Comparing to CD, one of the merits of minidisc is that you can title the disc and tracks for MD, but not for CD. Although there are some CD players can display CD track names, but the CDs need to be specially manufactured, and the players are scarce.
According the manual of my MZ-R70, each minidisc can hold up to 1700 alphanumerical letters, each track can contain 200 letters.
I am using a Palm program, MD Titler, a shareware by Paul Ellams, to label my MDs. Their web: http://www.ellams.f9.co.uk/palm6.htm. It uses the infrared port of the Palm to communicate with the Minidisc deck, which also has an infrared port to receive the infrared signals from its remote control. The MD Titler program sends a sequence of infrared signals, simulating the MD remote control to label the minidisc. However, this program only let you input up to 90 letters for each track. That's not a big problem for ordinary songs. However, for some opera CDs, the names of each track can be rather long, such as "Terzett: Verzeiht! Mein Volk Halt draussen sich nicht mehr (Daland/Senta/Hollander)" --Der fliegende Hollander, Otto kemperer conductor, EMI Compact Disc. Anyway, you can always shorten the long names. For operas, you usually have the libretti, so the track names are not a big issue.
A problem of the Palm MD Titler: sometimes it is too fast for the MD deck. A remote control cannot send letters very fast, but Palm can. Sometimes individual letters are garbled and need to be edited. Since editing is not very input-intensive, it can be done without using the MD Titler. It can be accomplished using the MD remote control or directly on the MD player unit.
MD units only accept ASCII alphanumerical characters, no accent-marked letters are allowed. (For MZ-N505 and MZ-R70 portable units, and MDS-JE470 deck. Some other units do accept other language characters, but I am not familiar with them.)
First, enter the edit mode. Volume +/- buttons are used to move the cursor right or left, respectively. Fast Forward/Reverse buttons are used to rotate the current letters. After find the right letter, press enter button for next letter. However, don't press the enter button for too long. If you press this button for 2 seconds, it indicates you finished titling, and the titling will be committed. To insert a blank or type a new letter, press the edit button within 2 seconds. If you press the edit button for more than 2 seconds, the labeling is cancelled. You can also use the "T Mark" button to cancel the labeling. Delete key is used to delete a letter, and move the following letters to the left. The pause button is used to switch between capital letters, lower case letters, numbers and punctuation marks.
Finally, the most important step: press the enter button for more than 2 seconds to commit the labeling.
The pause button is used to switch between capital letters, lower case letters, numbers and punctuation marks. Vol +/- buttons are used to move the cursor. Fast Forward and Reverse buttons are used to rotate the letters at the cursor. Press the enter button for less than 2 seconds to move to the next letter. To insert a new letter or space, press "End Search" and Vol + button at the same time. To delete, use End Search" and Vol - buttons simultaneously. You can use either stop button or "T Mark" button to cancel labeling.
Again, the most important step: to commit the labeling. Press the enter button for more than 2 seconds.
For MZ-N505, everything else is the same with MZ-R70. The only difference is canceling. On MZ-R70, you use the "T Mark" button to cancel, on the MZ-N505, there is a cancel button for this job.
Press "Name Edit/Select" button to enter the edit mode.
Press the "Name Edit/Select" button repeatedly to switch between capital letters, lower case letter, punctuation marks and numbers. Similar to the pause button for the portable units.
Use the character/number buttons to input a character. Use the Fast Forward and Reverse buttons to rotate letters. Press the cursor right button to move to the next letter. You can use the cursor left/right buttons to move the cursors. To change a letter, press FF/Reverse buttons, to delete a character, use the clear button. To insert, use the "Name edit/select" and character/number, or you can use the space button.
The most important step: press Yes button to commit the titling.
Using the menu to input the "Nm in" mode. Choose Disc or Track for labeling.
Press "Level/Display/Char" button repeatedly to select the character type: upper case, lower case, number or punctuation. Press cursor right button to input a space. You cannot use a space as the first character for the title. Turn the AMS(Automatic Music Sensor) to select the character. Press (not turn) the AMS to enter the current letter and move to the next letter. You can use the cursor left/right buttons to move the cursor, use AMS to change, or use clear button to delete. You can use "Level/Display/Char" button and AMS to insert.
Finally, use the yes button to complete the labeling process.
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August 16, 2003