Burning Custom CDs

If you have a CD recorder, Windows Media Player can use it to burn your favorite media items onto custom CDs. You don’t need to use Windows Explorer or a third-party CD-burning program to do this (although you can, if you want).

If the items you want to copy to a CD already exist as a playlist—either a custom playlist or a playlist that Windows Media Player has created for you—select that playlist in your media library. Then click Copy To CD Or Device in Windows Media Player’s taskbar. You’ll see a display comparable to the one shown in Figure 17-15.

Figure 17-15. The left pane shows the tracks to be copied and their total playing time; the right pane shows the current content of the CD and the amount of available playing time.

Your playlist appears in the left pane, with check boxes for each track. Windows Media Player initially selects all check boxes, on the assumption that you want to copy all tracks. The right pane shows the current content of the CD, if any. A list box at the top of the right pane identifies the drive to which Windows Media Player proposes to copy the files. If you have multiple drives and you want to copy to one other than the one displayed, choose it from this list. If you have a portable device (other than a CD recorder) installed, that device will also appear in this list.

Note the total time figure at the bottom of the left pane and the available time figure at the bottom of the right. If the total time exceeds the available time, some of your tracks will be marked Will Not Fit, as shown in Figure 17-16.

Figure 17-16. The Status column identifies tracks that will not fit onto the CD.

Be aware that if Windows Media Player comes to a track that’s too large to fit, it continues to scan the playlist until it finds a track that will fit. That maximizes the amount of music you copy to your CD, but it can interfere with the linear order you might be expecting. If you don’t want to copy any more tracks after the first one that doesn’t fit, you’ll need to clear all the remaining check boxes. Alternatively, you can clear all check boxes by clearing the single check box that appears at the top of the left pane (next to the word Title), and then select tracks until you come to one that won’t fit.

If you change your mind about copying the selected playlist, or if you’ve accidentally selected the wrong playlist, click Media Library in the taskbar. The next time you select a playlist and click Copy To CD Or Device, the playlist you have just selected will appear in the Copy To CD Or Device window, in place of the one that was there before.

If the items you want to copy don’t exist as a playlist, right-click each item in turn and choose Copy To Audio CD from the shortcut menu. (Choose this command even if you’re copying to a portable device, not an audio CD.) In this scenario, Windows Media Player adds each item in turn to a special playlist called Send To. The Send To playlist, unlike any other that you copy, works cumulatively. That is, each time you choose Copy To Audio CD, the selected item is added to the Send To playlist; it doesn’t replace the items that were there before. To remove an item from the Send To playlist, select Send To Playlist in the left pane of the Media Library window. (You’ll find it under My Playlists.) Right-click the item in the right pane and choose Delete From Playlist. Alternatively, you can right-click an item in the left pane of the Copy To CD Or Device window and choose Delete From Playlist.

When you’re ready to copy, click Copy Music in the Copy To CD Or Device window. The CD-burning process takes a little while. Windows Media Player first checks each track to make sure that its license (if any) permits copying. Then it converts each file in turn to a temporary .wav audio file. Because .wav files are uncompressed, you might need as much as 1 GB of temporary storage to accommodate this process. By default, Windows Media Player uses the drive on which Windows XP is installed. If you don’t have enough room there, choose Tools, Options, and then click the Devices tab. Select your CD recorder and then click Properties. On the Recording tab of the properties dialog box, shown in Figure 17-17, select a different disk.

Figure 17-17. The Recording tab of your device’s properties dialog box lets you specify the disk used for temporary storage while Windows Media Player burns CDs.

Finally, after each track is checked and converted, Windows Media Player begins copying files to the CD. You can follow the progress of all these operations by watching the Status column in the Copy To CD Or Device window, or you can return to another part of Windows Media Player and play other media.

By default, Windows Media Player ejects your disc when the copy is complete. If you don’t want it to do this, go to the Recording tab of your device’s properties dialog box and clear Automatically Eject The CD After Writing.

Tracks that play continuously in Windows Media Player don’t do so on custom CDs.

This version of Windows Media Player puts two-second "spacers" between tracks on CDs that it burns, and you don’t have the option of eliminating these spacers. Tracks that are intended to be played continuously thus will be discontinuous when copied to a CD. To eliminate the gaps, use a third-party CD-burning program.