Burning Music

With RealJukebox (bundled with the latest free version of Real's RealPlayer 7 Basic) you can burn a music CD directly from the RealAudio, MP3, or .wav files on your hard disk. All you need is RealJukebox, the free Adaptec Creator Plug-in, and a CD-Recordable or CD-Rewritable drive.

While connected to Internet, open RealJukebox (click Start, Programs, Real, RealJukebox) and choose Options, Preferences. Next, select the Portable Player/Storage tab, and click the Add button. If you see a blank list, click the Update List button. Choose Adaptec Creator Plug-in in the Add Portable Players/Storage list and click OK twice. RealJukebox will download and install the plug-in automatically.

If you don't already have a copy of Adaptec's Easy CD Creator software, you'll also need the free Adaptec CD recording engine. This plug-in allows you to use RealPlayer to record music CDs at 2X speeds. You don't need it if you already have Adaptec CD recording software installed. In fact, the free CD recording engine can conflict with existing Adaptec software, so don't download it unless your system doesn't have any other Adaptec CD recording applications.

If you do need the Adaptec CD recording engine, just click the link labeled "Click here to download your Free CD recording software" to download it, then double-click the file to install it before you go on to the next step.

Next, you'll need to create a list of the music files you want to be on the music CD. Click the Music Library icon in the left pane of the RealJukebox window. Right-click the Playlists folder in the left-hand Library window, choose New Playlist, and enter a name for the list. Expand the Artist, Album, or Genre section of the Master Library (click the "+" sign in front of the section), and add selections to your new playlist by dragging each song title over the name of the new playlist you've created in the left-hand Master Library pane.

Finally, insert a blank recordable CD into your CD-R or CD-RW drive. Expand the Portable Players/Storage item in the left pane to show the Adaptec Creator Plug-in icon. Drag a RealJukebox Playlist over the Adaptec Creator Plug-in icon, and you'll see a list of the songs to be burned into the CD. (If you've loaded too many songs, the status window will warn you and let you delete individual titles.) Click the Begin Transfer button at the bottom of the RealJukebox screen to burn your CD. A status indicator in the right-hand Track window will display song-by-song recording progress and let you know when the process is complete.