I want to transfer a podcast playlist to a USB drive in the order they appear in the playlist. However when I export them onto the flash drive they rearrange themselves. How can I export and keep my arrangement?
How are you playing these? Some players don't read the artist, title, etc. metadata embedded in the files and simply play files in the order they occur according to file name. You may have to rename the files by adding a number to the start so they play in that order. Check the Dougscripts web site for a script that can help with this.
Actually on various MP3 drives. The problem is, when I drag and drop them, the order is rearranged. iTunes has a rearrangeable list stack order. When exported the order takes on the order set in the "arrange by" settings. How do I get the system to keep the order I have set in iTunes. o
WHen I burn to CD I don't seem to have this problem.
I was asking about players, not drives.
How exactly are you doing this? Exporting using the export command is not the same as dragging files to a different drive. Exporting generates a text listing of files. Dragging simply copies the files. Then, as I said before, unless your player is smart and can read the internal tags the files simply get played by the order according to file name.
Burning an audio CD will burn special audio format files in the set order, but then it is in an audio format CD, not a normal data CD.
Here's related information, but this is for making a mp3CD and may not be the process needed for your flash drive:
iTunes: How to set the play order of songs on an MP3 CD - http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2455
Dragging and dropping. I did not see another way to get anything other than the txt files onto a usb drive. Looks like there is no way to do it?
Yes there is a way to do it. Copy the files to the drives. Rename them with a number at the start so they order in the desired play order. You may have to start some with one or more zeros in order to get them to all order correctly. If it is a few files do it by hand. If it is a long list then post back and I can spend 10-15 minutes typing in more detailed instructions on using a Dougscript and iTunes to do this.
Thanks but all that typing is waaaay beyond the call. I download regular podcasts and used to burn them to disc. Now I have a player in my car that will accept an aux input so I have bought myself a little thumb drive to play the regularly updated podcasts. I believe i can hack around the problem but wanted to make sure there wasn't something built in or more streamlined than I would do.
I was thinking there might be a way to "burn" to a virtual disc on the desktop and then copy that to the disc, or there might be a way to auto sequence the playlist in iTunes before dragging and dropping.
Thanks for the feedback.
Read the car';s manual for the player. They are pretty much all different. See if it will use m3u playlists.
It's an aux input so it doesn't care. It's the thumb drive that sees and plays the files. I can't find anything that indicates it will deal with m3u.
You could consider merging files into one track…
http://dougscripts.com/itunes/itinfo/jointogether.php
Or use Automator to rename files based on the creation/ modification date?
Unless you give us some more info about device that actually plays these files we can only assume it is using the filename as the sort criteria.
Dougscripts is worth searching - the site seems to be having issues at the moment, but that is where I'd look for ideas on automating iTunes.
Thanks a lot.
Thanks a lot Limnos
Of course there is always Automator…
http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20080424194133862
That hint will rename the exported files 🙂
I would change the 'get selected' into 'get specified' if you have a specific playlist for the device. I figure 3 leading digits is enough for less than 1000 items.
I have 5 thumbs drives and none of them have any kind of actual computing ability to play anything. They are purely storage devices. If yours plays things then it is more than a thumb drive, it is a media player with build-in flash storage and as such is really a mp3 player. Most thumbs drives do not connect to aux/line-in, they connect to a USB port and it is the car's player itself which plays the media stored on the drive. I do have a mp3 player that looks like a thumb drive but it is clearly a media player and it has a headphone socket which I can use to route audio out into a car's line-in jack. Without this kind of information is is more difficult to work with your question.
Tranferring mp3 podcasts from iTunes to flashdrive mac
