Does anyone know how to change the order of the songs around with the compact flash? I tried putting 1 - , 2 - , 3 -, etc in front but it doesnt work.

 

I think its just the order you put the songs on the card in. ?

 

When you have the card in the computer under view change the way you have it... For some reason this worked for me. Make sure you are sorting by name.... Give it a whirl see if it works.

 

OK, this is frustrating me to no end. I cannot get the song order to display properly when there are many songs in one folder. I've tried number schemes 101 - album - title, 201 - ..., 301 - ... and the order is just jumbled. The files are copied over in bulk. It's ridiculous to think I've got to copy each file of nearly 300 one by one in a particular order. In the PC the files are set to View | Name, although there should be no relevancy to how you view files on a PC and how they show up in the G since this function is strictly related to the operating system.

Has anyone figured out how to get things to work properly? It's a pity this system can't recognize playlists like other auto manufacturers systems do (BMW).

 

hey iko, have you tried opening the page with your song titles, then look in the header and push the "View" tab. In that tab look for "Arrange Icons by" and with the drop down menu up click "Name". If that doesn't work, arrange the icons by "Size" and then press "Name" again. I did that for my CF card and that seemed to work.

 

You mean to tell me that the way you view the files on your PC affects how they are displayed in your car? That makes no sense.

For the record, I do view them by name which has no effect in the car.

I tried breaking them into smaller groups of subfolders. Nearly fixed the problem but still had some files out of order. To make matters worse the car doesn't see folder structures. Everything appears as a base folder in the root.

 

I was trying to figure out if the CF slot would take a type II card (too lazy to walk out and check) when I noticed this in the AV service manual on page 603:

Symptom:
The songs do not play back in the desired order.

Cause:
The playback order is the order in which the files were written by the software, so the files might not play in the desired order.

 

Software is the Windows XP operating system copy/paste. I guess the only way to ensure proper playback is to use a DOS command or copy/paste one by one.

 

Grr...

Tried xcopy command and confirmed the order of the files were copied by piping to a log. The G's CF reader didn't see any files on the card. No data found.

Popped the card back into my PC and all the files were there and played just fine.

 

It looks like xcopy or an underlying API call may be performing some kind of simultaneous copy or other optimization that leads to files being copied out of the order listed. I was able to get a predictable (alphabetical, ascending) order by writing a quick script that copies files to the CF card one by one. I could see that the order was preserved in the G37.

I'm considering just getting an iPod. The CF and CD support for mp3/wmv playback is cool but the limitations, especially the inability to nest subfolders, are pretty annoying. Then again, setting up a CF card would be a one-time deal, at least for me so I might just do this and see if it gets too aggravating. I really don't like iPods and portable music players, I tend to lose/break them or be frustrated by their PC interfaces.

Let me know if you're interested and I'll post/send the script.

Tony

 

Interesting about the xcopy command, I didn't think about that. please post the script.

 

Here's the script I used. It's pretty barebones but it's pretty straightforward to modify, even if you don't have much scripting/programming experience. Works on Vista and XP. Copy the text into a text file ending in .vbs, for example "copy.vbs", change the destination and source folders as needed and then run it from the command prompt using cscript, for example "cscript copy.vbs". As it is, it will set up your CF card in ascending alphabetical order since that's the default order in which the files in the folder object are enumerated. It won't read into folders/subfolders so you'll need to create folders and run it separately for each folder; I could make it descend and copy a single level deep from the starting source folder but I'm not sure if it's worth the trouble. You should also format your CF card before you do this so that it has a clean file table on it. Hope this helps.

Tony
--
Option Explicit

Dim ofso, ofile, ofolder

Dim lngCount

Dim strSrcFld
Dim strDestFld
Dim strDestFile

lngCount = 0

strSrcFld = "D:\car\music"
strDestFld = "F:"

Set ofso = CreateObject("Scripting.FileSystemObject")
Set ofolder = ofso.GetFolder(strSrcFld)
For Each ofile in ofolder.Files
strDestFile = strDestFld & "\" & ofile.Name
WScript.Echo "Copying " & ofile.Name
ofso.CopyFile ofile.Path, strDestFile
lngCount = lngCount + 1
Next
WScript.Echo lngCount & " files copied"
Set ofile = Nothing
Set ofolder = Nothing
Set ofso = Nothing
--

 

much thanks, Tony!

 

I gave this script a chance and it didn't really help much. It doesn't do nested folders. I dump all my xfers into one folder and do a bulk copy/paste so the entire structure is copied.

xcopy would be the perfect command if it didn't cause problems. It seems the only way I've been successful is by copying each folder one at a time. When I drag/drop the nested folders then things get screwy.

 

I didn't bother having the script handle nested folders because the CF throws them all out into the root folder anyway. It's also slow to wait for a bunch of songs to copy over one at a time and then have to re-copy them all if you want to add a song in proper order. Maybe if GregUMR makes any progress with his harddrive mode we can see about tweaking how the embedded OS handles source media. Who knows, maybe there will be some kind of software update that will deal with MP3s in a sensible manner, though that's likely wishful thinking. I'm just going to get an iPod for now and be done with it.

Tony