Supported CD/DVD Formats

[mfergusson]

Hi,

I want to save my CD and DVD's in a format compatible with Xlobby/WinAmp etc.

What's the best format to use? I guess iso is the most compatible but just asking in case it's better to use a different format?

BTW, what formats does it support anyway?

Thanks,

Mark

[BaddaBing]

XL does not support or play back CDs or DVDs. It is a front end that support various music and DVD players. For music the most commonly used are WinAmp and Foobar. For DVD playback its ZoomPlayer and Theater Tek. Rip in any of the formats supported by these players.

What format to use depends on how much storage space you have and your personal 'quality' preferences.

MP3 for music is a 'lossy' compressed format and saves space. WAV, FLAC and APE are lossless music formats but take up more disk space.

Same thing for DVDs - multiple lossless as well as compressed options available. Pick your poison based on your personal needs.

[mfergusson]

Ok thanks. (I was under the impression winamp could play.iso CD's). Any other comments on this would be appreciated.

If I can ask a different off-topic question - what's the best format to save CD's? iso? (I need to save my valueable collection - particulalry as a forest fire recently threatened our house)

[tswhite70]

If you're concerned about backing up your CD collection then I would recommend ripping it to one of the Lossless formats, either FLAC or APE. Personally I use FLAC - it's opensource, free, there's actually some hardware based support for it, etc. Your rips will be lossless so you can convert them back to the original WAV's and reburn your CD's at any point, plus you'll get a ~50% space savings over the .iso (I know disk space is cheap but I also don't see any reason to waste space when there is perfectly good lossless compressed format available).

So rip all your CD's to Flac w/ EAC, you'll then be able to catalog them with Xlobby and play them via Winamp or Foobar (or any other FLac compatible player). Make playlists, convert to MP3 for your Ipod, whatever. You can back them up to an old hard drive or burn them to a bunch of double layer DVD's and keep them off site (friends house, work, safety deposit box, fire proof safe). Or keep the originals offsite if you prefer.

http://flac.sourceforge.net/faq.html

good luck,
tsw

[mfergusson]

Thanks for the good tips.

[S Pittaway]

i will second flac, i have ripped all of my albums to that format (a typical cd ends up being ~300mb so its a nice gain over waw/iso).

Winamp plays them back fine and is the esiest one to setup with xlobby (and its free) so give it a shot

[cmhardwick]

I'm new to the FLAC encoding. I'm assuming that like WAV or WMA or MP3, etc, it's individual tracks, not an image like ISO?

Thanks for the great support and tips, as always!

[S Pittaway]

it rips individual tracks...

of course, if you wanted to you could rip the enire cd to a single flac file, but i dont know why you would want to do that.

[cmhardwick]

Um, just to be strange? hehehehe

[cmhardwick]

One more word on FLAC. If you don't want to go through SourceForge and you use WinAmp, it will rip into FLAC format ever since version 5.3 You just have to make sure you get the free FULL version, not LITE. I'm currently working on my library now ... I'll be done by Christmas

[tswhite70]

I'd be careful using Winamp for encoding - see the following: http://flac.sourceforge.net/news.html#20061025

good luck,
tsw