Playlists on SD Card

[simon parker]

Got my first VW Cali Ocean last week. Loads to learn and setup but having fun doing it, but now getting to simple things like music. I can plug in my phone and use Apple Car play which works really well, especially for the google maps navigation but I also like to have all my music on an SD Card, as there's too much to store on my phone. Now I had this same SD Card in my old Mercedes I sold in order to by the Cali and it played all my playlists just fine. But on this Call when I choose the playlists it shows them eg 'Greatest Hits.m3u' but when click it to play the music in that playlist it gives error, no files found. I can manually play the music files and go into artists and albums and play them there but from playlists always gives error. Assume the VW needs a different playlist m3u file setup or folder structure to work? Can anyone help? I enclose screenshots of how its currently setup.

For example the file shows my classic rock playlist, and the structure of it, showing where each music file is. VW system reads everything else fine, plays all the files but selecting that playlist gives no file found error.

 

[Taff7996]

Mine plays fine but al, my files are all mp3,

The unit can only read MP3 and unprotected WMA files.

 

[simon parker]

M3u isn't the music files, they are indeed mp3's. the m3u file is the playlist, its what the system reads. But maybe its different on the VW. If someone has a file structure or playlist example that would be appreciated.

Taff do you have an example of your playlist file?

 

[motacyclist]

Worth a mention if you like music, if you register for VW Car-Net in your 2018 Cali you get 3 months free Apple Music. Apple also give you 3 months free, so you get 6 months in total.

My 6 months is up on 27 March, but I won’t be letting it go beyond that, not at £10 a month!

 

[Taff7996]

M3u isn't the music files, they are indeed mp3's. the m3u file is the playlist, its what the system reads. But maybe its different on the VW. If someone has a file structure or playlist example that would be appreciated.

Taff do you have an example of your playlist file?

Hi Simon

I don't have my songs seperated into files, prehaps that the problem

 

[simon parker]

yes thats a list of music file. Not the same thing. I'll figure it out

 

[zinglefiffy]

This might be worth a try:

https://darkimmortal.com/vw-composition-media-m3u-playlist-bug/

 

[simon parker]

yea I'd seen that 'bug' but still doesn't work. I'll have to play around with the playlist formats

 

[zinglefiffy]

I guess this is one of those niggly issues that the internet has a million and one answers to and no guidance on which is most likely to work for your exact circumstances

I saw another post where the solution was to make the paths in the playlist file relative to the placement of the playlist file rather than absolute paths. Yours are currently absolute, to make them relative add two full stops to the start of the path, so '/Music/...' becomes '../Music/...' Have you tried that?

It does look like an issue with the path to me, given that you can navigate to the actual file and play it and the unit appears to load the playlist file and then fail to follow the path to the same working music file. But who knows!

 

[Loz]

Yea, its a path issue.
On the mac I use export for iTunes and that puts the songs and playlist in a single folder and the file name has no path so relative to the playlist.
https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/export-for-itunes/id880764359?mt=12

 

[hirsty]

I have an SD card in the slot full of mp3 exported from iTunes on a Mac.

They are definitely separated into two playlists - Favourites and Classical - and I think I just dragged & dropped into two root level folders on the card & the head unit recognises them as playlists. I will bring the card into the house to check next time I go out in the van.

 

[simon parker]

I've the music files in their own folders, at Abba songs in Abba Folder etc. So the playlist then refers to them in whatever folder they're in. That way I don't have duplicates so no Abba songs in Abba folder and also Abba songs in a playlist folder. So yea I think its how the files are referenced eg with a ..\Music\Abba or without the .. etc, though tried all combinations and no joy so maybe I have to go old school and just put my playlist songs in their own folders

 

[hirsty]

I'd not considered that there could be options beyond opening a folder, choosing the first track & then either just let it play alphabetically or hit the red shuffle icon.

Do let us know if you get it to work another way.

 

[MattC]

Hi. What you're wanting to do is definitely possible. I managed to crack it for the SD cards in my T6 and my Golf a few weeks ago. I keep all my music as mp3 files in a folder structure of /artist/album/track.mp3. Then my m3u playlist files are just in the root folder and reference the entire path to each required track.

It took some trial and error, and the VW unit was even temperamental to the character set from particular playlist exports or editing apps used - I had entire playlists appear empty, and then specific tracks failing to register until I sorted that out.

I can't check any more detail as I'm on a bus in Norway right now... I'll be home in a couple of days so I can look at the cards for more details then if you've not cracked it.

 

[iceninejim]

I just had the exact same problem with playlists being visible but tracks not playable from the playlist. Making the paths relative with ".." did the job. I use Media Monkey, and it has a check box for changing the playlist to relative.

 

[simon parker]

Hi. What you're wanting to do is definitely possible. I managed to crack it for the SD cards in my T6 and my Golf a few weeks ago. I keep all my music as mp3 files in a folder structure of /artist/album/track.mp3. Then my m3u playlist files are just in the root folder and reference the entire path to each required track.

It took some trial and error, and the VW unit was even temperamental to the character set from particular playlist exports or editing apps used - I had entire playlists appear empty, and then specific tracks failing to register until I sorted that out.

I can't check any more detail as I'm on a bus in Norway right now... I'll be home in a couple of days so I can look at the cards for more details then if you've not cracked it.

Can you let me know the path structure? Still can’t grt it to work

 

[MattC]

Hi,

Here's an extract from a playlist that's working for me.

/Arctic Monkeys/AM/06 Arctic Monkeys - No.1 Party Anthem.mp3
/David Bowie/The Rise And Fall Of Ziggy Stardust And The Spiders From Mars/11 David Bowie - Rock 'n' Roll Suicide.mp3
/Primal Scream/Screamadelica/01 Primal Scream - Movin' On Up.mp3
/Compilations/The Reggae Album/1-18 Police & Thieves.mp3
/Echo & The Bunnymen/The Stars, The Oceans & The Moon/15 The Killing Moon (Transformed).mp3

The paths follow exactly how I have the music files stored in folders on the SD card - artist-album-track.

(It's not significant whether the artist name is part of the track name or not, that's just down to different apps I've used over the years when I've originally ripped the music from CD)

I originally exported the playlist in m3u format from the Poweramp app I use on my phone. On my laptop I then opened it in a text editor and re-saved it in DOS text format. That seemed to make it visible to the VW unit. The odd track still then showed up on the playlist in the VW unit but greyed out and unplayable - these turned out to be tracks with odd names and usually a weird character or punctuation in the name, so in these cases I tended to slightly change the track name to remove the offending characters from both the music file name and the playlist entry. For example iirc the ? character causes problems.

Hope that helps

 

[Loz]

The export for iTunes app I referenced earlier has various options for how you want to arrange the folder structure and filenames and it will convert file formats as it exports for you.

 

[Alan Greensall]

Mine plays fine but al, my files are all mp3,

The unit can only read MP3 and unprotected WMA files.

Just a note to everyone I put some FLAC files on my SD card, and they played no problem. If someone is after better quality audio this is really good news. The only shame is that my standard speakers in the Beach are so poor, most tracks sound like AM radio (yes they are really awful) Time for a sub and new speakers all round.