jlin101

Has anyone succeded in playing MP3's burned on a DVD, yet?

brn2rnjk1

There seem to be 2 ways to get mp3 on dvds. The first is to use a program called Discwelder which records dvd-a. This plays in my gs300 mark levinson. One of the downsides is that you cannot shuffle between discs (It took 3 discs to get the songs I wanted in the unit).

There seems to be another way that I have not fully tried. There are 2 programs, one called audio dvd creator which creates audio on the dvds and I am told will allow tremendous storage on each dvd. However, this will not allow shuffle mode so you can't shuffle.

Hope this helps.

Still trying to figure out why they didn't use an mp3 enabled dvd/cd player.

Jim

SGT

Going the Audio DVD Creator route which Jim mentioned means the MP3's will have to be converted before getting burned on the DVD, so it isn't actually the MP3's that are burned, it's either an AC3 or PCM format; whichever you choose to convert it to.

skingsland

I haven't heard of AC3 or PCM formats before -- are they compressed & lossy like MP3s? As long as I just need to convert to another compressed audio format, then I'm fine. I don't care whether it's MP3, MP4, ogg/vorbis, etc. But if I have to put them in some different variant of WAV format (i.e. full size, ~10MB a minute instead of 1MB/min), then I'm back to using my iPod.

If the head unit can play MP3s off a data CD-ROM, then I don't get why it couldn't play MP3s off a DVD-ROM for the ML system.

I think we need to find someone at lexus who can answer technical questions about the ML head unit/DVD changer.

SGT

Yes, both formats are compressed and lossy. See below:

Audio Format:

Select the audio encoding format: PCM (48 kHz/16 bit) has high quality which is similar to Audio CDs, the total playing time is up to 6 hours. PCM (96 kHz/24 bit) has the best quality, but total play time is only 2 hours. AC3 (192 kbps) has high quantity, the total playing time is up to 45 hours, and the quality is still good. If your DVD player supports, you can select AC3 (128 kbps) to hold more audio files on one Audio DVD. A number of coding rates are also provided to allow a flexible balance to be selected between playing time and audio quality.

skingsland

Wait a minute... 6 or 2 hours of "total playing time" for PCM??? Is that the total playing time for the entire DVD? That's not right... If a DVD is storing 4 or 5GB of compressed audio, that should be DAYS of playing time, not hours. If you had 5 GB of MP3s (at 128), I think that would be roughly 85 hours of playing time. Maybe AC3 (at 45 hrs) is compressed, and PCM isn't??

SGT

If you select PCM 96 kHz/24 bit then it will be 2 hours b/c the quality is better. If you select PCM 48 kHz/16 bit you'll get 6 hours. You can also adjust the quality for AC3's.

skingsland

Still, a DVD should be able to hold close to 100 hours of compressed music, unless I'm missing something here. A regular Audio CD holds 80 min., so I'd expect a regular Audio DVD to hold about 10 times that, then compress the audio to MP3 or a similar lossy format and we're at 10 times THAT. I'm just dealing with order of magnitude here, but that comes out to around 130 hours of music...

brewkp4

I know this has been answered elsewhere but I just need a clarification.....only the ML can play music DVD? Is it possible for an IS w/o ML and w/ NAv to play data cd's?

jlin101

only ML comes with a DVD changer, and thus plays audio or video DVD's; however, it cannot play mp3 DVD's. Non-ML stereo can play mp3 cd's without problem.

havanas

PCM (48 kHz/16 bit) is similar to the format of an Audio-CD (44.1kHz/16 bit). This is an uncompressed format which is why it will only store @6 hours. Basically a DVD vs CD is 4.7GB (4,700,000,000 bytes) vs 700MB (737,280,000 bytes)... you end up with @ a 4.7/0.7 = 6.374x capacity increase over a CDr. The differences in sample rate versus of 48kHz vs 44.1kHz = 1.088.

So the formula is 80 minutes for a 700MB CDr @ a 44.1kHz x 16bit.

For a DVDr at 48kHz you get (80 minutes * 6.374) / 1.088 = 468.68 minutes
468.68 / 60 = 7.811 hours ideally... it is probably only 6 hours due to some formatting overhead.

If possible I would use 44.1kHz / 16 bit as 48kHz is most likely higher quality then the source CDs from which the MP3 were derived from. That should increase that 6 hours by @1.088 = 6.5 hours. If you go the AC3 route ( a compressed format... kind of like a more advanced multichannel MP3 ) I would master that disc from PCM / WAV / AIF audio ripped from your master CDs. If you master the AC3 from an MP3 the audio will now have been compressed 2 times. With a quality sound system, this will likely be noticeable.

yeah

first post...
am eyeing a IS 250 AWD as my first car in 5 years.

brn2rnjk1

Keep in mind (and you may not care) that you won't be able to use shuffle mode when using the dvd this way.


Don't know why the ml didnt come with mp3 capability.

TimboIS

Hasn't anyone read this from the manual.

MP3/WMA files
- MP3 (MPEG Audio Layer 3) and WMA (Windows Media Audio) are audio compression standards.
- The MP3/WMA player can play MP3 and WMA files on CD-ROM, CD-R and CD-RW discs.
- The unit can play disc recordings com- patible with ISO 9660 level 1 and level 2 and with the Romeo and Joliet file system.
- When naming an MP3 or WMA file, add the appropriate file extension (.mp3 or .wma).
- The MP3/WMA player plays back files with .mp3 or .wma file extensions as MP3 or WMA files.
- To prevent noise and playback errors, use the appropriate file extensions.
- The player can play only the first session using multi-session compatible CDs.
- MP3 files are compatible with the ID3 Tag Ver. 1.0, Ver. 1.1, Ver. 2.2, and Ver. 2.3 formats.
- The unit cannot display disc title, track title and artist name in other formats.
- The MP3/WMA player does not play back MP3/WMA files from discs recorder using packet write data transfer (UDF format). Discs should be recorded using “pre-mastering” software rather than packet-write software.
- The following products may not be playable on your DVD changer: SACD, dts-CD, Copy-protected CD, DVD-R, DVD+R, DVD-RW, DVD+RW, DVD-ROM, DVD-RAM

Payam

I guess that answers that question.