Maddening iTunes Issue

[SodaAnt]

Anyone know what algorithm iTunes uses when burning a playlist to CD when the playlist spans multiple CDs?

I burn about 10 hours worth of podcasts a week to CD for listening during my commute and I can't make rhyme or reason of how or why iTunes chooses to split the individual tracks across multiple CDs.

These podcasts are typically 30-90 minutes each. Obviously, I want iTunes to pack them on CDs as densely as possible to minimize the number of blank CDs used--I don't care if it splits a podcast in the middle.

I've found that iTunes often puts a single 30 minute podcast on a CD and then asks for a new blank disk. At other times, it puts a track at the end of a CD such that there's 20 seconds from that track at the end of the CD before going to the next CD. Because of this idiotic scattering of tracks onto blank CDs, I've found that 10 hours (600 minutes) of podcasts often take 10 to 12 80-minute CDs rather than 8 CDs (600/80=7.5).

Is this just another annoying iTunes bug, or is there some way to modify how it splits multiple tracks across multiple CDs to minimize blank CD usage?

 

[aaronw1986]

Just wondering, why not get an ipod. It would easily pay for itself with how many CD's you are burning.

 

[michael.lauden]

have you tried using another program to burn discs?

i.e download the podcast, find the file - and burn it manually or with a program like toast?




if the podcasts are too large to be burnt onto the discs - you might try reducing the quality or something

 

[SodaAnt]

Just wondering, why not get an ipod. It would easily pay for itself with how many CD's you are burning.

I have several iPods but prefer not to use them in the car because my car doesn't have an easy way to interface an iPod to the sound system. I've tried the FM transmitter interfaces, but I live in the Bay Area and every available FM channel is occupied and this makes the interface unusable.

I get CDs wholesale for $0.02 each, so each week I go through about $0.25 worth. It's not so much the cost as it's the bother of changing CDs more often that I'd like to pack as much on a CD as possible.