I am interested creating an autostarting audiocd. On this cd I want to copy winamp (straight from the harddrive, as this way it does not need to be installed). The cd will obviously have audio tracks and a playlist. Does anyone know if its possible to get the audiocd to automatically startup winamp on a computer which does not have winamp installed and get the audio playing automatically without the user having to press the play button.
I have searched for this on the web but they all expect the user to have winamp installed on the harddrive!
Anyone have any ideas?
Create an autorun.inf
[autorun]
AUTORUN=winamp\winamp.exe music\playlist.m3u
Winamp is in the \winamp directory and the playlist is in the \music direcoty. Both at the root of the CD.
I have tried something similar to that. The thing is, when you open up .m3u in notepad, the path of the audio track is written including the drive letter i.e. c:\. I have also tried changing that to d:\ but not everyone has there cd-drive on d:\. I even tried ..\musicdirectory\musicfile.extention and it didn't work!
any suggestions are greatly appreciated!
If the m3u is in the same directory as the mp3s, then you don't need the path info. Maybe this can be used to your advantage?
As I have waisted too many cds trying to get this to work, I dont want to burn any more until im sure its gonna work
So do the think this will work
Files and folders in root of cd:
autorun.inf (file)
winamp (folder containing winamp.exe)
audio (folder containing audio files + playlist.m3u)
contents of autorun.inf
[autorun]
AUTORUN=winamp\winamp.exe audio\playlist.m3u (is it supposed to be autorun=something or open=something?)
contents of playlist.m3u
#EXTM3U
#EXTINF:108,track01
track01.ogg
#EXTINF:60,track02
track02.ogg
#EXTINF:75,track03
track03.ogg
and so on...
Can anyone spot any mistakes which might stop this from running? I have win2k, will this method work on all windows? The other thing which I am not sure about is the content of the autorun.inf. Should it be:
[autorun]
open=something
or
[autorun]
autorun=something
[AUTORUN]
OPEN=Winamp\Winamp.exe "..\playlist.m3u"
...should most definitely work.
What program did you create the M3U playlist with? Usually, it should contain relative paths, i.e., if your playlist is in the drive root and the music files are in a folder called "foo", the content of the playlist should be
foo\File1.ogg
foo\File2.ogg etc.
CU
Dominic
The m3u file was created by winamp. I will try it out and let you know what happens. Thanx for all the help
The easiest way to get started in my views is to start with a graphical frontend to creating an autorun CD, such as the freeware program CDStarter http://www.wentnet.uklinux.net/software/cdstarter.php3 (http://www.wentnet.uklinux.net/software/cdstarter.php3). CDStarter doesn't have the best looking menu system, but hey its free and gets the job done really fast.
I've made a ton of autorun CD's that autoplay however in my experience it has always been the easiest to have the executable file of the player itself in the root of the CD and not nestled in a sub-folder because it can't properly call upon the root of the CD to find your audio files. I think the playlist should also be located in the root of the CD just to keep things simple. You could use a command like:
YourPlayer.exe PlayList.m3u
The audio can be in sub-folders called from the playlist, for example:
Playlist.m3u:
Audio\Track01.ext
Audio\Track02.ext
The only drawback I see to using Winamp in such a way is that someone who doesn't have it installed will all of a sudden have Winamp system registry entries created immediately after Winamp.exe is launched. I do know that CoolPlayer doesn't automatically write to the system registry when it is launched and that's the player I use on autorun data music cd's.
I've made a ton of autorun CD's that autoplay however in my experience it has always been the easiest to have the executable file of the player itself in the root of the CD and not nestled in a sub-folder because it can't properly call upon the root of the CD to find your audio files.
I tried it, Winamp can do that.
D:\>cd Software\Winamp
D:\Software\Winamp>Winamp "..\..\Jukebox\HQ.m3u"
<Winamp launches and begins to play>
The only drawback I see to using Winamp in such a way is that someone who doesn't have it installed will all of a sudden have Winamp system registry entries created immediately after Winamp.exe is launched. I do know that CoolPlayer doesn't automatically write to the system registry when it is launched...
You took the words right out of my mouth I forgot to mention that in_vorbis, when launched, writes its configuration data to the registry. (Winamp itself doesn't, it uses an INI file which I much prefer.) Coolplayer would be great because it keeps everything clean, but it lacks ReplayGain support.
Just waisted another CD
this is what I did
CD root-------------------------
file 1 - autorun.inf
folder 1 - Player
folder 2 - Audio
----------------------------------
file 1 - autorun.inf------------
[autorun]
OPEN=Player\Winamp.exe "..\playlist.m3u"
----------------------------------
folder 1 - Player--------------
Winamp.exe
----------------------------------
folder 2 - Audio---------------
134 audio tracks
playlist.m3u
----------------------------------
playlist.m3u-------------------
#EXTM3U
#EXTINF:1441,Track2x
Track2x.ogg
#EXTINF:2132,Track3a
Track3a.ogg
#EXTINF:2561,Track3b
Track3b.ogg
#EXTINF:1007,Track4a
Track4a.ogg
#EXTINF:3455,Track4b
Track4b.ogg
#EXTINF:767,Track4c
Track4c.ogg
#EXTINF:2706,Track5a
Track5a.ogg
#EXTINF:1133,Track5b
Track5b.ogg
----------------------------------
When I insert the CD into the drive, Winamp startup up, but no audio. In the playlist window it says "1. ..\playlist.m3u"
What have I done wrong???????
Time to start using CDR/W's?
If I were you I would have done a trial run, on the HDD, before I burnt anything.
Running <Player\Winamp "Audio\playlist.m3u"> from a dos prompt, from where autorun.inf should be, it seems to work well. Hope this helps.
Finally got it working
Even though I used a CDR. I was somehow able to replace the autorun.inf file on the CD with a new modified autorun.inf file. How can this be ???????????????
I dragged the file onto my cd recording software and it asked me if I want to replace it ?????
Thanx for all the help. Testing in dos did the trick
Even though I used a CDR. I was somehow able to replace the autorun.inf file on the CD with a new modified autorun.inf file. How can this be ???????????????
I dragged the file onto my cd recording software and it asked me if I want to replace it ?????
This is possible if you don't close the cd. The old file will still be on the cd physically but not in the index.
It writes a new session with the new file and a new index is written.
If you don't close the cd you can always add more files. Making many session (=burn->add files->burn) wastes some space though.
Just waisted another CD
this is what I did:
[...]
file 1 - autorun.inf------------
[autorun]
OPEN=Player\Winamp.exe "..\playlist.m3u"
----------------------------------
[...]
folder 2 - Audio---------------
134 audio tracks
playlist.m3u
----------------------------------
Just FYI: You told Winamp that the playlist was in the drive root, while it was actually in the "Audio" folder.
"..\Audio\playlist.m3u" would have done it, but I see you have found some other solution.