USB drive organization

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Randy said:
Nissan / Clarion really need to produce a software update that respects the track number tags and plays them in order that way....

It's not just Nissan / Clarion. I have the same issue in my home with DirecTV and PS3. I have NAS (Network Attached Storage) with all my music on it. The UI on these devices ignores the track #. I've have to add the track# to the name. I think the programmers have never listen to an entire album. They are from the iPod shuffle generation. It's a real PIA especially when the track numbers are significant e.g. Side II of Abbey Road or The Who's Tommy.
 
jcesare said:
I think the programmers have never listen to an entire album. They are from the iPod shuffle generation.
Well, then the problem is that they are letting the programmers decide how it should work.

I don't remember playing through XBox 360 - but my guess is ut uses Zune and will play by track # (or shuffle etc).
 
turbo2ltr said:
much to my dismay, is that if I skip a track with the steering wheel controls while in the shuffle all mode, it skips to the next track in the folder that contains the currently playing song, not the next random song. I consider this a bug.
I just found this too and I agree that it is a bug.

I just had the Leaf mess up my flash drive. I pulled it out mid-song (USB is fully hot pluggable), then when I put it in the computer, it said the drive needed to be formatted. :cry:

There goes the hours I spent selecting what music to put on the drive for my driving music.
 
Most of my music on my flash drive was in .wav format. I spent all afternoon reformatting it in WMA. I will make sure to save a copy on my hard drive so that if it gets messed up by the Leaf I can just copy it all back again.
 
evnow said:
All this means that Leaf doesn't use the media portion of Windows Automotive. May be they will have time to incorporate that in MY2012.

It seems not.

In my 2012, USB operation appears to be identical to what I've seen described earlier in this thread. There is no shuffle (a future feature I'm sure, rather than a bug), and apparently no use of MP3 metadata.

I've organized a 512MB thumb drive into
root > artist > album > song and
root > podcast > episode

This works well enough, but since metadata is not used, there is no indication of how long a track might be. For podcasts, a "song" is often >30 minutes. There doesn't seem to be a way to fast-forward or back-up within a song. Another future feature for a very stupid player I'm afraid.

When I plugged my android phone into the USB port, I was expecting only to be able to charge the battery, but I got more. The file structure containing MP3s was read out and displayed/played just like the thumbdrive.
 
blorg said:
Has anyone really identified the play order that it does by default on a USB drive? Manual says that it plays in the order that the files were put onto the drive, but I'm seeing it playing by file name order. I'm not sure if that's just how my software ended up copying it, so it happens to be the same either way or not.
The files seem to be played in alpha-numeric filename order. But then, I wrote the entire album to the thumb drive in one shot. Albums were written out of order, but are displayed/played in foldername order.

I got in the habit long ago to precede song names with 2-digit track numbers for this very reason.

What are other people doing to work around this, other than going the ipod route?
I don't think a workaround is possible. Everything I've seen suggests the filestructure dictates playback order.
 
After seven months of ownership I now have a different perspective on this. First, the shuffle feature works just fine, although, as noted, if you flip the lever on the steering wheel to the next song, it's always the next one in the same folder. I have found that it does skip to each of my three folders randomly. It seemed to skip randomly from song to song also, but now I don't think it does. I've found that there are many songs that are played quite often and some, in fact a large block of cuts, that have never been played.

Early in this thread it was stated that the USB drive had a limit of 510 files. According to the spec chart on p. 4-8 of the navigation system manual the CD has this limit but the USB can go to 8000 files, as long as each folder does not exceed 255 files. Mine all have < 255 files, yet the first folder I put on the drive, Rock, seems to play all the songs randomly, the second folder (miscellaneous) does fairly well but misses some, and the last, Folk & Classical, plays a very limited selection of songs, or so it seems. It is as though the file system grabs all of the songs from the first folder, and some from the next 2, but stops after a limited number and only plays those, rather than going back onto the USB drive and randomly choosing from all ~220 songs in a particular folder. Of course I haven't done a scientific controlled study to verify my impression, but I was wondering if others have experienced this? Any theories or recommendations on how to get it to play the whole range (without having to play 10-20 string quartets in a row)?
 
I use a 4GB thumb drive. I've already filtered all of my music files (wav, mp3, ogg, flac) using EasyTag, a compilation and general purpose swiss knife application which runs on Linux. Then I take the 3500+ music files and shotgun them into the stick drive using Brasero, another Linux all-purpose audio player which I can have randomize tracks. I've got about 225 hours that way.

The left hand pickle shift on the wheel take some practice since in my case I have gone from stick drive to bluetooth to Sirus and there are 3 Sirus folders each with a number of "stations" inside of each; then on to the FM and AM radio in a big circle. It has only been in the last few days that I discovered pressing the pickle at the same time as pulling or pushing it.

The screen display is OK, I suppose, but I am always hitting the mode button. The titles and artists are a PITA, but after re-writing the thunb drive a couple of times I got it set to the correct sequence.

I would like to be able to have a meta-pickle or something to trigger a paradigm shift between Insane Clown Posse tracks and Verdi's Operas.

Dave
 
In my 2012, the mp3 tags do show correctly, but only on some of the songs. I've been doing some testing and troubleshooting. I have around 8GB worth of songs on a 16GB USB drive. When I checked on my computer into the properties on songs that displayed correctly vs. ones that didn't the significant item that seemed to be different was the "encoded by" field. Because of the lengthy time period (measured in years) of accumulating this library, this field could contain: iTunes n.n.n.n (where n.n.n.n is a version number), nothing at all, or possibly some other value. At first I thought only the ones with recent versions of iTunes listed in that field were the working ones, but now I'm not sure. It seems the simple act of modifying that field, and nothing else, from the Windows 7 file explorer, makes the tags readable by the Leaf. It doesn't seem to matter what you put in there, even putting nothing seems to work. I wonder if there is some slight unseen difference in how Windows 7 saves the tags vs. other applications within Windows or earlier versions of Windows like Windows XP.

In any case, I think I know how to get them all to read correctly now although the process may be quite time consuming.
 
relytgerg said:
It seems the simple act of modifying that field, and nothing else, from the Windows 7 file explorer, makes the tags readable by the Leaf. It doesn't seem to matter what you put in there, even putting nothing seems to work. I wonder if there is some slight unseen difference in how Windows 7 saves the tags vs. other applications within Windows or earlier versions of Windows like Windows XP.

In any case, I think I know how to get them all to read correctly now although the process may be quite time consuming.
Possibly the verison of the MP3 tag format the tag is saved with. I'm assuming that Windows rewrites it with the latest version if you touch anything... I think the MP3tag program lets you make a column in its listing which shows the tag version. Let me know what you find.
 
tps said:
Possibly the verison of the MP3 tag format the tag is saved with. I'm assuming that Windows rewrites it with the latest version if you touch anything... I think the MP3tag program lets you make a column in its listing which shows the tag version. Let me know what you find.
Thanks tps! You're right - Sort of. It's not how current the tag version is, but it is the tag version. All the songs that the Leaf won't properly display are listed by the MP3tag program as "!BAD ID3v2". Curiously, the Windows 7 Explorer view shows valid info in all fields even before modifying info, but the MP3tag program shows nothing in the tag fields. I'm 99% sure these are all songs that were directly ripped from CD to MP3 by iTunes. Unfortunately, it still looks like the fastest way to fix them all is to do it from Windows 7 Explorer and touch the tag properties for each song. I can do this an album at a time pretty quickly. I'd sure love to find a way to do it for all the songs at once.
 
I've confirmed iTunes as the source of the problem. I ripped a brand new CD to files last night, and copied the files to my USB drive. As expected, the Leaf doesn't show them correctly. I'm sure once I go in and "touch" the MP3 tags from Windows, things will be fine. Although Apple makes wonderful and easy to use products, many of which I've owned and enjoyed, I have run into issues with them not following accepted industry standards before. This looks like another case.

At least I know what to do from now on.
 
What software do you all use to organize your folders on the USB drive ?
My music collection was all in iTunes in Apple Lossless format. About 230 GB in all, all from legally purchased CDs, roughly 700 of them.
I let iTunes convert all them to 15651 MP3 192 kbps, which took about a day on the Bulldozer.
I then did an XCOPY x:\itunes\*.mp3 /S to my USB drive, copying the iTunes folder and preserving its structure.

The files still didn't fit on the 64 GB stick. I could fit them all by re-encoding at 128 kbps, or by getting a 128 GB stick.
But I ran into big problems with the directory limit and file limit on the Leaf.
Supposedly there are 512 folders and 8000 files supported as long as folders don't exceed 255 files. I know that none do.
But it turns out only 198 folders are shown in the list. It appears that all the intermediate empty folders are being counted against the 512 folder limit.

I should be able to write a script to remove the directory structure and make all the folders top-level so that more folders are displayed.
Even if I do that, I will still run out of folders.

There may be a few things I can do in iTunes like consolidate CDs that are part of a set into one album, which would reduce the number of folders. But I still don't think that will get me to under 512 folders.
Even if it could, I will hit the 8000 file limit next.

Are there programs that can consolidate individual songs in a folder to reduce the number of files in order to work within the Leaf limitations ?
 
madbrain said:
... There may be a few things I can do in iTunes like consolidate CDs that are part of a set into one album, which would reduce the number of folders. But I still don't think that will get me to under 512 folders.
Even if it could, I will hit the 8000 file limit next. ...
I'd suggest splitting your collection onto TWO USB drives. They're cheap, after all. How much music can you listen to in one trip considering the LEAF's range limits, anyway? If you absolutely MUST have your whole collection at your fingertips, a more expensive, but better solution would be to get a 160GB iPod classic. Your whole collection will fit, maybe even in lossless format, and it doesn't suffer from the same limitations. It's also directly supported by iTunes for syncing. You would not want to leave it in the car exposed to high heat when parking, so you will need to remember to unplug and take it away when parked in the sun.

I will warn you that the LEAF's interface is slow and clunky when navigation a large collection, no matter which storage medium. So much so that I mostly don't use my iPod, and use my phone and Bluetooth for music, instead.
 
henrysunset said:
Is a USB (spinning) Hard Drive supported?
I don't know the answer to this, but it's an interesting question. I have some USB drives (RAM, not spinning hard drives) on my desktops. I store most of my music there due to limited space on my C drive. The problem with using one of those, I would guess, is organizing the folders correctly. The Leaf imposes a limit of 255 file per folder/directory, as I recall. I have mine in three separate folders by genre, but those are all close to max now. I may have to create a fourth folder on the USB drive. If it works with your hard drive, i would expect you'd have to make sure your music does not exceed the folder limits or some files will not be read/played.
 
davewill,

davewill said:
madbrain said:
... There may be a few things I can do in iTunes like consolidate CDs that are part of a set into one album, which would reduce the number of folders. But I still don't think that will get me to under 512 folders.
Even if it could, I will hit the 8000 file limit next. ...
I'd suggest splitting your collection onto TWO USB drives. They're cheap, after all. How much music can you listen to in one trip considering the LEAF's range limits, anyway? If you absolutely MUST have your whole collection at your fingertips, a more expensive, but better solution would be to get a 160GB iPod classic. Your whole collection will fit, maybe even in lossless format, and it doesn't suffer from the same limitations. It's also directly supported by iTunes for syncing. You would not want to leave it in the car exposed to high heat when parking, so you will need to remember to unplug and take it away when parked in the sun.

I will warn you that the LEAF's interface is slow and clunky when navigation a large collection, no matter which storage medium. So much so that I mostly don't use my iPod, and use my phone and Bluetooth for music, instead.


I know I can only do so much driving with the Leaf, but the point is to be able to choose which disc from collection I want to play. In lossless format, the collection takes about 300GB, so even a 160GB iPod classic would not work.

Is it actually possible to play lossless files on the Leaf using the iPod ? Or via Bluetooth ?
Of course, my phone isn't going to fit 300GB either, at least not my current phone which won't take micro SDXC cards. I haven't seen any micro SDXC cards beyond 64GB size, also.

I would rather not buy an iPod. I find the phone interface to be unsafe for use in the car. I really want to use the big screen in the car. The interface is somewhat limited indeed. But if it showed all the folders and all the files, it would be a lot more manageable.
 
I got tired of the entertainment system becoming confused as it read files crossing the 2GB mark (I have 3.5GB of MP3s on an 8GB drive). Sometimes, the system becomes so confused that it also corrupts the drive - only a format and rewriting the drive corrects this.

I got so tired of this, I finally contacted Nissan via chat to see if there was an update to the system. My symptom was this "When reading a USB flash drive larger than 2GB, the system becomes confused, often corrupting the flash drive."

The response was
"I see an open campaign for your [2012] LEAF. The Campaign number is RC-3387909. The TSB number is: NTB13-061. It's for reprogramming, just as you thought!"
 
brettcgb said:
The Campaign number is RC-3387909. The TSB number is: NTB13-061.
This is the LBC (Battery Controller) reprogram. It does not affect the head unit. Apparently the only way to update the software on the head unit is via SD card from Clarion, and as far as I know there is no updates (yet) for all the bugs.

I've found not only does the shuffle function on USB not randomize well, and the skip track goes to next song rather than random, but it also randomly "forgets" it's in shuffle mode and goes back to sequential sometimes.

-Phil
 
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