MP3s on flash drive

[mcali6301]

I'm curious how songs are populated into the MFT from a flash drive.

 

I ask because some songs are located in "songs" but others are not. I checked the metadata for the a song that IS in the "songs" section and one that isn't and they are both setup the same way...

 

So to clarify, some songs are in the songs section but some songs I can ONLY find by going to artist>album and THEN picking the song..

 

Any insight?

[akirby]

Any funny characters in the title? Is it DRM protected? Are the bitrates the same?

[mcali6301]

Any funny characters in the title? Is it DRM protected? Are the bitrates the same?

No funny characters in the title. I haven't bought music in like 7 years, haha and the music in question is all downloaded..Bitrates....would THAT make a difference?

[akirby]

It shouldn't but you never know.

[Dominatron2212]

I haven't seen an issue with bitrates.. see my last post http://www.fordedgeforum.com/topic/15659-not-all-mp3s-play-nothing-seems-to-be-in-common/ here for how I fixed the issue.,

[enigma-2]

I'm curious how songs are populated into the MFT from a flash drive.

 

I ask because some songs are located in "songs" but others are not. I checked the metadata for the a song that IS in the "songs" section and one that isn't and they are both setup the same way...

 

So to clarify, some songs are in the songs section but some songs I can ONLY find by going to artist>album and THEN picking the song..

 

Any insight?

I'm guessing, but It's possible that some are in folders and other are not. The HU reads one folder deep, IE

<folder> (thinks it's an album title)

<sub-folder> (thinks it's a song title)

<sub-sub-folder> (can not be read)

 

Other than that, it could be in metamedia (is that the right word, the extra stuff, album title, song size, duration, singer, etc.) stored with the song.

Edited November 29, 2014 by enigma-2

[Tacyon]

Found this link and it addresses most of what you ask and more. MFT with USB drive tips

 

I can tell you that what enigma said about folder layout is pretty close to accurate. However assumptions are not followed as you'd assume.

 

for instance and assuming all mp3 tags (meta data) are correct on all my tracks .. took me 4 freaking weeks to get that all corrected!

 

Now with this layout <artist>\<album>\<track.mp3> you can say "play album X" and it finds that album out of the 2500 albums from 628 artist or so that I have.

"Play artist VanHalen" and it'll play all 223 tracks from 17 albums in my VanHalen folder.

"Play track Beautiful Girls" and you can get just the one you wanted from the path \VanHalen\The Best Of Both Worlds\

 

Now I also enjoy movie sound tracks and I have a folder setup like this -> \soundtrack\movie\track.mp3

One might assume that I could say "play album abyss".. and the movie name "abyss" being in the "album" position this technically should work. However MFT gets confused. I'll be presented all the tracks inside Abyss and asked to choose.

Remember, I said "Play album Abyss" so it "should" look for it as such. The fact that in my head I have a artist called "Sound Tracks" and albums (movies) within should be enough. "play album abyss" should be no different than if I'd asked for "play album 1984" which was in \VanHalen\1984\jump.mp3 and does work.

 

There is also a relationship between this folder structure, the file names themselves and meta data (mp3 tags) but I'm not sure on how tight this relationship is and which one takes precedence.

 

1) mp3 tags - are all spot on. I've gone over this with a fine toothed comb (actually a freeware app called mp3tag - awesome)

2) the file name format I use is "Artist - Song Title.mp3" and I did this so i'd always know who performed a given song. Although lately I've been considering dropping the "Artist - " preamble something the MP3TAG app can do to 7500 songs in a few minutes. Way f'in cool.

3) folder structure. Mine is \artist\album\song.mp3 Artist folder being in the root level of my flash device.

 

and this works for 98% of everything on my 64gb flash drive with the exception of the aforementioned sound track folder ... .

 

... the research continues. I need absolutes. If there are rules .. they must apply, consistently.

 

ps - I see that Sandisk make this flash drive now but since the MFT USB interface is undoubtedly v2.0 you'd not realize any benefit except being able to load data to it from a computer much faster assuming the computer in question had USB v3.0.

[akirby]

I thought the album name came from the metadata within the file, not from the folder structure.

[Tacyon]

yeah .. .another possible "assumption" but if that were an empirical fact and one that takes precedence ... then I'd have no issues as all the meta tags are accurate. Since the mp3 tag field for ALBUM on each of those is the name of the movie it comes from, it should just work.