The Zé Dos Frangos International CD Release Party is in one month, so I was a little nervous about getting the CD done in time, especially since it's my first time to press a real CD. I mixed and mastered the CD on my Mac and brought the final mixes with me when I moved back to the US two weeks ago. Here are some problems that took a bunch of my time to solve.
Problem 1: SD2 Files
I brought all of the CD tracks with me from Slovakia prepared for burning, but why did I bring them in Sound Designer 2 format? This is the default output format for Waveburner, the program I used for final sequencing. I couldn't open them with iTunes or Quicktime on my PC.
Solution: Borrow Angela's MacBook and convert them to WAV files with iTunes
Problem 2: MP4 files
I wanted to include the video for Feel My Mustafa on the CD, but I needed to play it with a Flash player (SWF).
Solution: Download the free video converter called Super
Problem 3: Burn Audio and Video to the same disc
Some free programs like ImgBurn and InfraRecorder can burn audio and data to the same disc, but I had to burned a lot of test CDs until I realized that they were making what's called a Mixed-Mode CD. In a Mixed-Mode CD the first track is data, which will destroy you if you have the volume up when you press play. The only way to truly separate the audio and data so that the CD player won't read both is to put them in different sessions. In a Mac, this will look like two seperate CDs in the Finder. With Nero 9 I was able to created a disc image of my multi-session disc.
Solution: Download trial version of Nero and use profile CD Extra
Problem 4: Paying $200 for software I'll never use again
I created an Autorun file for my CD using a trial version of AutoRun Pro Enterprise. The output seemed fine, but then the reproduction house called to say that it wouldn't run because I hadn't paid for the AutoRun software!
Solution: Pay $30 for AutoRun Expert and redo the whole thing
P.S. CD Duplication is CD-Rs, CD Replication is with a glass master. Thanks to New Cyberian Systems, Inc. for all of the good info on their page.
Miguel – “Always Time”
8 hours ago
2 comments:
problem 1:
...what happened to your all powerful mac pro?
problem 2:
flash? why flash? ...why not some mpeg format?
problem 3:
again, where is the mac pro? i hope you didn't ship it? that thing needed to have it's own seat on the plane.
problem 4:
...ahh man, autorun? no one wants autorun...that shit is evil.
-Mac was in shipment
-The autorun program only handled flash
-Don't worry, I booted it up, the only problem was some bluetooth sync issues that have resolved
-I like autorun. It's fun when there is extra content on a CD. Without the autorun, people might not search on there and find the video.
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