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How do I Organize music on USB flashdrive?

Discussion in 'Gen 3 Prius Audio and Electronics' started by F8L, Mar 24, 2012.

  1. F8L

    F8L Protecting Habitat & AG Lands

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    I tried a search but couldn't really find an answer.

    I have the 2012 NAV and Entune stereo with USB port. My USB flashdrive (32GB) is organized via folders and sub-folders to separate genre and artists much like you would do when organizing music on a computer. My old Kenwood stereo read this format just fine but the Prius stereo just plays tracks based on their numeric filename so that everything with say 01 plays in order then it goes to 02 and so on. Eventually it skips a bunch of music and starts over again so that I will hear repeat tracks well before listening to the entire 3000+ songs on the drive. I have no way of listening to one album from an artist or even switching between genres to find a song I want. I am basically limited to forwarding to the next track or pushing the List button and trying to cycle through all 200+ songs starting with the label 01. :mad:

    I'm sure I am missing something but rather than spend hours trying to re-organize my flashdrive I thought I would see if you guys have found a better solution.

    My old system had a button for changing folders and another button for changing tracks.
     
  2. tach18k

    tach18k Member

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    I'm guess the HU can only see the first 99 songs in each folder. Only set the usb to see one folder per folder, then the song files in each folder. Our computer may drill down into folders, but the HU will not. So have a folder for each 'album' then the songs under that. name each folder for what songs, title, album, but no sub folders. Also clean up the file names, remove the numbers, or you can leave them in order, the HU can not mix and match names, it will only just play files, and not sort like a iPod.
     
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  3. RRxing

    RRxing Senior Member

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    Not sure if this applies to the flash drive, but the following are the CD specs:

    Max Directory Hierarchy - 8 Levels
    Max Length of Folder/File Names - 32 Characters
    Max Number of Folders (Including Root) - 192
    Max Number of Files per Disc - 255
     
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  4. rokibler

    rokibler Member

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    My music is arranged on the thumb drive like this:
    /Artist/Album/Track.

    The HU reads the entire thumb drive and assigns a number to every album in the order that you copied it onto the drive. When you play music from the thumb drive the display gives you the File name (the track name) the Folder name (album) and the Artist name (artist). It also shows you the Folder number and File Number at the top of the display. The folder number is the ordinal number of that album on the drive. The file number is the track number on the album.

    The problem comes in when you want to add a new album to the drive. It will show up as the last album (it will have the highest number). It will not appear alphabetically by artist.

    To get around this problem, whenever I add an album to the drive, I erase the entire drive and copy my entire collection to the drive again. I use a DOS batch file that a friend worked out for me that has these commands in it:

    rem The file jpg.txt contains ".jpg" (no quotes), and the file m4a.txt contains ".m4a"
    echo.
    echo Copies all files in current directory except jpg's and m4a's
    echo alphabetically (by artist) onto target path (Prius thumb drive)
    echo.
    echo It took 41 minutes to copy all 104 artist folders on 12-27-10
    echo It took 37 minutes to copy all 104 artist folders on 05-20-11
    echo It took 43 minutes to copy all 110 folders containing 196 albums in Robs Music on M1330 laptop on 03-23-12
    echo.
    echo sample syntax: batchfilename e:\
    echo.
    echo Start time: %time%
    for /f "delims=;" %%a in ('dir /AD /B /ON') do xcopy /q /y /S /I /exclude:jpg.txt+m4a.txt "%%a\*.*" "%1\%%a"
    echo End time: %time%

    Hope this helps.
     
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  5. F8L

    F8L Protecting Habitat & AG Lands

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    Could I simply erase the drive then add the albums back on in the usual manner of copy and paste to avoid the DOS business?
     
  6. Big Steve

    Big Steve ramblin wreck

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    There are also free utilities for naming/renaming files or batches of files by many kinds of rules as you see fit.

    Away from computer right now so can't look it up.
     
  7. tach18k

    tach18k Member

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    F8L, you could take a few moments and trial and error the system, create a folder and put on song init. go look and see how the Hu sees it. add more and recheck, find how the system reads the drive. Once you see how it all works, then creat it that way. Me, I just create folders of what I want in them. I'm not worried about, other details of songs, just album, or group of songs and the song themselves.
     
  8. JoelIrwin

    JoelIrwin New Member

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    Not sure what changes they made on the 2012 as I have a 2011. On my 11, the flashdrive files are read in the physical order the were written to the flashdrive. The file names and ID tags make no difference to the order. Also as you have seen, there is a 512 file per folder limitation. This is true whether the USB device is a flash drive or external hard disk. Also the screen forward and back buttons like everything else get disabled while the car is moving leaving you to advance forward and backward a track at a time from the steering wheel.

    To order the files through sorting or in any 'playlist' order I want (including the folders), I use a free utility (for Windows) called, "DriveSort". I copy the files to the flashdrive and then use this utility to put them in the physical order I want to get played.
     
  9. rokibler

    rokibler Member

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    When you drag and drop from windows it does not copy folders in alphabetical order. That's what drove me to the DOS solution.

    But Joel Irwin's DriveSort sounds promising.
     
  10. rossodile

    rossodile New Member

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    I just got the Prius 2016 and was unhappy with a radio with no playlists, a 'downgrade' from my previous radio, as far nice person I was concerned. I had organized the USB by folders/categories (male pop, female pop, soundtracks, classical), but there was no way to ACCESS my folders.

    I found a workaround last night!

    I used Windows File Explorer to change the ID3 tags. I added a column, "Genre," which is one of the organizers that the Entune radio uses. Genre is what I changed to folders/categories, and I can now listen to what I want.

    It takes a while to switch the folders, but makes MY driving experience better.