: jmil
People (like me) who don't have $400 to shell out for an iPod may find MP3 CD players a convenient alternative. The nice thing about playing MP3 CDs is that you just create a bunch of folders on a CD-R or CD-RW, and the MP3 CD player can differentiate between the MP3s in each folder. The nifty feature in iTunes' is that directories will be created on the disc based on how the playlist is sorted in iTunes at the time of burning. Read the rest of this article to see a couple examples, and some pictures...
Note: Make sure you have chosen to burn an mp3 CD rather than an audio CD in iTunes' preferences.
- Create a new iTunes playlist no larger than 666.6 MB (iTunes CD burning limit)
- Sort the playlist by Artist (click on the "Artist" column)
- Click the "Burn CD" button
- Insert a blank CD into your CD-RW drive
- Click the "Burn CD" button again to burn the CD. Result: iTunes burns the playlist as individual MP3 files which are contained within ordered folder names of their respective artist (either ascending or descending, depending on which sort method you have selected). This is similar to the iPod's feature of being able to listen to all songs by one particular artist at a time. See Image One for a picture of how this looks in the Finder.
- If you repeat the above steps, but instead sort by "Album", folders will be created on the CD based on the Album title. This is extremely useful for copying several albums worth of mp3s onto a disc while still allowing individual albums to be listened to individually. Taken one step further, and depending on the features of your MP3 CD player (what types of shuffling and manual programming it allows), you could then constrain shuffling to one or more of the individual albums on that CD. See Image Two for a screenshot of this sort in the Finder.
This hint works in iTunes 2.0.4 and OS X 10.1.5 for me. I have not tested it on other systems. It assumes you have a CD burner, too.
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Mac OS X Hints
http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20020715092628316