How do I record 5 hours of music onto a DVD?

[Folded Paper]

I've been through the articles and forums on this site for this information. there was one article about putting 40 CDs onto a DVD so it must be possible but surely there must be a simpler way?
All I want is to fit about five albums of music onto a DVD with chapters every three minutes and a menu to select which CD to play. Do I really need to make video files to fit in with the albums or what?
I'm little better than a complete novice at this, I make movie DVDs using DVDShrink, TMPGenc and Ulead MF2 all the time but never anything more complicated and I don't have any grassroots understanding of how these things work. Would appreciate any help or advice in this area that anybody could offer really.

[bugster]

WIth some (newer) DVD players you can put Mp3's onto DVDr, just like you can put them on CDr with many players. Check your DVD player in the compatibility list to the left of the page to see if anyone has tried this with your player.

[Folded Paper]

That would be a nice way around it but mine doesn't. I don't have a problem recording five hours of (low quality) movie on a DVD so surely I can just put the same amount of audio on a disc in the same way? Isn't there a nice program I can buy/download to use that would make it simple for me? The ones I have currently need a video to go with the audio.

[dlb]

Adobe encore dvd will allow audio only (mp2) on a dvd. Join all your tracks together, insert chapter points at each track and design menu to navigate. There is a 30 day tryout version on their site.

Hope this helps.

dlb.

[Folded Paper]

That sounds great. Thanks, dlb. I only hope it is user friendly enough for my simple paper brain to figure it out.

[SaSi]

Actually, any descent DVD Authoring application can be used to achieve this.

Firstly, you need to decide on audio encoding. It has to be sampled at 48kHz, so if you rip CDs (sampled at 44kHz) you will need to resample them.

The next thing to consider is audio format. You can use MPEG or AC3. I guess you will not need multichannel, so MPEG stereo would be enough. Since you won't have much video, you can encode at 320kbps, which will provide good quality.

Tmpgenc can be used for both the above steps. As can Mainconcept MPEG Encoder.

The next thing to consider is the menu layout. I would use a menu picture to select albums and branch out to 5 different submenus to select individual tracks.

Depending on the authoring application, you can leave the picture at the menu while each track is playing, or even display a separate picture while the audio is playing.

The other way (simpler) is to encode the whole album into a single mpeg audio file and not use submenus. You can insert chapter points at the start of evey song and skip songs within an album with next and previous buttons.

You can also author the DVD so that the first album plays automatically (without menu selection).

DVD Lab is fine for that kind of authoring.

[Folded Paper]

Sasi said;
'Depending on the authoring application, you can leave the picture at the menu while each track is playing, or even display a separate picture while the audio is playing.'

I don't think Ulead DVD MovieFactory 2 does that, right? That's really the crux of the matter, I need a different DVD authoring program. The only other option I have is Nero. Adobe Encore sounds like that I need and the 30 day trial should suffice.

Thanks everybody, you'll hear from me again next problem, I'm sure.

[FT Shark]

I wrote this guide and Adobe Encore will allow you to use almost any form of audio as an asset and it will convert it to DD 2.0 (AC3).

https://www.videohelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=683333#683333

Good luck

[Paco M.]

VideoCD Audio guides could be useful for you. They are vailable at the site:

http://www.digital-digest.com/dvd/articles/index.html#vcd

Several methods for easy authoring and use audio compilations are proposed. Bye.

Paco

[painkiller]

I found that a Pinnacle s/w that allows me to collect pictures into a slide show will also accept music files (wav and mp3, maybe others) one right after the other. THen output to either cd or dvd.

SImple way to put a lot of music together, and maybe just repeat some pics.

All I paid for the s/w was around $20 some time back.

Just a thought.