USB drive organization

My Nissan Leaf Forum

Help Support My Nissan Leaf Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
So here's a new one. I listen to a lot of audiobooks in the car. Usually I use CDs from the library, but increasingly the library does not stock the CD version, only a digital version using a program called OverDrive. It was a bit of a pain to install the program and figure out how to use it at first. It is designed to install onto an iPod or mp3 player of some kind. It won't save the files onto the hard drive of the computer, which was my first choice since I don't have one of those or a smart phone. I found I could get it to download onto a USB flash drive, though. The first time I did that I tried playing that in the car and even though I was in normal mode, not random, it played the files out of order. Apparently it did not install them physically in the same order as they downloaded them, I guess, or the operating system put them in different places. I copied them from the USB back onto the hard drive, deleted the USB copies and all other files on that device, then recopied the files by ordering/sorting the directory in correct numerical order then highlighted it all and copied to the USB again. That still didn't work. Apparently the computer did not copy in the order listed and they ended up in somewhat random order on the USB stick. I deleted those and did it a second time, copying the files one by one to an empty folder in correct order. That still doesn't work. The files are all there and play just fine, but they are not displayed or played in correct order. They do play in the order shown on the screen and they are named correctly (Section 1, Section 2, etc.) so that if they were played by name order they would play correctly, but the Leaf system does not have a way to direct the player to do that. Does anyone know how to force the player to consider "Normal" to be in alphabetical order? Is there a way to copy the files to the USB drive and force the OS (Win 7) or OverDrive to put the files in that order physically, which I think may be the problem? Of course I can just push the on screen button for the next file in sequence when it goes off order, but that's not always immediately apparent since the books often jump from one scene to another, and in any event it is distracting. Sometimes I also hear "spoiler" information before I realize it is out of order again.
 
Rat said:
The files are all there and play just fine, but they are not displayed or played in correct order. .

Iirc, there's a setting on the head unit to either play the files sequentially, or randomly. Sounds like maybe yours is set to random?
 
Nubo said:
Rat said:
The files are all there and play just fine, but they are not displayed or played in correct order. .

Iirc, there's a setting on the head unit to either play the files sequentially, or randomly. Sounds like maybe yours is set to random?

No, it's set to "normal" which is sequential. I made sure of that. I play my music in random order, but when I first loaded on an audiobook instead of music I made sure to change it, and I've checked it more than once since. Also, it always displays the files in the same order and plays them in the order shown. It does not do that when set to Random. In fact, the files are semi-sequential. They are something like Section 8, Section 9, Section 10, Section 1, Section 2, Section 3, Section 4, Section 11, Section 12, etc. I think it must have something to do with the way the computer orders files when copying them to the USB, or how the file index table of the USB is written, but I don't know how to change that. With a music player on my computer, Windows Media Player for example, I can sort the files any way I want - by name, date, size, etc. - and play them in the order shown. I don't see any way to do that with the Leaf's system.
 
Not sure of the collating sequence. You might try eliminating the spaces, and also be consistent in the numeric part.

I.e., instead of "section 1"....."section 9" ..."section 10",

section01
section02
section03
.
.
.
section10
section11
.
.
.
 
Nubo, I do appreciate the suggestions, but I don't have much hope that will work. The files are named automatically by the OverDrive program at the time of download. I would have to manually change them all, which is not a big deal, but I already know from having renamed some files on my other USB stick (music files, usually done because I have two versions of the same song), the Leaf player doesn't reorder them when playing in normal order, even if they are now out of alphabetical order. Another reason this is frustrating is that with my music files, I originally sorted my songs on my hard drive in alphabetical order for each of the three folders and then transferred them to the USB stick. The display in the Leaf came up in that same order and will always play in that order if I don't go to random. That's what I wanted, and it makes it easy to find a specific song out of the hundreds in the folder. That's why I thought it would do the same thing with the audiobook flies, but it doesn't. Maybe it's because the files are so much larger. The OverDrive program creates one file (called a section) for each CD, somewhere around 60 - 70 minutes long. If I want to select a spot, I can only choose a Section and it will start playing at the beginning of that section, i.e. like at the very beginning of the CD. It's a royal pain to try to fast forward to the right spot if I want somewhere in the middle, which is why I don't want to pull the USB stick out to rename anything. It loses my current spot if I do that. That's different from what you see if you actually insert a CD. Typically each CD has dozens of files, or tracks, each only 2 or 3 minutes long. Some split the audio in 99 tracks, each 30 - 45 seconds long. It's very easy to select your exact starting point on those. I know this is a first world problem here, but it seems like this is a simple problem in the software of the Leaf's player. Why not just allow it to play in alphabetical or numerical order?
 
I've had the same problem with audio books. I suspected it may be due to the part number being at the end. I edited the names of the files and put the part number at the front, then the LEAF played them in order.
 
larrycookjr said:
I've had the same problem with audio books. I suspected it may be due to the part number being at the end. I edited the names of the files and put the part number at the front, then the LEAF played them in order.
I'll try renaming them yet again.
 
I have a 2013 SL, and have been frustrated by the USB drive organization for a while, so after reading this thread, I did some testing yesterday, and I think the 2013 works a bit differently than the 2011 or 2012, at least according to how this thread describes the functionality.

Here is what I found out - the 2013 organizes folders alphabetically, but based on the parent folder not necessarily the folder where the music resides. However, the Leaf only displays the folder names of the folders that actually hold music.

Here is what I mean - most software I've come across rips music such that there is a folder with the band name, and inside that folder is another folder with the album name, and inside that folder are the individual tracks on the album. What the Leaf does in this example is display the album names in a list (because those are the folders where the music resides), but orders the albums alphabetically based on the band names (because those are the 'parent' folders).

So, let's say you have the following on your SD card:

Band: Elephants, Album: Zoo Animals
Band: Zebras, Album: At The Zoo

Where your folder structure is this:

Elephants/Zoo Animals/Tracks on the Album
Zebras/At The Zoo/Tracks on the Album

The 2013 Leaf will display those like this:

1 Zoo Animals
2 At the Zoo

It does this based on the parent folder for both of these albums - Elephants and Zebras, because E is before Z - regardless of the name of the album and regardless of what order the folders (or tracks) were written on the SD card.
 
karma said:
I stick my USB drive into my Leaf and all I get is an error. Does it not read .wav files?
No, it doesn't read .wav files. Only mp3 and wma. That's in the manual. You'll have to convert them to use the USB option. If you have a phone or music player that plays wav files and has the right output cable you can use the auxiliary jack (at least I think you can, but I don't have one).
 
I have a studio and software that lets me make any kind of file I want but I prefer .wav files and this makes no sense whatsoever. If my thumb drive holds the .wav file why should the Leaf care if it's a .wav, mp3, or wma since it's not taking any internal space? Way to dumb down the quality on one hand while offering a Bose stereo upgrade on the other. Even a 320k mp3 is only about a quarter size of a .wav file so you can imagine the depth and saturation you are losing.
 
^^^
It cares because someone has to write the software (or create the hardware) to decode and play the file format in question along w/various codecs that can be associated w/that extension (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Media_Audio#Codecs" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;, for example).
 
karma said:
... why should the Leaf care if it's a .wav, mp3, or wma ...
Because the folks who wrote the software in the headend restricted it so. Why? Maybe they had to acquire an extra software license (although since it supports, WMA, you would think that it would be included). These are the same folks who apparently made it sort based upon DOS short-names. They probably had a spec that said what it should support and then only enabled those containers and codecs.

Here's a suggestion: Try to rename a file from .wav to .wmv and see if it shows up and plays. The codec might be in there, and the player might be able to play it, but the interface might only show (and allow selection of) files with "known" extensions. I believe I saw somewhere that the system is based upon Windows Embedded, but it might still use something that dynamic detects content type (rather than being driven by file extension).
 
karma said:
so you can imagine the depth and saturation you are losing.
Most people really can't tell the difference. Most car audio systems make the difference even less discernible.

In particular, the speakers in the Leaf seem worse than most other cars. I have the Bose system and nothing sounds decent. These are MP3s I ripped myself that sound rich and wonderful on my 12-year-old Passat Monsoon system. I even tried the original CD of the MP3 files I fed it and both sounded equally terrible.
 
Solved! Finally!
Today I played an audiobook ripped from a CD and copied onto my USB drive and the tracks played in correct order for the first time after years of trying. I did one thing different this time which seems to make the difference: I ripped to mp3 format instead of wma format. This gives credence to those who thought it was the ID3 tags that determine the order.

I had tried converting wav or wma files to mp3 before, and they still wouldn't play in order. I would guess that's because the ID3 info wasn't in the original wav or wma files. So I ripped directly from the CDs to mp3 this time and checked the properties and there are many ID3 tags shown, including one labeled #. I think that must be the one used by the Leaf player.

So why didn't I ever try this before? I didn't know how. I'd always used Windows Media Player to do the ripping and the mp3 option wasn't there. WMA was, and that's the only other format the Leaf player can play, so I used it. I never knew that you had to download the LAME codec from sourceforge or elsewhere. Apparently due to copyright or patent issues programs like Windows Media Player and Audacity can't include that codec in their programs. I had a good audio editing program (WaveLab LE) and never felt the need to download Audacity, but recently someone mentioned a feature that Audacity had that my program didn't, so I installed it. I checked to see if it could save a file as an mp3 and it couldn't, but when I looked in the help file I discovered the informational statement about downloading the codec from LAME in order to get that functionality. So I installed that codec and found that Audacity, Windows Media Player, and Wavelab can all now save in mp3 format! Why didn't those other two programs tell me to do that? It never made any difference for music since I always play that in random order anyway. I've never been able to tell the difference in sound quality between wma and mp3 even on my home stereo system with a good amp and speakers, so it just didn't matter.

I don't know why the Leaf player can't use the file names or dates for wma files, but it still plays those in random order when it's audiobooks. For music files, in Normal mode it does play in alphabetical order by file name. I don't know why that doesn't work with audiobook wma files. I'm going to post this in the thread "Can't play songs in order" too, since the same discussion has taken place there.
 
Good to know, and explains why I never had a problem: I haven't done "wma" for years and only play "mp3" (with ID3 tags). Glad you figured it out!
 
I also found out something. I listen to a lot of Audio books myself so they have to be in order. I have all MP3's. They were named as such:

Folder: Christopher Paolini 1 Eragon
Files: Eragon 001.mp3 - Eragon 125.mp3

Folder: Christopher Paolini 2 Eldest
Files: Eldest 001.mp3 - Eldest 125.mp3

The interface would put the second folder before the first and the files would be in what looked like a random order. I had the track numbers in order, did a mass modify to make sure the modify dates were in order, deleted from the flash drive and recopied. None of that helped. But when I changed it so the number was not in the middle or end everything comes up in order now

Folder: 1 Christopher Paolini - Eragon
Files: 001 Eragon.mp3 - 125 Eragon.mp3

Folder: 2 Christopher Paolini - Eldest
Files: 001 Eldest.mp3 - 125 Eldest.mp3

I tried this with just a few of the folders out of order and files out of order to make sure it was going to work. Now I can rename the rest in the same fashion and all should be right again.

BTW: I used the program "Advanced Renamer" for doing the mass rename of the files. Works nicely as you can give it a format to use like "Increment title".
 
I might have missed this point.. but what disk file system format does LEAF read from USB hard drive? NTFS? FAT32?

Then I just format that for my USB drive and copy in MP3 files to use?
 
be236 said:
I might have missed this point.. but what disk file system format does LEAF read from USB hard drive? NTFS? FAT32?

Then I just format that for my USB drive and copy in MP3 files to use?

FAT32. You may need to do some file name editing if you want a certain order (mentioned above), but that's basically it. I typically group things by folder...which are also read in alphabetical order.
 
Back
Top