This is a P.I.T.A!!!

Bf has like 10 million katrillion CD's in 3 400+ storage cases. Some of them are so old that the CDs are shot and need copied...Well me and my BIG mouth was jabbering to him about copying all his good cds so I had my own copies for in the car or what not! Yea well guess what Im stuck doing (this is day 2 of this adventure mind you)...RIPPING ALL OF HIS CDS!!! Onto Media Player and then after I do about 20 Ill start burning copies of the ones I want then go back to ripping some...Needless to say halfway thru this my computer went weird and shut down and had to be restarted at a back up point. Thank god I do this about 2 times a day and didnt lose the stuff I had already done and updated but holy cow this is a pain to do! Plus if Media player cant load up the CD info Ive got to go in a type it all myself which sucks even more!!! And it wouldnt be much better if I had an MP3 player because then Id have to go and rip everything make copies of the crappy cds for him and then put everything onto the MP3 player! I wish I could just go poof and make this all be done right now!!!!!! I need a nap already its only 1030

Don't use media player, it does not have good error correction at all. Nor does it let you choose modes to rip with.

http://www.exactaudiocopy.de/ Very basic, and is what is preferred for ripping.

If all you want is mp3s, you then need to get LAME http://lame.sourceforge.net/ and tell EAC where it is. You can download any audio codecs you want and tell EAC to use them, and at what bit rates.

Another nice encoding/decoding GUI for your codecs is http://members.home.nl/w.speek/multi.htm Very simple, again, and you can put as many files in at a time as you want. Also tags your files nicely if you give it the info for the album and parameters.

If you want a better audio player for your pc check out foobar. It support multi-tagging and uses less ram than other players. One of the few programs I really miss.


As for the shutting down, a few things could be happening. Your pc is dirty and needs cat hair dust bunnies cleaned out of it. You're running out of ram and windows is spazzing (increase your paging file for virtual memory). Third check your services, you could have something failing and tripping a service that's set to restart your whole pc instead of just restarting the service.

None of this will make the physical ripping or burning easier. But it will help you make better copies and hopefully use less ram/crash your computer less.

Ill have to look into some of those. I cant use MP3 cds in my cd player though. It is supposed to read them but it doesnt read them at all so I dont even know if Im making an MP3 cd properly!

Then you tell EAC to just make wav files and burn those. EAC does have a burn program in it, and you can make mp3 files into a cd audio format. Whenever you use a burning program and it ask "audio project" or "data project", you choose audio.

I have just been using the burn tab in my Media Player. I have another burn program on the computer its that LightScribe dohickey thingermabobber! The tech person at Walmart said it will only work with Light Scribe disks but if Im only making cds it doesnt matter I guess. I also have a DVD burner but I need to figure out or find a program that will let me copy DVDS I already have because even though we buy a lot we would like copies of other family members dvds and then copies of ours to share with family. I have DIVX on my other computer but wasnt sure if I could burn that onto a disk to put on this computer then. Downloading stuff takes forever and day on dial up so I would like to avoid it at all costs!

Tech person at Walmart? Sorry, that's the last place I would go for any sort of tech advice - the best you could get at a place like that is you might find some guy working who plays a lot of games and could talk about them.

A cdr is a cdr, you don't need a special brand and programs won't know what brand you put in. All a program can tell is if the disc is finalized and can't be added to or if it's open/rewritable (cdrw).

Most cds aren't copy protected and are covered under fair use - provided that you're copying them for your own use and not distributing those copies in any way. Dvds are another matter. These are always encrypted, you have to break that encryption if you want to rip the dvd. Though technically you should be allowed to because this is fair use, too, circumventing the copy protection is a bit more of a grey area.
This isn't as simple as cd copying, and you need a halfway decent computer and a lot of space to do it. If you're not that tech suavey, you'd probably just want to save yourself the headache. There are some slightly easier programs to use... but first you should probably do some studying.

DivX is only for avi's - video that has been encoded and compressed. Dvds are not compressed they're vobs.

OMG, I hate that task. I rip a cd to my computer everytime I get a new one so I avoid the mass ripping.

I only rip stuff for me to have copies of whatever BF has or copies for him of whatever I have. We dont even download anything we still buy all our cds...Its only fair right..lol..As for the DVDs I am still on a hunt for a good ripper program because like my cds Im not going to download movies but I would like to make copies of our Nip/Tuck series for Bfs dad and copies of my girls Disney movies for myself and all that kinda stuff. Not to go out and sell them or anything like that. Its mostly just for personal use and so I dont have to go out and buy all 5 Saw movies when Bfs brother has them and I could just make myself a copy..Its all a pain in the butt. I found one program that seems like it might work but Im really hesitant on downloading stuff like that because while Im pretty technical some stuff DVD ripping I have no clue about. I have a brand new 09 Compaq with tons of space and a DVD burner..I just need the code cracking stuff to rip the DVDS I already have.

Hm, to better word it. Suggesting you software (especially free software for this), openly, on this forum isn't very legal. Because it's cracking encryption. There's a site called videohelp.com that has a lot of information about all sorts of things video and even codec related, you can find other sites to help, too.


Oh, and your first post sparked a bit of a discussion with a couple friends the other day. We all have cds from the 80s (86 for me specifically). They still play fine - so nothing you have should be "too old" to play. So far the life on any cd hasn't been met yet since the oldest should be around '83.
Too damaged is another matter, which is why I suggested you use EAC.