creating cds

[liszmaninopin]

I have a mixture of music files on my computer that I would like to put on 1 cd.  They are MPEG files, but when I use the Real Player to try to burn them on a cd, it calls them an unrecognized format.  How does one counter that?

[IgnazPaderewski]

God knows what you are doing, but its wrong. are you sure you mean mpeg, as they are video files. And why are you using real player at all? To burn mpegs, tell Nero to make a VCD. To burn purely audio files (such as WMA, WAV, MP3) tell it to make an audio CDs. these options should be available on any CD buring sowfware(not realplayer) e.g. Nero or Roxio.

[liszmaninopin]

Yes, I just checked it, and under "type of file" it says MPEG audio.  I know little about computers, so I had no clue what software to use.

[Plaz]

MP3 files are "Layer 3" MPEG audio files, so I'm hoping that's what you're trying to burn onto a CD.

See if you can play the files using Real Player.  If not, then you're not going to be able to use it to burn them onto a CD.  If you can't play them using Real Player, how do you normally listen to them?  I'm using RealOne Player; it can play MP3 files and burn them onto a CD without much trouble.

If you want to be able to play your mix CD on any CD player (car, home audio system, etc), then make sure you pick "Audio CD" format instead of "MP3" or "Media" format.

It sounds like either the files are corrupted or that they're not really MP3 format.  Windows will tell you that something is MPEG audio based on the file name, not based on whether the file actually contains valid MPEG audio data.  If you're able to listen to them with a different player, then you might have better luck with other software like IgnazPaderewski suggested.

[liszmaninopin]

I can listen to it on real player, and I can burn it in a data format onto a cd, using Roxio.  But when I try to burn it onto the cd in an audio format, it doesn't work.

[Plaz]

Can you be more specific than "it doesn't work"?  If you can play the files on Real Player, then you should be able to burn an audio CD using it or using Roxio.  You might want to make sure you have the latest version of the software you are trying to use.  I have RealOne Player version 2.0 and Roxio Easy CD Creator version 5.3.4.21 SP8.  You cand find what version you have by using the "Help" menu and selecting "About <the program>" which is usually at the bottom of the Help menu.

Assuming you have a recent version, can you describe what steps you are following?  For example, on Roxio, you should use the "File" menu to select "New CD Project" and "Music CD".  Then you find the files you want to burn in the top window, select them, and click on "Add" to put them into the bottom window, being careful not to add more than 74 or 80 minutes worth of music (depending on size of blank CD that you have).  Then click the record button and make sure the pop-up window contains something like "The selected recording method finalizes both the session and the CD".

If that doesn't work, does it fail during selection of the files, during the burning process, or when you try to play the CD in your CD player?  If you get a specific error message, what is it?  You mentioned an "unrecognized format" message in your first post.  At what point did you get that message?

[nilsjohan]

If you want to play back the CD in a normal audio CD player you should burn it as an audio CD (and don't forget to "close" the disc).
As far as I know you must use the WAV format in 44,1 kHz, 16 bit for audio CDs. Mp3 format works only for data CDs.

[Plaz]

Both RealOne Player and Roxio offer ways to convert MP3 files into audio tracks for an audio CD that you can play in any CD player.  Basically, they internally convert the MP3 file into WAV format before writing the track to disk.  At least the recent versions can, I'm not sure about older versions.

The other suggestion that I forgot to make earlier is to try Apple's iTunes program.  It also supports creation of audio CDs from various digital music formats.