Slashdot Mirror
Wrappers for MP3 CDs in iTunes?
Nikopol asks: "iTunes is very good at dealing with MP3 CDs made by itself, but MP3 CDs made with other software (in this particular case, HP MyCD on a Win 98 computer) aren't recognized at all. The ability to make an MP3 CD available as a source in iTunes is due to an XML file iTunes puts on each MP3 CD it burns. Other MP3 CDs, lacking such file (in fact, I think this file is on a separate HFS+ partition), are bound to appear in ISO9660 form on the desktop...and those MP3 are then bound to be permanently stacked in the main iTunes library, thus voiding much of iTunes Dynamic Playlists usefulness. Is it possible, via a plugin or some trickery, to generate such XML file that would allow iTunes to see any MP3 CD as a source? In fact, such trickery would ideally be applicable not only to MP3 CDs, but to networked drives or folders too! (I know, I know...Rendezvous...but it isn't implemented widely yet!)"
What do you mean they aren't recognized? I do this all the time and I've never had trouble. iTunes doesn't recognize it automatically when you put the disk in. So you do have to drag and drop the directories. Make sure under preferences you've not selected to copy the files to your iTunes directory automatically. They should play fine.
OSX doesn't "autoplay" CDs. This has been discussed many times. I personally see this as a good thing, given all the problems its caused me under Windows. I suspect if you wish you could create an Applescript to play the files in iTunes when a disk is mounted. I'm not sure how one would do this though. The CD preference pane allows you to run an Applescript when a Music CD is mounted, but I don't think that MP3 CDs count since they are basically just data disks. Probably what you'd want to do is attach an Applescript to the /Vol directory. You'll need to be administrator to do this.
If you want to take it a step further, you can do what I did. I burned a MP3 CDRW with the songs I wanted and then looked at the resulting ContentsDB.xml file on the new CD. Then I took that file and edited it to match the file layout I wanted on my target CD, since I didn't want the default layout that iTunes creates. If you needed to do this a lot, I'm sure a perl script to automate it would be pretty easy to whip up.
Like I said, certainly not an ideal solution. Unfortunately I don't know of any way to do this without creating a second CD, but maybe someone else can come up with something better. Or maybe this will help someone think of a better idea.
Say hello to zMac.
MyCD is a software package that Veritas produces that OEM's out to CD-R/RW makers and brand as theirs. Pioneer bundles a version of MyDVD (the version I have is called something else but I can recall the name right now) with the DVD-R/RW drive that I bought and that they licensed from Veritas and re-laballed it as Pioneer's, though the Veritas logo is still floating around the app.
The invisible plist file you see on Mac CDs is not really there. It is a virtual file created by the mac CDDA filesystem. Look at the CDs on a PC, you will see that it does not exist.
But Apple revoked license to the API for the author of iCommune, a "device" plug-in that actually allowed for the browsing and playing of MP3s on remote volumes from within iTunes. I, personally, think that it is technically a "device," but Apple apparently did not. There goes that part of your idea. :/