Writing Text To Audio Cd On A Imac With Pioneer Dvd-rw Dvr-k06a

[wolfhowl]

I have an intel imac running mac os 10.5.6 and have Toast 10 Titanium. I am pretty certain I have written titles and track info to an audio CD using itunes but got toast so that I could have better master CDs but so far cannot get it to write track titles to an audio CD. Can anyone help me with this or tell me if I am wasting my time trying. Is it the specific CD burner in this machine and should I buy some sort of external drive if I am wanting to write text. I am going to be submitting a master for pressing so it is critical that my master be clean and error free - I hope I am doing the right thing using toast. Any advice is appreciated

[jasonbaum]

First of all, apologies for being a somewhat dimwitted.

 

So what I think I'm reading is: when I buy a CD and pop it into my iMac, iTunes goes to the CCDB and says I've got a CD here with ten audio tracks, the first is 3:07, the second is 2:40...etc. And then the CCDB says: oh, I know! That's the "Best of The Osmond Family" and track one is: Puppy Love, track two is...you get the idea.

 

So unless I am burning a CD exactly as the commercial copy, CCDB is going to say I have no idea what this is and could you please send more Osmondsj or Manilow.

 

And furthermore, the CCDB is the only way Leopard will ID a disk, unless you've used Doug Adam's script and added the disk to your native database.

 

Is that basically it? This kills me because it prevents any simple way for me to burn a compilation disk on computer A and then rip it on computer B with all the data "intact". I know the data is there and if I throw the disk into an audio player I may get the track name/artist in the display but that's the extent of the ability to transfer data via disk.

 

Is that right?

 

Thanks,

 

Jason

[tsantee]

Is that right?

 

Thanks,

 

Jason

Yes, that's right. If you burn the audio CD using iTunes instead of Toast the Mac's database file is updated during that process so your Mac will recognize the album/artist/tracks when inserted the first time. But it won't be recognized in any other computer. When burning an audio CD with Toast that isn't registered with CDDB you'll need to manually enter the track info within iTunes or use the dougscripts applescript for that info to get written to the Mac's database file.

 

You can upload your compilation to CDDB so it will automatically download whenever it is put in some other computer, but you shouldn't do that unless you plan on distributing copies of the disc because it isn't good form to use CDDB as your private online database. Both Toast and iTunes have commands to upload to CDDB. You have to eject and re-insert the audio CD after burning in order for the upload command to be active.

 

The audio CD format predates the existence of computer CD drives. When creating the specs there wasn't any plan for reading artist/album/track info from the disc onto a computer (or anything else). Later, Sony came up with the idea for CD Text, probably as a way to sell car and home CD players that can read CD Text. CD Text isn't actually written to the track the way metatags are written to MP3 or AAC files.

 

If you plan to play tracks on a computer don't burn them as audio CDs. Burn them as data discs.

[jasonbaum]

If you plan to play tracks on a computer don't burn them as audio CDs. Burn them as data discs.

 

Thanks for the prompt and informative response. Data Disks seem to be the best solution.

 

Jason

[tsantee]

This entire history is quite lame. This functionality should be built into Toast of any version. Try this example: use itunes, make a playlist (to make it more difficult use mixed artists and AAC or apple lossless) and burn the playlist as an audio CDR. The result is all mettagging is kept and displays in a car stereo. Now burn the same playlist using Toast. The mettagging remains. If this can happen then why can't the software developer make it happen without the requirement of pre-burning using itunes!!!!! Fix that and i'll start supporting Toast again.

But what if Apple doesn't allow third-party developers to modify the cdinfo database file. That's the issue here. The file can only be modified by the Apple OS and iTunes. I agree that it is a pain. As you point out, burning an audio CD with iTunes does update the cdinfo database file. Of course your disc still won't be recognized when you insert it into any computer other than the Mac that burned it unless the track info can be downloaded from CDDB.

[Smokerz]

It is likely you burned CD Text to your audio CD. You can check by inserting the burned disc and choose Disc Info from Toast's Recorder window. You should see the artist/album/track info appear in the window. If any of the info is missing then you need to be sure to fill out both the disc and track info in Get Track Info in the Disc menu before burning your CD.

 

If you did all this and nothing is shown in the disc info window, then you need to place a check mark next to Add CD-Text at the lower left corner of the Toast Audio window.

 

If the reason you believe the info isn't on the disc is that it doesn't appear in the Finder when you insert the disc, that is normal. Macs don't read CD-Text. Instead, they get the artist/album/track info as a download from the online CDDB which looks to match with CDs that have the same number of tracks if the same lengths. Other than a CDDB download you can enter this info on your Mac by entering it in iTunes or using the CD Text to CDinfo applescript available at dougscripts.com.

 

You also can upload your CDs info to CDDB. Insert the burned CD and choose Submit CD Track Names in Toast's Disc menu. Toast does read CD Text so it knows what's on the audio CD.

 

This entire history is quite lame. This functionality should be built into Toast of any version. Try this example: use itunes, make a playlist (to make it more difficult use mixed artists and AAC or apple lossless) and burn the playlist as an audio CDR. The result is all mettagging is kept and displays in a car stereo. Now burn the same playlist using Toast. The mettagging remains. If this can happen then why can't the software developer make it happen without the requirement of pre-burning using itunes!!!!! Fix that and i'll start supporting Toast again.

[tsantee]

It is likely you burned CD Text to your audio CD. You can check by inserting the burned disc and choose Disc Info from Toast's Recorder window. You should see the artist/album/track info appear in the window. If any of the info is missing then you need to be sure to fill out both the disc and track info in Get Track Info in the Disc menu before burning your CD.

 

If you did all this and nothing is shown in the disc info window, then you need to place a check mark next to Add CD-Text at the lower left corner of the Toast Audio window.

 

If the reason you believe the info isn't on the disc is that it doesn't appear in the Finder when you insert the disc, that is normal. Macs don't read CD-Text. Instead, they get the artist/album/track info as a download from the online CDDB which looks to match with CDs that have the same number of tracks if the same lengths. Other than a CDDB download you can enter this info on your Mac by entering it in iTunes or using the CD Text to CDinfo applescript available at dougscripts.com.

 

You also can upload your CDs info to CDDB. Insert the burned CD and choose Submit CD Track Names in Toast's Disc menu. Toast does read CD Text so it knows what's on the audio CD.

[wolfhowl]

THANKS for this information! I will try all that you suggested to see if I did indeed burn text to audio cd.