Can't play songs in order

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Bob

Well-known member
Joined
May 24, 2013
Messages
305
Location
New Hampshire
My 2013 SV has a the factory Clarion Nav/Radio.

I have a book on disc with 100 chapters on 10 CDs. I want to play them on USB instead, so I converted each chapter to MP3 and then wrote them to USB, one at a time, in sequence, as recommended by the manual. I set my Nav to play in order, but the chapters come up in a strange order, not the sequence that they were written. The display always shows this weird order, too.

I formatted the USB and tried copying the files again, one at a time, using Win7Pro. Same problem. I tried two different public domain programs to sort the USB and they seemed to work, but there is no difference to the order shown on the display or the order played. Yet when running the program, it shows the files in order. The programs that I tried were: mp3DirSorterE.exe and NewFAT32Sorter

I tried formatting then creating 10 separate directories and put 10 chapters in each, but it still plays in the wrong sequence. I tried formatting the USB in FAT and RAW modes. No better.

I tried a second USB, this time with much more capacity, and had the same problem.

What else do you recommend that I try to solve this?

Thank you for any ideas at all.

Bob
 
I am guessing from the name of 1 of your sort programs, that the files are in
MP3 format, so the order could be based on the ID3 tag. using a tag altering
program for MP3 files might solve your problem. I am also guessing from the
.exe part of the sort program name, that you are using windows, since I
use Linux/BSD I can not suggest a program to use.
 
Just looked at a USB I use, and the order looked to be by file name,
not ID3 tag. I did however have the file names start with a number.
Like 01 - name1.mp3
 
On my 2011, the Clarion NAV unit does not respect track ID tags on mp3 files that are on a usb stick. If I want a collection of songs that came from a CD to play in the order that they are on the CD, I put all the tracks in one folder on the stick and then renumber the track names to 01.mp3, 02.mp3, 03.mp3, etc. All the tracks will then play in track numerical order....
 
I went through this exact issue in an earlier thread. Nothing works. Mine were WMA files. I renamed the files on my audiobook on my USB drive, e.g. part01, part02, part 03..., etc. I tried renaming several times, using A,B,C as well as numbers. I made sure mode was in "Normal", not random and they still played in a different order. It was always the same order, not random, but it was incorrect. Much of it was in sequence, but it would start with track 5, then 6, then 7, then back to 2, then 8, then 1, then 10, 11, 12, 13 in order, etc., or something resembling that. My guess is that when copying to the USB drive Windows does not write them in sequence - i.e. it picks a convenient spot on the USB memory stick that has the right amount of memory available for the file size and writes there, just like on a hard drive, so track 7 may come between track 1 and 2, even after reformatting, and the Leaf just plays them in the order they are physically written into memory. The Leaf has an option of Normal and Random and All Random, but it does NOT have an option to sort and play them by file name the way Windows Media player or other players do. It's a major flaw in Leaf's player. The only workarounds I can see are to burn the files onto a CD (but for large audiobooks this is not practical) or creating a separate folder for each file on your USB drive. Then you can manually select each folder in order and play them without having to change CDs, but it may not be worth the extra work and the distraction of having to punch the screen after every track.
 
Rat,
I've never played WMA files in my car, but I'm pretty confident that your files would play in sequence if you converted them to mp3 files with sequential file names. I've been playing music in my car for 3 years now and this works like a charm....
 
Randy said:
Rat,
I've never played WMA files in my car, but I'm pretty confident that your files would play in sequence if you converted them to mp3 files with sequential file names. I've been playing music in my car for 3 years now and this works like a charm....
Sorry to disagree, but wma and mp3 files are treated exactly the same by the Leaf. I have also taken an audiobook CD and ripped it to mp3 files with sequential track names and they will not play in correct order in the Leaf. This is true even when I delete everything from the USB stick and copy the mp3 files one by one in correct order. When the Leaf reads the folder (in Normal, not Random mode) the tracks/files do not come up alphabetically or in order of copying. This is true even though my music files (which are a mix of WMA and mp3) do play in alphabetical order if I put it in Normal mode instead of my usual All Random mode. I have repeated this experiment many times many ways. You just can't listen to an audiobook in correct order from a USB drive in the Leaf.

I have given up on this because now the Library does not allow transferring e-audiobooks to a USB drive. The apps will allow me to download to my home computer and play them through Windows Media Player (which I had to upgrade in a laborious process with two separate tech help sessions with the company that makes the library's audiobook download software), but that's only because that player now automatically deletes the files when the checkout period is up, and will not allow copying to any other device. So there is no point. Fewer and fewer audiobooks are coming in CD format now; many are available (in the library at least) only as downloadable e-audiobooks (in at least 3 different formats playable only with proprietary software). Nissan needs to figure out how to allow them to be played from a USB drive.

If I really wanted to make this happen with downloadable e-audiobooks, i.e. play the book continuously and in correct order from my USB stick in the Leaf, I know how to do it. I could hook my laptop to my desktop, download the e-audiobook to my laptop and play it on Windows Media Player, recording it in real time with my WaveLab program on my desktop (while I'm away from my computer, sleeping, etc) into one long wav file which can then be converted either to a single mp3 or wma file or at least a few files small enough to be transfered easily to the stick. That's probably illegal and too much trouble anyway. I just limit myself to CD audiobooks now and use the USB stick for music.
 
You could try concatenating the small MP3s into larger ones, e.g. one to represent each CD. There are utilities to do this, for example

http://mp3wrap.sourceforge.net" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

I use Mac, so have not tried that program, but just offering as an example.
 
Rat and I have the same issue. OK, at least it's not just me. :)

The manual says that putting them on USB in order should do it and for me, it doesn't. I have a call into Nissan and they have opened a case, but I'm not holding my breath that they will be able to help.

I tried completely formatting the USB before coping files to it, so that should prevent any random writing issues.

One thing unique about us is that we are both dealing with books on tape, which consist of large numbers of "chapters". Could it be related to having too many files? I tried separating the files into subdirectories and that still didn't work.

Then I did exactly what Nubo suggested, and concatenated each group of 10 "chapters" into one larger file, and wrote those 8 large files to USB. This time, they play in sequence! That has to be a clue. Or perhaps it is random luck. :-(

I wonder if the Clarion heads have different versions of firmware and this is a bug in certain models, but not others. (I have a 2013 Leaf SV)

Thanks to everyone for their comments. Please continue sharing ideas.

Bob
 
I have no doubt that the Leaf player will play a single file from beginning to end, so if you concatenate several files into one, in correct order, it will play that one file in correct chapter order. The question is, will it go from the first "CD" file to the 2nd one and then the 3rd one, etc. in correct order? It's not clear to me from your post that you have done that. There must be something different about audiobook files. Maybe they have "hidden" titles or some metadata the Leaf player reads that messes up the ordering.

Another solution is to get an iPod or mp3 player and use the Aux jack in the Leaf, but I don't want to have to buy another device for this purpose and there is the hassle of plugging and unplugging it every time or security risk of leaving it plugged in and visible. The USB stick is much more convenient.

Maybe the thread title should be changed. I CAN play songs in order. I just can't play audiobook tracks in order from the USB drive.
 
Randy said:
On my 2011, the Clarion NAV unit does not respect track ID tags on mp3 files that are on a usb stick. If I want a collection of songs that came from a CD to play in the order that they are on the CD, I put all the tracks in one folder on the stick and then renumber the track names to 01.mp3, 02.mp3, 03.mp3, etc. All the tracks will then play in track numerical order....
This is my experience as well. Tracks in a single folder will play in name/number order (assuming that shuffle and repeat play are turned off, of course) once I select that folder to play. I use tracks ripped to wma and the track numbers placed by the ripping process determine order. The folders, however, play in alphabetical order based on the folder name, unless I select a particular one.

I've found that ripping audio books from CDs is something of an art form, since it is so dependent on folder and file names/numbers. Allowing internet information to fill in those names just leads to frustration.
 
Rats,

Sorry about the confusion in my last post.

This was easy to do but isn't easy to explain. I started with 9 CDs and ~12 chapters per CD so roughly 100 files. Now I have 9 large tracks on USB rather than 100 small tracks. The 9 large tracks are now playing in sequence, with CD #1 playing first, then CD #2, etc. So I strongly suspect the problem is related to the large number of tracks.

When I converted from CD to mp3, I used mono with very low bit rate for smallest file size. The bit rate is between 30K and 36K BPS. But otherwise, mp3 files are just files in a file system. I can't think of a reason why a music player like the Clarion Nav would treat one mp3 directory entry differently if the content of the file is different.

This weekend, I'll experiment with a small number of music files and then a large number of music files.

Bob
 
I think that I've figured this out now. Can someone please confirm this with their Leaf/Clarion?

I wrote a USB with many music files in random order. The Clarion head played them in alphabetic order, based on the first characters of the file name.

I added some more songs to the USB and then put it back into the Leaf. The Clarion sorted them correctly. It is NOT playing in the order recorded.

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.

From a geek's perspective, that makes sense. It isn't worth their effort to sort based on the whole file name. Most users wouldn't care (just Rat and me). Also, sorting on the whole file name would take a little bit more memory in their tiny computer and a little bit more time when reading the USB. So they just sort on the first few characters. Note: Computer programmers never have enough memory. ;-)

And it explains why my audio book game me trouble, because the tracks on the book were files named "title 1-01", "title 1-02", etc. where title is the book title.

I assume that Clarion updates their software for each model year and each trim line (S, SV, SL) has a different software, too. So this may not apply to all Leaf/Clarion radios.

Again, if anyone could confirm this with their Leaf/Clarion, I'd appreciate it. Thanks!

Bob
 
Excellent research, Bob. That may have been my problem. I naturally assumed that the entire name would be used and named them accordingly, ssection01, section02, etc. Maybe if I renamed them AA, AB, through ZZ it would have worked. As I mentioned, though, now the library software won't allow the files to be copied onto a USB drive, so it all becomes moot.
 
Bob said:
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.

From a geek's perspective, that makes sense. It isn't worth their effort to sort based on the whole file name. Most users wouldn't care (just Rat and me). Also, sorting on the whole file name would take a little bit more memory in their tiny computer and a little bit more time when reading the USB. So they just sort on the first few characters. Note: Computer programmers never have enough memory.
I suspect that they are sorting on the short (8.3) filename, rather than on the long filename. On FAT32 and NTFS, every long filename is smashed into an equivalent short filename. On Windows you can open a cmd window and run dir /x to see the short names.

And if this indeed the case, then (as a software developer who's worked with embedded systems in the past) I suspect that this is just a bug, and some developer used the wrong filesystem mount option and accidentally got shortnames rather than longnames. I can't imagine any system being built in the last ten years that would purposely sort just the first few characters of a filename to save memory. Even my 5 year old, 2GB $25 MP3 player does better than that, and it's got a tinier computer with less memory than what must be driving the system in the Leaf.
 
Nissan, are you reading this? Fix it !!! It is certainly the case that the few bytes saved by using short names is insignificant.
 
I just got off the phone with Nissan Leaf support about this subject. First, let me say that the support person really tried to get an answer and was extremely polite.

He said that he traded email with someone who knew of the situation and that person said that the Clarion does play the tracks in order, but the order is not based on what we see as the file name, it's based on something else created by the computer. The support person didn't explain short 8.3 file names and may not have understood the concept, but I think that's what he was trying to say.

I asked the support person if the manual for future Leafs could be reworded to correct this, and he assured me that the manual is correct and that I just didn't interpret it correctly. I tried to explain that the manual says that tracks are played in the order that they are written to the USB (2013 SV/SL Nav manual page 143 - "The playback order is the order in which the files were written by the writing software, so the files might not play in the desired order.") He repeated that I didn't understand. Sigh.

Bob
 
I just proved that renaming the files doesn't help. I ripped an audiobook then wrote a program that renamed the files 601, 602, etc. for disk 6 track 1, etc. Then I played them in Windows Media Player, with shuffle off. If these were songs, they would play in order, but even Microsoft doesn't recognize the file names for ordering. As the previous post said, the files are ordered by something the computer does itself. I notice also that the player displays the track being played as "6-01" rather than 601. This is some sort of meta data and is the second half of the original file name. So the whole short name thing is incorrect. I don't know what it is with audiobook files, but they just aren't the same as music files.

I did find a solution, but it's not very convenient. I ripped the audiobook CDs into wma files then used an audio editor to concatenate the files in the correct order. This worked.
 
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