Winows media player Rips my Audio Cd MP3’s into an order my car doesn’t suit

FrankFalcon

Hi all

I am learning French Language and have picked a a 9 CD set of Audio discs so I can listen in the car. Each disc has 20 tracks on (for example Disc 1, Track 1. Greeeting People. Disc1 Track 2. At the shops. Etc.)

So, I pop CD1 in my PC and open up windows media player. I rip the CD to my HDD. I then open up the the destination folder and rename the tracks in order ‘French Track 1, French Track 2’. Etc. so, from this first disc I have now manually renamed all 20 tracks. I then transfer this to a usb stick to play in my car. (My car has no cd player and only plays from USB). Now, If the language coarse was 1 disc only this would be fine because the car reads the tracks in order. However, the problem is that the coarse is 9 disks. So, I put in CD2. Again, rip it to the destination folder on the HDD. I Then go into disk 2 and rename track 1 as French Track 21 (because this is disk 2) and do on until I get to track 40 (remembering that there is 20 tracks per cd). So, I do this with all CD’s and at the end I have renamed every track  I go away to my car, pop in my USB with my 180 files on it (9 discs x 20 files) and expect it to play tracks in the order I have named them (French Track 1 to French Track 180). However, I discover that there are 9 track 1’s, 9 track 2’s, 9 track 3’s etc. I put my usb stick back in my pc and see that all the tracks are still named in the order I manually gave them  (Tracks 1 to 180). I open up the rip folder and discover that windows media player has assigned each track its own number under a column with a hash. 

So, if you look in this example image that I randomly grabbed from google you can see the first track is titled ‘Red Rain’. If I changed that title to ‘ZRed Rain’ I’d expect it to play last (alphabetically) but the column with the hash decides it is track 1 no matter what I title it. Even if I was to rename every track on this disc as Track 1, Track 2 etc that hash column insists on keeping the tracks in its pre arranged order. This is fine for this single disc but my problem is I have 9 discs and each track on each disc is assigned a hash number by that hash column. Therefore, when Input all 9 discs onto 1 USB that is why there are 9 track 1’s, 9 track 2’s and so on. So, I now have 9 track 20’s. Is there anyway I can do away with that hash column determining what is track 1 etc? 

Thanks all. 

Neil_Jones

First check the obvious and that the car radio isn't in shuffle mode or something when it plays from USB.

Also see if you can make folders and then see what happens.  So you have one folder for CD 1, one for CD 2, etc.  That may be all you need to do.

I don't think this is a "hashtag" thing, its more likely a metadata thing.

outtatune

Try using Exact Audio Copy

It's a little bit more involved than basic WMP but has really good configuration options for naming the output files and -crucially I think for you - setting the metadata. You may even find that someone has already done the thinking for you and one of the online CD databases already has the correct settings for your CDs.

wongataa

FrankFalcon said:

and so on. So, I now have 9 track 20’s. Is there anyway I can do away with that hash column determining what is track 1 etc? 

Thanks all. 

In the metadata of the MP3 files is a track number field That is what WMP is showing in the # column.  Yes the data in that field can be edited to blank it out or you could change it to match the number in the file name.

You can change the track number in WMP as far as I am aware, just like you can change the track title and artist information.  Any other audio management software should be able to change the track number as well.

Olinda99

I would echo the advice above which goes to put each CD in a separate folder

as for the technical reasons why your player is behaving the way it did there could be several including the following

1. the player is indeed playing by file name order but you have named them 1,2,3,....21,22,23...180 whereas you should be naming them 001,002,003...021,022,023...180

2. the player is not playing them by file name order but by metadata order - maybe by track number and you probably have several track 1's and several track 2's etc so it plays all the track 1's first and then all the track 2s etc.

Username03725

Could be that your in car player is using the metadata Track Number field value for its sort order, ignoring the physical file names. That’s the norm.

Try a free bit of software called MP3Tag, to edit the track numbers manually. It’s easier if they’re all in the same folder but once they are you can drag them all into the MP3Tag edit window, sort them by column header with whichever field gives you the correct order (file name presumably?) and then edit each track individually in the right order to create track numbers from to 1 to 60 or whatever the last track is.

It sounds convoluted but assuming familiarity with Windows and software it’s a pretty trivial task.

PHK

Players typically use metadata to sort tracks and album. Amongst other things the metadata includes disc name, track name and number. 

What you actually call the file rarely matters. 

So the first thing to do is make sure that the tracks have the correct metadata. If they don't then you can add them manually. 

The player should then allow you to select disc name and then play the tracks in order. 

Please note that some car players are not very clever and will just play the tracks in the root directory of the USB stick in the order they were added to the stick. 

droopsnoot

PHK said:

Please note that some car players are not very clever and will just play the tracks in the root directory of the USB stick in the order they were added to the stick. 

Indeed, I was just going to add, this is what mine does. If I delete a few tracks I'm bored with an add some more, the new ones will play at the end regardless of title or anything else.

FrankFalcon

Thanks all for your advice. It appears that then Audi Music player is not very clever and you can’t change how it reads the tracks, which leads me to another question that I will ask in a new thread. I will start a new thread because the question in this thread is probably now not relevant given the cars ability to only play tracks in a particular manner. 

PHK

You need to format the USB stick, then add the tracks in the order you want to listen to them.

Andy_L

When I was using the MP3 player in a (Garmin) car satnav I had to rename the tracks with 01, 02, 03 etc at the start of the track name to get it to play in order