Here is my problem:

I have a Cadillac that has a 6-disc CD changer that will not play mp3’s (only burned audio CD’s…so like 15-20 songs at max). It also has a functional DVD player that will play burned DVD’s but not burned DVD’s with MP3’s on it.

I was hoping that somebody might have a solution for me that will allow my mp3’s to be played on the DVD player.

My thought process was this:

I know that the Caddy DVD player will play burned video discs (full of music videos). So I know that you can create .avi’s into a playable DVD disc. My thought was that I could somehow convert my .mp3’s into .avi’s, and then from there burn them to a playable DVD.

Any thoughts on this? I can’t seem to find much information on converting .mp3’s into a playable .avi format.
why not just convert them to wav, make an audio cd/dvd from the mp3’s…
there are only two decent Ipod adapter kits, both are $200

plus the price of an IPOD

that still doesn’t solve my problem. I’d rather solve the burned DVD issue….
$150 for an ipod nano 4g.

I got an adapter for my chevy for $20 (kenwood hu), and $60 for my toyota (stock 6disc changer headunit).

Your dvd issue is solved by my suggestion. You’ve already said you can’t do exactly what you want to do. Therefore you’re either here to be a whinny bitch, or you’re stupid. Of course this can be remedied by coming back to reality.

There has to be some compromise otherwise you’ll never get that functionality.
If you have auxillary inputs on the back of the deck you can put a headphone to rca cable from the ipod to the deck. This is what I did in my eclipse and it worked great. It was about 10 bucks for the CD changer to RCA adapter piece and then 3 dollars for the headphone to rca cable. Cheapest fix if you have a deck that allows for cd changer controlling.
no aux inputs available

How does this suggestion at all help answer my question of adding mp3’s onto a burned DVD?

I don’t have any desire to spend $350 to fix this problem. The only way your suggestion could be any worse is if you say that I should purchase a $1k navigation head unit. Hell, maybe I should just sell my car and buy a different one that plays mp3’s.

I’m not a "whinny" bitch, nor am I stupid. Your suggestion clearly had very little thought behind it and certainly didn’t addess my situation.

stay the fuck out of my thread asshole
You demand things that cannot be done. Clearly you’re stupid.
clearly one suggestion has been posted that will work…

yet, it can’t be done. I might as well sell my car and buy your shitty toyota and Ipod adapter and then the problem will be solved of course
I’d do Jolly’s suggestion, but you could try playing around with Movie Maker to make a movie with MP3’s and a still.

god damn. you were doing pretty well for a while, but still your true asshole nature resurfaces.
If you aren’t diehard about audio quality you could always go with an FM transmitter. Otherwise, you’ll probably have to convert them to something that the dvd player will recognize. Is there a way to burn a black screen with music as chapters on a dvd? Surely the toyota cannot be the best answer.
it has a dvd player… do you have dvd authoring software? You could easily setup a dvd with songs as chapters… then use the next/previous chapter to go forward and backward… hell you could even setup whole albums as chapters, create your own title screen to access the chapters that would be depicted with the album covers. If you wanted to get REALLY fancy you could even record winamp visualizations of each song as it plays and use that as the video… that would be pretty bitching actually, but greatly reduce the number of songs you would get on each dvd

Don’t listen P07 he is a jackass and ignorant if he thinks you are asking for something impossible.

FM transmitters are the worst.

one thing though is that you are a guy driving a cadillac with a DVD player built in. i can’t imagine that even $400 to do this the proper way would break the bank.

anyway, i never tried this software, but it is free for you to try. it says it can convert between various audio formats and includes avi and mp3.

I’ve been looking at doing something in this area. If you really only want to spend 250$ you can do it. I don’t know if you have a double-din headunit or not but depending on that you can get a new HU that reads mp3’s easily. Installment cost around 50$. HU cost around 100$ (the really cheap ones)

Problem is with a bit more money you can get bluetooth and all kinds of shit. Double-din head units cost more so look to spend upwards of 200$ if you go that way. You can get single deck HU with double din adapters but they look like shit.
You can do this without spending any money… read what I already wrote…

I’m actually with him on this.

.

Nero for example, has everything he needs to do this.
You can’t make the player play MP3s if it doesn’t have a decoder built-in. Maybe you can convert them to low-quality WAV files so you can still fit them all on one disc, but then it’ll sound like shit.

Alternately, you could convert them to full-quality WAV files and burn them to multiple discs.

Does your player have an AUX jack on it? If it does, then you could use any MP3 player without a conversion kit.
stop telling him to buy an ipod you worthless assholes

he can do it
mp3 to avi converter

then burn to DVD using convertXtoDVD
Yeah, I would google a program that can convet mp3 to avi as some people have mentioned. Then just burn them to DVD with Nero or a similar program. Worth a shot, but…

To be honest, it sounds like a lot of effort for something that may be worth spending some money to fix. Perhaps with a cheaper mp3 player/car connector or something. Or if you’re a DIY person: google for info like that. If you can somehow hardwire an aux input cable to your headunit on your own (I know nothing about this, you’d have to look into it) then you can hook up any cheap mp3 player (or even your laptop if you wanted) to it and play the music like that. You might want to go to craigslist and see if anyone has some cheap solutions to your problem or something if you don’t want to do it yourself. I’m not sure how easy this would be either, but if it is possible, it may be a better longrun solution cuz it might be a pain to convert and burn all those songs. Depends on how you feel about that and whether there are any other solutions without just buying the iPod + accessories. Good luck

edit: possibly worth reading, i just glanced at it:

Buying an iPod is the best solution. It’s not what he wants, but it will work better and more reliably and with less effort. Shoot us for recommending a different approach instead of helping him fit his square peg into that round hole.

Why isn’t this big silly billy yet?
I’m not gonna argue that an Ipod would be the best solution to the problem.

But once again, potty with his constant personal attacks and saying the thread starter is a whinny bitch and stupid is COMPLETELY uncalled for.

It really is one of those solutions you do once, and then realize how gay it is to go through all that hassle and end up buying an iPod adapter and iPod. Just don’t tell Jolly about it

See if it supports DVD-A. []

best solution? are you fucking brainwashed my macintosh ??
i already gave a recommendation that’ll work for his needs cumm guzzler

he clearly doesn’t want to spend more money on his setup and is looking for something cheap to do now

telling him to use an ipod is just fucking absurd when he has everything he needs to burn dvd’s of music
(sorry for the excessive use of language but if people aren’t gona give him solid advice they should stfu)

not to mention this isn’t the mac shack, people should be a little more creative about finding a solution to his problem
Nero it. Convert the files to avi’s and burn it as a DVD w/ a still shot for each song or album. It will work.

.

It happens to a lot of threads here lately…
I am gonna have to remember the still shots for dvd video and putting a lot of music on a DVD… Me and a friend were trying to figure out if we could do this with a blue ray disc but with movies instead of music, as in each movie is a chapter on the disc… Gonna have to try it out now.

Thats a possibility -one he should undoubtedly try- but to do this everytime he wants new music, worth it? I understand the whole iPod debate and thats not what he wants because it costs a lot, but I really do have to question whether saving hte money is worth the hassle. But that’s really for the OP to decide.

OP, I would try the Nero thing. Hopefully it will work and you’ll be satisfied. If you do get sick of it, it really seems like its worth it to spend the money for this one. My personal opinion is that having to hassle with technology is generally not worth it unless you enjoy it or are really fucking determined. I think you may get sick of all the effort just to listen to music in your car. Also, the iPod connector may help you sell your car for slightly more if you one day chose to.

it might just be a ‘to prove a point thing’ for the OP. I think it’s a pretty cool idea, but I agree with you too. It’s a lot more simple just to get an ipod or something (touchscreen w/ hard drive, etc.). Especially since this is an Escalade we are talking about. I don’t think money should be an issue here.

money is totally an issue with an escalade, imagine how much he is spending on gas.

It’s a CTS-V

And I can afford one at 24 because I don’t throw my money away to solve a problem that I can do for basically no cost

will be updating this thread later tonight with my results

lol…where the hell did I think escalade? I guess all of thesse people out here who drive caddies have Escalades or Denali’s. Either way, it just seems a little ridiculous. My mother in law drives a 2004 5 series beemer but can’t even afford to fix the fucking air conditioner.

I understand not wanting to spend the money on fixing a problem that can be solved, however the better solution for this could very well be an ipod, hard drive, etc. Either way I would like to know how it goes b/c I might end up doing something like that for a different application.
well everything I have tried so far to convert .mp3’s to any kind of video file isn’t working

even the programs that promise to convert mp3 to avi don’t actually do that

any other suggestions to accomplish this?

try windows movie maker
import the mp3, import a pic, add the pic to the story board, add the mp3 to the timeline (just drag and drop),… then publish the movie
i think it’s wmv format and can be used to make dvds

same steps with nero vision and on that you can select the output format (e.g. avi)

at this point, you have movies/videos.
use a dvd authoring software, add those movies as chapters, burn the dvd, profit

did you happen to try the software that i linked earlier? i didn’t test it, but it claim it could do what you are asking.

one thing to keep in mind with AVI files also is that not all AVIs are created equal. AVI is a container that could contain videos encoded with a number of codecs including Divx and XVid as well as MJPEG and others i’m sure. then, i think XVid at least uses MP3s for the audio stream (or at least can use MP3 encoding for the audio stream). so, if your player can’t decode MP3s, you probably can’t play certain AVI formats that depend on MP3 encoding for the audio.

if you really want to go with this, i think what some have said with DVD chapters and just putting the MP3 music as the audio over some static pictures would work.

to more off’s point about people suggesting iPods, just know that the iPod is the most popular PMP right now. so, like Bandaids and Kleenex, when people are saying "get an iPod" they aren’t necessarily saying that the Apple iPod brand PMP is the only solution. quite often a person is meaning "buy an MP3 player."

yes, absolutely. personally, id on’t own an ipod

Dude, that’s a great idea! Rep + 11ty.

Same here…I don’t own an Ipod, it’s just like the Kleenex and Coke meaning.
I don’t see why you haven’t tried just decompressing the MP3s into WAV files and burning them to DVD as a data disk.
Oh… so people who actually mean MP3 player are saying iPod?

Well that’s fucking stupid. The iPod is nowhere near the best portable media player available, and in my opinion you look like a fag carrying one around. I would take something like the Archos 605 over an iFag anyday

i doubt the stock dvd player would play that though…

suppose I should give it a try

it won’t

dude, have you tried windows movie maker? nero?
if those are too difficult for you,… why don’t you try and look for something like Audio DVD Creator?

it doesn’t matter what you think about iPods, it is pure fact that Apple cornered the market on portable media players. i’m seeing different numbers ranging from 70-90% (and possibly higher) of the PMP market is made up of iPods. they aren’t the best player, but they have a great interface and great 3rd party support (do you see any cars that come with Archos connectivity built in? no. it is either iPod or just a generic auxiliary jack). plus, are there any ways to buy songs that is better than iTunes? again, iTunes isn’t the best application and the Fair Play protected files kind of suck (and keep you locked into an iPod), but what other company has the success of Apple and thus the selection and pricing?

Keep your iTunes it’s garbage… if you don’t already have a huge collection of mp3’s… what have you been doing the last decade? Keep your car adapter also anyone who cares about audio at all has a non-stock headunit with aux input. Pricing versus feature set for the archos units are right on par with the various ipod models so dont feed me that line of bs either.

What iPod has is a name, and a reputation, and the reason they sell so well is because people don’t give two shits about researching something before they buy it they just want what their friends have and/or are brainwashed by gimmicky advertising.

you know he’s not arguing with you on why the ipod is the best, which it obviously isn’t. he’s simply stating why it’s so popular amongst the GA.

it’s the same with any popular branded product.

did people in the past say get a walkman or get a portable cassette tape player?

what’s with all this defensiveness.

lol. truth.
I don’t think buying an IPOD is the correct way to go.

I struggled with a similar problem for years.
I spend 2 1/2 hours a day commuting. I wanted to listen to a radio show that clocks in at just over 3 hours during that commute.
The issue was that I had a paid subscription to the radio shows website (coast to coast am) and they distributed the .mp3 files as 4 45 minute files every day.

So the math is pretty simple to follow here.
A cd holds 72 minutes of music. 2 45 minute files = 90 minutes of music. Therefore without a bunch of trouble I am left with having to burn 4 CD’s when I only really needed to burn 2.

I struggled with it for a long time. Everything I tried to do was a huge pain in the ass.
Eventually I got a CD player for my car that played MP3’s.
That was the solution.
1 CD will carry more then 2 weeks worth of MP3 files of that radio program.

I know that replacing your CD player isn’t the answer you are looking for, but you should look into it. It really is a cheaper solution then I thought it would be.
I have looked into several solutions:

1) replacing the whole DVD/CD/Nav head unit in my Cadillac.
The problem with this is that:
A) it’s expensive, I wouldn’t want to downgrade and lose the NAV capability. So I’d end up spending $1.5-2K on an aftermarket HU
B) I would lose all of the sweet computer functions that GM so thoughtfully tied into the stock HU. The CTS-V has all of it’s performance monitors and car enhancements set up through the computer that is integrated into the stock HU. No solution exists yet to replace this entirely

2) An Ipod with applicable Ipod interface.
As I’ve mentioned before I don’t own and Ipod so there would be the initial cost in purchasing that ($150) and even worse yet is that the only decent Ipod interface with my stock HU is $200 and doesn’t even allow you to scroll through artists. It will only play through playlists. What a pain.

3) Somehow use the stock DVD’s player ability to play burned VD’s by tricking the DVD player when it is full of mp3’s.

4) Burn all of my albums to regular old CD-r’s as audio disks. Effectivelly one disk per album. This is the only option I will consider persuing if the burned DVD solution doesn’t work.

I haven’t tried Windows Movie Maker and my Nero must be crippled because I don’t see anyway to create a dvd with playable mp3’s as chapters (what version of nero do you have?)

Audio-DVD-Converter looks awesome and I will certainly give it a shot!!

Doomsday, appreciate your advice. Do you happen to know how to use Nero to do this?
And lets please give this Ipod argument a rest.

I don’t care which PMP is better. I don’t plan on using one for my solution either way. I do have a 512mB Sansa that I use when I go running. Otherwise I’m either in my car for less than 5 minutes (short commute), at my house (use my computer), or in my office (once again, use my computer).

This thread is getting out of hand!!

You can thank one person for that. In fact everyone can thank that one donkey for any thread that gets out of hand.

what version of Nero do you have? I’m still using Nero 7 Ultra Edition but is still probably the same with Nero 8.

it’s easy.

in Nero StartSmart, go to Photo and Video > Make Your Own DVD-Video > Make Movie

add your Media files.
just drag the mp3s to Audio 1
drag the pic to video track
then extend the pic to sync with Audio 1’s timeline, or add more pics, or whatever you want to do. you can put song titles and shit.

Here,.. the mp3 is already a movie/vid.
Divide the mp3s as chapters
burn the dvd

and you’re done.

sorry, to keep harping on this, but have you tried Switch? that was the software that i linked earlier and i’m not sure if you said you tried it. it got 4/5 stars from both the CNet editors and 192 users who voted.

switch is good, but the nero suite would take him all the way to DVD video format

Ah, ok. Cool
I know I used some program to do the exact same thing but can’t remember what it was. I want to say VirtualDubMod but don’t think it was that. I know I tried Windows Movie Maker but that damn program always crashs or enters error-hell before I ever finish anything. I’ve never completed anything with WMM and have used it on multiple computers including fresh OS installs as well as fresh WMM installs….. I know others who’ve used it with no issues so I don’t know.

Assuming doom is right and just burning a data disk with wav’s won’t work (which I see no reason why it wouldn’t but I’ve never tried), try Windows Movie Maker or Nero (if you have it) since there are instructions here.
so good news and bad news

I finally was able to use nero vision to create a playable DVD with mp3 tracks

I was able to put it in my car and the DVD player recognized the disk and would play the music

the bad news is that fucking GM crippled the dvd player in this car so that you can’t use any functions while in motion. Most importantly, you can’t switch tracks, not even forward or backward without stopping the vehicle.

FUCK!!!!

My roadtrip is coming up in a week and I think I’m going to have no choice but to burn all of my albums to CD-R’s….what a waste!!

At least it has a 6-disk changer so the process won’t be totally unbareable.

Also considering enabling the already on-board XM
Here are the steps to be driving, riding, and watching (Be safe, if you are diving, do not watch screen!!)
Step 1 Put in DVD.
Step 2 Play DVD (Do not leave it at the front menu, if you do not start the DVD you will not be able to start it after you begin to drive.)
Step 3While playing – Hit the second from the bottom buttons on the right hand side of the DVD screen and then press the forward Seek Button. (You will see a little flicker)
NOTE: If you see a differnt screen with the words "cold reboot" on it, press the same button combination AGAIN and it should go back to the DVD…

Step 4 Now disable the parking break and make sure that the DVD stays on.
Step 5 Enjoy

If you did everything correct you will notice that all the features are disabled. If you are at the main menu of the dvd you will not be able to select play movie or any features.

If you would like to stop the dvd, you must hit the top right button first. Then it will bring up the safety lock if you are in motion or parking break off.

Other notes:
I got DVD-R to play fine in mine, but the +R are having some problems.
thanks, yes, i followed that guide but what it neglects to mention is that you can’t skip tracks

so, i can get it to play but I can’t go to the next track, which means i’m pretty much locked into whatever shitty song i may have running…

Yes, and the solution: Don’t put shitty songs on your play list
yeah but a lot of them are albums I have yet to listen to

this road trip was going to be the time I get to first listen

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The Asus is cheaper at around $1700.

My limit’s $2500 and hopefully I’ll have my current laptop sold (someone’s interested — $800) so that should ease the budget burn a little bit. This’ll probably be the last laptop I buy for the next 2 to 3 years.

Asus G50:

Sager NP8660:

Thoughts?
As interesting as the G50 with the two hard drives is, I think I’m just gonna bite the bullet and go with the Sager.
I’m not gonna get the Asus, then have a wave of buyer’s remorse wash over me because I didn’t get what I really wanted.

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if this is true, that is fast enough for me.

what about reliability? will this work in a building well?

they charge $60 per month. anybody else know of better providers with a better product and possibly less $$ per month?

thanks OT.
my brother in law had it, he was getting roughly double the speed of dialup

maybe they have upgraded speeds since last year or he was in a crappy service area

I used it for a while when traveling around my area, Kansas and the general midwest region, it was horridly slow and unreliable. The best speeds I ever got were probably around 100k, most of the time and especially during the night it was much slower. The connection also frequently turned into a zombie and I would have to reconnect, sometimes taking a minute or two to authenticate and get back on. The only reason I had it is a friend worked at a local Verizon store and got me a hookup, I decided to pay full price for AT&T after just a dozen times using it while traveling.

Of course in this area Verizon has far less of a network than in their prime areas, it’s probably better in their better markets.
Yeah, I thinks omethin glike this would REALLY depend on Verizon’s service in the area. You *should* be able to do a 30 day trial or something, like you can with their phones. It might be a hassle cancelling it, but you can look into it.

yeah, they said that there is a 30 day trial but you know how that goes. I wanted to see what the reviews were for it before I even went that far. Ughh, I got to figure this thing out soon.

Thanks OT. I’ll do a little more research on it and let you know what I find.

what phone do you have? use pdanet if you have a treo/centro.

Get Wireless Internet on your laptop through the Treo or Centro phone – The PdaNet software allows your computer to go online by connecting to your phone through the Hotsync USB cable or Bluetooth. If you own a Treo or Centro phone with a data plan subscription from any carriers, PdaNet will make it your wireless Internet Connection for your laptop/desktop computer instantly – no extra hardware or setup necessary.

one time fee of like $34, or of course there are illegal ways of obtaining it.

thanks and good idea, but I don’t have any phone like that or data plans.

This is really going to be for a stationary desktop computer that I cannot find a provider for in the area. I’m not sure what to do except this. I made a thread about it a few weeks ago and now I was considering the wireless thing.

I’ve still got some debating to do.
My father has a Verizon wireless card and it’s pretty good. Obviously not quite cable speeds, but much faster than dialup.
sprint seems to have some pretty kickass speeds with their cards
Make sure your area is serviced by EVDO Rev A for the fastest speeds. Even then, it’s dependent on how good of a cellular signal you receive inside the house. Keep in mind that your cell phone may not be a good judge of cellular reception either. My Verizon USB card picked up a good 1-2 bars fewer (~10dB less) signal than my cell phone did in the same spot.
well….thanks for all of your responses. I actually viewed the USB internet thing active in the location I want to use it and it is fast enough (not cable, but much better than dial-up). A customer of mine came in and had one and I asked to hook it up. Thing worked pretty good and I am actually a little impressed with it.

Thanks for all of your input, I’m gonna stick with verizon since I already have an account set up with them.

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I like the idea of the netbooks. For years you had to pay a premium for smaller laptops that never ran as fast as a big monster. If I’m getting a slower cpu, smaller screen and less hd space I should pay less, not more. And if I want something so portable, it wouldn’t be as a full desktop replacement. It would be for quick emails, web browsing, showing powerpoint presentations and the like, nothing that needs power.

Trouphaz hit it right on the head. I just picked up an Eeepc from some guy on Craigslist for $300. Its a 900mhz Celeron M with 20gb of storage, and an 8.9" screen. I upgraded the ram from 512mb to 2gb for $59 from Best buy. I reformatted it and put windows XP Sp3 on it, and it runs great. Now obviously i wont be editing the next release of Toy Story on it, but I can easily surf the net, run MS Office, check email etc. Other are actually running cad programs, and photo editing programs on them.

There is a whole community dedicated to these things, including some rather large forums that tell you how to mod the computer to add bluetooth, gps, touchscreens (I ordered the touch screen kit, and I’m going to add a bluetooth connection),and all kinds of stuff. People are taking some of the newer models and adding 160gb iPod drives to them.

It all depends on what you want to do. For $350 I feel I got my monies worth. I can take this thing anywhere.
Not sure how the eee is overrated considered how much it costs and what you get. I’m interested in getting a small laptop. I have a powerful desktop so the eee may be the thing I need.
sounds like all of the stuff you would do with an eeepc you could just do with a black berry no?

Yeah, but I prefer to have a full QWERTY keyboard that I can actually type on.

working on a laptop != working on a blackberry.

yeah, a blackberry is convenient, but oh so painful to do more than just basic tasks. no way you are going to sit in class and take notes on a blackberry. shit, i’d like an eeepc and a blackberry as a modem. that’d be slick.
the HP Pavilion DV-6000 I got for 500 open box is better than all of those

That’d be highballin’, son.
Why does everyone always make exceptions for Macs? They don’t do anything PCs don’t do.

can a blackberry run fl studio or reason? i cant wait to be able to lay down some beats right when they come to me rather than waiting until i get home to my comp. plus being able to read ebooks in the bathroom.

is the eepc the undisputed way to go or should i look into the lenovo s10 or new dell one?

i have a feeling mac is coming with something fierce as well.

Because they’re shiny?

Oh shit, that’s right.
List is flawed…

Just recommended to a colleage a few weeks ago (and she bought it) a new Gateway with 15.4" screen, Intel C2D T5750, 4GB RAM, 250GB HDD, Bluetooth, webcam, etc, Vista Home Premium 64-bit for only $650… a decent video card is all that it was lacking but she has no need for one anyway.

The argument is merely slightly better build quality and the OS. Since Mac moved to Intel architecture, it is more or less an OS war. Microsoft wins the war over all because of the lack of markets mac covers. Anything a mac can do a PC can do, and the PC does more because there is more game and software support.

Oh, and they are shiny.

actually, you are 100% wrong on that. what can a mac do that a regular PC can’t? run OSX. other than that, a mac can do EVERYTHING a PC can do… even run Vista better than most PCs.

is it worth the premium? not to me. i don’t own a mac and apple will have to make some major changes before i bought one, but there is certainly a market for them outside of the narrow minds of the C&P forum.

I never got this argument. How is this true? There is no way that any Mac but the highest end iMac or a Mac Pro runs Vista better than my current Wintel desktop (Q6600, 4GB RAM, 8800GTS 512MB GPU). The whole tower I built cost half the price cost half the price of both Apple models I mentioned.

I’m not trying to start a flamewar, just honestly curious as to where the whole "Macs run Vista better than other PCs" or if its just another b.s. fact, like how "Macs r superior 4 photohshop"

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