Use DVD to burn a playable CD?

[Nomad]

I have tape cassette files that I want to transfer to CDs and to play in normal CD players. A couple of the tapes are too long for normal CDs and I don't want to split them. Can I record them as long CDs on a DVD and will that be acceptable to play on a normal CD Player?

[dbminter]

The short answer is no.  "Normal" CD player implies a standalone CD player.  Those only play CD's because when they were made, there were no such things as DVD's.  Now, some DVD players, particularly modern ones,  play CD's as a bonus to get you to buy them over others that don't.  If your DVD player supports reading container files like MP3 from discs, what you could do is burn a bunch of MP3's made from a CD to the DVD.

 

The long answer: I have a way of copying CD's to DVD's that play as DVD Video, but it requires software that isn't free and a little bit of know how.   Plus, this method is not ideal for music CD's.  It's best for books on CD, etc. that have more than 1 disc, where you can put an entire book on 1 DVD-9.  Or a CD boxed set of an audio play like the Doctor Who ones Big Finish releases.

[Nomad]

Thanks dbminter.

They're audio tapes so it looks like I will have to join them and then split them into 6 CDs so that they can play on a normal CD player.

[dbminter]

What I did with my audio tape collection was I bought a device that converts audio tape to MP3's on a flash drive.  I then converted those MP3's to DVD Video.  But, what you could do is convert your tapes to MP3 and do like you say. 

 

However, I have to wonder what type of tapes you are actually talking about.  The longest running type of audio tape I have ever known to be manufactured was the 2 hour variety, an hour of recording time on each side.  Since a CD runs over an hour of recording time, I don't see why you can't convert each side of a tape to its own CD.

[Nomad]

Ditto the first step. I bought a small device and transferred the tapes to MP3 on a micro card. However there were 5 tapes and 2 of them are 90 & 80 minutes long after I tidied them . All use both sides of the tapes. The CDs will only do about an hour so that would make 7 CDs which could be a solution and less work but I'll have a look and see if I can make logical breaks and put it on 6 CDs. I need to make a couple of copies so I'll ask if they specifically want the CDs to play on a player of can take MP3 or WMA format.

[Nomad]

There are CDs available that can take 99/100 minutes but are not readily available and from what I read, they were not reliable.

[dbminter]

Yes, they used to make 90 minute CD-R's, but they weren't widely supported.  And I don't think they're made anymore.

 

When you say one of the tapes is 90 minutes long, do you mean one SIDE is 90 minutes long or both sides together make for a 90 minute tape?  If it's the latter, you could just make 2 CD's for that one tape, Side 1 on one CD and Side 2 on another.  I don't know of any tape format that allowed for 90 minutes on one side.  As I said before, 1 hour sides on a 2 hour tape was the largest running time format I am aware of that they manufactured.

[Nomad]

They are all 2 sides - A and B. All 5 tapes are recorded on both sides. The longest side is 46'23" long [after editing] but it has over 40 minutes on the other side.

I think you can still get the 99/100 minute CDs but they come from China and there is no information on the quality.

I'm talking to the owner of the tapes tomorrow and hopefully he can take MP3 or WMA format as I'm doing this as a favour.

[dbminter]

Since just under 47 minutes is the longest side you have, in the worst case scenario, you could put Side 1 on one CD and Side 2 on another disc.  I had a book that had been read to MP3's for blind people that I made a book on CD out of.  Due to the length of some of the chapters being long, I could only fit 1 chapter onto some of the CD's.  The chapters were under 50 minutes, but just long enough that I could only fit 1 chapter per disc on in some occasions.  I ended up with 7 CD's in that case.  I've been meaning to dig out those discs and convert them into one of my DVD Video books on CD DVD's.  Compress my collection down a bit by 7 audio CD's to 1 DVD Video.