nuvi 660 sd trouble

Select tools, media player, Is there a musical note on the screen? If not select source, if there is select browse.... You should see the mp3 files that are on the card...

My mp3 files are in a garmin folder, on the SD card.. But I don't believe they have to be...

The unit displays your songs in the various categories by reading the ID3 Tag data for Album, Artist, Genre, etc. I suspect your songs do not have anything in their tag fields. The "Info" page of iTunes is an easy way to fill them in, but I think all operating systems allow you to do it under Properties as well.

Do you mean the tool icon on the nuvi? I selected that but there is no "media player" choice there...only map, system, locale, display, navagation, bluetooth, proximity points and volume. Where should I be looking?

On my 660, I press Travel Kit then MP3 Player. At the bottom of the screen, press Browse, then All. This will bring up a list of the mp3 files it finds.

However, as bentbiker alread said, if you don't have the ID tags filled in on the mp3 files before you load them, the nuvi will give the appearance that there is nothing there, because there are no tags to read.

All the attributes show up in Itunes but did not show up on sd when I copied the Itunes file onto the sd card. Without Itunes open, the sd card doesn't play on the computer. Is that normal or did I mess something up? I am going to erase the sd card and start over and see what happens, but I think I am missing an essential step. Help!

I have never used iTunes, so I can't help you there. My mp3s either came from download sites like Napster or Wal-Mart, ripped from CDs, or digitized records/tapes. Regardless, I always made sure that the ID tags were filled in when I made the mp3 file.

I then just used my PC to copy the files to the SD card in the 660. I never had a problem. I think using iTunes may be part of your issue.

1.) Have you found the MP3 player on the GPS?
2.) Are your songs true mp3 files, or are they in a different format?

If you click on the file via the computer, it will open whatever application you have chosen to play mp3 files. Does that happen?

Yes I found the mp3 player on the nuvi. It only has the intro on it. How do I tell if my songs are "true" mp3 files? All I know is that they work on my ipod! When I click on the file via my computer, Itunes plays the music, which is where the files originated. Most of the files are from burned CDs, a few from online, all play via computer and have been dloaded onto two ipods successfully. On the off chance it was the sd, i formatted a different one and put a few songs on it ( it is only 256 mb instead of 1gb like the other one). I think I messed with the 1g one so much that it is now totally messed up. One of my computers says that it is corrupted, so I am going to throw it away. Anyhow, the smaller sd is playing through my computer right now, but does not show on the nuvi. I can't figure out how to add album name, artist, etc to that file, as every time I click on it, Itunes opens and plays it, and that already has all that info on each song. I tried opening preferences for the sd while it is just in a sd drive, but there is no option to add anything to each file. Yikes. I am about to give up. Sorry for long-winded explanation

Does it have a mp3 extension? example music.mp3 where music = the song title...

It says MPEG-4 audio file....is that what you mean?

That's your problem, can you convert them to MP3?

check out this post:

http://www.poi-factory.com/node/13106

To change the tag...you can use Windows Media player or if u have Vista just right click the mp3 file and change the tag.Tag and rename software is also another option.

I had similar problem with one of my SD/micro card, which I tried removing and plugging back when the GPS was on.Big mistake.

Also, do not format the card using OS.Have seen many problems arising when someone tries to use a SD card which was formatted through the OS.It may be a compatibility issue.A good practice is just deleting files.

http://www.cnet.com.au/mp3players/musicsoftware/0,239029154,...

Look on your Mac at User/music/iTunes/iTunes music/whatever folders are there and you should see MP3"s in there. Copy them to the SD Card. If you use a PC ???

Go to iTunes/Preferences/Advanced-Tab/Importing-Tab. Change the "Import Using" dropdown menu from AAC to MP3 (you can change back later). Now, right click (or ctrl click) on any song and it will give you the option of converting it to MP3 -- it won't change your original, it will make a duplicate in the MP3 format. Then copy that mp3 to the card and you are home free. I doubt you hurt the original card unless you reformatted it.

My original, (NEW!) sd is definitely messed up beyond my fixing anything. Just so I know how to do this on my next sd, how do I change mpeg-4 files to mp3s? Or better yet, how do I copy songs from Itunes onto a new sd card? I thought I followed directions the first time out: that is, I did a select all from Itunes, then copy, then paste into nuvi sd. What did I miss? Why did it come out as mpeg-4?

How to convert mpr4 to mp3 will take some sort of a program, and that will be computer dependent....

BTW Why do you think the sd card is messed up??

http://www.m4p-mp3.com/?gclid=CLmB5q_ng5QCFSY1agodxB9HWw

Check it out...

It says" Windows was unable to save all the data for the file D. The data has been lost. This error may be caused by a failure of your computer hardware or network connection. Please try to save this file elsewhere." It doesn't show up on My Computer at all when I plug in the reader, so I think it's fried? I tried the instructions re converting to mp3s...thanks! I get it. But that must mean that I have to convert them one by one from Itunes and figure out which is the right file to copy to an Sd, right? Instead of doing select all? That'll be a long job! My husband is going to owe me, big time! Doing all this on the hated Dell, as that's where his Itunes are stored. Love my Mac laptop and it would never have done this to me, I'm sure! Sally

Conversions, I usually use real player to do conversions, but it's a premium feature... It also lets you select many files and convert them at once and keep the original if you like....

Sorry, I thought you were on a Mac; sounds like you had no problem following the conversion steps anyway. You can convert them as a batch -- select all the files you want to convert and then ask it to convert. Once they are converted, make sure "Date Modified" is one of the columns (you can add by right clicking on the bar), and then sort them by by date, clicking on the heading of the column (Date Modified). The MP3's will all be the newest, at the top of the list.

Okay, so first if you transfer mp3's to your sd card from itunes then you should be able to view them on the sd while it is conected to your computer. When you view them make sure that they have an extension mp3 because itunes uses a different format but no worries you can convert them to mp3 using itunes. Also make sure that you have the actual music file not just the library index.

Do you have a camera that uses SD cards? See if it recognizes it.... If so have it format it... I use xp pro and format my sd cards all the time without any problems.... This is the first I have heard about people hurting there cards by formatting them. I had one SanDisk card quit on me in a camera, I wasn't formatting it, I had removed it from my camera while it was on. I called SanDisk to ask how I could save it, and they sent me a new card and a pre-paid shipper to send the old card back...

I did as you suggested and put it in my camera and formatted and removed it. Now: Just to check this sequence: Do I plug nuvi into computer, wait for the icon indicating it is hooked up, then insert SD card, then go to My Computer and find nuvi sd and then try to move mp3s from itunes to nuvi sd by first changing them to mp3s, copying and pasting?

You can put the card in the GPS before plugging the GPS into the computer. But, yes, your sequence is correct.