Can't play songs in order

kubel said:

Are you guys sure it's not sorting by title (not filename)?

Click to expand...

For the audiobooks I've done this to, the title and filename are the same. They still won't play in order.

I've had yet another (mis)adventure with this since my last post. My local library is stocking fewer and fewer CD books, going to mostly downloadable digital now, mostly in OverDive format (but not all). I've downloaded them into OverDrive and tried to save them as mp3 or wma files. The OverDrive program will do this on my desktop computer, and I can play them in Windows Media Player, but Overdrive will not let me export to a USB stick. The WMA files have digital rights management (DRM) protection such that they will only play in certain programs or apps that are DRM enabled. I've tried copying the wma files to the USB stick and playing them in the Leaf, but the player won't recognize them. They have to be decoded on the fly by a DRM player. I found a workaround that is probably illegal, but does work. I installed OverDive on my laptop, downloaded a library audiobook file, and played it on the laptop with Windows Media Player, while plugging the output to my stereo, which pipes its output to my desktop computer sound card where I can record the audio in my audio editing program in real time. I turned the speakers off and just let it run for an hour or so, then stopped the recording and exported the wav file to wma, then transfered this to the USB stick. It works fine, but of course, the big disadvantage is that you have to do it in real time, which may be 15 or 20 hours of recording. For the record, I just did this as a test - a proof of concept, and deleted the file right after I did it (I had already read the book). I could probably buy an iPod or other portable mp3 player with DRM and plug that into the AUX, but that means spending hundreds of bucks for something I have no other use for, and which I would have to keep removing from the car or risk someone breaking in to steal it. I don't know if those things work with the controls in the car or you have to try to manipulate the device touchscreen while driving.

Rat, when is the next book due?

downeykp said:

Rat, when is the next book due?

Click to expand...

It's being proofread now. Expect it in about 4-6 weeks.

I just realize "The playback order is the order in which the files were written by the writing software" literally means that
It's the order the songs are copied onto usb drive, regardless their name or tag. After I delete all my songs then copy them back one by one in the order I want them to be played, songs are played in the desired order. Can anyone confirm if this works for you?

tsowen said:

I just realize "The playback order is the order in which the files were written by the writing software" literally means that
It's the order the songs are copied onto usb drive, regardless their name or tag. After I delete all my songs then copy them back one by one in the order I want them to be played, songs are played in the desired order. Can anyone confirm if this works for you?

Click to expand...

I can "confirm" that it does NOT work for me with audiobooks.

Rat said:

downeykp said:

Rat, when is the next book due?

Click to expand...

It's being proofread now. Expect it in about 4-6 weeks.

Click to expand...

And since then I've written another: Gut Shot. They're all available here: Cliff Knowles Mysteries..

Rat said:

tsowen said:

I just realize "The playback order is the order in which the files were written by the writing software" literally means that
It's the order the songs are copied onto usb drive, regardless their name or tag. After I delete all my songs then copy them back one by one in the order I want them to be played, songs are played in the desired order. Can anyone confirm if this works for you?

Click to expand...

I can "confirm" that it does NOT work for me with audiobooks.

Click to expand...

Mmmmm. Interesting. I have done this multiple times. It always works for me. I am using WIndows 7 to copy files onto my usb drive. What OS you use? Also don't copy a folder or multiple files at the same time. It won't play the order you see in the original location. The only way to work is to copy files one by one.

tsowen said:

Rat said:

tsowen said:

I just realize "The playback order is the order in which the files were written by the writing software" literally means that
It's the order the songs are copied onto usb drive, regardless their name or tag. After I delete all my songs then copy them back one by one in the order I want them to be played, songs are played in the desired order. Can anyone confirm if this works for you?

Click to expand...

I can "confirm" that it does NOT work for me with audiobooks.

Click to expand...

Mmmmm. Interesting. I have done this multiple times. It always works for me. I am using WIndows 7 to copy files onto my usb drive. What OS you use? Also don't copy a folder or multiple files at the same time. It won't play the order you see in the original location. The only way to work is to copy files one by one.

Click to expand...

I have Windows 7 also and when I have tried this I have done so every different way I could think of. Most of my attempts I copied files in bulk, trying variations such naming them different ways, but I have also copied the files one by one into the USB drive, starting with the first track, copied and named in correct order, and when played back they always play in random order even though I am NOT in random mode on the Leaf player. I have only done that once since it is such a pain to sit and hand copy hundreds of files one by one and it didn't work when I tried it. I have also watched the program rip the CDs to the USB drive (or hard drive first before transfer) and the ripping is done in correct order, so the file creation date is in the correct order, but the player still plays them randomly.

(duplicate post from USB Drive organization).
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? For that matter, why doesn't the Leaf manual explain 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.

To elaborate on the above post, some people (e.g., Cliff and Randy) suggested using mp3 earlier in this thread and I said that I had ripped audiobooks to mp3 and still gotten the same random order problem. This was not strictly correct. I had ripped to wma and converted to mp3. I thought that was the same thing then. Now I realize it's not. Apparently it has to go directly from CD to mp3.

My Leaf player stills plays the CDs themselves correctly and that will still be my normal way of playing audiobooks. I use the USB slot for my music and wma (or a mix of wma and usb) seems to work fine there. But now I have the option of being able to finish a library audiobook that I can't renew because someone has a hold on it. I can burn the last couple of CDs to the USB and listen at my leisure.

Bob,

Bob said:

Then I took those same songs and renamed them by adding random numbers in front of the names. So instead of "My Baby.mp3", the name was "01 My Baby.mp3". Sure enough, it sorted the songs by the new number that I gave each song, not the alphabetic name of the song.

Then I took those same songs and renamed them again, this time by adding the words "USB Drive" in front of the name, so "01 My Baby.mp3" became "USB Drive 01 My Baby.mp3". This time, the Clarion played the USB in random order!!!!!

So it appears that the manual is wrong. It doesn't play based on order recorded. It plays based on a sort of the first few characters of the file name, but not the whole name.

Click to expand...

Looks like there was an answer buried deep down here in the forums, but I "discovered" the same thing on my own today. Repost from another thread,

http://mynissanleaf.com/viewtopic.php?f=36&t=21575
I drive a 2015 Leaf SV, and today... I stumbled onto a solution (at least for me)!!

I have many MP3 albums, always sorted by "Artist - ## - Title.mp3" which has never worked for me on a USB drive in my car. However, I recently added an album from my brother which was titled "##-artist - title.mp3" and that one folder played in correct order while all the others were still jumbled beyond recognition.

So I began sorting other folders with the same "## - Title.mp3" naming scheme... and it worked. I tried several folders, even a folder filled with NPR podcasts with nonsense file names, but as long as they have the ## prefix, they appear in order in the car. It seems the car actually CAN read files in order, just that it can't read the file name unless it STARTS with the organized file/track numbers.

Here is the folder from my computer,


Here is the dashboard in the car,


Let me know if anyone else tries this, and finds that it works for them as well.

I went through a lot of this, but then someone here gave me the idea to plug in an iPod. I had an old iPod Touch around, and plugged it in.

The interface with that is much better. You can choose albums or artists, and more importantly, you can set up playlists.

So, consider buying a used iPod, even one that's broken. For example, this one works, but has a broken screen:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Apple-iPod-Touch-2nd-Generation-8-GB-Works-But-Screen-Fracture-1A-/262446449601?hash=item3d1b0703c1:g:Ju4AAOSwd2xXPyJ-

I leave my iPod Touch plugged in and off. It works great. I put the device and cord in a black sock so someone won't break into the car to steal it.

Thanks all for this thread!

I have some long audiobooks, and my problem was that I couldn't seek within an MP3, which is a real pain if I'm switching between cars. Yes, using my phone would be the "right" solution, but I prefer to use the flash sticks. So I used ffmpeg to split the books into 5-minute MP3 files, making it easy to get to within five minutes of where I left off in the other car. Everything was sorted nicely for a while, but then I set up a new stick and everything fell apart. I assumed it was due to the raw file order, so I tried fixing that, and it didn't help. The key as explained in one of the posts above is that the car is sorting the tracks by name, but it's only using the first 8 characters of the file name. They're probably using the Quicksort algorithm, which does not preserve the order for equal entries, so it essentially randomized my files when the sequence number wasn't in the first 8 characters.

Stripping off the part of the file names that was redundant with the directory names solved the problem, as that left the sequence number at the start.

Every car MP3 player seems to have weird limits, glitches, and misbehaviors. The key is to learn to understand and work with the quirks.