I’m burning a number of folders containing MP3 files to CD so I can play them in my new car’s 6 CD changer. I figure I can get roughly 60 CDs worth of music on 6 CDs and carry my essential collection with me (car doesn’t have an MP3 input jack.)
Anyhow, I’m burning the CDs using the native XP software and I want my files to be in the proper original order per CD. I can’t sort them properly without including leading file numbers which I don’t want. The car player displays album and song and I don’t want to see the lead numbers.
Anyone know a sorting method I’m missing (I’m trying not to touch each song to rename, comment, etc.)?
Or, anyone know a shareware program (preferably free) that’ll let me customize my file order this way?
You need to edit the tag info. Itunes can do it (and will also burn the compilation). Also, before you go through all the hassle, you may want to verify that your CD changer actually plays mp3’s (not all do).
ETA: It sounds like you want your disks like *Artist X - Album 1 - Track 1-13; then Artist Y - Album 1 = Track 1-13, etc. If you songs are labeled “1 - Trackname - Artist” then that’s the problem. Itunes will let you edit the ID3 tag info and create playlists and junk that will let you burn the way you want. It’s also free.
I’m also quite sure there are other tools to do this, but I’ll let the other dopers add it in.
I use DeepBurner for all my disc-burning needs. It’s free, it works for CDs and DVDs, it burns audio, video and data, and it’s damned near error-free, which is more than I can say for the XP utility.
It also lets you customize your file order, which should be of particular interest to you.
ETA: from the link, click on Products, then click Download under “DeepBurner Free”.
Sorry, I’ve always Nero to do my music CD/DVD authoring. If you don’t want the CD receiver displaying a file number, you can either change the display settings on the player or edit the ID3 information. Admittedly, since I don’t know the info on your songs are coded, and if, in fact, ALL of them are consistent, I can’t recommend anything more.
So, to be clear, you’re looking for a program that will
Automatically update the tags of your music so that they will reflect their number on the album
Fix the file names so that they don’t have a number in front.
Is this correct?
I use Mediamonkey for all of my music-organization needs, and I think it might make this easy. It would be able to recognize the appropriate track number for each song when you import the folders into the library, and automatically update the tags. Then, you use the “auto-organize” function in mediamonkey, and this will take all of the MP3s in the library, and move them to a directory you choose. In that directory, you can set how the files are arranged from there. My setting is this:
C:\Media\Music<Artist><Album><Artist> - <Title>
Mediamonkey recognizes those bracketted terms, and will sort the files automatically. It will also edit the final file name, so that all of my music has the same file name structure of <Artist> - <title>.
So, for example, my music appears on the hard drive as “Wilson Pickett - Mustang Sally.mp3”, not “03 Mustang Sally.mp3”
If you have other questions, feel free to post/send me a message.
I have all of the CDs burned already. When burning them, they were appended with a track number (for example, 01_Tangled_Up_In_Blue.mp3). I have already gone through the painstaking process of removing all of the leading track numbers. What I want is to be able to drag and drop the files in the folder in the order I want, not alphabetically, or by size, etc.
Right. Another way for windows to sort files is by track number, which is a piece of data contained within the MP3 itself, in the tag. Mediamonkey would tag the files with the appropriate track numbers, and then in explorer you could sort the files by that, and everything would be dandy.
However, since you went through that painstaking process of removing the preceding track number, I’m not sure mediamonkey would know what the track number ought to be, though, so it might not be able to do this automatically. By taking out the number in the filename, you make it so that there isn’t any data anywhere indicating what the track number should be. In this case, I’m not too sure what you’d do. If the files still have data on the album somewhere, then you could get the album info from freeDB automatically using mediamonkey, and this would give each song the appropriate track number.
Oh, then you should be all good.
As far as I understand it, the problem is that they aren’t sorted appropriately in Windows explorer, so you are having trouble dragging-and-dropping them in order. So, just sort the files within explorer in track number order. Open up a folder with your music in it, right click within the folder, and choose “Arrange Icons by… Track Number.” Assuming that, when you ripped the music, it put the track numbers on each tag, you should be all good.
