Ordering Playlist Songs

[maikii]

I have an IPAQ 2210, of course with WM (PPC) 2003, WMP9.

As I mentioned in another thread, I lost all my playlists, and am re-making them. (I will back them up this time, not just in a system-wide backup.)

One question arises, as I do this, considering the order of songs in a playlist. Of course, I know how to order the songs individually, one by one. That is pretty obvious. I'm wondering if there is a quicker way to do it.

Let me explain. These playlisrs are all exactly the same as CDs I have. I ripped the CDs (ones I had bought) to WMAs, and copied the WMAs to my flash card. Each CD of WMAs is in its own folder, with the name of the CD as the folder name, and each of the songs has the same name as on the CD. After ripping them to a folder, they are in the same order that they were on the CD. I think the ripping program created them in that order, so the one with the earliest creation time is probably the first song on the CD, etc.

Although it's not essential, I would like the songs on the playlist to be in the same order as the songs are on the CD. (I couild choose "shuffle" if I ever want to hear them in a different order, but I would like the original order to be the same. I create a new playlist, give it the name of the CD, click on the "add" sign, then go to the folder on the CF card in which the songs from that CD reside, select all of them, press OK, and voila, all the songs from that CD are on the playlist. However, although the songs were created in the folder in the order of the CD, they don't end up the same way in the playlist. In fact, they end up in alphabetical order.

OK--I know I can then move them around to put them in the correct order. It's a little time-consuming though, having to look at the CD jacket to see the original order, and moving the songs one by one to put them in the desired order. Multiply that by several playlists, which I have to re-make now, and that time adds up.

Is there a way, when I select all the songs in a folder to add to a playlist, I could make sure that they are added to start with in the desired order, which should go from earliest to latest, considering the file creation time (all the same date though, just seconds or minutes apart in creation time).

Anyone know how to do that? Thank you.

[Gremmie]

Here's a question that will get you in the right direction, but I don't know how to point you there.

When you are ripping the CD's, are the filenames (open up My Music to check this out) preceeded by a number. For instance, I rip CD's and the filename output is like this:

01 Once.wma
02 Even Flow.wma
03 Alive.wma
...etc.

For me, this typically keeps them in order when you transfer them to your device. So if it's not doing this, just, uh, try to make them do it (told you I don't know how to point you there :wink: )

Bonus question, are you transferring via Media Player "Copy to Device" or through My Computer? If you're trying one way, have you tried it the other way (e.g. use Copy to Device if you've used My Computer)?

[Dave Beauvais]

I always name my files using track numbers for this reason, but Media Player on the PPC always adds them to a playlist in reverse order when I add an entire folder at a time. I have to manually move tracks up and down in the playlist because Microsoft has yet to add such a simple thing as a sort option.

--Dave

[Janak Parekh]

The simple answer is not to use WMP to do your playlists -- its playlist functionality is horribly broken, IMHO. Either use a third-party tool to generate the playlists, like CEPlaylist (http://www.ceng.com/CEPlaylist/description.asp), or use a different playback program.

--janak

[maikii]

The simple answer is not to use WMP to do your playlists -- its playlist functionality is horribly broken, IMHO. Either use a third-party tool to generate the playlists, like CEPlaylist (http://www.ceng.com/CEPlaylist/description.asp), or use a different playback program.

--janak

Is the PPC playlist format something universal, that all the media players for PPC use? (I thought that each had its own format, that only WMP could create playlists for WMP, etc.) (I haven't even heard of there being any compatibility between WMP playlists on a desktop computer ns those on a PPC. (So that one could create playlists on a desktop computer and then copy or convert them for use on a PPC. Is that possible?)

[stevew]

I found a gem of a program for doing playlists and it also will sync them with the PPC. You build the playlist on your desktop using MediaSync and then it tranfers the playlists directly to your PPC. It's a super program and there is a 30 day trial. I love this program. Found it doing a Google seach and I've never seen or heard of it before.
http://www.dataview-sc.com/software/mediasync.htm

[qmrq]

I always name my files using track numbers for this reason, but Media Player on the PPC always adds them to a playlist in reverse order when I add an entire folder at a time. I have to manually move tracks up and down in the playlist because Microsoft has yet to add such a simple thing as a sort option.

So... try another media player. ;)

[maikii]

I always name my files using track numbers for this reason, but Media Player on the PPC always adds them to a playlist in reverse order when I add an entire folder at a time. I have to manually move tracks up and down in the playlist because Microsoft has yet to add such a simple thing as a sort option.

So... try another media player. ;)

Not so simple as you state. I have tried a few other media players, and although they might have a few other sorting options than WMP, none of them (at least that I could find) would sort by date/time, which would seem an obvious sorting method to me (any find of file explorer program has that as one of the sorting options). Date/time sorting would put the songs in the same order they are on the CD, as CD ripping programs (mine at least, I assume probably all) rip the CD tracks to audio files in the order the tracks appear on the CDs. Therefore, the file created from the first track on the CD will have the earliest creation time, etc.

I really do not understand why programmers who create these media players (including WMP, and others) don't include this very obvious sorting option. In fact, the most common default sorting option they have, sort by filename (in alphabetical order), although a useful sorting method for finding a file in a directory, is not really a sorting method well-suited to music listening. How many people prefer to hear their music in alphabetical order? :roll:

If people want a customized order, of course they will have to do that manually. But if they want the program to automatically sort the songs in the playlist, and the playlist contains the same songs as are on one CD, one would think that the most frequently desired method of automatic song sorting would be to have the song order on the playlist the same as on the CD.

Some people have written that they put numbers at the beginning of each song, so that the alphanumerical sorting will put the songs in the same track order. That's a possibility for dealing with it, but it adds an extra level of time by the user, having to rename and type in the numbers before each track. (My ripper just automatically names the files exactly the same as the names of the tracks on the CD, no numbers.)

A "sort by time/date" feature would be a much simpler way to deal with that.