Quick-Ripping Audio from your CDs

While creating MP3 files of everything is a great space-saver, it's not always the best choice when you're in a hurry. For things like newscasts, weather reports, and other routine stuff you add to your system over-and-over, keeping things uncompressed in WAV or AIFF files can make a lot of sense.

The same can sometimes be true of syndicated programming on CD. Let's say you routinely broadcast the program, "When Radio Was," which is delivered on CD, and you decide you want to snatch the cuts off the CD rapidly without turning them into compressed MP3 files. Just follow these steps:

1.   Insert the CD
   
2.   Double-click on the CD icon when it appears*. If you have BeOS set up with a "Disks" icon in the upper left corner of your screen, open that to find your CD.
   
3.   Find the "WAV" folder that appears when you open the CD.
   
4.   Select the files you want by either Shift-left-clicking individual files or use CTRL-A to select the whole batch.
   
5.   Drag the files in the "WAV" folder to the BeOS folder of your choice.
   
6.   When the progress bar finishes, you can eject the CD by simply dragging its icon to the trash. Don't worry, it won't erase your CD!
   
7.   Rename the files you copied, if your Program log expects different filenames than the generic "Track" numbers supplied when you copied them.
   
8.   You're done! The files will be large, as much as 10 megabytes per minute, but in some cases the speed of using this approach is worth the extra hard drive space involved.

* On most TuneTracker computers, auto-mounting is already pre-set to "on." If yours is not, you can solve that by right-clicking on your desktop background, moving your mouse over "Mount," and clicking on "Settings." Assure that "automount all volumes" is checked.


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