Playlists on USB thumb drives

Great information thanks!

SCH-I535 ? 2

 

Playing music from my kindle with bluetooth..wow! Sounds great! Thanks.

SCH-I535 ? 2

 

It seems to me that if you all were to add the price per hour of your time playing with USB's and file attributes, buying a used IPOD might be cheaper and much less trouble. Your time is worth something. The IPOD integration on the Prius is excellent.

 

I can play from BT on ipod or plug it in directly...

But when playing from iphone through BT you lose the ability to "browse" all your songs....you can only skip ahead or back one song.

with the USB stick you can browse it many different ways, which is nice. And with my setup you can have your identical playlists all without ever touching your phone.

I still will use my BT through phone on occasion so this is just another tool for the system. Its great having so many choices with the system.

 

In my 2013 model 3 Prius, if you plug the IPOD (I assume it works with the IPHONE also) into the USB port in the compartment to the right of the driver, you have all the functionality on the head unit screen that you would have on the IPOD screen when it comes to song/playlist management. All this without using Bluetooth and without using some of your phone plan's monthly data allocation. Toyota did the IPOD integration right. Why spend time futzing with USB files, compatibility issues regarding playlist software, and file attributes?

 

many times people dont like to need to have to plug in their phone....with USB drive you can have it all without plugging it in, its not that hard to do IMO, love my setup.

sorry all my pics are gone....damn site that used to host them for me is gone...ugh

 

Who needs BT for the IPOD? Plug it in to the USB jack in the center and all the file work is done for you via the IPOD integration software and you can access songs and use your I-Tunes playlists so easily. I also love the ability to tell it to play "Light My Fire" by the Doors via voice command.

 

I tried all the options laid out above. Especially the one with using windows to move the files, etc. My windows media player doesn't offer the suggestions. No blue arrow in the upper right hand corner for me. I just need to see what the computer in the car uses as a media player and make the usb drive have the same media player in it.

 

The USB thing is for the birds!! This is how I finally got it to be recognized in my prius III 2015. I can only do 80 minutes of MP3 music at a time (need to choose files to burn to a CD). I take my files to windows media player that I want to put on the USB and burn them to a CD in MP3 format. Then I ripped them to my library. Then I transfer the ripped MP3 files from my library to the USB drive. Really? I wanted to have over 7 hrs of continuous music without burning my phone or tablet up. Geeesh! At least it works!

 

That is a drawback with the Prius system (maybe all cars). MP3 is the format they recognize, but most popular applications don't use MP3 as the format nor always offer an easy MP3 file converter.

I went MP3 on my music collection long before iTunes was a big deal.

 

My aftermarket NAV has an MP3 USB in it that I've recently been using (Myron & Davis). I had buy a "Mini to female 5 2.0" adapter to use it though. None of the tag info is presented so I stripped it out with "ID3Kill". Funny thing is, the songs are not presented in song order but seem to be ordered by last modified date. Wierd, huh...?

 

That's a common problem. You literally need to copy all of it to a PC new folder. Arrange as you wish (part of why my sub-folders and files have number prefixes) then copy/paste back to a BLANK USB drive. In most cases, it should transfer them in order, and then the time/date stamp lets the Prius see the files in the order desired.

That is messed up by itself.

 

I recommend going back to post #30 in this discussion where someone actually explains how the file order stuff works in this system. There's another better explanation in another thread but I'm too lazy to look it up. Everything else on here is wrong. Or it works because it gets at this same result through other means but is stated incorrectly.

The quick version, files/folders are played in order as they appear in the file system. There's no easy way to know this order in Windows or OSX as they actually pay attention to the file system tree structure. You have to use manual methods of copying files to an empty drive in the order you want them or use specific tools to manipulate the order such as DriveSort. It sucks, but it is what it is. And it's not just toyota who uses this. Some cheap MP3 players apparently use the same methods.

Playlists on USB thumb drives | Page 2 | PriusChat

 

WOW!!!! Thank you BillyBueger!!!! I found DriveSort by doing Google search and safely downloaded the software which is very simple to use. I just plugged my USB drive into my PC (Windows 7) and started DriveSort. It allowed me to reorder my folders in long-name format first (be sure to save that first). Then I opened each folder with DriveSort and reordered the song names in long-name format and then saved that too. DriveSort has a little save button you must use each time your reorder a series of songs or the folder structure. Once that was done, I took my USB drive back to my car and voila! The folders and songs within each folder are properly ordered! Thanks again Billy! Here's a link to DriveSort and the download is at the bottom of the writeup (it's virus-free):

www.anerty.net/software/file/DriveSort.php

 

Found a quick runaround to converting all my files to MP3. Downloaded a software program called Switch Sound File Converter by NCH Software. Drag and drop all the files you want to convert and click convert.

 

I am one of the beneficiary PiP owner of this exercise by all of you. Especially finding of windows play list as the acceptable playlist format for this Toy Head Units.
Many thanks.

It shows that the OS internally running in the Toy head units are based on Windows, not Linux. I pity Toy with such a legacy but using a non-legacy OS base.

 

This is the first break through... of play list compatibility.. well done bridgebum...

 

Hello, the step by step instructions are very logical and makes sense. However on 2016 Prius it does not work. It seems the usb player on the 2016 Prius ignores the playlist file and plays the songs in alphabetical order.