tman's handy mp3 to tracked-cd guide (big images!)

tman

appologies about the large image size (2mb total...)
alright, let's get it on!
got a bit bored last night so i decided to stick a couple of my favourite mp3 mixes onto cdr's. after managing to utterly **** up my first attempt, i started from scratch, and decided i might as well take a few pics along the way & make a guide for you folks while i'm at it.
i can't think of a more suitable forum than this one, seeing as you won't get many mixed mp3's outside of the dance/electronic scene...

software needed;
sonic foundry sound forge (or the newer sony version if you must...). ahead nero burning rom.
i'm sure you could use a free alternative such as goldwave for this, i cba looking into that though.

all instructions appear above the pictures, not below.

1:
open sound forge, go to file/open, browse to the required mp3 mix and open it.
sound forge will now convert it to a wave file for you (building proxy)
position the playback cursor at the very start of the file (or where you want the cd to start) and press 'M' on your keyboard to drop a marker.


2:
with that done, position the playback cursor at the position you want the second track to start at. use the up arrow to soom in and the down arrow to zoom out.


3:
repeat step 2 for every track that you want the mp3 to be split into.
this picture shows the wave file zoomed in fully, ideally you want each track to start at a quiet section like this (the dot is on the blue line, under -20db)


4:
you should end up with a series of markers that look like this. position the playback cursor at the very end of the file and hit 'M' on the keyboard for the very last time.


5:
go to the special menu, regions list & click 'Markers to regions...'


6:
your markers should change to regions, and their name will change to reflect their start and end points on the file.
go to tools, 'extract regions...'


7:
in the extract regions box, choose your destination folder (where you want the seperate tracks to be dumped) and click 'Extract'.
once this process is complete, you're finished with sound forge. close and exit. don't bother saving

tman

8:
open nero, create a new audio cd.
browse to the folder that you dumped the tracks to and drag them across to the left pane.
make sure that the tracks are in proper order


9:
left click on an empty space in the left pane and press ctrl+a to select all tracks.
with all of the tracks selected, right click on one of them and choose properties;
change the pause length to 0 seconds.


10:
left click on the very first track once to select it, right click & choose properties.
change the pause length at the start of this track to 2 seconds


11:
you should end up with something that looks similar to this;
the 2 second pause at the start of the first track & the 0 second pause for the rest is very important.


*The following step is optional, if you don't require cd text, left click on the burn icon, make sure that disc at once mode is selected & click burn. job done:) *

12:
if, like mine, your cd player supports the uber handy cd text format, right click on each track in the left pane, choose properties and enter the track info in the title field (my cd player seems to ignore anything in the artist field, so i just throw everything into the title field)

ok that & you're ready to rock.

blimey, i've got far too much time on my hands:D

/edit
ah ****, i forgot about the images being too large for the screen.

Ste-

Good stuff tman. I'm sure this will come in handy.

Pulse8

It'd be far easier to just take the big mp3 into nero & then right click,properties...then the "indexes,limits&splits" tab

Then just click where you want the track marks.
Then click ok & burn away

Much easier & less messing

tman

pffft, that'd be the easy way:rolleyes:

Cake Fiend

I like to write out a cuesheet like so:

PERFORMER "VA (Mixed By James Holden)"
TITLE "Balance 005 (Disc One)"
FILE "01-va-balance_005_(mixed_by_james_holden)-cd1-tronik.mp3" MP3
TRACK 01 AUDIO
TITLE "The Difference It Makes (Original Mix)"
PERFORMER "The MFA"
INDEX 01 00:00:00
TRACK 02 AUDIO
TITLE "Metalgroove ep: Antrieb"
PERFORMER "Meta.83"
INDEX 01 06:25:38
TRACK 03 AUDIO
TITLE "Oshawa"
PERFORMER "Jake Fairley"
INDEX 01 08:18:60
TRACK 04 AUDIO
TITLE "Tool 1"
PERFORMER "Zeta Reticula"
INDEX 01 10:38:40
.
.
.
.
TRACK 16 AUDIO
TITLE "Leaving You Behind (Without Knowing Where To Go)"
PERFORMER "Herrmann & Kleine"
INDEX 01 65:28:49

And use it to burn a single mp3 file to multiple CD tracks with no pauses.

Then again, I'm weird.

tman

Originally posted by Sico
I like to write out a cuesheet like so:

And use it to burn a single mp3 file to multiple CD tracks with no pauses.

Then again, I'm weird.

how do you make a cuesheet like that? notepad and a bunch of guesswork? or is there a more precise way of doing it?

large images have been resized btw, just refresh the page and everything should fit on the screen without horizontal scrollbars:)