How to play iTunes playlist in Bolero?

[jon15]

I created a playlist with my favorite songs in iTunes and then exported a .m3u file onto my Mac, and then from Mac to my SD card, hoping to play it in Bolero.

 

But when I tap on the .m3u playlist file in Bolero it says "No playable files available".

 

Needless to say that my entire iTunes library is already on that SD card, but I would like to play that specific playlist. I thought once I tapped on the playlist file in Bolero it would then automatically find all these songs on the SD card and index them to be played...

 

Any ideas?

 

 

Edited 29 July, 2017 by jon15

[CapstanPlug]

You've done a "cleanup" of hidden Mac files before removing the SD card from Mac ?  They usually confuse non-Mac equipment.

[jon15]

19 minutes ago, Dithane said:

You've done a "cleanup" of hidden Mac files before removing the SD card from Mac ?  They usually confuse non-Mac equipment.

 

Ah, totally forgot to do that. (You are referring to the ._.DS_Store files, I suppose?)

 

But do you think that is really the culprit here?

[CapstanPlug]

7 minutes ago, jon15 said:

 

Ah, totally forgot to do that. (You are referring to the ._.DS_Store files, I suppose?)

 

But do you think that is really the culprit here?

 

Yep - those ones !

 

After that - I'm not sure - - I use straight mp3s, exported from iTunes. Rather than exporting a "playlist". 

I just put mp3s into a Directory (with artist or album name ) and copy that to the SD.  Old skool !

 

What kind of files do you see on the SD card - in Finder? Can you see each individual track as individual files with .mp? 

[jon15]

42 minutes ago, Dithane said:

 

Yep - those ones !

 

After that - I'm not sure - - I use straight mp3s, exported from iTunes. Rather than exporting a "playlist". 

I just put mp3s into a Directory (with artist or album name ) and copy that to the SD.  Old skool !

 

What kind of files do you see on the SD card - in Finder? Can you see each individual track as individual files with .mp? 

 

I see. But considering that I have a huge iTunes library (100+ GB) and mostly sorted by albums,  my SD card is already 80% full, so I don't wish to duplicate the songs by adding these favorite songs into a "playlist" folder and causing these songs to take up additional GBs on my card. Defeats the playlist's purpose... :/

 

I'll try to delete those hidden files when I'm back from vacation, but I still find it hard to believe it would actually solve the problem.

 

Re: Finder: I see normal mp3s with .mp3 extension in my SD card Finder folder.. Just like any other folders on my Mac.

Edited 29 July, 2017 by jon15

[CapstanPlug]

Ah, OK ... that is puzzling .. if the mp3 files are there - it should play them. 

 

I do recall tangling with iTunes when doing this before - it didn't seem to like to do a straightforward export. So went to the Media directory and copied the mp3s, more or less, directory by directory ( album by album). I'm sure that I was missing some simple (not to me!) way of doing it. 

 

There are threads on here with similar-ish probs (Octavia 3 and ICE forums come to mind) .. some with ideas about exceeding max num of files in root directory of SD card, some with non-standard filetypes (that might look standard!), some about obviously non-standard filetypes (aif, etcc) ... some about avoiding the use of micro-SD (which I also had an issue with - but that throws more of "No SD card" error)...  

 

Bit of a bummer that you're not able to enjoy your toons while on hols.

 

Sorry I can't be of more help, man.  Someone else on here might have some deeper wisdoms !

 

[jon15]

2 hours ago, Dithane said:

Ah, OK ... that is puzzling .. if the mp3 files are there - it should play them. 

 

I do recall tangling with iTunes when doing this before - it didn't seem to like to do a straightforward export. So went to the Media directory and copied the mp3s, more or less, directory by directory ( album by album). I'm sure that I was missing some simple (not to me!) way of doing it. 

 

There are threads on here with similar-ish probs (Octavia 3 and ICE forums come to mind) .. some with ideas about exceeding max num of files in root directory of SD card, some with non-standard filetypes (that might look standard!), some about obviously non-standard filetypes (aif, etcc) ... some about avoiding the use of micro-SD (which I also had an issue with - but that throws more of "No SD card" error)...  

 

Bit of a bummer that you're not able to enjoy your toons while on hols.

 

Sorry I can't be of more help, man.  Someone else on here might have some deeper wisdoms !

 

 

I surely appreciate your help man, thanks! Actually, so far I've never had a problem playing my huge collection from the SD card, that's why I'm sceptical as to whether or not deleting the DS_Store files would help at all. As sometimes I did delete these hidden files, while on other occasions when adding some more music and whatnot I may have forgotten to delete and it didn't seem to play any role.

 

Now that you mention the max no. of files in a folder, could that be the problem that it won't play the playlist? The playlist that I'm trying to get to work on Bolero includes cca. 3200 songs, whereas a 1000 (or so) is the limit per folder if I'm not mistaken?

 

P.S.: as for enjoying my music on holidays - no probs, since I can also play this same playlist from my iPhone via bluetooth and it works pretty well. It's just a bummer that it won't display album artwork over bluetooth, which I can live with temporarily, but I'd still want to play all my music from the SD card in the future mostly because of the artwork thing. Also, if playing through bluetooth there seem to be 1-sec or so interruptions during every other song or so; that's another reason to prefer the SD card.

Edited 29 July, 2017 by jon15

[CapstanPlug]

Ok - just trawled both the Bolero and Swing manuals and the only reference to file numbers is a "Note" under Media section ( around page 24 depending on manual revision )  :

On older versions the note says:

■ With more than 1,000 tracks in the folder only the first 1,000 tracks with the oldest creation date are displayed.

On the Nov 2016 revision, it says

■ In the list, the first 1000 entries (titles, directories etc.) are displayed with the oldest creation date.

So, I wonder if there might be a 1000 hidden files - so it doesn't get to display the ones you want ??

 

Other than that - I'm goosed for an answer !!!

Enjoy the hols ! Ciao.

 

[CapstanPlug]

And... just see in latest version (05.2017) - they combine car manual and Infotainment in one book now, it seems.

 

It says (on p126)  :

The Infotainment can detect a maximum of 1024 directories in the connected audio sources and can play back a maximum of 6500 files. The Infotainment can play a max 1024 files from a directory.

 

So, much that same - 1000 files (ok, 1024) max per directory.

 

Also - they won't play any files with DRM protection.

[jon15]

Thanks. I have the older (late '14/early '15) version of Bolero (the one that doesn't support MirrorLink properly).

 

I just tried deleting all the DS.store files and also added a smaller .m3u playlist (cca 300 songs) to the SD card. As expected, deleting the DS.store files didn't play any role whatsoever. In addition, the 300-song playlist wouldn't play either, so that eliminates the doubts about playlist not being recognized due to excessive number of files in the root folder.

 

I'm hoping someone can help me over in Octavia III forum.

 

As a last resort I suppose I'll have to add these mp3s from the playlist separately into folders (without a playlist), which really wouldn't be fun though as the playlist involves 3000+ songs, meaning I'd probably have to split them into like 4 folders because of the damn 1000 songs per folder limitation. And then if I had these 3 or 4 folders, how could I even make Bolero choose songs between these folders ONLY, rather than eventually randomly playing songs from other folders on the SD card as well? Seems like I'd have to buy a separate (small) SD card just for these "playlist" folders then?!  In addition, is there even a way to export all these mp3s from iTunes playlist into a folder? Because as of right now these 3000+ songs are only in a playlist in iTunes, so obviously I wouldn't want to go look for each and every mp3 from this playlist separately and then manually add it to a "playlist folder".

Edited 3 August, 2017 by jon15

[jon15]

Upon inspection of the .m3u playlist, I could imagine why Bolero wouldn't recognize the files in the playlist. I would assume it's because the playlist is based on the directories on my Mac rather than my SD card! So the question now is how to export the playlist from iTunes that will be based on my SD card file locations rather than Mac file locations??

[jon15]

1 hour ago, jon15 said:

 In addition, is there even a way to export all these mp3s from iTunes playlist into a folder? Because as of right now these 3000+ songs are only in a playlist in iTunes, so obviously I wouldn't want to go look for each and every mp3 from this playlist separately and then manually add it to a "playlist folder".

 

Ok, you can simply drag and drop the files from the playlist into a folder on SD card if you wanted to "mimic" the playlist.

[jon15]

I finally got it to work, many thanks to @Paul90!!  

 

I wrote step-by-step instructions below, but to summarize: the path of your mp3s needs to be linked to folders/files on your SD card, and for Mac users like myself the .m3u file should be saved in Windows (CRLF) format, otherwise Bolero (and similar systems) won't recognize it due to some formatting differences between Windows and Mac.

 

1. Create your playlist in iTunes

2. Click on the playlist, go to iTunes "File" and then "Library" and select export in M3U format

3. Open the .m3u file with TextWrangler (free app)

4. You will see something like this (this is just an example of 1 song!):

 

#EXTM3U
#EXTINF:273,Shape of You - Ed Sheeran.m4a
/Users/username/Music/iTunes/iTunes Media/Ed Sheeran/Divide/04 Shape of You.m4a

5. Remove everything to the left of the slash "/" before the artist's name, so you end up with something like this:

 

#EXTM3U
#EXTINF:273,Shape of You - Ed Sheeran.m4a
/Ed Sheeran/Divide/04 Shape of You.m4a

6. Do this for the rest of the songs in the .m3u file (best to use the "find and replace" option within the app)

7. Once done go to "File" in TextWrangler and then "Save As"

8. Under "Line breaks" choose Windows (CRLF) - this will ensure that the file can get read properly in Bolero!

9. Copy all your music to SD card and make sure the paths match those on the playlist! E.g. in the above example the folder structure is as follows: Artist/Album/Song, so the "Ed Sheeran" folder should be visible right away when you plug SD card into your computer, as it will be on the "root" of the SD card.

 
 

Below I'm quoting some additional explanation from @Paul90:

 

Quote

Paul90 said:

A full path starts from what they call the "root" of the file system, this just means the highest level you can get to.

So if you plug the SD card into your mac and open it you will see some folders (I guess you've already created some).  These start at the "root" and that's indicated by the first "/".  

A text file (like the .m3u file) contains characters you can see (the text) and ones you can't (called control characters).  These would be used to indicate that the end of a line has been reached, etc.  Whatever you use to display the file interprets these control characters and so does the car when reads the file so it knows how to display it or use it to find the tracks.

Things are different here depending on your operating system.  The car and most other people on the forum are using  a Windows operating system and for them it's simple, what they see on the screen is what the car reads.
This expects a CR (carriage return from the typewriter days) and a LF (line feed).  A Mac these days tends to just use a LF and not a CR.  So you need to insert a CR after each line so the car can read the file.

 

I use a free app called TextWrangler to do this and it will also search and replace the path text as it's just a general text editor.  At the bottom of the screen you can choose how you want the file to be saved.  Just choose "Windows (CRLF)" and it will insert all the control characters for you automatically.  Job done :-)

 

Edited 5 August, 2017 by jon15

[alltorque]

Having tried all sorts of stuff, I finally just dragged stuff off iTunes, album by album, onto a USB stick. Bolero seems happy with it but plays tracks in what appears to be an alphabetic sequence. Not ideal but there are more important things in life and I have little patience with technology that makes me work for it, rather than it works for me. 

 

Old bloke rant ends.