[saket77]

Hello Members,

My humble car ICE includes a Blaupunkt MP47 with Sony Xplod speakers. I am using a Sandik 4GB USB drive for listening music. It has 5 folders with less than 150 songs in each folder.

The problem is that whatever I do, the way I arrange music on my USB, the player has its own logic while sequencing the songs.

I would like to have it play following MY sequence. How do I go about it, please let me know.

Thanks in anticipation of help!

Saket

[Prowler]

Originally Posted by saket77

Hello Members,

The problem is that whatever I do, the way I arrange music on my USB, the player has its own logic while sequencing the songs.

I would like to have it play following MY sequence. How do I go about it, please let me know.

Thanks in anticipation of help!

Saket

Usually the player sorts the files in the given directory on alphabetic order. So if you want a song to be played in the first, make the file name of the song as 0001-some-song.mp3 and so on. You need to do this with your PC and use your Windows Explorer setting it to sort on the basis 'name'.

[saket77]

Originally Posted by Prowler

Usually the player sorts the files in the given directory on alphabetic order. So if you want a song to be played in the first, make the file name of the song as 0001-some-song.mp3 and so on. You need to do this with your PC and use your Windows Explorer setting it to sort on the basis 'name'.

Thanks Prowler for the advice but unfortunately that doesn't seem to be working.

What information I have gathered from the internet is that its the sequence the files physically copied to the drive is what that matters. For example, if song A is copied before song B, irrespective of their names alphabetically or numerically, song A will play first.

I am in the process of copying those 400-500 songs at the moment!

But I would prefer an easy way out for the thing that when I put new songs on the USB, they come up first.

Thanks,
Saket

[Prowler]

Originally Posted by saket77

Thanks Prowler for the advice but unfortunately that doesn't seem to be working.

What information I have gathered from the internet is that its the sequence the files physically copied to the drive is what that matters. For example, if song A is copied before song B, irrespective of their names alphabetically or numerically, song A will play first.

I am in the process of copying those 400-500 songs at the moment!

But I would prefer an easy way out for the thing that when I put new songs on the USB, they come up first.

Thanks,
Saket

Ok. So it sorts on the basis of time stamp.
But copying hundreds of files would be tedious.

You can use something like this from Windows Command Prompt to modify the time stamp:

copy /b some-song.mp3 +,,

I agree this is equally tedious - but you can make changes to the order any time later. This command is roughly equivalent to the UNIX touch command.

[saket77]

Originally Posted by Prowler

Ok. So it sorts on the basis of time stamp.
But copying hundreds of files would be tedious.

You can use something like this from Windows Command Prompt to modify the time stamp:



I agree this is equally tedious - but you can make changes to the order any time later.

Hey Prowler,

That looks useful...can you please elaborate on that command line.

Thanks,
Saket

[Prowler]

Originally Posted by saket77

Hey Prowler,

That looks useful...can you please elaborate on that command line.

Thanks,
Saket

What it does is it just modifies the time stamp with the current time. Copy command is used with the switch set to binary (the slash b) mode and the 2 comma represent that the files are in the current directory. Navigate to the drive in the command prompt and issue the command.
In a Linux/Mac this can be automated using the touch command and a file list containing all the files edited with the order you want it to play and a simple Perl Script.

Sorry Saket - if I have made the whole process more complicated than it already is.

[YVES]

Originally Posted by saket77

Hello Members,

My humble car ICE includes a Blaupunkt MP47 with Sony Xplod speakers. I am using a Sandik 4GB USB drive for listening music. It has 5 folders with less than 150 songs in each folder.

The problem is that whatever I do, the way I arrange music on my USB, the player has its own logic while sequencing the songs.

I would like to have it play following MY sequence. How do I go about it, please let me know.

Thanks in anticipation of help!

Saket

Use software Mp3tag and here you can tag your music based on artist/ Genre etc, then the Ice should sort if it has options to sort based by artist, Genre etc.

[saket77]

Originally Posted by Prowler

Sorry Saket - if I have made the whole process more complicated than it already is.

I think you have done just that but will be really helpful if that works.

Thanks!

Originally Posted by YVES

Use software Mp3tag and here you can tag your music based on artist/ Genre etc, then the Ice should sort if it has options to sort based by artist, Genre etc.

No sorting options AFAIK in Blaupunkt MP47. I am stuck with either a 'Mix' option which is like shuffle or the way it plays automatically. But thanks for exploring the option.

Regards,
Saket

[saket77]

Got a software (suggested my a member on another forum): Drivesoft.

Believe it can sort the files physically...yet to check that.

Saket

[swami.n]

Originally Posted by Prowler

Ok. So it sorts on the basis of time stamp.
But copying hundreds of files would be tedious.

You can use something like this from Windows Command Prompt to modify the time stamp:

Even I have a Pioneer HU which acts exactly the same way when songs played from USB or MMC card, and I am afraid this changing of timestamp in cmd promt does not work, as there are two timestamps that we are dealing with realistically. Set the windows view to Details and when you right click on the columns header, you can see the following two columns.

1. Date Modified
2. Date Created

In most cases we will only have the 1st column checked, and may not have noticed the 2nd column at all.

For example, I bought my Laptop in 2009 end and have so far downloaded songs and also copied from my external drive which I had previously.
Logically, all the files that I have has to have date modified greater than 2009 right?
But that is not the case. I have songs with Date modified in 2006.

When we copy a song or any file for that matter, only the Date created attribute is updated and the Date Modified is left untouched. And editing the field in command prompt in our computer would not help as, every time the file is copied to a new location, the Date created attribute is updated in the location where it is copied.

And all these players that play directly from USB drive or MMC card consider ascending order of the Date Created attribute alone.
If we can find a way to alter the Date Created attribute, directly in the USB or MMC card, then we would have a solution to the problem.

But again, in most cases the song that we are adding to the USB newly would be the latest downloaded song, which we would want to play first. But going by the above theory, the latest file will have the last place in ascending order and will be played last.

So the following are the steps I do to set the order.
1. Sort the files in the USB folder in ascending order of Date Created.
2. Select all & move files to hard disk. The step 1 ensures all files are moved in existing order of Date Created.
3. Copy the new files one by one in the order that I want them to be played.
4. Then again move all the files from Hadrd disk back to the USB folder.

Though this process is tedious, it is not too difficult, since we are only going to copy a few new songs everytime.

Originally Posted by YVES

Use software Mp3tag and here you can tag your music based on artist/ Genre etc, then the Ice should sort if it has options to sort based by artist, Genre etc.

Some HUs have the option to choose songs based on the MP3 tags, but again this would not let us to decide a particular playing order as we do in a playlist.

Originally Posted by saket77

Got a software (suggested my a member on another forum): Drivesoft.

Believe it can sort the files physically...yet to check that.

Saket

It would be helpful if you could elaborate on this software or provide any links. I did not find a related link if I search google. Thanks.

[saket77]

Hello Swami,

Below are the 2 sources from which I downloaded the s/w I was talking about. I am yet to try it, but surely you can give it a try too. If it works, then it will end all our worries!

http://www.pendriveapps.com/drivesor...-newest-files/

http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/...riveSort.shtml

Regards,
Saket

[swami.n]

Originally Posted by saket77

Hello Swami,

Below are the 2 sources from which I downloaded the s/w I was talking about. I am yet to try it, but surely you can give it a try too. If it works, then it will end all our worries!

http://www.pendriveapps.com/drivesor...-newest-files/

http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/...riveSort.shtml

Regards,
Saket

Thanks Saket. It is DriveSort. I think you had mentioned it as DriveSoft in the previous post. Thats why I couldn't find in google.

[saket77]

Originally Posted by swami.n

Thanks Saket. It is DriveSort. I think you had mentioned it as DriveSoft in the previous post. Thats why I couldn't find in google.

Oh boy...& I was wondering why I am not getting the search results! I realized that only after your post!

Just in case you try it before the lazy writer of this post, please let us know if it works.

Saket

[swami.n]

Originally Posted by saket77

Oh boy...& I was wondering why I am not getting the search results! I realized that only after your post!

Just in case you try it before the lazy writer of this post, please let us know if it works.

Saket

Saket, I haven't yet downloaded and used it. But on looking into the details of the software, I again feel it is not going to help solve our problem.

The following is the description given in the link.

DriveSort description
Sort an entire drive or a selected subfolder, either by size (to find the largest files) or by date.

Have you always wanted to find out which files are taking up the most space on your hard disk? Or what files have been created by a recently installed application?

DriveSort lets you do just that - sort an entire drive or a selected subfolder, either by size (to find the largest files) or by date. (to find the newest files).

As per the description, all it allows is to sort, and sorting only is to view it in a particular order in our Windows. It is only going to improve our view and not do anythng on the Creation Date. The HU is again going to read in the same order that I have mentioned in my above post.

[saket77]

Originally Posted by swami.n

Saket, I haven't yet downloaded and used it. But on looking into the details of the software, I again feel it is not going to help solve our problem.

The following is the description given in the link.


As per the description, all it allows is to sort, and sorting only is to view it in a particular order in our Windows. It is only going to improve our view and not do anythng on the Creation Date. The HU is again going to read in the same order that I have mentioned in my above post.

Same thoughts went through my mind...but decided to give it a try as why would anyone build (& others download) a SW to sort files when windows can do it easily!

Or may be I am acting too smart!