Help needed for techie thickie (me!)

Jay-Jay_4

I'm so rubbish when it comes to techie things so please bear with me

I want to buy some music (from a DJ) from ebay but the format is DVD data and I don't know how to play it.

I've got my laptop which is this:

Hewlett Packard pavillion ze5700
MS Windows XP SP2
Intel Celeron CPU
2.80 GHZ
191MB RAM
Radion 1GP 345m

Now all that means nothing to me but I believe that I can play DVDs on it and I've got Media Player which I've played a CD through.

I'm presuming that the seller can fit lots of data on a DVD rather than copying loads of CDs and that's why he's doing it?

What do I need to to to convert the DVD to CD?

NellyLock

first of all its most likely that what your buying *probably* isnt legal, ignoring that,

i assume you have a dvd reader. if you have media player 10 you can burn music files (hazarding a guess they will be mp3's) to audio cd so you wouldnt need anything new. (i dont think media player 9 can do this so worth the update if required)

JimArnold

music is stored in a variety of ways wave, Mp3 and WMA are the commonest
Wave files are what you get on a normal CD; MP3 and WMA are methods of compressing music into a smaller space. The amount of compression is variable and higher compresion rates do lose quality

If you have the latest version of windows media player (and you probably have) then it will allow you rip (copy music to hard disk) and burn (write to cd). investigate the tabs along the top. Alternatively most of the cd burning software eg Nero will do the job

I assume you have a cd writer in your laptop ?

Rex_Mundi

I'm presuming that the seller can fit lots of data on a DVD rather than copying loads of CDs and that's why he's doing it?

This is probably right. I back my tracks onto DVD 'cos I can fit approx 1100 tracks on one disc.

What do I need to to to convert the DVD to CD?

If you burn your own CDs already. The normal software that you burn with should be able to do this for you. You'd have to transfer the contents of the DVD to your computer first.

djohn2002uk

First I must assume that this is all legal.
You shouldn't need to convert anything. The music should still be on the DVD as MP3 or Wav files but the DVD would be burned as a data disc. This is simply because there is no comparable DVD format to an audio CD. Your laptop should read the DVD ok and you can either copy the MP3s/WAVs to your hard drive or just open the folders on the DVD and double click on any of the tracks which should automatically open Mediaplayer and play it. You can also copy any of it to a CD if you wish, the only proviso being that to play the CD in any CD player you would need to burn them as WAV files.

Jay-Jay_4

Thanks for your quick replies

I've got all the instructions and disks that came with the laptop. One of the disks says "Easy CD & DVD Creator 6 (basic edition)" and one says "WinDVD Creator 2"

I've got Media Player 10 so would I just put the disk in and press 'rip' then change disks and press 'burn'?

I'm really sorry...I know I'm really bad at this

backflip

If you merely want to play the tracks (as you said) on your laptop then follow djohn200's advice and that will do the deed. Ripping etc. is only if you want to copy them to cd, not necessary if you just want to play them. Just either copy them to your hard drive or play direct from the dvd. Both will work.

Jay-Jay_4

Thanks, I need them on CD though.

From what everyone's said I 'should' be able to do it....I think, though I'll probably be back on here asking for advice


Last question...and it's a really daft one......

What CDs do I buy? I have some CDr which are described as

High Speed Recordable Media
80 min/700MB CD-R
For use in 48x speed CD-R/Rw Drives

I bought them and then realised that I didn't now if they could be used for backing up my computer files, recording music or both Oh god, I'm so bad at this!

backflip

Those blanks will be fine. Check the format the files are, probably mp3, if so copy them to your laptop and then burn using mediaplayer 10. Remember that if you want to play back other than on a computer, mp3 files will almost certainly need to be converted to wav type.

culpepper

Remember that a dvd is going to hold a lot more than a cd.MP3's can be 10% of the size of a wave file.So it'll take quite a lot of CD's to get all the files from your DVD especially if they are MP3. If you are going to play them on an MP3 capable CD player you can still get quite a lot on.I do mine like that but obviously they dont play in the ordinary CD player(non MP3 compatible) then.

Jay-Jay_4

Oh this is turning into a big fat nightmare

I want to copy them onto CD to play on our old CD player and in the car. We haven't got any MP3 things.

I just tried to burn a CD, which I've never tried before, and Media Player is telling me that I don't have a CD burner....which I'm sure I do!

This is why I never bothered before....all too complicated