Copying and burning audio CDs using Windows Media Player 8 and Windows XP 

Copying an audio CD to your hard disk

1. Dial up or connect to your Internet connection and minimize your Internet software.  This is done to allow the automatic CD lookup to function. Otherwise the proper artist, album, and track names will not be automatically applied.

2. Insert an audio CD into the computer's CD-ROM drive.

3. After a few moments, a dialog box will pop up that asks you "What you want Windows to do?" Click on "Copy music from audio CD using Windows Media Player".

4. Windows Media Player will open up and the copying process will begin automatically.  (If that does not happen, you can open Windows Media Player 8 yourself - click Start --> Programs --> Accessories --> Entertainment --> Windows Media Player - then click on the "Copy from CD" tab on the left, and click the red Copy Music button at the top). You will not hear the music while it records, because the program spins the CD really fast.  Recording a CD takes much less time than playing the CD normally. 

5. Once the recording is complete, the audio disk is ejected. Each selected track on the CD will have been saved in WMA (Windows Media Audio) format into a folder in "My Documents" --> "My Music". The files will be in folders that Windows Media Player 8 automatically creates and names for each album that you record. 

Burning an audio CD (Note: to do this you must have a CD-writer (CD-RW) on your PC)

1. To burn an audio CD from any music tracks or albums that you have previously recorded, insert a blank CD-R into your CD-R drive (do not use a CD-RW disk). 

2. After a few moments, a dialog box will pop up that asks you "What you want Windows to do?" Click on "Select media to copy to CD using Windows Media Player".

3. Windows Media Player will open up in the "Copy to CD or Device" mode.  (If that does not happen, you can open Windows Media Player 8 yourself - click Start --> Programs --> Accessories --> Entertainment --> Windows Media Player - then click on the "Copy to CD or Device" tab on the left).

4. To select music tracks, click Start --> Documents --> My Music.  This will display all the albums and tracks that you have previously recorded. To select an album or a music track for copying the the blank CD, simply drag the folder or the song track onto the left-hand panel of the Windows Media Player 8 window.  If you drag too many files than can fit on an audio CD, the ones that don't fit are labeled "Won't fit" in the Status column.

5. Click the red Copy button to start the CD burning process.  Windows Media Player 8 will display the estimated time remaining to complete the process at the bottom of its window. When it is finished it will eject the completed audio CD. 
(c) Tom O'Haver (toh@umd.edu), March 2004