Hey all, title says it all really.

When using a hard drive via MDI, is there any way to create playlists?

Cheers

Stu

Hey all, title says it all really.

When using a hard drive via MDI, is there any way to create playlists?

Cheers

Stu

Yes - plug the HDD into your PC and create them using Windows Media Player.

I have created mine in a separate directory.

Yes - plug the HDD into your PC and create them using Windows Media Player.

I have created mine in a separate directory.

Brilliant, thank you very much!

Yes - plug the HDD into your PC and create them using Windows Media Player.

I have created mine in a separate directory.

Do you have a quick guide how to do this please?

I can only seem to create a playlist for music on the computer, not stuff on the external hard drive?

Do you have a quick guide how to do this please?

I can only seem to create a playlist for music on the computer, not stuff on the external hard drive?

A while since I did it so can't remember exactly - didn't have any difficulty though.

Try:

1 Create the palylist for tracks located on the external HDD

2 Play list will be saved on your local HDD

3 copy playlist file to external HDD

OR

1 set the external HDD as the default source in Windows media player

2 create playlists which will be saved to external HDD

I will have another fiddle to see if I can work out how I did it!

A while since I did it so can't remember exactly - didn't have any difficulty though.

Try:

1 Create the palylist for tracks located on the external HDD

2 Play list will be saved on your local HDD

3 copy playlist file to external HDD

OR

1 set the external HDD as the default source in Windows media player

2 create playlists which will be saved to external HDD

I will have another fiddle to see if I can work out how I did it!

any chance of a bit more guidance?? i did exactly what you said (before id even googled to see if its possible).. i can bring up the playlist on the display, but when i select it i just get "file error", i have tried both the '.m3u' and '.wpl' file types that WMP lets you use..

i viewd the playlist as a text document and saw all files were directed as "L:/music/...", on the swing stereo its listed as "PD:/music/".. i changed the file path on 3 of the 2k+ songs but still a fail for those 3 =[

im using my 8gb mp3 player, FAT32.. all works well, just dont like that 'mix' only uses the current folder (this being the reason for needing a playlist)

Edited 25 May, 201115 yr by Black Howling

just make a playlist with some like media player classic, then conect your hdd and drag and drop the playlist in. this works with my go flex.

just make a playlist with some like media player classic, then conect your hdd and drag and drop the playlist in. this works with my go flex.

Bit late to this topic, but seen a few posts about MDI, USB sticks, Hard Disks, SD cards and the like in the past few months whilst waiting for my new car so worked out a few things ahead of time thanks to other members. Now it has arrived I have been using a Freecom 250GB USB hard disk with my music on, lenghty description follows, but may help others setting up music/playlists.

Drive has about 5000 tracks on it (about 30GB used) and plays fine with little start up time, and I have playlists working too. Lots of detail here, but you may be able to pick out some stuff of interest.

I simply mirror my entire music selection (using the free Synctoy from Microsoft) to the Freecom drive, then plug that into the car. I actually store my main music collection on a network drive, but the same applies if you use your PC drive or external drive.

The folder structure on the car disk is as my master music storage area, with folders for Artist and Album:

Artist ->

Album ->

01_Track1_name.mp3

02_Track2_name.mp3

These are recognised fine by MDI/Bolero.

For playlists, create the playlist as usual in Windows Media Player and save on your master music area (normally a folder called Playlists). Double click on the play list so that it appears in the right hand side (under Play/Burn/Sync), then select the little down arrow next to the box with a tick in it and do "save list as..."

Save the list with a name like <original_name>_car as M3U format.

You then need to edit the m3u playlist and remove all the PC folder structure from the name so that:

C:\Users\Fred\Music\Artist_name\...

becomes:

\Artists_name\...

Once done, re-save the file and synchronise your music selection with your car hard disk, the <original_name>_car playlist will now work in the car.

If you have some extra hierarchy on the car disk, then modify the names accordingly. You don't have to do each one in turn just search and replace all.

I don't see why the same approach couldn't be used with a USB flash drive or SD card.

The other thing to be careful of is making sure that the USB drive you chose is not power hungry since I think the MDI is only specced to give 1Amp. Most 2.5" drives should be fine, but any that supply a 2nd usb lead to supply power may draw too much current.

Very interesting thread! I've had a little play around with this so I'll try and simplify it as much as possible. Props to previous posters, especially gsp...

What you need

• 1.8" or 2.5" low power hard drive (3.5" or a drive needing a double USB connector are out)
  
• A Windows PC (someone wanna write a Mac guide?)
  
• Winamp (free download, I recommend looking for the "lite" version)
  

Things to know

MDI will show folders and files on the root of the drive and then let you browse folders and generally navigate the contents of the drive. For ease of use while driving I suggest having all your playlists in the root of the drive and all the music stashed in a subfolder. E.g.

Root:

• MASTER FOLDER
  
• Playlist1.m3u
  
• Playlist2.m3u
  
• ...
  
• Playlist9.m3u
  

With all the album folders under the "MASTER FOLDER". This way you just skip past the single folder then scroll through the playlists rather than scrolling past all your album folders to get to the playlists. MDI will display things in this order: FOLDERS, PLAYLISTS, FILES with each group displayed alphabetically. (Actually, this is only true if you use M3U playlists and MP3 files as M3U is before MP3 in the alphabet.)

As a side note, if you don't want to use playlists and just play folders save the files as "01 - Artist - Name.mp3" "02 - Artist - Name.mp3" etc. so the files are at least sorted by track. Notice I've gone with 01, 02, etc. rather than 1, 2, etc. to avoid confusion in order. You may end up with tracks being played in this order 1, 10, 11, 12, 13, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9.

Okay, so now we know a little about the structure. Dump all your favourite tracks to the drive, I suggest in this order: Master Folder -> Artist Folder -> Album Folder -> Tracks.

All done with the music? Now onto making the playlists. Fire up Winamp and make sure the playlist editor is shown (click on the tiny menu icon in the top left of Winamp and make sure "Playlist Editor" is ticked.) Make sure you have an empty list to start by clicking "LIST OPTS" and "NEW LIST" down the bottom right of the editor.

Next, bring up an Explorer window and navigate to your first album on your external drive. If you have Vista or Windows 7 it will probably already show the music in a handy detailed list, for Windows XP you may need to go to the "View" menu and click details. Hopefully XP already thinks this is all music. If you need to explicitly tell Windows you have music there is an option on folder properties to customize the view as music. Try just changing the properties of your master folder and hopefully Windows will do the same for all the folders underneath!

Now the reason we want this detailed view is to get some of the ID3 tag information, specifically the track numbers. Windows will let you click on a column and sort by track instead of the default sort by name.

Dragging and Dropping

There are some quirks with lists when you drag and drop. Whichever item is clicked on when dragging the list always ends up first so don't do something like click on the first item, hold shift, click on the last item then drag. Easier to go to "Edit" -> "Select All" and then drag the list from the first item. Oh yeah, and we drag the list to the Playlist Editor in Winamp

Okay, hopefully the order looks good in Winamp. You can drag and drop items within the Playlist Editor to get things right. Now we can go to "LIST OPTS" and "SAVE LIST". Save the file with a suitable name to the root of your external drive.

Phew! That was easy

Not quite... I've found a little bug in Winamp. If we take a little peek inside one of these M3U files we get something like this:

#EXTM3U

#EXTINF:250,Kinobe - Slip Into Something More Comfortable

Master Folder\Chilled Ibiza\Chilled Ibiza - CD1\Kinobe - Slip Into Something More Comfortable.mp3

#EXTINF:346,Groove Armada - At the River

Master Folder\Chilled Ibiza\Chilled Ibiza - CD1\Groove Armada - At the River.mp3

...

Those "EXTINF" lines give a length in seconds and the track title to display. If you lob a massive list at Winamp it doesn't always seem to add these info lines, only around the first 20. I guess it only analyses the tracks as needed. So, just for completeness if you want to join a 2 CD set together you might want to check the contents of these M3U files. If you spot a problem you could, like I did, save a playlist for each CD and then manually stitch them together with a text editor. Just make sure you only have one "#EXTM3U" at the top and the file extension is still M3U.

**Edit** Winamp only saves the full information for the files on screen, i.e. missing out the ones that "drop off" the bottom of the list. So drag the Playlist Editor down to fit in the whole album!

Notice the playlist stores the relative paths of the files, this is why I chose Winamp You may wish to check out the Wikipedia article on the M3U Playlist Format which should make more sense now I hope!

Feel free to ask me any questions.

Regards,

Andy

Edited 30 August, 201114 yr by POSitality

Trying to get playlists working on my mdi kit and it is failing to find the playlist when I choose them.

I get the message

"The Playlist file could not be found"

I am doing everything identical as I did on the memory car in my old car.

Funny thing is when I hit play on the PLS I get the above message, However if I press on the title of the playlist ip opens it up and I can view the tracks within the list, Then if I hit play on one of the tracks I get the above message again.