Swagman
January 4th, 2013, 05:32 PM
I have been having trouble with MP3’s not in order on my Pioneer head unit.
I've had to copy the files one at a time if I wanted them in to play in turn on my playlist
Turns out this isn’t limited to just Pioneer. Here’s an explanation I found...
Problem: Many MP3 players that are based on USB flash drives don't allow you to sort the MP3 files in the order you want to listen to them.
Instead they play the MP3 files in the order they find them; usually the order you copied them to the flash drive. How do we re-order the files?
Background: In the old DOS days Norton Utilities provided a tool called DS (Directory Sort) that would re-arrange the order of files in the FAT (File Allocation Table) directory structure. This was useful because many programs would only display or process files in the order they found them; they wouldn't allow you to sort the files. With the advent of Windows the need for DS was reduced as Windows usually sorts filenames before displaying them (i.e. in Explorer or the Windows file selector dialog box).
Many modern MP3 players are based on USB flash drives (i.e. Creative's MuVo range of MP3 players). These devices don't allow you to sort the MP3 files in the order you want to listen to them.
Instead they play the MP3 files in the order they find them; usually the order you copied them to the flash drive. Unfortunately if you select a bunch of files in Windows' Explorer and copy them to your MP3 player, they don't always copy in alphabetical order (even if you have told Explorer to display the files alphabetically). And of course you may want to add new MP3 files at a latter date, which will result in them being added to the end of the directory.
Norton's old DS utilities was designed for FAT16 drives and so won't work with newer drives that are FAT32. The addition of long file names (VFAT) further complicates matters. Duncan Murdoch wrote a utility called LFNSORT which went some way to addressing the problems with Norton's DS not working with newer file systems, but unfortunately LFNSORT doesn't work with newer versions of Windows (i.e. Windows 2000 and later).
Early versions of the Windows Defrag tool would also re-sort the directory, but this ability seems to have been removed from newer versions.
Ok.. So this wasn't with USB but with SD Card but the problem still exists.
I was pointed to DriveSort but it is a Windows app.
I have Wine & Crossover installed but sod all happened when I tried to run it !
So I was forced to sully myself and use a Windows machine (I'm now going to have to go round proclaiming "Unclean, Unclean" for a month of Sundays) to use this program.
It works !!
So, in future, Rather than contaminate my delicate little Pysch Is there a linux equivalent ?
I wish I could code coz I'd have a crack at it myself.
http://www.anerty.net/software/file/DriveSort/
I've had to copy the files one at a time if I wanted them in to play in turn on my playlist
Turns out this isn’t limited to just Pioneer. Here’s an explanation I found...
Problem: Many MP3 players that are based on USB flash drives don't allow you to sort the MP3 files in the order you want to listen to them.
Instead they play the MP3 files in the order they find them; usually the order you copied them to the flash drive. How do we re-order the files?
Background: In the old DOS days Norton Utilities provided a tool called DS (Directory Sort) that would re-arrange the order of files in the FAT (File Allocation Table) directory structure. This was useful because many programs would only display or process files in the order they found them; they wouldn't allow you to sort the files. With the advent of Windows the need for DS was reduced as Windows usually sorts filenames before displaying them (i.e. in Explorer or the Windows file selector dialog box).
Many modern MP3 players are based on USB flash drives (i.e. Creative's MuVo range of MP3 players). These devices don't allow you to sort the MP3 files in the order you want to listen to them.
Instead they play the MP3 files in the order they find them; usually the order you copied them to the flash drive. Unfortunately if you select a bunch of files in Windows' Explorer and copy them to your MP3 player, they don't always copy in alphabetical order (even if you have told Explorer to display the files alphabetically). And of course you may want to add new MP3 files at a latter date, which will result in them being added to the end of the directory.
Norton's old DS utilities was designed for FAT16 drives and so won't work with newer drives that are FAT32. The addition of long file names (VFAT) further complicates matters. Duncan Murdoch wrote a utility called LFNSORT which went some way to addressing the problems with Norton's DS not working with newer file systems, but unfortunately LFNSORT doesn't work with newer versions of Windows (i.e. Windows 2000 and later).
Early versions of the Windows Defrag tool would also re-sort the directory, but this ability seems to have been removed from newer versions.
Ok.. So this wasn't with USB but with SD Card but the problem still exists.
I was pointed to DriveSort but it is a Windows app.
I have Wine & Crossover installed but sod all happened when I tried to run it !
So I was forced to sully myself and use a Windows machine (I'm now going to have to go round proclaiming "Unclean, Unclean" for a month of Sundays) to use this program.
It works !!
So, in future, Rather than contaminate my delicate little Pysch Is there a linux equivalent ?
I wish I could code coz I'd have a crack at it myself.
http://www.anerty.net/software/file/DriveSort/