Music Playlists - Media System Plus/Navi System

[FRTSIman]

I've found a really simple way of making playlists from a selection of any of the music files on my SD2 Card or USB stick on the Media System Plus/Navi System on my SEAT Leon Mk3, which may be of interest:

I plugged my SD card or USB stick already loaded with all my music files, (which can be in folders, sub-folders, etc for artist, album, etc) into my computer and then opened VLC media player (on my computer) on one side of the screen and opened the SD card (or USB stick) folder/file directory on the other side of the screen, so they were both visible side by side. Then I just dragged the individual tracks I wanted in my playlist from the SD card (or USB stick) into the Playlist window of VLC media player. If necessary, it is then easy in VLC media player to change the playing order of the tracks (which will start in order from the top of the list).

After completing the playlist in VLC media player, click on Media at the top left of the VLC media player screen and select "Save Playlist to File" from the drop-down menu.

Now select the SD card or USB stick and type the name of your playlist, ensuring it is saved as a file format ending .m3u and NOT ending .xspf, i.e. the playlist file when saved on the SD card or USB stick should be e.g. "Playlist01.m3u" and not "Playlist.xspf".

You can either save the playlist outside any folders on the SD card or USB stick, in which case it will appear at the end of the list of all other music folders displayed on the Media System Plus/Navi System screen, or you could save the playlist in a playlist folder named, e.g. "1Playlists", so the folder appears at the top of the list of music folders displayed on the Media System Plus/Navi System - I did this so I could quickly find my playlists without having to scroll down through to the end of all my other music folders (artists and albums).

Now eject the SD card or USB stick from your computer and then unplug it and plug it back into the Media System Plus/Navi System in the car.

I have noticed the following extra points while making my first playlist:

The playlist must be initially saved on the SD card or USB stick - It will not work if first saved somewhere else on your computer and then copied to the SD card or USB stick.

The playlist does not seem to play music files that have names, titles, etc containing characters or symbols which are not displayed correctly on the Media System Plus/Navi System screen. I found this was a problem with a music track I had with some Scandinavian characters in the mp3 ID3 tag. This may be resolvable by editing the ID3 tag?

 

[marty_34]

interesting to know, might look at putting some music on an sd card. usually stream off my iPhone but handy knowing of alternatives

 

[johnnyd2003]

I'm the same I normally use my phone for music it's much easier

 

[DaFoot]

The playlist must be initially saved on the SD card or USB stick - It will not work if first saved somewhere else on your computer and then copied to the SD card or USB stick.

I had a similar issue with playlists (different software) that suffered the same strange issue.

Turns out if I selected the option in the software to create playlist to use relative paths instead of full/absolute paths it would work fine.

In essence that means the pointer in the playlist file works something like:

./artist/track.mp3

instead of

/home/user/music/artist/track.mp3 (or something like C:\Users\user\Music\artist\track.mp3 under windows) which of course won't exist on the USB stick/SD card in the car because it will have a different mount point.

However ./ (meaning current directory) is the same anywhere - ie relative to file system location.

 

[fabiavrs2004]

I finally got round to this last night and it works. The only thing is you have to do at a file level and not folder level. Next challenge is how to edit the playlist. Has anyone done this.

 

[YorkshirePud]

Question folks! Say you have several folders all on the card. Within one folder lets call it rock you have several other sub folders, but within the rock folder itself you have scattered quite a few MP3S

now if you save a playlist to the rock folder it will only control the single mp3s in that folder and not in the subfolders?