Playlist burns to disc in reverse order

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Level 3

522 points

Playlist burns to disc in reverse order

I'm oldskool... I still like discs that I can feel. So even if I download an album from Apple iTunes Music Store, I will burn it to disc, add it to my physical disc collection as well as to my digital disc collection that I keep in CDPedia.

Now, something strange has been going on, and I don't know if it's since El Capitan, or one of the latest versions of iTunes (I am running the latest OSX 10.11.3 and the version of iTunes is 12.3.2.35).

So:

1. I download a full album from iTunes Music Store;

2. I get an 'album' in iTunes;

3. I select all the tracks from the album, and choose File>New>Playlist from selection;

4. Sometimes (and I don't know if that is consistent), the tracks end up last one first (so reverse order);

5. If (4) is true, then I choose Edit Playlist and Sort by Track#; I definitely check that the playlist is in the order that I want;

6. Then I choose File>Burn Playlist to Disc, insert an empty CD when requested, etc.

The last couple of times (today was with Philip Glass's Koyaanisqatsi), I immediately (i.e., during the Initialise phase) noticed at the top of my iTunes screen that the CD was going to be burnt in reverse order, although the playlist I wanted to burn was in the correct order. The first time, I continued, and indeed: the resulting CD was in reverse order.

So then I chose Edit Playlist again, made sure all tracks were in the correct order, and tried to burn again. Wrong order again (Initialise phase) and this time I interrupted burning. The CD was unusable, but it was in the same reverse order.

So finally I chose for a new playlist (empty!), dragged the individual tracks one by one to the new playlist, filled in the title manually, etc. and then repeated the burning process. This time all was fine, as it should be.

As I said: this has happened before, but is this only happening to me? How (except from manually building a playlist). When can I really rely on the playlist shown on screen, knowing that when I press "burn" it will be OK? I don't want to spill three empty CDs for every album I want to burn.

Thanks for your input.

iMac, OS X El Capitan (10.11.3)

Posted on Feb 7, 2016 4:09 AM

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Answer 1

Best reply

Kenichi Watanabe

Level 8

41,572 points

Feb 7, 2016 5:11 AM in response to lescornwell

It may be best if the playlist to be burned has the songs shown in actual list order, not a sorted order. First, show the playlist using the Songs view to show a plain list with columns (if it's not already). NOTE: The view control is at the right end of the horizontal bar; if it currently says Playlist, change it to Songs.

In the Songs view, you can sort the list by clicking the heading of the column you want to use for sorting. To sort by Track #, click the heading for the Track # column. To reverse the order, click it again. The list order is shown for the playlist, when you click the column heading of the leftmost column. This column does not have any title in the heading, and it has sequential numbers below. The "pointer" in the heading (after you click it) should point UP (click it again to reverse).

With the playlist shown list order, you can manually drag the songs (up and down) on the list to get them in the desired order. This is useful, for example, to create a "mix CD" with songs from different albums in any desired order. Try burning the CD with songs in desired order, as shown using list order.

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Answer 2

lescornwell Author

Level 3

522 points

Feb 8, 2016 1:06 AM in response to Kenichi Watanabe

Thank you very much for your detailed and accurate reply. I went through the whole process again, now following your instructions instead of my previous workflow described in my first post, and bingo: (your last paragraph) with the playlist shown in list order and, (your second paragraph) with the pointer pointing UP), I indeed had to change the order (it was reverse) by dragging the individual tracks to their proper position. But now the disc burned correctly as of the first time.

Thanks again: I'll print this solution and add it to my 'workflow' notes re burning CDs.

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