Changing MP3 sort order on a USB stick ?

[Mike99]

Some MP3 players sort & play the songs in the order they were put on the USB stick, not alphabetically. Editing the ID3 tag does not change this.

There are a few programs that claim to be able to change the order. A couple of them appear to just rewrite all the songs in alphabetical order. One program that appears to change the pertinent data has a demo download & a source file download, neither will help me. Another program lists having Python as a requirement.

Has anyone used & can recommend a program that changes the data that indicates the stored order of songs?

Even a command line program will work. But I have no way of working with a source code.

Thanks for any suggestions.

 

[br4]

This may not help, but I created the copy commands in an Excel spreadsheet to perform the copy in the order I wanted. Then I copied the commands to a batch file and ran it to do the copying.

You might want to consider using a playlist, which gives you control over the order of play.

 

[J.R.]

Have you looked at DriveSort?

Anerty's Lair - DriveSort

 

[Mike99]

Thanks for the replies.

I thought about using a playlist. If I added a song the whole playlist would have to be re-copied to the USB stick. Depending on how many songs there are that might take a bit of time, but not a deal breaker.

I tried to find out how DriveSort worked. Initially I presumed it changed something in the FAT table but could never verify that. Then I read that it re-records the songs in alphabetical order.

Either of the above will work. I was just hoping for a more elegant solution such as just changing a few bits in the FAT table. I’m still looking.

At this point using a playlist might be the best way because I don’t need to use any third party software and/or worry about data getting scrambled.

 

[br4]

My playlist has 444 file names and its 18KB in size.

If you want total control over your playing order, I think you have only two options: playlist or include the file number in the file's name, which I tried at one point, but it can get tedious.

For example, the first file's name would be 001 song1.mp3, the second: 002 song2.mp3, etc. My player shows its file number before the file's name, so the first one would display, while playing, as 001 001 song1.mp3. Once I discovered how to use the playlist, I removed the file numbers. It seems to be working OK, though I hope to learn more about the playlists.

I think the amount of time to copy the playlist and then reload it would be less than the time to copy the other files.

 

[Mike99]

I had a number before the name & that works in Windows, one car, but not the other car. Apparently it takes some computing power to sort the files alphanumerically, and a lot of MP3 players don't have that processing power. So they just list songs in the order they were stored on the USB stick. Changing the filename makes no difference & neither does changing the ID3 tag.

 

[Mike99]

I made a Media Player playlist but can't find a way to copy the songs to the USB drive, at least not in one process.

I did a lot of searching & some web sites say to click on the "Copy" tab at the top of Media Player. But I don't see any Copy tab or drop down menu selections with Copy in them.

Other searches instruct how to find & copy the Playlist file to a portable device, but then say that's just an XLM list of the songs & you still need to copy the songs. That means I still have find the songs in several different folders.

Am I misunderstanding something?
Is there a way to copy the Playlist songs in order in fell swoop or batch?

 

[br4]

I believe each file referenced in a playlist has to be on the same storage device as the playlist itself.

If you are using a playlist, the order the files are copied should not matter, as the playlist tells the player the sequence of play.

A couple ways to copy: in Windows Explorer, select a group of files, then Copy and Paste. This can get tedious, but it won't lock up your computer for a long amount of time if you have a lot of files to copy.

As I've previously noted, you could create a batch file with one line for each file's copy command. By creating this in Excel, you could copy the files in any order you wanted. If you're using a playlist, the order copied should not matter.

The amount of time required for the copying will depend on how large the files are and your computer's resources.

 

[Mike99]

I thought copying a Playlist would copy all the songs in order but apparently that's not the case. The songs still need to be copied.

My one car plays songs in the order recorded. So I just copied 10 songs in my order to a USB drive & they play in that order. Windows Explorer lets you sort files by names, dates, etc. But neither the Date Modified or the Date Last Saved (which appear to be the same) is the date recorded to the USB. How can I tell if songs were recorded in the order specified, other than going out to the car & trying it?

If I copy the USB drive to a second USB drive will the copy retain the proper order?

 

[br4]

The playlist only contains file names, it does not contain any music. It's like a table of contents, to tell the player the order of play of the MP3 files.

Your second paragraph uses the word recorded, but I think you are referring to the copied order. The only way to be sure of the order of copy is to copy the files, one at a time, in the order you want. I've previously mentioned a few ways to do this, a lot depends on how many files, and their size, you need to copy. I recommend using a batch file with one copy command per row. The copy would be done in the order that is in the batch file.

I would recommend copying from your hard drive to any flash drive, versus from one flash to another. Flash to flash would probably take much more time than HD to flash.

 

[Mike99]

I copied 10 songs to a USB stick & used “Date Accessed” in Windows Explorer and it did show the songs in the order they were copied to the drive.

I then copied the USB song folder to a folder on the PC, and then copied just the files to another PC folder. Then copied that PC folder to a different USB drive. The good news is all the songs stayed in order.

But there’s something strange about how Date Accessed worked.
Both USB drives sorted the songs in order, but clicking on the up/down arrows does not flip-flop the order. It remains the same. And everything is time stamped 12:00am even though nothing was copied or done at that time.

Looking at the PC’s folders using Date Accessed did indicate the time the songs were copied to the folders. Clicking on the up/down arrows does not flip-flop the order but does change it to something that appears random. So it’s either the correct order or toggled to something that doesn’t make sense.

Also I read that the “Date Accessed” time does not change when you access a file. It is disabled by default. You have to go into the Registry to enable it.

The sort order when playing songs in the car is not that important. It doesn’t affect that many songs just the compilation that I put together. But I thought it would be nice if both cars and the PC all matched. The songs ripped from albums are in order.

I’ve never written a batch file so I’m not sure how to go about that.

I might just keep a master copy of the compilation on the PC that is in order. If I want to add a song in the middle, temporarily delete the last half of the songs, then copy the new song, and then re-copy the last half back on. That should keep things in order. Just a thought.

 

[br4]

If you use a playlist, the order in which the files are copied does not matter. Your car's (or cars') file handling capabilities are probably much less than what you can do with Windows Explorer, so you're limited in what you can do.

For what it's worth, I have my car's system play the files randomly. It's a RAV4 and it's music system leaves a lot to be desired.

As I see it, there are a few ways to get the files to play in a particular order:
* copy them to the flash drive in the desired order
* create a playlist
* have each file's name begin with the numbering sequence

While each of these has various pluses and minuses, I think the playlist one is easiest to do and much easier to maintain.

If you'd like help in creating a batch file, which you don't really need to do if you use a playlist, send me a PM and I'll try to help.