Folder layout for music on usb

[lininjim]

We have just taken delivery of a 2016 Excel Touring and it comes with the Toyota Touch® 2 with Go Plus navigation system. As it replaced our 2014 Auris Excel a lot was familiar but I wanted to avoid the issues that I had with the old car. Due to my lack of knowledge, most likely, I found that reading albums and the like from a usb stick was a bit hit and miss in it recognising albums.
I usually ended up with a list of tracks rather than them being organised into albums, I couldn't choose albums and have it play just that album.

I am primarily using a mac to input the music onto the usb but I also have access to Windows, if that would make a difference.

Is there any specific format or ordering I should adhere to when putting albums onto the usb, a way that would ensure the usb stick looked like it was full of albums rather than hundreds of tracks?

[Bemused2]

The Touch2 on the Yaris has been the subject of much discussion, mostly in regards to playing tracks/albums from a usb. Not sure if your unit is the same. If it is the system has an annoying habit of not playing albums in sequence, and when returning to the player after leaving the car, playing just one track of an album on repeat.

You could use Windows Media Player to transfer albums across to your usb. Having done that you will still have problems selecting songs or albums to play in an ordered manner.. I just put it on random songs which cuts out a lot of the hassle.

[lininjim]

This new unit seems a little more receptive to folders, time will tell on a long journey I suppose. Thank you.

[Wayne2015]

Not sure similar issues I have with my Auris Gen 1

Ordering of the MP3 S are random and folder names too :(

 

In the end, as recommended by a forum member,

Best compromise was to name the MP3 S with specific Album names (edit using properties of the MP3 files).

Not sure about ordering MP3 S, best I could do was to save the MP3 S in the order u like ...

[Dancing Badger]

I had this problem and have solved it. I think the folder structure is a bit of a red herring - the music on my usb stick is organised so each album is in its own folder or subfolder because that's how I have it on my pc, but I'm not sure the car cares about folder names or even file names - what the car reads is mp3 tags. Depending where you got your music from these may not be present or complete. You won't see the tags in a file manager or by looking at the file properties, you need to download and install an mp3 tag editor on your computer to see and edit them. I use one called Mp3tag - it's free and easy to use but there are several alternatives available. If you plug your stick into your pc you can edit the files directly. Using the tag editor you can edit track title, artist, and crucially, album name. If track titles are not present there is a "filename to tag" facility (amongst others) to update in bulk and save typing - you can edit all tags a track at a time or in bulk. 

The Touch and Go reads the tags and organises your music accordingly - you can even define the genre of each album if you want and the car will read it, so you can choose blues or rock or whatever. All my music comes up with album and artist correctly identified, and I know it works because it faithfully reproduces any spelling mistakes! I can browse by album title, but that doesn't work so well if you have multiple albums called "Greatest Hits!" I generally browse by artist, then if I have several albums by the same artist when I select the artist I'm presented with a list of their albums. 

Try it - it works very well for me, and it's my favourite price - free! 

[lininjim]

Thank you for that and for the effort involved, much appreciated, all of you.

[Bemused2]

Thanks Dancing Badger. Will give it a try.

[Bemused2]

It works!!!!!

No problems now playing Albums and tunes from a U.S.B.on Touch 2.

You Sir ,are a star.

[Wayne2015]

Downloaded MP3tag and ace I can rename my mp3s and have the names displayed on my car stereo :)

 

 

But now my order of mp3 S are all random. Are they not ordered by TITLE? 

Or is it ordered by something else?

[Dancing Badger]

10 hours ago, Wayne2015 said:

Downloaded MP3tag and ace I can rename my mp3s and have the names displayed on my car stereo :)

 

 

But now my order of mp3 S are all random. Are they not ordered by TITLE? 

Or is it ordered by something else?

There's a tag for "Track Number" - 4th line down in the left hand editing window in MP3tag, I think the Touch and Go uses that. There's also an auto-numbering wizard in the Tools menu to save laboriously typing the number into each track. As far as I can tell the wizard will (re)number the tracks in the order they are onscreen in MP3tag (which you can select by clicking the top of the column) so filename order or title order as you wish. I've not really experimented much with that as most of my music already has that field populated but I had a double album that was being played out of order in the car as it was organised into two folders based on two CDs. The car was ignoring the subfolders and playing tracks alternately from each disc. I renumbered the tracks sequentially as one album (basically renumbered the tracks on disc 2) and it sorted the order out in the car. You can fiddle about with it until you're happy, if you don't actively save it it won't keep the changes anyway.

I've also noticed that the Touch and Go doesn't seem to like titles which start with a number - I spotted a number of albums where the track was listed as "Untitled" on screen when playing in the car but when I looked at the Title List in Touch and Go the titles were all correctly displayed. They were playing in the correct order but it just irritated me that it wasn't displaying the titles correctly. I couldn't understand what was going on at first, but then I spotted that it only seemed to happen when the title of the track began 01, 02 etc. The titles don't need to be numbered - Touch and Go uses the track number to order the tracks, and Windows uses the filename. When I edited the titles to delete the numbers from the titles it solved the problem, but I haven't (yet) found a way of automating the process. It is slightly quicker to click twice on the title in the right hand window which lets you edit it directly and autosaves rather than faffing about in the editing fields and saving each record but it's still laborious. It all depends how obsessive you are, it doesn't really affect the functionality in the car, just looks better.

I do have a couple of albums where the track titles begin with numbers and they display ok in the car when playing so there's something else going on that I haven't sussed out yet, but as I've been able to fix the ones that were bugging me I've not bothered to investigate any further.

Oh, and if you've tried any CDs with mp3s on in your Touch and Go you might notice that it seems to do things slightly differently, but I'm not getting into that one, can't be bothered burning discs!

[Wayne2015]

Cheers bud

I will give it a go!

[Wayne2015]

Will give it a go nx few days...

 

 

[Dancing Badger]

20 hours ago, Dancing Badger said:

(Snip) When I edited the titles to delete the numbers from the titles it solved the problem, but I haven't (yet) found a way of automating the process. (Snip)

Ok, I've been on a mission and found out how to get MP3tag to remove the leading numbers in titles in bulk, so each title of the format 01 My Song, 02 My Second Song etc becomes My Song, My Second Song. This hopefully will prevent Touch and Go displaying "Untitled Track" when you play them. I didn't work it all out myself, it uses regular expressions which I'm not very good with, I'm not that techie, but I've been digging around on forums and found this. It looks complicated but it's actually quite easy to do.

This will permanently remove the leading digits from all your track titles so be sure that's what you want to do (can't see why not), but it won't affect the filenames. Be careful to exclude any tracks that have a number at the beginning of the title so you don't butcher them (only example I can think of is 19th Nervous Breakdown by the Stones - I think that would be okay because it has no white space after the numbers but I'm not sure, I don't know enough about regular expressions)

So, here's how to do it...

Click on the menu Actions. You get a little window with some mysterious groups in it. Ignore them and click on the "New" button (top right) and give your new action group a useful name - remove leading digits, something like that. You'll then get a very unhelpful looking blank window. Fear not, click on "New" again and you'll see a drop down menu headed Select action type.  Choose Replace with regular expression, and ok.  Now you've got a drop down and two text fields.  In the drop down box entitled Field select TITLE.  Now, in the field Regular expression type (or paste)  the following expression:   ^\s*[0-9]+\s+  No spaces or punctuation. Leave the third field blank and do not tick the tick box. Click ok. Now you'll see your new action group in the little box. Click on ok to exit.

Now you can select all the tracks you want to edit (it makes sense to order them by Title, that way the numbered ones are together. Click on the Actions menu again, and you'll see your new action in the list. Select it and sit back and watch the magic happen! 

This procedure edits the titles directly, you don't get a chance to look at it and decide whether to save, so be careful what you select. It's probably a good idea to test it on just one or two tracks to make sure you've got it set up right.

I think I need to get out more! 

[lininjim]

You are a star!  Now can you figure it out for my mac please?  :p

[Dancing Badger]

18 minutes ago, lininjim said:

You are a star!  Now can you figure it out for my mac please?  :p

Now you're asking - I've never had a Mac, only played with one very briefly. There's a tag editor called ID3 which runs on Windows or Mac OS (or has versions which do), I'm sure there are others. I think you can edit tags in iTunes, but have no idea how. I've used iTunes on my pc to talk to my iPad - it's not the most user-friendly piece of kit and I prefer my Android tablet! 

Or you could just use Windows... 

[Wayne2015]

1 hour ago, Dancing Badger said:

Ok, I've been on a mission and found out how to get MP3tag to remove the leading numbers in titles in bulk, so each title of the format 01 My Song, 02 My Second Song etc becomes My Song, My Second Song. This hopefully will prevent Touch and Go displaying "Untitled Track" when you play them. I didn't work it all out myself, it uses regular expressions which I'm not very good with, I'm not that techie, but I've been digging around on forums and found this. It looks complicated but it's actually quite easy to do.

This will permanently remove the leading digits from all your track titles so be sure that's what you want to do (can't see why not), but it won't affect the filenames. Be careful to exclude any tracks that have a number at the beginning of the title so you don't butcher them (only example I can think of is 19th Nervous Breakdown by the Stones - I think that would be okay because it has no white space after the numbers but I'm not sure, I don't know enough about regular expressions)

So, here's how to do it...

Click on the menu Actions. You get a little window with some mysterious groups in it. Ignore them and click on the "New" button (top right) and give your new action group a useful name - remove leading digits, something like that. You'll then get a very unhelpful looking blank window. Fear not, click on "New" again and you'll see a drop down menu headed Select action type.  Choose Replace with regular expression, and ok.  Now you've got a drop down and two text fields.  In the drop down box entitled Field select TITLE.  Now, in the field Regular expression type (or paste)  the following expression:   ^\s*[0-9]+\s+  No spaces or punctuation. Leave the third field blank and do not tick the tick box. Click ok. Now you'll see your new action group in the little box. Click on ok to exit.

Now you can select all the tracks you want to edit (it makes sense to order them by Title, that way the numbered ones are together. Click on the Actions menu again, and you'll see your new action in the list. Select it and sit back and watch the magic happen! 

This procedure edits the titles directly, you don't get a chance to look at it and decide whether to save, so be careful what you select. It's probably a good idea to test it on just one or two tracks to make sure you've got it set up right.

I think I need to get out more! 

Interesting stuff - thanks for taking time to look at this

My stereo seems to be fine with displaying Title prefix with numbers (I have a 2012 Auris)

 

Before, I would numbered the MP3 filenames and named the ALBUM using the MP3 filename PROPERTIES options

This only allowed my stereo to group the MP3s by ALBUM, but the ordering of the filenames could only be done by the order they saved

 

So as recommended by your goodself, I downloaded MP3tag and tried to name the MP3s so that can be ordered the way I wanted them

I didn't know where to start, so decided to NUMBER the MP3s using the TITLE and it was easier to name the ARTIST and SONG using MP3tag

My stereo only allowed to display 3 things: ARTIST, SONG and ALBUM

But popping the USB stick into my car, everything displayed perfectly (ARTIST, SONG and ALBUM) - but the order of the MP3s were all random :(

 

SO, when I have time, I will need to play with the "#" ordering or the auto-numbering as u suggested....

[Dancing Badger]

Hopefully that will do the trick for you - it did for me, but I can only go on what my car does. I suspect that Toyota have not been consistent - probably because they're trying to do more. I have several CDs with mp3s on them that I used to play in my Gen 3 Prius. It was a T3, didn't have Touch and Go, and didn't have USB connectivity but the stereo played mp3s and displayed album name, track name or artist (not all at once). It sounds a bit like your description of your stereo. I never tried editing numbers for the Prius, but I do recall that it played tracks in the order I burned them. Then again, a CD isn't a USB stick.

When I play those same discs in my 2013 Auris which has Touch and Go the titles and artist names are reported slightly differently - I can't recall exactly how at the moment, I no longer have the Prius, I haven't tried it in the Auris for a few days and She Who Must Be Obeyed is out in the car - but it's definitely different. The Prius was certainly ok with displaying tracks with numbers in the title, but my Auris doesn't seem to like them - can't see why not, but it was displaying them as untitled tracks in the main screen even though it correctly displayed them in the title list screen. Now I've deleted the numbers it displays correctly. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but as long as it's doing what I want I'm happy.

[Wayne2015]

Cheers 

Strange one the Toyota USB not by default ordered MP3 s by filename. I never had problems with previous cars be it MP3 CDs or USB slots direct on the Stereo itself

 

And it's a real pain renaming/ordering 100s of songs . especially now I got to do it AGAIN as last time it not resolve the ordering of it :(

 

Off to dealers today to fix intermittently working horn, so will enquire about the USB as well...

[Wayne2015]

Asked THREE staff at dealers AND confirmed by Service dept:

"No one knows how to order by MP3s" 

[Wayne2015]

OK

Using MP3tag:

1. Blank out all TRACK column

2. Ensure filename and title are numerical ordered

3. Auto add TRACK number

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Nope!

Still plays in random starting with filename:

150

100

250

(Instead of TRACK 1-9 OR filename 008-018 ) 

 

 

 

 

 

OK

Someone S gona,make fun of my playlist aren't they? 

[Wayne2015]

interesting read here to explain why u cannot sort MP3s..

http://www.murraymoffatt.com/software-problem-0010.html

Problem: Many MP3 players that are based on USB flash drives don't allow you to sort the MP3 files in the order you want to listen to them. Instead they play the MP3 files in the order they find them; usually the order you copied them to the flash drive. How do we re-order the files?

 

Background: In the old DOS days Norton Utilities provided a tool called DS (Directory Sort) that would re-arrange the order of files in the FAT (File Allocation Table) directory structure. This was useful because many programs would only display or process files in the order they found them; they wouldn't allow you to sort the files. With the advent of Windows the need for DS was reduced as Windows usually sorts filenames before displaying them (i.e. in Explorer or the Windows file selector dialog box).

Many modern MP3 players are based on USB flash drives (i.e. Creative's MuVo range of MP3 players). These devices don't allow you to sort the MP3 files in the order you want to listen to them. Instead they play the MP3 files in the order they find them; usually the order you copied them to the flash drive. Unfortunately if you select a bunch of files in Windows' Explorer and copy them to your MP3 player, they don't always copy in alphabetical order (even if you have told Explorer to display the files alphabetically). And of course you may want to add new MP3 files at a latter date, which will result in them being added to the end of the directory.

Norton's old DS utilities was designed for FAT16 drives and so won't work with newer drives that are FAT32. The addition of long file names (VFAT) further complicates matters. Duncan Murdoch wrote a utility called LFNSORT which went some way to addressing the problems with Norton's DS not working with newer file systems, but unfortunately LFNSORT doesn't work with newer versions of Windows (i.e. Windows 2000 and later).

 

 

Some recommended software on that site - but most don't work....so I am still digging....

 

 

[Wayne2015]

Trying this software

Dosent let me select how to ordered ????

Let's see what order they play in then ...

 

[Wayne2015]

FAT Sorter not worked for me :(

 

NEXT!

DriveSort...

http://techmadeplain.com/2014/how-to-sort-music-flash-drive-car-stereo/

 

 

 

[Wayne2015]

DriveSort NOT work too! 

 

I give up!

The only way it works (that I am aware of) and ONLY on my stereo - is it can ONLY be ordered by the order I copy to the USB Stick!

Which does mean copying each and EVERY MP3 file INDIVIDUALLY !!! 

[Dancing Badger]

Bizarre - it works perfectly for me, and my display looks identical to yours. Only thing I can think that's different is that my files aren't numbered sequentially like that - each album (which have individual folders) is individually numbered - and not all my filenames are numbered at all. The tracks are numbered. I didn't take any care what order I saved onto the USB - I just dragged and dropped folders. 

I'm saying nowt about your playlist - least said, soonest mended! ;-)