Heeeelp: MP3 alpha order issue ?
 

Hi all,

Many moons ago, I imported around 1200 Mp3s via Nokia PCSuite & WinMedia player onto the MicroSD card on my old Nokia 6124.

On that phone all the albums appeared with the songs in the correct album order.

However....when I inserted the same SD card into my n900, all my songs appear alphabeticised in media player......albeit in the correct album folder.....instead of in the intended album order .....?!?!?

Same happened when I tried copying same tracks onto the n900's internal HDD.

I don't use playlists much. Prefer listening in Album order. Being a bit new to all this I assumed :o all my tracks were all tagged ??!?

What have I done wrong ??? :confused:

Any help gratefully received.....

Regards,
Sam

Re: Simple MP3 alpha order issue ?
 

.......Bump

Re: Simple MP3 alpha order issue ?
 

......Buuuump

Re: Simple MP3 alpha order issue ?
 

You've done nothing wrong, submit a bug against the media player app.

Re: Simple MP3 alpha order issue ?
 

Well could be that your songs don't have tags about albums. Can you list the music by genre or performer?

Re: Simple MP3 alpha order issue ?
 

That's exactly what I thought initially, but I think they are tagged since my songs can be listed by Genre or performer, & they listed correctly on my old phone (N6124).

I used PC Suite for many of the albums - from original CDs too - so would've thought the tagging was done automatically ?

Re: Simple MP3 alpha order issue ?
 

:eek: Really ?!! But surely there'd be Thousands of others reporting the same issue.....have you seen the same thing too ?

If I'm not the only one, I'll gladly submit a bug but I was convinced it was something daft that I'd done !

Has anyone else experienced this problem ?

Re: Simple MP3 alpha order issue ?
 

I'm assuming your music is in the "Audio clips" folder.

Open up the terminal, try this, and let us know what the output is:

You'll need to replace "<path-to-song>" with an actual song. Holler if you need help figuring that out.

-jkq

Re: Simple MP3 alpha order issue ?
 

Well I think you've identified the issue....

Most of my music is still on the SD card in the Music folder....not sure how I browse to that ?

However, just to test, I've copied some tracks into the "Audio Clips" folder on the n900 partition, and run the command as follows below:

All the tracks appear to show as Track 0.....even though the other metadata has been carried across correctly.

How can I correct this ?

Re: Simple MP3 alpha order issue ?
 

I believe it is in "/media/mmc1", but I'm not completely sure, as I don't have a card in mine.

Hmm, I don't know if you can fix that on the N900 itself. Probably you'd have to fix the tags with some tagging program on your computer. :eek: :mad:

Maybe another forum member has some ideas?

-jkq

Re: Simple MP3 alpha order issue ?
 

the problem probably is, that your songs don't have correct trackNo filled in (e.g. in the case above, it is set to zero) - thus player uses track title.. I'd love to have tracks sorted by filename, when inserted into playlist, too :)

Re: Simple MP3 alpha order issue ?
 

I've got the same thing with my N900 and music collected from over the ages: most albums don't show cover art (even though there is a 'cover.jpg' in each album folder) but also I have the alphabetical listing issue with the media card. Two albums out of about 60 on the MMC card are correctly listed.
I just wanted to let you know you're not alone if you see this :-)
I'll grab a tag editor and try to find the root cause shortly.

Re: Simple MP3 alpha order issue ?
 

Have you tried the steps listed in http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=36145, at posts 26 and 28?

You probably don't have the track number (or it has the wrong value) in those songs.

-jkq

Re: Simple MP3 alpha order issue ?
 

1) No - but thank you for drawing them to my attention. I'll take a look when I get more time, I think there's merit in step 26.

2) No - it's not track number. I've downloaded eyeD3 and I have a high degree of trust in it.
I did use Musicbrainz to blat a few of the folders and that seems to have a pretty good hit rate when it comes to decorating music to appear on the N900.

Overall, although I'm a little used to the luxury of Rhythmbox on Ubuntu, I was surprised that the N900 wasn't a little more resilient for track numbers. I'm certain to have to do more work to put more dimension around this 'feature' :-)

Re: Simple MP3 alpha order issue ?
 

All my songs were tagged using eyeD3 and some scripts I wrote myself, so I know that method works.

-jkq

Re: Simple MP3 alpha order issue ?
 

Hi,

I have had a similar issue in this thread -

http://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=39938

I have found that only MP3 format files are listed correctly.

My WMA format files are listed alphabetically.

Anyone know of a fix or workaround for this?

Thanks

Re: Simple MP3 alpha order issue ?
 

Can you follow the steps in http://talk.maemo.org/showpost.php?p=460078&postcount=8 and post the results? I'm wondering if your WMA tags are being recognized properly by tracker.

-jkq

SOLVED: Simple MP3 alpha order issue ?
 

Solved (via workaround):

First I moved all my music off the SDcard in my n900 onto my laptop.

I downloaded Songbird & built a library off my laptop.

Then plugged my n900 in Mass storage mode & manually (right click, send to n900) sent my albums to the n900.

Job done.:cool:

I suspect WMA tagging wasn't recognised by the n900...or I was using a old version of WM player that wasn't tagging correctly..using the correct version....?

Either way....Songbird worked....It's a neat interface, clean install but ....slight word of caution, I'm running Windows 7 64bit & it Songbird crashed several times during music transfer....although it re-started relatively smoothly & quickly. It does clearly warn you during the install that Win7 isn't fully supported in but it does work...sorta!

Still missing some bits of artwork but I can work on that ...main thing is the tracks are in the right order.

Thanks all for your advice.:)

Sam

Re: SOLVED: Simple MP3 alpha order issue ?
 

#

Hi Sam

This is all very interesting, I have been struggling with the track order and album art for a while now...weeks and weeks.

I get the same problem with track order with WMA files (newly ripped or from historical library), always alphabetical when on the N900 ggrrr. I have used Songbird and Media Monkey and WMP and am running on a PC with XP.

WMP drops the album art everytime (due to me using bitrate conversion from lossless down to 64Kbit and Songbird seems to get the album art but all tracks are listed alphabetically.

I noticed it works for you with Songbird and am wondering if I have the wrong settings somewhere. Have looked through but not getting anything obvious.

Any ideas, anyone at all as I am quite stuck!

Regards
Simon

Re: Simple MP3 alpha order issue ?
 

Hmmm, sorry not sure - the album art is still a bit hit & miss with mine though...but songs are importing fine.

Don't think I changed any settings from defaults except for going for 192kps high quality as I figured space wouldn't be an issue.

Songbird: Have you tried re-trying by ripping some new songs from CD ? Be warned...if you're running Windows 7 you'll need to add the Gearworks add-on to enable ripping.....I only mention it because it took me ages to find that ! ;-)

Let me know how you get on - don't give up: I know how frustrating it is but you'll get there.

Re: Simple MP3 alpha order issue ?
 

Thanks for the tips, I tried again (from fresh) and with Songbird it is still only showing the tracks on the N900 in alphabetical order.

Only difference I can see is I am on Windows XP and bitrate, neither which should cause a problem.

You are not wrong about frustrating.. really want to get my music collection on my N900....