Posted by Gilles Kohl on 09/02/06 09:39

Charles,

On Fri, 01 Sep 2006 17:06:44 GMT, Charles Russell
<SPAMworFREEwor@bellsouth.net> wrote:

>I infer from comments in this newsgroup that many non-Apple players now
>permit simple drag-and-drop from the Windows file system without
>requiring any specialized music database.

I recently bought a HD-based player and being able to do this was one
of the selection criteria, in addition to a standard mini-USB socket.
I do not want to depend on either proprietary software nor a
proprietary USB cable. (My GF has a nice Samsung CF-based player, but
one of its annoying features is the depency on its Samsung cable -
once that gets lost or forgotten, you're scr*wed).

Another not so nice feature of the Samsung is that you cannot access
its file system directly on a machine where Windows Media player 10 is
installed - immediately takes over and I've found no way to disable
that on the PC side.

On my new Archos Gmini 202, there is a player-side setting that
controls whether it should present itself as a HD or as a Windows
media device.

>My question is: how do you
>control the sequence of play after drag-and-drop? Alphabetical by
>filename? Alphabetical by title in id3 tag? Numerical by track number?
>Playlist?

It usually seems to be numerical by track number as far as I can tell.

The Archos can look at its filesystem in two ways, as "Music" and in a
"Browse harddisk" mode.

In the former, it displays ID3 tags and sorts by track number (there
are various ways to get to the titles, by Artist, Album, Title, Genre
or Year - the first two being the most useful IMO). In the latter
mode, organisation is by directory and sort order by alphanumerical
filename. In this latter mode, you can still play music files, and it
will by default play all the tracks in one directory, by filename sort
order. Sometimes useful.

>Can you drag-and-drop playlists too? Wikipedia lists several playlist
>formats. Is there a single format that works with most players?

I'm no expert here - the Archos can create and edit playlists directly
on the player, via a split-screen device - complete list on the left,
playlist being built on the right, and you can tag and add to the
list. The lists end up as simple ASCII files in a folder called
"Playlists" - here's an example of my "Think.m3u" playlist:

/Music/Barenboim/Chopin Nocturnes/01-E flat major op 9 No.2
Andante.mp3
/Music/Barenboim/Chopin Nocturnes/02-F major op 15 No. 1 Andante
Cantabile.mp3
/Music/Barenboim/Chopin Nocturnes/03-F sharp major op 15 No. 2
Larghetto.mp3
/Music/Barenboim/Chopin Nocturnes/04-G minor op 15 No. 3 Lento.mp3
/Music/Barenboim/Chopin Nocturnes/05-C sharp minor op 27 No. 1
Larghetto.mp3
/Music/George Winston/December/01-Thanksgiving.mp3
/Music/George Winston/December/02-Jesus, Jesus, Rest Your Head.mp3
/Music/George Winston/December/03-Joy.mp3
/Music/George Winston/December/04-Prelude.mp3
/Music/George Winston/December/05-Carol of the Bells.mp3
/Music/George Winston/December/06-Night (Snow, Midnight,
Minstrels).mp3

(the original has a song per line, not wrapped)

This was created on the player, but as the format seems quite common
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M3U) I guess you should be able to
create them on your PC and drag over as well - the only problem could
be the path names.

>I expect to replace my iPod at some point with a cheap generic, and hope
>to avoid the need for bloated player/organizer/device-loader software
>(e.g. iTunes) even if it is free. It would be ideal if I could simply
>copy the directory tree from Windows or Linux, but that does not appear
>to be an option with existing players.

I'd rephrase that: "does not appear to be an option with some existing
players". My previous one, a Creative muvo, also worked in "file mode"
- behaved like a memory stick once plugged into USB. It was nice, but
had only 128MB, that's why I replaced it.

> Most of my files are things like
>symphonies where tracks must be played in the original sequence, and
>some means of enforcing this is an absolute requirement.

My SO likes to listen to audio books in the car, and the problem with
these is that they usually come in the form of several CDs, with the
track numbers starting at 1 anew for each CD. This means that you have
to manipulate the device each time you've finished listening to a CD,
to switch to the next CD. Tag info is rarely available on the internet
databases either, so as an additional aggravation, when ripping a
six-CD audiobook, you end up with six "Track 01.mp3" or similar.

As I'm a programmer I wrote a small (C#/Windows) utility that can
renumber the tracks starting from a given number, set a common album
name for all of the tracks (they usually differ on a per-CD basis),
copy the files to a single directory, etc.

If you or anyone else is interested, you're welcome to it, just drop
me an email. You will probably find a plethora of better tools on the
net - programmers sometimes love to reinvent their very personal
wheels :-)

Regards,
Gilles.

[Back to original message]