I actually used MP3tag lots of years ago! But today I am again a newbie.
I have some mp3 audiobooks that I put on a SD card to play in my car. The folder they are in are in order 1-2-3 etc ... But when they play they are not in order! I did remember Mp3tag could help me with that - I'm just not sure what my next step is to make sure they play in sequence.
Here is the image of how it looks on my computer:
It is hard to tell with just the filenames. Is there any other order you can tell from how your car system plays them back? Alphabetical by title perhaps? Sometimes car systems are extremely basic when playing audio from SD or USB devices and simply even play in the order of the time written to the device.
This is likely the case. I have an older (2012) car stereo that plays from a USB drive, but will play in the order the files are written to the USB drive. This order is effectively random, from a listener's point of view. I believe this is a limitation of the FAT drive formatting; your car may recognize the SD card if it's formatted NTFS or something else, but it may not. Mine doesn't.
My solution is to use a freeware called DriveSort. This will rewrite the file allocation table (which is where FAT gets its name) in the order you have selected, usually alphabetical/alphanumerical. It's portable, meaning you don't have to install it - just download the executable, put it in a logical spot so you can find it later, and run the executable.
There are other utilities available to do the same thing; this was the first one I tried and it worked, so I stopped looking.
Very helpful, thanks for sharing.
Another that has an option to sort the FAT32 table after syncing is TuneFusion by dbPoweramp. It is specifically designed to work with audio files and can set up transferring files from your library in many ways. YMMV
If you want to do it without any additional tools, then it would be worthwhile to try the following:
In many cases the files now get copied in the sorted order to the SD card.
This would be the ideal scenario. Unfortunately the Windows environment doesn't always behave that way. It boils down to the FAT32 table and is not dependably managed this way. Other than software like the above options resorting to a refresh of the table contents after the files have been written, the only other way is to manually manage the write order by individually copying each file one at a time, in the order you wish.
It would be so much better if these basic car radio designs would at least get some level of library management by the tags rather than simple filenames and their basic elements.
I opened the sd card in the car and it is totally out of sequence. However when I open the sd card on my computer it is in sequence!?
Images above are the file from the sd card as seen on my computer
Next one is the original file from my computer
Here is the images when the sd card is opened in my car
Totally out of order. Is there something I can do with mp3tag to get these in order or do I need to use another program??
It looks to me as if the player uses the TITLE to sort. At lease that looks like an alphabetic order to me.
So now it would be interesting to see which tag fields you have filled - only the TITLE?
If you get the files in the correct order, it would be worth a try to fill the field TRACK - perhaps with the help of the track numbering wizard Ctrl-K
On my computer I can see a track # - I probably used mp3tag on this years ago. But when transferred to the sd card - though they were in order the track # is gone. And in the car - they did not show up in order - it looks like the car uses alphabetical order.
It does look like the car uses alphabetical order. And it uses the filename not the title. I opened the sd card on my computer and renamed each filename by adding the appropriate letter - A- B- etc to each filename.
It now works in order in the car. BUT I have many of these to do. Is there an easier, more automated way to do them?
If the car stereo uses the TITLE and sorts it alphabetically, then you could add the data from TRACK to get the numbers in front:
Use Convert>Tag-Tag for TITLE
Format string: $num(%track%,2) _ %title%
Looking at the picture taken fro the car - what happens if you use the category "Songs"?
You showed us the filenames which start with numbers - so they should sort alphabetically already ...
Which leaves me puzzled: which data does the car player really use to sort?
