Windows XP Cookbook

Chapter 11. Digital Media

Introduction

Before Windows XP, Windows wasn’t thought of as being particularly friendly to digital media—to using and creating videos, music, and graphics files. But Windows XP is the most media-friendly version of Windows yet released, and so a variety of multimedia is now easily available to Windows users. It includes a variety of built-in tools, such as Windows Media Player and Windows Movie Maker.

In this chapter, you’ll find recipes for handling a variety of media—everything from copying digital music to your PC, to making music CDs, recording video, making DVDs, and handling and converting graphics.

11.1. Ripping Digital Music

Problem

You want to rip music from an audio CD to your computer’s hard disk—in other words, copy it to your PC in a digital format, so that you can listen to it on your PC, or on a portable MP3 player.

Solution

Using a graphical user interface

Windows Media Player offers built-in tools for ripping music and storing it in a variety of formats, including MP3 and WMA. (Note: versions of Windows Media Player older than version 10 cannot rip music into the MP3 format, without buying extra software.) Here’s how to do it:

1. Run Windows Media Player by choosing Start→ All Programs→ Accessories→ Entertainment→ Windows Media Player.

2. Click the Rip button.

3. Insert the CD whose music you want to rip into your CD drive.

4. Windows Media Player will show a list of all the tracks on the CD, but there may be no information associated with each track. To ...