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Virtual CD-RW, that I can burn to from iTunes...


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Hi all,

Bit of an odd request this, but I exclusively listen to podcasts in the car - I always burnt MP3 CDs from iTunes from a playlist in the correct order, and they played perfectly. Unfortunately my new car only has two SD slots rather than a CD player, and I cannot figure a way of getting the files onto an SD card with the track order (including tags) that I'd like.

So I'm trying a different approach - is there a way I can burn to a virtual CD-RW drive, and then copy them across? Every virtual CD drive I've come across focuses purely on running ISOs etc, rather than letting you burn to them from another program.

Thanks!

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Try searching google for "virtual cd burner"... there are a number of links that claim their software provides such a virtual CD burner to remove the DRM from iTunes music. Most of them seem to be paid software, but I encountered this: http://www.kernsafe....talmounter.aspx. There's also this one on Lifehacker many years back, which automates the Virtual CD -> MP3 conversion: http://lifehacker.co...rtual-cd-burner.

I've never tried any of them though, never had a need for them.

With unprotected MP3 files, I usually just drag-and-drop the files from iTunes to whatever storage medium, the files should be copied over. But then again I've never really bothered with playing the files in a particular order. You *can* export playlists in iTunes, apparently (I don't have iTunes installed now, but used to) so I suppose it's quite easy to make a small script to read the playlist XML file and rename the MP3 files to play in that order (I'm assuming your car stereo's MP3 playback simply plays by filename - some of them probably can read the playlist directly).

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Thank you so so much guys, I think I actually tried TotalMounter last night (I spent ages Googling and trying different things) but because it just saved to an ISO I disregarded it, argh! I should have realised it's easy to extract the files from the ISO :) To be honest the link on Lifehacker looks even better.

Exporting playlists does work, and would be perfect, but unfortunately yeah it isn't in order, and having renamed the tracks I realised my head unit seemed to disregard them. Sounds silly but I'd much prefer to have them in a proper order, so I think I need both the track numbers and the file names changed... otherwise they just play in a completely random, the best I've got it so far is to group by podcast, but that's not ideal either since there would be no variety, just hours and hours of one podcast, then hours and hours of another ;s

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@ Kai/P1R4T3 is there any piece of software you'd recommend to do that? TotalMounter doesn't work for me unfortunately, I just can't get it to create the ISO file and host it as a virtual drive, and DVDneXtCOPY's iTurns won't load at all, saying there has been a component error :( I feel that we're on the right track though!

@ remixed - thank you, but is there anyway to actually select just the playlist I want? I only have a single XML file playlist file which imports my entire library, eek!

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@ Kai/P1R4T3 is there any piece of software you'd recommend to do that? TotalMounter doesn't work for me unfortunately, I just can't get it to create the ISO file and host it as a virtual drive, and DVDneXtCOPY's iTurns won't load at all, saying there has been a component error :( I feel that we're on the right track though!

@ remixed - thank you, but is there anyway to actually select just the playlist I want? I only have a single XML file playlist file which imports my entire library, eek!

Do you got a standlone .m3u playlist??? you can import those into it....

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I've tried TotalMounter before and I couldn't get it to work for audio CDs. A couple of alternatives: NoteBurner and Phantom Burner.

Thanks, NoteBurner looks good but it seems to then convert everything into one big track at the end, with no easy way to drag it off as an MP3. Will try Phantom Burner now!

Do you got a standlone .m3u playlist??? you can import those into it....

Thank you, but trying to import the m3u playlist doesn't do anything, and saving as XML and importing that just says no file found, I think it doesn't like the characters that the podcasts use in the filenames :s (the raquo symbol)

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Re-export your playlists into m3u again... then try that amok again.

Also make sure you make sure that you export all meta info when you do the export. If info is missing then you'll have problems.

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Can't help but what car do you have? Very curious as to the 2 SD cards, sounds like an Aygo?

Audi TT Mk2 with the sat nav unit (no CD player, since the navigation disc in the DVD drive, and I have an iPod dock instead of a CD changer)

And many thanks Pirate, will take a look into this now :D

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