Since the MP3 format (MPEG 1 Layer III) is part of the MPEG standard, I was wondering if it was possible to take multiple MP3 files and make them into a VCD without changing the files to a lower quality format. It would seem to be a pretty trivial thing to implement, and think about it... 100 tracks of CD-quality music on one disc!

So... would this work, and how? Anyone willing to give it a try? (I don't have my CD-R ye

-- Justin Sevakis (too.much.anime@ibm.net), April 26, 1999

Answers

You have smoked yourself retarted.

-- Will Shakes (soldier0081@hotmail.com), April 26, 1999.

Do you know what a VCD is?

-- Will Shakes (soldier0081@hotmail.com), May 02, 1999.

YES, I know what a VCD is, thank you very much! Just because a format is made for video doesn't mean it always has to be used that way.

-- Justin Sevakis (too.much.anime@ibm.net), May 03, 1999.

You want to make an MP3AudioCD not a VCD(VideoCD). VCDs are actually made for video. If you want audio you make an AudioCD or MP3AudioCD. I have already made an MP3AudioCD, they work and you can also buy them from www.mp3.com. You can not convert *.mp3 to *.dat. NO SOFTWARE EXISTS TO DO IT. You convert *.mpg to a *.dat and that is it. All you want is to burn your songs onto a cd. It is very easy and does not need to be VCD. Just use DirectCD or EasyCDCreator to copy the files to a blank cd. THAT IS ALL YOU CAN DO WITH MP3 SONGS. Oh and you can store about a little over 200-300 tracks of cd quality music. If you want a regular audio cd then you will have to convert a MP3 to WAV and burn it in CDDA format. Here are the CD(Compact Disc is not a format but a storage medium) formats: AudioCD, MP3AudioCD, VideoCD, CD-ROM, CD-Interactive, CDExtra, EnhancedCD, PhotoCD. DVD is the same way (Digital Versatile Disc NOT Digital Video Disc) AudioDVD, MP3 AudioDVD, VideoDVD, DVD-ROM.

-- Will Shakes (soldier0081@hotmail.com), May 03, 1999.

I read this thread, and even if all answers are actually correct, I don't think anybody really understand the problem. 1) OK, everybody understand what a VCD is, that's not the problem! 2) OK, burning MP3 files into a CD is no problem and allow to store much more than native AudioCD (14 times at 112k) with CD quality. The drawback is that you need a PC to play your music. 3) OK, it is also easy to convert MP3 back into WAV to burn a native AudioCD and play on a standard Audio player.

But the real issue is that some people (or at least me) would like to enjoy the extra capacity allowed by the MP3, but still be able to play them without a PC. It is so ridiculous to have a wonderfull MPEG hardware decoder in the VideoCD or DVD player, as well as in the state of the art AC3/MPEG/DTS amplifier and still we cannot use them for Audio. The final solution will be (one day) the DVD-Audio, but it will require new DVD players, and almost nobody can write DVD media anyway. So the real question here is: Is there any way (any CD format) which allows compressed Audio (either MP3 or other) on standard 74/80min CD-R to be played on a standard VideoCD/DVD player? The idea of Justin was not stupid at all, and indeed maybe there is a way to encode a VideoCD with only Audio streams. I don't know. Anybody got an idea? Another idea would be to write a MP3 player for PlayStation (that a lot of people have connected on standard Audio/Video equipment) and burn CD-R's for PlayStation including the MP3 files and the PlayStation MP3 Player. The playstation would have enough processing power for MP3 decoding and can read standard CD-R with ISO structure. (The same CD-R could include the PC player as well)

-- Marc Morisse (MarcM@epson.nl), June 02, 1999.

Marc-

If you read Will's answer you would know that the only way to get audio only is to record an MP3 to CD directly. If you change the file to an MPG you lose the compression. That was the intent of the above answers and questions. MPG is not smaller than MP3 it is larger. After all you can store 74 minutes of audio or video or both on a CD but you can store 650+ MB on a CD. The MPG would cap off at 74 minutes but the MP3 would go on for at least 9 hours. The best solution for the both of you...a $150-$250.00 piece of hardware called the RIO MP3 Player. At $250.00 it stores an hour of music and is portable, the size of a pager, has flash upgrade card slots that can add up to 64 more minutes, and never skips or shakes. Also many companies are designing MP3 home players. Wait for those to come around. And one last thing Marc...DVD+RW and DVD-RAM are coming this summer so AudioDVD will soon be a reality for many people.

-- The Lone Ranger (rutger_s@hotmail.com), June 02, 1999.

If you create a video clip with just sound and *no image* it will compress very well and you can fit about 4 hours of music on a VCD. The reason is that MPEG more or less compresses the *changes* between scenes rather than the actual scenes.

You can only play this on a VCD player (including DVD players), since it's playing "black" video.

Putting titles on the tracks makes them slightly larger but when you play them you get some extremely valuable feedback.

-- Jim Smith (jimsmith@paw.com), June 17, 1999.

A great program for creating your VCD format mpg is xing encoder. you can produce vcd audio only files with as well

-- GaAnKaK (Saber@-nospam-howling.com), November 21, 1999.

:-)

-- right marc? (ithink@he.want.to.know.if.there.is.a.dvd.player.that.would.play.mp3), December 18, 2000.

So far the only person here who is not a dickhead is Marc (and of course the guy who started this).

It is .very. possible to burn MP3 files onto a VCD.

There is no other way of putting it.

There may not be a loss of quality, but there will be an increase in file size, as you have to convert the MP3 file into MPEG2, (ie .MP2) once you have done that, NO WORRIES. use a program like TMPGenc, its a jap program, but its in english too. It will convert raw audio into the required .MPG files for VCD playback.

OK, you cant just burn MPGs onto a CD, that's dumb. You can then use a .good. cd burning util such as nero to create a (multitrack) VCD from the MPG files.

HEY PRESTO YOUVE GOT YOURSELF A VCD WITH YOUR MP3 MUSIC ON IT! All I can say is that the dude who started this is a fucking genius. Good idea mate.

There is a catch, the filesize. Expect it to be big, I don't know if it will actually be worthwhile tho... Try it... lemme know... Also... you gots to make sure the MPG 'movie' file is the right resolution/framerate too. TMPGenc has some preset templates that should take care of that tho.

Mark.

-- Mark McDonald (mark.mcdonald@start.com.au), February 12, 2001.

You can create an audio disk with VCD2 sound which will only play on a DVD player that is VCD compatible. The format is MPEG-1 layer ll at 224kbps this is the standard VCD2 sountrack that can have Dolby Surround encoded into the stero soundtrack. MPegger™ 1.1.1 has the codec for this.

-- Kirk Lorenson (kirkland@nemain.com), March 07, 2002.

Use WinOnCD (from Roxio, the makers of Easy CD Creator) and choose the Music Album option.

This creates a VCD (playable on most DVD players) which can have Album/Track listings as a menu and stores 5+ hours of MPEG audio.

The software is very user friendly.

-- Roger Miall (RogerMiall@freenet.co.uk), May 24, 2002.