I am attempting to burn my own CDs. How novel. Just music from CDs I already have, nothing fancy. So I purchase CD-Rs (I know, I should use probably CR-RWs) - 700MB/80mins, it says on the box. I’ve copied music onto my hard drive, assembled the playlist I wuold like to burn onto this CD. The program I’m using is Windows Media Player. When I go to copy the files, however, the Player says that while I’ve got 80 free minutes on my CD, it stops after about 44 minutes! (On the second one I burn, it stopped just short of 40 minutes.) I’m confused. The original format I was using was the default setting - 28MB per CD (64 Kbps), “CD Quality” it says. So I think, hmm… maybe I should compress it a bit more, so I do, to the smallest at 22MB per CD (48 Kbps) “Near-CD Quality.” If I can cram 30+ minutes more music in, I’ll take the slight hit in quality. Well, I get only an extra 4-5 minutes with the compressed format.
What gives? What am I doing wrong – why can’t I burn 80 minutes onto an 80 minute CD?!!