CJITTY

For those of you with an Alpine IVA-W200, I wanted to share a mini DIY on getting MP3's to play using DVD-R media that will allow you to store a whole bunch of CD's on one DVD-R disc. After all the car stereo shops telling me it couldn't be done , I knew it was possible and easy to do. I just did it and I am very tempted to go back and show them dummmassses what time it is!

If you know how to do this, or use an Ipod already, this post may not be for you.

Background: Since I installed my IVA, I obviously lost my CD Changer in my stock headunit. No need to worry, our Alpine IVA units can read DVD audio formats. My goal was to not carry any CD's around with me. But, I could listen to my favority CD albums just in case I got bored with watching DVD's, listening to the radio or my XM with my IVA.

Here is what I used to get my MP3's working with my IVA-W200.

*Alpine IVA-W200 head unit. duh (this may work for the other multimedia hu's as well)

*DVD-R blank disc

*DVD/CD burning software that can burn in Data format such as Roxio, Nero or Sonic. I used Sonic.

*Windows Media Player 11

1. In Windows Media Player I went to the RIP tab and ripped my CD's in mp3 format using 256 kbps, not 128. 256 sounded better to me than 128 did, even though it takes up more room on the DVD, I still have plenty of disc space for what I wanna hear.

2. After ripping, I went back and changed my file folder name to reflect the artist and album name on the folder level of the mp3 files. Example: Jay-Z_Black Album. Did this for 30 CD's so far.

3. Opened up SONIC on my Toshiba laptop and selected "Create Data Disc"

4. Sorted my folders in alphabetical order in Windows Explorer of my E:\Ripped Music folder on my portable 120gb drive.

5. Copied the mp3 folders into the Sonic burn list.

6. Allowed the burn to complete, took about 20 minutes on my Toshiba Satellite Notebook.

7. At the end of the completed burn, I had appx 25 folders (25 full CDs @ 256kbps bit rate) and it only took up 2.6gb out of appx 4.4gb available on the blank DVD-R. I would of done more, but most of the CD's I wanted to rip did not have album/artist/track info for Windows Media Player to recognize, and I didn't feel like manually labeling those other CDs. I'll do all that later when I have time.

This may be a very basic process to most of you (me included), but for others that don't have an Ipod or other MP3 device, this is a great solution to bring all of your favorite music with you on one DVD-R disc.

In addition, my IVA-W200 reads the DVD-R very quickly and displays all the artist/album names as soon as I load it, and I can directly play the album or click the double arrow on the right of the list to display the song titles of that album and play that song. I have no lag time in selecting albums/songs to play..I was very happy!!

Very cool..my CD's will remain at home from now on since they are all in one cheap DVD-R disc!

I hope this helps anyone. If not, oh well, it was fun talking about it because it made my day

Tdot_TLS

bro are u dumb that head unit is a dvd player itself u can do that ith any dvd player that shit is old as the frist deck that plays mp3 files HAHAHAHAHA

CJITTY

Thanks for the positive and valuable insight. I see you have a total of 4 posts, I hope the other 3 were just as valuable .

Trust me, I know what these DVD decks can do. If you would of read my post entirely, I mentioned that people who are supposed to know what they are doing told me that you couldn't play mp3s on a DVD. I knew they were wrong. Either way, I had the time and decided to post a basic DIY. There are some people that don't know how to do things like this believe it or not.

Since you are new around here, I won't get at you too much. In case you didn't know, we try to keep things positive around here. You might want to try doing that if you plan on getting help on here should you ever need it. Just my I'll be sure to add you to my friends list