Technical Glitch and a Fix

leswalden · Post by **leswalden** » September 28th, 2012, 10:40 pm

Before my vacation earlier this year I downloaded several Librivox books and saved the mp3 files to compact disks to play in my (2006 Mercury) car. (Did you know that Pride and Prejudice will fit on one disk?)

This worked fine for some books, but others came up with their chapters all out of order! Apparently the car stereo plays the chapters in the order in which they were last modified.

Back at home I tried to fix the problem.

One at a time, I loaded each of the chapters into Audacity and then re-exported it. The new disk plays the chapters in the order the author would have intended (had she known).

This could be done to the mp3 files when they are posted. Easier would be to have a utility program to modify the date without all the extra effort. (I think that in the dear, dead, DOS days there was just such a program called "touch".)

Leslie Walden

Post by **annise** » September 28th, 2012, 11:08 pm

I've met players playing the files in the title field in the ID tag order.
I've met them playing them in the file name order.
Both of which we work hard to get right when they are catalogued

I had a player which played the files in the order they were transferred so that highlighting a group and moving them was a disaster - windows decided which one it would move first. So I had to put them in a folder and then shift the folder. (that could have been a date thing I suppose - I never did work out what order it was).
Perhaps your problem was the order in which they were burnt to the disk and you could force that to be right ? Otherwise I am not sure we could do anything about it

Anne

leswalden · Post by **leswalden** » September 29th, 2012, 9:09 pm

I'll let you know if I get a better handle on it. I suspect the culprit may be the order in which the files unzip.

Placing the files in one folder, then opening and re-saving them in the desired order, and then sending the lot to disk as a batch did work.

Leslie

Post by **annise** » September 29th, 2012, 9:24 pm

I forgot , I did unzip straight to the player and it didn't work either so I think it may be the order in which they arrive at the player.

Anne

leswalden · Post by **leswalden** » September 30th, 2012, 9:14 pm

I'll keep looking. If I turn up anything useful, I'll let you know.

Leslie

leswalden · Post by **leswalden** » March 27th, 2013, 8:27 pm

I have a further clue about the problem of tracks that play out of order. This evening I cut two disks with a book I had recorded at home using a New
tech Infosystem, Inc. program that was bundled with my Acer computer. When I played them back on the same computer they wanted to run in the order of track 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 01, 02, 03, 04, 05, 06, 07, 08, 09.

Then I made another disk using the Windows disk utility (with Windows Vista Business) and that played 01 to 14 in numerical order.

My tentative conclusion is that Windows works and the NTI program was hatched from a scrambled egg. If I find any reason to change that conclusion, I'll let you know.

Leslie

Post by **annise** » March 27th, 2013, 9:04 pm

the NTI program was hatched from a scrambled egg.

THank you for your clear explanation

Jessi · Post by **Jessi** » March 28th, 2013, 12:20 pm

leswalden wrote:Easier would be to have a utility program to modify the date without all the extra effort. (I think that in the dear, dead, DOS days there was just such a program called "touch".)

Just wanted to add that 'touch' still exists on Unix-based systems (Linux in my case) .

Jessi

Post by **aradlaw** » March 28th, 2013, 1:49 pm

I haven't used CDs in quite a while, but this might be the same thing. I usually use a USB stick for listening, I have to unzip the files into their own folder, then copy/paste/move the folder to the stick to get them to play in the right order.

tovarisch · Post by **tovarisch** » March 28th, 2013, 2:21 pm

It may help a bit, it may not, but I had what I believe a similar problem recently. Check out this thread.

CalmDragon · Post by **CalmDragon** » April 16th, 2013, 2:31 pm

One thing I do for issue like this is create a text file with all the file names in the order I want them to play. I rename the filelist.txt to bookname.m3u and keep it in the folder with the mp3 files. You can also include folder names and keep in the root of the folder of the disc you are burning the files to. I do not use Drive Letter designations, but paths like foldername\filename01.mp3 and so for forth line by line. Creating the list is fairly simple if you can handle yourself at a command prompt or terminal screen. I use windows so I open a command prompt from accessories and after changing to the correct folder type DIR /b > filelist.txt

If my files are in a subfolder, I will type DIR subfolder name /b > filelist.txt and remember to keep it straight where to put the final M3U file.

the /b is to use bare formatting of the directory listing, just filenames and folder names, no sizes nor dates etc.

In linux it might bye using the LS command instead of using DIR of Windows/DOS.
Might be the same LS command on a Mac terminal screen, not sure.

Editing the text file is fairly simple, remove lines with only a folder name and make sure the filenames are in the correct order. Then save it, and rename it to an M3U file.