I have several Genius playlists on my iTunes (on a PC) that I'd like to transfer to an SD card. That is easy enough, but I would like to be able to transfer the playlists such that they will either be called up by voice (if that is possible) or that they will be able to be individually selected via my car's Comand system. Also would like to have the ability to have the songs within the playlists shuffle when played (again, if possible.) Thanks.

 

Surprised no one is using playlists from iTunes on an SD card. Anyway, here's a second try at getting some help. The bat file program I am referring to is found on this site (http://download.cnet.com/M3U-Playlis...-76111803.html). It does convert mp3 files into a playlist named Playlist.m3p. However, all such made playlists will all have the same name, Playlist.m3p. And when giving them different names, Comand doesn't read them. Comand only seems to read Playlist.m3u...so when doing a Playlist search, you come up with all you SD card playlists as Playlist.m3u. Can, or has, anyone figured out how to get Comand to recognize the renamed playlists?

 

OK, so I got 77 reads and no one was able to help? One reason may be that most folks have smartphones (I don't) and that makes the playlist problem less of a chore. Another can be that for those without smartphones just weren't interested in setting up SD cards with playlists. Well, I finally have figured out how to accomplish placing Comand readable playlists on to the SD card. I could write out a step by step approach, but only if I get the feeling that there would be interest...and, at the moment, I'm not getting that feeling.

 

I'll bump this thread... I've been working on importing music and would be interested in finding out what you discovered. I was trying to use playlists but I can't copy them to the music register. Do they have to reside on the SD card?

 

OK, here you go:

1. Choose PL to be exported
2. Copy songs in playlist
3. Paste songs into a Desktop folders (Called mine "PL Working")
4. In iTunes: Export PL to PL Working - The export will sohow up as "playlist.m3u"
5. Copy playlist creator file (m3u_creator_acp which can be found in https://www.google.com/search?num=40...k1.IR5dOTgVmvA)
and paste into PL Working
6. Execute creator file
7. Delete creator file and original name of PL, but keep plalist.m3u
8. Use "save as" in in Notepad++ (https://www.google.com/search?q=note...utf-8&oe=utf-8) to change name of playlist.m3u to same name as in iTunes and send to SD card
10. Delete all in PL Work to get ready for the next time you want to export a PL.

I came to this method, which most likely is the long way around, via big time googling and a lot of trial and error. I do remember that there was either a blog or a response in a forum that gave me most of my info on this approach, but unfortunately I can't locate this source. As I have only done this once and really don't remember more than what I have copied from my notes, you are going to be on your own for any particulars beyond what is written here. However, if you do find a more efficient method, let me know. Good luck.

 

Or just use the program Doubletwist, which does it all for you.

 

If iIremember correctly, I tried using Doubletwist (had successfully used it before on another setup,) but for whatever reason, it didn't work on the coupe. Thus, I went to the setup described above.

 

Thanks for the reply, I'll give a shot and let you know how it goes!

 

Do you put one playlist file in each folder? Does it let you pick the playlist and then shuffle from within the songs on that playlist?

I'm finding the SD option kind of a pain because it scans my card basically lists every file it finds and there's no way to force it to only read from one folder only. Shuffle play becomes a mess because it shuffles every file on the entire card together.

Seems like the only way to keep genres separate is to have a card for each one and swap cards as needed, which would be a huge pain.

Edit: I got it to work finally. I found two ways to do it, either with the Album tag (PITA) or the playlist route. With the playlist I don't have anything apple so I'm not familiar with flycaster's itunes method. I used media player classic to create my playlists and it was basically three steps: 1. open media player classic 2. drag all files you want into the playlist window 3. "save as" and save the playlist file into the folder your files are in.

Don't forget to rename the label of your SD card so that the car will rescan it. Then you go Search > Playlists > pick one of the playlists (I named them the same as my folder e.g. 80's, Classical, etc). Once you pick the playlist, it will list all the items inside but the first entry is "All", pick All, then go to playback options and do Random Tracks and it will randomize your playlist. If you pick Random Media it will randomize every file on your SD card.

The other option was to edit the ID3 tag of your files and give the same "album" name to all the files you want to appear in the same playlist, the rest of the steps are the same but instead of searching for Playlist you'd search based on Album. This method was tedious and annoying so I wouldn't recommend it. Also if your files are already tagged properly you probably wouldn't want to mess with them.

Hope this helps. Now COMAND is slightly less annoying for me, but I still miss the aux input and the video input I had in my w204.