It has been about a year and a half since I updated my music DVDs for COMAND 2.0 - I use two separate music libraries in iTunes - one in almost nothing but higher quality formats for quick upodate of my iPod, and the other largely converted to mp3 for burning DVDs. "Libra" software helps to quickly choose between the libraries. Unfortunately, I had lost the disc image for the last burn when I changed out some hard drives, so had to start from scratch with my DVD burn library. Not too hard, I thought. I updated my playlists, ensured all songs were in .mp3 format, copied them into Toast, and burned a new DVD.
I was highly chagrined and frustrated to find that despite my computer showing and playing all of the song files on the newly-burned DVD, many of the songs were missing from my COMAND display and could not be accessed or played on COMAND. Entire Beethoven symphonies, movements to some symphonies, piano concertos, and the like were gone. I went through starting from the originals, re-recording them to CD and re-importing them as mp3; and also through converting the original AIFF and Apple Lossless files to mp3 on the hard drive. Neither process (requiring 4 days) was any more effective than the other; but conversion on the hard drive is much faster. I still lost the ability to play the music on COMAND regardless of the type of conversion, although it was written to the disc and would display and play on my computer in a variety of software.
Finally, after printing out the DVD song index using Toast and comparing it to what was displayed on COMAND, I noticed that the missing pieces had very long song titles (some, over 100 characters). While the Mac (and Windows) can handle very long file names, apparently the COMAND DVD player cannot. The answer to this vexing problem was to shorten the file names (I set an arbitrary limit of 30 characters; didn't want to fool with it any more). When I did that and tried to write the disc, Toast informed me that not all of my file names ended in ".mp3" and they may not read on some disc players. It was an automatic batch fix, so I used it (I had checked, and all titles in fact did end in .mp3 - but apparently some were not recognized, and the batch fix added it again in a few cases - but without harm).
That solved the entire problem and all of my music became accessible on COMAND when I burned another DVD with the short file names, ending in ".mp3" (I changed them in Toast, but will likely go back and do it in iTunes to minimize the likelihood of this happening again).
Many of you will know this, but much of what is written in this string emphasizes burning your mp3s as "data." I prefer to use Toast rather than iTunes to burn, because I have greater control over where my music appears in folders, and the sequence in which it appears. Toast has a quirk in that regard. Here are some of the settings and steps I used:
1. I first organized my music into playlists (35 of them for this particular disc) in iTunes, ensuring that each song was in mp3 format vice any other.
2. I then set Toast to create an "Audio CD - mp3 disc" and set the lower button (by the burn button) to DVD. That's the quirk - it seems counterintuitive, since Toast has a "Data Disc" selection in its menus for burning discs - but if you use "Data Disc" you will get an "unrecognized format" readout from COMAND when you insert the disc (at least I did in my '05 COMAND 2.0). Using "Audio CD" and in the slide drawer of Toast, choose "mp3 disc," then selecting "DVD" in the small button next to the large burn button, will work for you. Despite the labeling in Toast 6's menus, you do get a DVD data disc, but one that COMAND can read.
3. You create a folder in Toast (at least my version - 6 - I know, time to update, but it still works) - by either clicking "New Disc" at the bottom left of the window or by dragging at least one song into the burn space (the "Drag mp3 files and folders into this area") in Toast. Once you do, a "Folder" button will appear at the bottom left, allowing you to create, add, and name folders at will. I created my 35 folders at this time, so they would appear at the root (top) level of the DVD, allowing me to display all of them by selecting the "Folder" soft key on COMAND. The folders can be sequenced in Toast either alphabetically or by number. Earlier, when I used only two folders at the top level, subfolders within them were only accessible using the arrow keys and did not display as discrete selectable folders in the COMAND "Folder" view.
4. Then I went back to my iTunes playlists and dragged the songs into the corresponding Toast folders; checked the order of them (they may still retain the numbers from iTunes and thus the playlist order may be changed when they are dragged, an annoyance - but they can be changed in Toast for the burn); shortened the titles and ensured all had ".mp3" at the end of the title - and saved the work as a Disc Image. Saving interim work as a disc image saves a LOT of grief. When I go back into iTunes and shorten the titles in the music library, changing the titles after dragging them into Toast will not be necessary; but I always work with a disc image (and save the final when complete, for future updates).
5. I then burned the 4.42 GB disc successfully, and it displays all music on COMAND, in folders and in the order that I wanted it.
My06clk has posted the procedure he uses for iTunes at
DVD Burning with iTunes and Toast (Mac versions) - MBWorld.org Forums. It is also a good procedure, especially where the sequence of the playback is not important.
RadSteve also reports on MBWorld that Toast 8 creates a folder automatiically when one drags a playlist into Toast 8's burn area - which I can confirm (having just upgraded to Toast 8 last week to do an airshow movie and quickly burn 32 copies). The songs may still have to be re-ordered by dragging them, however, if play sequence is important.
Hope this saves someone similar frustration.
Burning mp3 DVDs with iTunes and Toast (Mac versions) 
Linear Mode
