Z2 Does Not Play MP3 DVDs?

[ricerz]

Hey, I had the avic-D3 and now I just switched to the Z2. With my D3, i was able to play MP3s that were recorded on a DVD. When I tried to put that dvd in the Z2, it said "Unreadable Disk Error" Does the Z2 not play MP3 DVDs?

[whtcrxghst]

No

[rapayn1]

Don't know about the Z2, but if you can get a Z1 they play Music DVDs with MP3s. I use Roxio (maybe it is called Sonic now) Toast Titanium to make the discs. I just select the submenu under Audio for Music DVD, and then I add 200 or so MP3s. You can also mix the mode and have MPEG 2 videos and just MP3 audio files as well. This way you can even see album cover art work and more text information.

[sir]

Don't know about the Z2, but if you can get a Z1 they play Music DVDs with MP3s. I use Roxio (maybe it is called Sonic now) Toast Titanium to make the discs. I just select the submenu under Audio for Music DVD, and then I add 200 or so MP3s. You can also mix the mode and have MPEG 2 videos and just MP3 audio files as well. This way you can even see album cover art work and more text information.

 

I have a Z1 upgraded to Z2. I will give a try this coming weekend and I will post the result here.

Thanks.

[inferno999]

Just to clear some confusion...

Z2 does not support MP3 DVD discs.

 

• This product [z2] allows playback of MP3 files on

CD-ROM, CD-R and CD-RW discs. Recorded

discs can be played back if they are compatible

with level 1 and level 2 of ISO9660 and with the

Romeo and Joliet file system.

 

rapayn1's method is simply burning an audio disc, much like burning an audio CD in iTunes.

[rapayn1]

Inferno999,

 

Again, if you are talking about the Z2 (which he was and you appear to be as well), then I will have to take your word for it. However, I have an AVIC-Z1 and don't know how can you say it does not support it if MP3s on a DVD play. Again, I'll give you the Z2 part, but this is not the same as burning an Audio CD using iTunes. Using Toast 8, the options are:

 

Audio CD

Music DVD

MP3 Disc

Enhanced Audio CD

Mixed Mode CD

 

A Music DVD can be played in a set-top DVD player or in a Macintosh or a Windows computer with a DVD player. A Music DVD should not be

confused with a DVD-Audio disc. DVD-Audio discs require a special DVD

player. A Music DVD is a standard DVD that contains music (and can also

contain photo slideshows and videos), has full navigation menus for song

selection, and can be played in any set-top DVD player.

 

A standard Music DVD can contain over 50 hours of music with Dolby

Digital sound. If your recorder supports dual-layer recordable DVDs, you

can create a Music DVD with over 100 hours of music.

 

A typical audio CD can hold over 70 minutes of music, while an MP3 CD

can hold over 10 hours and an MP3 DVD can hold over 50 hours. However, an MP3 disc has limited menu capabilities for navigation, so finding a particular song can be difficult, and they can only be played on devices that support MP3 CD or DVD playback. A Music DVD is the best choice for high capacity, full menu navigation, and universal playback.

 

By default, Toast records Music DVDs in Dolby Digital 192 kbps audio. This compresses the audio to maximize disc space to fit over 50 hours of music, but maintains full Hollywood-style fidelity. To change the audio format from Dolby Digital to uncompressed PCM audio, click More and choose the Custom option from the Encoding tab. Choose PCM for the Audio Format. Toast records PCM at 48 kHz / 16-bit or 48 kHz / 24-bit levels, which are higher than standard CD quality, and exceed the levels of most songs in your iTunes library. Audio that has been recorded at 96 kHz / 24 bit is downsampled automatically unless you choose the 96 kHz /

24 bit option, which maintains the higher quality but significantly

reduces disc space.

 

Last summer I drove from Maryland to Toronto and Ottawa, Canada and I had MP3 Music DVDs loaded with hundreds of MP3 songs. These discs have song title, artist name, and album cover artwork. They sounded great and looked great too. The display was perfect on the AVIC-Z1 screen as well as the Alpine monitors in the headrests. The only limit is you can only have 99 tracks per playlist. However, you can easily navigate from one playlist to another on the same DVD disc.

 

When you get a chance, please tell me (define for me if you will) what an MP3 DVD disc is. Is it a DVD that contains MP3 files? If the answer is yes, and one can play this DVD full of MP3 files in an AVIC-Z1, and listen to and watch the contents, would that not be, perhaps, what Ricerz was looking for, albeit in a Z2? I simply told him that it worked on a Z1. He can trade his Z2 in for a Z1 and as far as I am concerned, his problem is solved. However, if the Z2 is just the same as a Z1 with just updated maps and a need for a different way to execute the bypass, then it seems like this should also work on a Z2.

[whtcrxghst]

Are you sure you don't mean mp3 CDs? You mention you listened to hundreds of songs on a disk in your post. You can fit that many on a CDR in mp3 format. A mp3 DVD would literally fit thousands of songs in mp3 format. MP3 CD = Z1/2 like. MP3 DVD = Z1/2 doesn't like

[rapayn1]

I'm sure. I'm using DVD-R discs and not CD-R discs. If I have time tonight, I will see how many mp3s I can get on a 4.7GB disc. I said hundreds before, because:

 

#1 - That is all I wanted to listen to on the trip to Canada

#2 - I had music videos as well as Live Earth concert clips on the DVD-R

#3 - I had jpeg pictures on the DVD-R

 

As always, the amount of songs depends on how long the songs are and how they were encoded. An 80GB iPod might claim that it can hold 20,000 songs, but in reality, the actual number may be more than 20,000 or less than 20,000. The 20,000 is a ballpark figure. You can fit more 3-minute long pop songs on a disc than you can fit non-stop club/dance music mixes, techno remixes, extended dance remixes, rap mixes, etc.

 

When I drag an MP3 file to a CD, I can get a lot of them, but I don't get any cover art and I don't get detailed artist information. When I drag an MP3 to a CD to make a Audio CD that the AVIC-Z1 can import into it's hard disk drive, I can only get about 14 or 15 "regular" songs on the disc, as the 6MB files suddenly balloon up to 65MBs or more for each song.

[rapayn1]

Okay, curiosity got the best of me, since no one reading this thread seems to believe this is possible to do, and I went and looked for one of the smallest MP3 files that I have. Keep in mind that this is not a good representation of the size MP3 files that I have, but should give me the best possible results (larger file sizes should mean fewer MP3s can fit on the DVD-R)

 

I went digging and found what may be one of the smaller MP3s that I have in my collection. I grabbed Yael Naim's "7 Baboker":

 

Size 3.4MB

Format: MPEG-1, Layer 3

Time: 3:33

Channels: Joint Stereo

Bit Rate: 132kbps (VBR)

Sample Rate: 44.100 kHz

Encoded with: LAME 3.97

 

If it had been given a bit rate of 128kbps, it would have been even smaller, but again, I usually have my MP3s at 160kbps or 192kbps. So, the reality is that most of my files are going to be larger ... MUCH larger. A typical mix MP3 of mine might be 1-hour, 12 minutes and 45 seconds at 166.6MBs of file size, and be encoded at 320kbps. So, it is hard to compare and come up with how many can really fit on a disc since bit rates are all over the map.

 

Grabbing this one MP3 file and duplicating it 98 times for one playlist folder produced a folder that contained 331.1MBs (347,002,124 bytes) worth of MP3s at a total time of 5.7 hours according to iTunes. So, that would seem to expand to 1,226 individual songs at a total of 73 hours, 13 minutes and 10 seconds worth of music (12 folders with the max limit of 98 MP3 files, and one folder with 50 MP3 files) on one DVD-R DL disc.

 

Attempting to do the same thing on a CD-R, to make an MP3 CD, let me only get 212 of the same 3.4MBs MP3 file by Yael Naim on the disc. This resulted in a total of 699.7MBs worth of music or roughly 11 hours worth of music.

 

Attempting to make an Audio CD only allowed me to place 22 copies of that 3.4MB file for a total of 78-minutes and 59 seconds worth of music on a 80-minute CD-R.

 

So, based on that, it would appear that Whtcrxghst is correct that I am not getting an MP3 DVD, because it is not containing thousands of MP3s. It's not an MP3 CD though either. However, I'm happy with 1,226 MP3s on a single disc, as I will never be in my SUV for 73 straight hours. So, what is it? What kind of disc do I have? Since I will also have a mixed bag of MP3 files of higher bit rates, I can pretty much cut the number in half and say 613 MP3 songs for 36.5 hours of music. Still fine for my purposes. I no longer really know what ricerz was looking for, but if anyone out there is looking to store a lot of MP3s on one disc, then this is a solution for them. It will NOT however, upload to the AVIC-Z1 hard drive. So, these can't be added to your built-in library.

[inferno999]

Inferno999,

 

Again, if you are talking about the Z2 (which he was and you appear to be as well), then I will have to take your word for it. However, I have an AVIC-Z1 and don't know how can you say it does not support it if MP3s on a DVD play.

...

When you get a chance, please tell me (define for me if you will) what an MP3 DVD disc is.

...

Is it a DVD that contains MP3 files?

 

Yes. A true MP3 DVD disc is a DATA-DVD burned in DATA mode, with compressed MP3 files on it. If you were to put this disc into a computer, you would see compressed MP3 FILES. On average, you should be able to fit 8 or 9 hundred MP3's on the disc. Others have tried playing these MP3 DVD's in their AVIC-Z1/Z2's, and found it does not work. This is confirmed in the instruction manual clip I posted above.

 

You're talking about the DVD-Music format (which isn't really an official DVD format, but it has become a commonly used name for a DVD-Video disc that contains primarily music). A DVD-Music disc is really a standard DVD playing uncompressed audio accompanied by darkness or still images on the video channel. There's also a DVD-Audio disc format, which contains special high-fidelity audio tracks that can only be decoded in specific DVD-Audio players. Neither of these formats are MP3 DVD (DATA) discs, though you can use MP3's as a source for creating them.

 

I'm not saying that the DVD-music format isn't a viable way of playing your music on your Z1/Z2 ... I'm just stating, for those who might also be trying to create MP3 DVD wondering why it doesn't work, that the Z2 cannot play MP3 DVD (DATA) discs.

[rapayn1]

Cool. Thanks for the explanation. I still don't know why one with an AVIC unit would want a DATA mode MP3 disc then though. MP3s are a lossy compression scheme. If it holds 800 or 900 MP3s, but can't be played without a helper application, then how would it be more desirable than a DVD-Music format disc that contains MP3s compressed to 192kbps (higher than a lot of people use), and that can be played on an AVIC unit or a set-top DVD player, or a computer DVD drive? Sounds like semantics, although technically speaking, I do understand the difference as you have graciously explained it to me this morning. DVD-Music format or DVD MP3 disc, the end desired result is to be able to play as many MP3s off of a single disc as is possible.

 

Person #1 has a boatload of MP3 files. Let's say 800 or 900 MP3s. They want to be able to listen to those files in their vehicle using an AVIC series stereo unit or system. From what I have learned today, they can't do it using a DATA-DVD burned in DATA mode with MP3s on it. However, if they burn a DVD-Music format disc/DVD, they can store their 800 or 900 MP3 files on the one disc, and play that disc in their AVIC unit, with the added bonus of a full-blown tracklist, artists and album fields, along with cover art. What am I missing? I'm not trying to be sarcastic. Honestly. I'm glad you took the time to reply. I'm just curious. It almost sounds like someone wants to use a Fleetwood Mac 8-track tape in the AVIC. It won't work, but if they grab a Fleetwood Mac CD, they can listen to it on their AVIC. So, person #2 just gets the CD or in this case the DVD-Music format DVD disc, and drives off happy and listening to his/her MP3 tunes. Yes? No?

 

Thanks to the snow and ice, and not going to work today, I have time today to read and reply rather quickly.

[inferno999]

I still don't know why one with an AVIC unit would want a DATA mode MP3 disc then though. MP3s are a lossy compression scheme. If it holds 800 or 900 MP3s, but can't be played without a helper application, then how would it be more desirable than a DVD-Music format disc that contains MP3s compressed to 192kbps (higher than a lot of people use), and that can be played on an AVIC unit or a set-top DVD player, or a computer DVD drive?

 

Hey, don't get me wrong. I agree that the DVD-music faux-format is an elegant solution. But if you want to know the answer to your question, I'll give it my best.

 

 

The short answer:

Re-compression and capacity.

 

 

The long answer:

DVD's use lossy compression formats too, typically at or above 192kbps for the stereo audio channels (explained later). When you burn a "music DVD," you're starting with MP3's, encoded with lossy compression, and then re-encoding with lossy compression to the DVD audio-track. As you know, any time you re-encode audio you degrade fidelity and add compression artifacts or impurities, EVEN if you're going between higher data rates like 192kbps.

 

So, the first part of your answer is: you're re-encoding your already re-encoded music / mp3 files to get them on disc. Say hello to compression artifacts!

 

The second part is far more complicated and depends on how your burner is selecting a format and data rate. DVD's are far more complicated than CD's; CD's have ONE audio format (Linear PCM digital audio (lossless) while DVD's can record the audio track in one of MANY, almost all using lossy compression:

• [*:38voiqk9]Linear PCM - Lossless. Uncompressed digital audio at 4096 kbps. The same format used on CDs.
  [*:38voiqk9]Dolby Digital - Lossy multi-channel compression using AC-3 encoding. Standard rate is 192kbps for stereo audio.
  [*:38voiqk9]MPEG - Lossy multi-channel compression similar to MPEG3 supporting rates from 32 kbps to 912 kbps.
  [*:38voiqk9]DTS - Lossy multi-channel compression from PCM supporting rates from 64 kbps to 1536 kbps.
  [*:38voiqk9]SDDS - Sony's lossy multi-channel compression format based on ATRAC supporting rates up to 1280 kbps.

 

It's impossible know for sure how you're being impacted without also knowing how your software is configured or how it chooses formats and quality. I can tell you that the more you add, the more it has to compress. Remember the old days of VCR's, with their SP and EP recording speeds? Slower speeds let you put more hours on tape, but degraded the quality? DVD's have an adaptation of the same system, and most recording applications I've used drop the quality automatically as you add more and more media. Here's a list I found of the recording modes:

• [*:38voiqk9]XP - 1 Hour[*:38voiqk9]HSP - 1.5 hours[*:38voiqk9]SP - 2 Hours[*:38voiqk9]LSP - 2.5 hours[*:38voiqk9]ESP - 3 hours[*:38voiqk9]LP - 4 Hours[*:38voiqk9]EP - 6 Hours[*:38voiqk9]SLP - 8 Hours[*:38voiqk9]SEP - 10 Hours

 

Even if your burner application is only sacrificing video quality, I don't see how you could get more than 10 hours on disc. An MP3 DATA CD can give you 10 hours... imagine what an MP3 DVD (DATA disc) would give you? simple math says 67 hours. I haven't tried it myself, but man... THAT's capacity.

 

 

Like I said, I agree that the DVD-music faux-format is an elegant solution. I'm only saying that, despite having the capacity for high-quality, it simply doesn't provide the same capacity at the same quality without some degree of re-encoding. ... and I simply prefer MP3 DVD's .

[rapayn1]

Inferno999,

 

You are a cool guy. Thanks a lot for taking the time to reply in great detail. I'm so glad that this did not devolve into a flame-war. I'm definitely smarter than I was 14 hours ago. And I have you to thank for it.

 

I agree that re-encoding is something that one would normally want to avoid, but perhaps in the environment of an automobile, with possibly so-so sound insulation, and driving at highway speeds, or going over potholes in the city, and around construction sites, that MP3s, even re-encoded, are probably okay for listening to your tunes. At home, on a high-end amplifier and receiver, with high-end speakers is a different matter altogether.

 

MP3s became popular because the average person could not tell the difference between a DDD Audio CD, a AAD Audio CD and a run-of-the-mill MP3 encoded between 128 and 192kbps. In the end it seemed that people just cared about the ability to carry around 20,000 or more of their favorite songs in the space of a deck of cards. No jewel cases to fumble around with and no milk crates full of 12" vinyl records. SACD (Super Audio CDs) have had limited success because the perceived improvement isn't enough to Joe and Jane Lunchbox to shell out the extra cost for a SACD. Sadly, many are saying the same thing about HD-DVD and Blu-Ray relative to cheaper priced standard DVD. The classic why pay $30 for a high definition DVD when I can get the same movie for $14.99 or cheaper and it looks clear/good enough? For the record, I welcome high definition DVDs and have had a HDTV for 2 years now. Wish more programming was available in true HD and not faux HD.

 

Again, I truly thank you for your time today. I'm glad you chimed in on this topic and gave such detailed answers/explanations.

[sir]

I just burned a Music DVD with Roxio as long as I did not find this option in Nero(?!) and it plays fine with Z1 upgraded to Z2. No sound quality lost (at least for human ear) plus the DVD menus are very functional.

Bottom line I am very pleased with the results.

[03Aviator]

Then there is this:

 

http://www.pioneerelectronics.com/PUSA/ ... rs/BDR-202

 

Of course, the Z can't read it. But my God...25GB????