I have a burning question.

[Bucket]

Since I am a plebe who has no use for a PMP, I often burn MP3 CDs to play in my car. Problem is, the shuffle feature on this ancient stereo isn't nearly as versatile as Windows Media Player is. It'll shuffle one folder and repeat over and over.

Is there a way to shuffle tracks as they're being burned? From what I can see the problem that I use (ImgBurn), and probably all burning software, burns in order of track name. There has to be a way to burn them in random order.

[chungy]

Sounds like you'd rather just put all files into the root directory with no folders.

[Acid]

From what I can gather, randomize the order on WMP and burn using WMP.

[Bucket]

Nope. Making a scrambled playlist does not affect the order in which the files are burned. I was hoping for a burning program that had a specific feature. I guess maybe putting all the songs in one folder might be the best recourse.

[Acid]

That's weird. My version of WMP burns in the order it was dragged in. Maybe because I still run Windows Vista? (Btw, WMP version 11.0.6001.7010, if it makes any difference)

[Mr. T]

Get an iPod shuffle, jesus

[Technician]

Mr. T said:

Get an iPod shuffle, jesus

He says his stereo is ancient so it probably doesn't have an auxiliary port.

[Jodwin]

Mr. T said:

Get an iSomething, jesus

Gay.

[Maes]

Technician said:

He says his stereo is ancient so it probably doesn't have an auxiliary port.

At least with cassette ones you can use an adaptor cassette. Or, get a decent deck and go back to tape, as I do, music sounds sweeter when you have to "work" on it and cherry-pick what you can fit in 60 or 90 minutes ;-)

It's not possible to burn "scrabled" CDs because the CD ISO9660 filesystem standard imposes writing the file directory in alphabetical order. You'd need a non-standard CD burner to get past that. However, you could use an utility to do a pseudo pre-scrambling of a list of files in the following way: read the list of files in any order, scramble it, and rename the files themselves using a numerical prefix.

E.g.

Track1.mp3
Track2.mp3
Track3.mp3
Track4.mp3
Track5.mp3
...
Track666.mp3

will become (random example)

001 - Track19.mp3
002 - Track500.mp3
003 - Track7.mp3
004 - Track123.mp3
...
666 - Track10.mp3

Of course, the order, even if random, will be fixed. The other solution is simply to prepare MP3 CDs for your car WITHOUT using folders: I found that most MP3-CD players handle those uglily anyway, and that if you want a true random hearing experience over ALL of the contents you have to prepare a disk with a "flat" root directory.

[Platinum Shell]

Jodwin said:

Gay.

WHEN YOU SAY THATS SO GAY DO YOU REALIZE WHAT YOU SAY


Jk, anyway I attempted burning MP3's onto a CD before with Windows Media Player but it wouldn't play shit. I tried again and again, too...

[Clonehunter]

Mr. T said:

Get a Sansa MP3 Mini in the Blue Color, jesus

Fixed for Truth

[188DarkRevived]

Just go into MyComputer or Explorer or whatever other file manager application you are using and manually rename all of the mp3s into such an alphabetical and numerical order which would shuffle them according to your particular desire. (Doing it manually is a lot of work, but it is a solution. That's what I always do.)
And then just use an application like Nero Burning ROM and "Burn a new Data CD".

[Bloodshedder]

Ant Renamer has a "Random names" function that can also include the original filename. For example, use the string %random%%name%%ext%