Playlists on SD Card

[VDubberinDE]

Does anyone know how to replicate my songs and playlists from my iPod to an SD card? I want to have same browsing functionality as if my iPod was plugged in. I want my phone plugged into USB port but still have it as if my iPod was available because I don't like carplays clunky menus to get to playlists.


Not sure why VW only put in 1 USB port.

 

[KevinC]

Follow my instructions here. I transferred from iTunes on a Mac, but the same principles apply if you're on a Windows machine...

https://www.golfmk7.com/forums/showthread.php?t=28720

You will actually gain additional functionality by moving to SD card from an iPod. You will be able to use a "coverflow"-like interface to swipe through your albums. Unfortunately you can't change how they sort, which is by album title - I wish they could be sorted first by artist - but it's still a cool & useful feature. Good luck!

 

[VDubberinDE]

Thanks. Unfortunately I do not have a MAC and cannot find that program for Windows.
Anyone know a comparable windows program?

 

[topspin]

playlists on SD card

download iTunes for Windows, (its free) and sync your ipod. Copy music from itunes to a folder on your desktop or directly to SD card folder.

 

[KevinC]

Thanks. Unfortunately I do not have a MAC and cannot find that program for Windows.
Anyone know a comparable windows program?

Doesn't matter - principles are exactly the same. Use anything to move the files to the SD card. Good luck!

 

[VDubberinDE]

Ok I gave it a try yesterday and played with it and it was easy , no software needed.
Just copied all my music files to the root of the card (each artist is in a separate folder, but no subfolders within folders), and then copied playlists exported from iTunes to root also. Do not use a main music folder, it stops the playlist from working in the Library View, they only work under folder view. Don't know about previous years but the 2018 units now will automatically organize by Artist, song title, genre, etc in the Library view (which is what you should you to browse music ). In folder view it just shows all your folders in alpha order.


I love the voice command, omg so easy to just call a song , no taking eyes off road.

 

[KevinC]

Glad you got that sorted. Have you tried the coverflow-like interface? Try tapping the album art while a song is playing.

 

[VDubberinDE]

Glad you got that sorted. Have you tried the coverflow-like interface? Try tapping the album art while a song is playing.

Yes, I have only 1 issue left and that is some songs don't display the album art even though they all have it when in iTunes.

So either its not embedded in the music file or wrong size maybe.

Not sure where to place the art in the folders. Should I put it in same folder as song or somewhere else?

I'll have to play with it. Otherwise everything works great and so much better than apple car play or my iPod which couldn't do the voice commands.

I spent like all weekend reorganizing my music in iTunes, what a pain! haha.

But I now have all DRM free files and organized by Artist.

 

[southpawboston]

Yes, I have only 1 issue left and that is some songs don't display the album art even though they all have it when in iTunes.

So either its not embedded in the music file or wrong size maybe.

Not sure where to place the art in the folders. Should I put it in same folder as song or somewhere else?

I'll have to play with it. Otherwise everything works great and so much better than apple car play or my iPod which couldn't do the voice commands.

I spent like all weekend reorganizing my music in iTunes, what a pain! haha.

But I now have all DRM free files and organized by Artist.

I have the same issue in my 2017. I’m pretty sure VW’s infotainment only allows artwork of 600x600 pixels Max. The owner’s manual states 400x400 but I’ve found that not to be a hard rule.

I haven’t found a decent app for Mac’s that can batch resize the artwork.

 

[seanmcd1]

I believe Itunes deals in png files now? I don't use it - but I dont' think VW will read those, they need to be jpg.

Also - You can actually use a very large .jpg for the folder.jpg file - I had 1400x1400 working with some albums (I eventually resized them but they worked). What WON'T work above 600x600 are embedded photos. I couldn't figure out why many of my flac files would not display the album art - then realized no matter how small I made the folder.jpg file - the embedded album art was gigantic and preventing it from displaying.

Tag and Rename is a great app for batch resizing.

 

[KevinC]

If you're using iTunes, check your artwork size. 600x600 does indeed seem to be the max size that MIB2 will display. Apple is inconsistent with artwork size if you buy from the iTunes Store, sometimes it's massive.

Whenever I buy something new now, I check it, and if it's too big, I pull it out, resize it online at...

https://resizeimage.net

... down to 600x600, then replace the artwork in EACH SONG with the new file. Voila, problem solved. You don't need to save separate artwork image files anywhere, MIB2 reads the embedded artwork out of the actual track files.

I did a more detailed writeup on fixing album art a while back...

https://www.golfmk7.com/forums/showthread.php?t=46174

 

[southpawboston]

If you're using iTunes, check your artwork size. 600x600 does indeed seem to be the max size that MIB2 will display. Apple is inconsistent with artwork size if you buy from the iTunes Store, sometimes it's massive.

Whenever I buy something new now, I check it, and if it's too big, I pull it out, resize it online at...

https://resizeimage.net

... down to 600x600, then replace the artwork in EACH SONG with the new file. Voila, problem solved. You don't need to save separate artwork image files anywhere, MIB2 reads the embedded artwork out of the actual track files.

I did a more detailed writeup on fixing album art a while back...

https://www.golfmk7.com/forums/showthread.php?t=46174

If you use a Mac, the built in Preview app does a great job to quickly resize images. It even makes it easy to resize a bunch at a time, although not in true batch mode.

 

[Luckyarmpit]

I thought I had read it was 500 x 500 but maybe I'm wrong. All of my album art displays properly (I'm super anal-retentive about my album art) due to the fact I went through my ENTIRE music library - about 20 GB - and updated the album art on everything. Took a few days but was worth it. I use two programs that helped immensely -

Tag & Rename
MP3Tag

I use Tag & Rename to resize all the album art (it will do it in bulk) and use MP3Tag to create playlists. MP3Tag is free; Tag & Rename lets you use it for 30 days with no restrictions but then you have to pay.

 

[KevinC]

I thought I had read it was 500 x 500 but maybe I'm wrong.

That's been said, and perhaps it applies to MIB1 (?), but 600x600 definitely works 100% of the time on my '16 MIB2 unit (TechniSat hardware).

I too was obsessed with getting everything to display properly, and went through and fixed everything that was wrong with my entire library (about 325 albums - not massive, but not tiny either). There was also a lot of other funky stuff to correct in the MP3 tags that caused weird sorting, songs to not tie to the correct album, etc. But once I figured out what was wonky it was all fairly straightforward to fix. It's sooo nice to have the entire library at my disposal in the car at any time, working 100% correctly and display album art properly for every single song.

 

[Luckyarmpit]

That's been said, and perhaps it applies to MIB1 (?), but 600x600 definitely works 100% of the time on my '16 MIB2 unit (TechniSat hardware).

I too was obsessed with getting everything to display properly, and went through and fixed everything that was wrong with my entire library (about 325 albums - not massive, but not tiny either). There was also a lot of other funky stuff to correct in the MP3 tags that caused weird sorting, songs to not tie to the correct album, etc. But once I figured out what was wonky it was all fairly straightforward to fix. It's sooo nice to have the entire library at my disposal in the car at any time, working 100% correctly and display album art properly for every single song.

I've an '18 R so yeah you're probably right about the 600 x 600. I sure as hell ain't going back through my library to resize everything up. Any new music I buy I'll try 600 x 600 just for my own sheer morbid curiosity.

Yes, agree, I corrected all the wrong metadata (like you did) and while it was tedious, it corrected ALL the things that were wrong with my sorting, album art, song names, associations, etc., etc., across all my devices. I purchase my music through iTunes and that's the "master" copy on my laptop's HDD. I make sure the metadata is right and then it's a simple matter of copying it to the SD Card in the car and then to my phone (Pixel 3 XL). It's not as tedious as it sounds and yes, I prefer local copies of all my music on my devices.

My only complaint is that more often than not, the infotainment system "forgets" what I was previously listening to, and defaults to the first song on the first band ("Also Am I" by 36 Crazyfists... I like the song but I'm getting sick of hearing the intro, lol). When it does this, the Selection button is grayed out so I can't pick any other song/album/artist/playlist until I exit/re-enter the Media function several times. I'm wondering if it's a problem with the SD Card itself... it's an older card but thought about buying a newer/faster card to see if that helps?