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PRIUS Gen III USB MP3 play order

Discussion in 'Gen 3 Prius Audio and Electronics' started by foxxyx, Jul 27, 2010.

  1. foxxyx

    foxxyx New Member

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    2010 Prius
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    How to specify play order of Mp3 files played using USB memory drive? thanks,

    Hoe does Prius MP3 player decide play sequence of files from USB memory stick?
    I have noticed that play order is not in sequence by filename or date stamp of the file in a folder.

    I am trying to play Audio book hence sequence is important.
     
    #1 foxxyx, Jul 27, 2010
  2. rokibler

    rokibler Member

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    I think the order is determined by the order that you copied folders/files onto the drive. So the first file you copied plays first, and the last file you copied appears last in the list.

    Yes, it is a very primitive interface.
     
    #2 rokibler, Oct 19, 2010
  3. PlugInPriusUser

    PlugInPriusUser New Member

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    After struggling with my 2012 Plug In Prius USB MP3 player, and trying to figure it out for a few days, I finally nailed it!
    I hope this helps you! I like to play audio books, so this was driving me crazy (pun intended).

    The problem as stated by rokibler above is essentially correct: the order you copy the files onto your USB Memory Stick (drive) is the order it plays them in, but it is more complicated than that. That is true only if the drive has just been formatted. After any files are deleted, folders reorganized, good luck on the order. It wont be what you expect.

    The file system on the USB drive is usually FAT32. This is a primitive file system, BUT THE PLAYER USES THE ORDER OF THE FILES IN THE FAT32 FILE SYSTEM AS THE PLAY ORDER! Windows and most other operating systems hide the actual underlying FAT32 file system order by sorting the files before displaying them. The MP3 player play order is NOT File Name, Create Date, Modify Date, Access Date, or any MP3 TAGS that I can tell.

    SO the best way to fix this is (and it worked great for me):

    1. Rename all of your MP3 files to sort in alphabetical order. If you have multiple books, definitely keep one book per folder, make sure they sort in the right order. You can use Windows to check on this by clicking on the NAME header in the folder in details view. Numeric prefixes are good, but be sure to add leading zeros if you go past 9... otherwise 1 and 11 wind up next to each other... etc. i.e. use 01, 02..09,10,11,...99 OR for sets more than 100 per folder: 001,002...

    2. You can use a utility to reorder the FAT32 system file order to match you alphabetical naming order. Since I have a RaspberryPi (linux) handy, I used a free utility call fatsort (sudo apt-get install fatsort). If you have Windows, a number of place have recommended this utility: . DriveSort from anerty_net, although I have not used this.

    3. check your order: fatsort -l <device> will list the order of your files in the folders. You can make sure it worked.

    Happy listening!
    Rick
     
    #3 PlugInPriusUser, Jan 24, 2019
    kc5dlo likes this.
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