MP3's and NUVI

You can actually create a playlist on the unit itself using the Media Player, at least I can on a Nuvi 760. But your larger question of best software to create a playlist is a good one. I use iTunes as my library, but almost all my music is in MP3 format. What are good choices for creating playlists that can be used by a Nuvi without installing very large software that parallels iTunes functionality?

You can use Notepad, Media Monkey, iTunes, Windows Media Player, etc. Just be sure that you do it once the files are already on your SD card.

You can use Windows Media to build a playlist, too. Just be sure and save it as a standard M3U playlist. Windows Media defaults to their own proprietary format of .wpl if you don't switch the "save as" filetype first.

For a few keystrokes, you can create a simple playlist.

Open a command window (cmd) and change to the drive/folder where the mp3 files are. Then type
dir /b *.mp3 > playlist.m3u

To append new songs to existing playlist file, type
dir /b *.mp3 >> playlist.m3u

Use notepad to edit playlist.m3u, if necessary
notepad playlist.m3u

You then transfer/copy the mp3 files along with the playlist file to Garmin internal drive or the SD card.

Replace the word "playlist" to whatever name you like. But I suggest NOT to use punctuation or space as part of the filename, stick with alphabet and/or number.

To open a command window, press the Window key on the keyboard, click Run, at the pop up small window, type cmd then press Enter key.

Early example is to put all mp3 files to the playlist by using *.mp3

To be selective, try this:

dir /b seventies*.mp3 > playlist.m3u
dir /b oldies*.mp3 >> playlist.m3u

NOTE the use of
> which means overwrite existing one or creates new
>> which means append to end of existing file

I have all my music in Windows Media and their default is used. Are you saying that I can create a playlist and save it as an mp3. Will all the songs be converted?
Thaks,
Gerry

While any *good* media player will do it for you, the procedure above is actually the easiest way.

But a few things to keep in mind:
First, this way adds all the files alphabetically...using a media player lets you sort the songs first. But you can easily edit the playlist.
Right click the file, choose 'Open With', and select Notepad.exe
Using cut/paste, move the files around as you see fit...just remember that each song needs to be on a separate line.

Thanks, I will try it.

Gerry

I've been an avid user of Winamp for a long time to this day. It can create playlists very easily and is free to download (at winamp.com)!

As an avid user of Winamp, I thought you might know if it will convert WMA files to mp3. I have about half my files I downloaded for my Creative mp3 player downloaded in WMA format. I tried converting them to mp3 format in Winamp and it said to get Winamp Pro. I'd just like to know if it will work before I upgrade to the pro version.
Any help greatly appreciated!
Thanks,
Craig

I use this program, works good. Free!
You can generate by Time, Number of songs, or Size.

http://www.davewolf.net/software/products.php

Thanks for all of the answers. Been a big help. When using the command prompt system, is it possible to have a playlist for files in multiple directories? For instance, there are 4 albums in different directories but I just want 1 playlist to access songs in each directory. Can that be done?

Hi guys,

I've been experimenting with the media player in my nuvi 760 and was wondering, is there a "stop" button?

I know there is a "pause" function, but how about completely stop and get out of it?

Thanks

X

No stop button, but what are you wanting to do that the pause doesn't do for you?

It seems like the pause button keeps the media player in a state where next time you power it on it is still there and there is no easy way to get back to the main menu.

Ideally a stop or exit button would have put you back to the main screen.

I am new to the GPS world and franly expected a more refined package than this (I have a nuvi 760).

Thanks

Try hitting the Source button instead of the Pause button and it will do what you want.

Thanks guys. We'll give it a try.

On the 650 you tap the play button, to stop it tap the button again, to change songs tap browse, if you tap the source button i get the audiobook player. and tap it again and it goes back to the same song that was on.

You are correct, tapping the play button switches back and forth from play to pause. And tapping the source button takes you into the audiobook player.

So all in all I will still like to have a STOP button. Even Microsoft can put a little x at the corner to close an application out.

BTW, has anyone experimented playing video files on the media player?

I'm a novice in iPOD and mp3 type of things. I don't know how to create playlist. I'll try some of the methods in here and report back later.

Jerry,

I asked Zeus why he wanted the STOP button, and he said to prevent the mp3 player from starting up automatically when you re-start the unit. If you do as I suggested (and yes, go to AudioBooks), the unit will not re-start at the mp3 player screen -- at least if you have no AudioBooks.

Tried the suggested method, but the resulting playlist shows empty on the nuvi, the list has the list of all the mp3 files, but it does not have the "#EXTINF" string that I am assuming is required for this to work.

I also tried the Windows Media Player, and after saving as m3u, it didn't work either, I had to edit the file to remove all the "..\..\..\..\" that the windows media player prefixes on the filenames, once removed, the playlist worked fine on the nuvi.

I found it easiest to make my playlists using Windows notepad. The format is simple. Here are a few out of one of my playlists:

George Thorogood - Bad To The Bone (live).mp3
Genesis - Invisible Touch.mp3
Buffalo Springfield - For What It's Worth.mp3
Santana - Black Magic Woman.mp3
Bob Seger - Like A Rock.mp3
Whitesnake - Slide It In.mp3
Billy Squier - In The Dark.mp3

"Artist - Title" is just the naming convention I've always used when making mp3 files.

When I'm done, I do a Save As to a file name like Play List 1.m3u

Then, I copy the play list file into the same folder with the song files themselves on the SD card in my 660.

EDIT: I tried the steps raymondleeus provided and once I opened the command window, I could not CD to folder where the mp3 files are located. I get an error that says it can't find the specified path. Double and triple checked my typing & upper & lower case. Still no go, can't get to the right folder.

EDIT, EDIT: I got it to work. To make it simple, I just made work folder off the root directory on the C drive and put some mp3 files in it to test. I actually just copy>pasted the dir command into a BAT file and then executed the BAT file. I made a perfect m3u playlist file that required no editing. COOL!

i have a nuvi 760...how do i add alerts or other mp3 files to my unit so it plays when that POI is nearby?
thanks all

http://www.poi-factory.com/node/6764

edit:
BTW The mp3 file has to be in the same folder as the poi and have the same name except for extension:

Poi.csv
Poi.mp3
poi.bmp

etc...

you also might like to check out getting started and faq at the top of any page on this site....

http://www.poi-factory.com/node/6654

Video isn't supported...so even though the 700 and 800 series nuvis have screens perfectly sized for video, Garmin doesn't think we deserve it.

I just plug my ipod 30 gig into the aux port and listen away...

What settings do you use to get the iPod to pause when a navigational alert is announced? And how do you get both navigational alerts AND iPod outputs to play through the aux port?

Don't know if I am answering your question but here goes... I have 2 power outlets and one aux port for the Ipod.. I have an E85 alert as well.. I would imagine that the ipod would be playing and when I come upon an E85 station, the Garmin Nuvi will alert me.. Now if the Ipod is playing so loudly, I may not hear the alert. Is that what you mean?

That sounds like that would be to much going on at one time and be awful distracting.
Ipod playing
Jill screaming turn here
Wife saying turn the da... thing off.

L O L

That is one problem. That plus the inability to hear the alerts and navigation and BT phone through the car speakers has convinced me to retire my three iPods in favor of the integrated Garmin. It's a royal pain if you are listening to a book to have to make the choice of listening to either the book or the directions and missing one. I thought maybe you had a gizmo that allowed multiple inputs to the single aux port with one having priority over the other (if anything came through from the GPSr, it would take precedence). With such a gizmo you could at least make sure which audio was missed.

It's a shame that Garmin didn't spend the three pennies it would have cost them to enable video support on the 700 and 800's.

Everything is already there, the screen size, the resolution, it can even play games, all that is missing is bringing it all together.

Maybe they thought it would have been too much of a distraction.

I believe they would be illegal for use in all states (on the dash).

My first try of this didn't work, as per my previous post above, but I found out it was due to the fact that I have my music organized into folders and subfolders (eg. \music\artist\album\song.mp3), so I had to also use the /s option to include subfolders, and then edit the playlist file to remove the drive letter (C:) from the playlist, then everything worked fine.

DIR /b /s *.mp3 > playlist.m3u

Then notepad to replace "C:" with "" (empty)

Just wondering if you can store mp3's and TOPO U.S. 2008 mapsets on same card. I have this idea that once you hit the maximum number of mapsets the SD card will act as if it's full. I'd like to get an 8gb SDHC card and load the maximum number of mapsets and fill up the rest of the card with mp3's and be able to access both from the same card on my Garmin.

As long as it's not a preloaded Garmin map card, you can put other data on it.

Note that you are limited to a maximum of 2025 map segments that you can load in a mapset. There can only be one mapset (It will be in a file named gmpsupp.img.) on the card at any one time. Unit will also only read a mapset up to 2GB in size.

For the US TOPO, you will hit the segment limit long before you hit the maximum file size of 2GB.

The unit also can only read a maximum of 1000 songs. This will be approximately 4GB.

Excellent! Thank you for the speedy reply. I had my terminology mixed up as I meant map segments and not mapsets. It's a bummer they limit the songs and segments, but I've read enough posts about that complaint so no need to expand on that. thanks again.

To add POI alerts the file(s) need to be in the proper format and then loaded with POI Loader. The software is a free download from the garmin website.

As for the POI files themselves. I created a folder on my computer for pois. When I create or download a file from this site I put it in that folder.

I then tell the POI Loader software where to get the files from and send it to the sd card in my 760.

For alerts to sound you need to have an alert .mp3 file that corresponds to the file name for the alert. So for example if the alert file is called coffee.csv then the sound needs to be coffee.mp3. both files should be in the folder that you tell the software to load from.

Once the you run poi loader the sound should then work.

For a more detailed set of instructions go here (thanks to Motorcycle Mama)

www.poi-factory.com/node/4360

Good luck

How do I turn on the Proximity Alerts on my Zumo 550? The owners manual says it can be done, but the icons don't appear on the screen where they should.
To change the Garmin TourGuide
settings, touch > Proximity
Points > TourGuide. Select Auto
Play to hear the complete tour as
programmed, Prompted to show the
speaker icon on the map when tour
information is

I don't seem to have a TourGuide button?

Do you have any TourGuides loaded? If not, I suspect the button will appear when you have a TourGuide loaded.

I use Switch file converter that is free and can handle just about any standard format including WMA. I have used it to convert commercial CDs to MP3. It is available at http://www.nch.com.au/switch/index.html

I have POIs loaded from this site and from a macro associated with geocaching. Is there something that makes a Tourguide file different from the others?

You will only get that button if you have loaded Custom POIs (including TourGuides) that have alert information included in them.

You must set an alert if you want an alert to sound. You can run POI Loader in Manual Mode and set whatever alerts you want. Or you can put some alert information in the files themselves.

If you run POI Loader in Manual Mode instead of Express Mode, you can set whatever alerts you wish.

Check out Phil's great guide for more information about alerts.

Hornbyp's guide to setting alerts with POI Loader
http://www.poi-factory.com/node/6764

With the mp3 max of 1000 songs does it matter on the size of the individual mp3's? I have an mp3 audio book that is 1 mp3 file that is 20 hours long and almost three hundred megabytes. Does that still only count as only one song?

From what I've been able to tell, the size of the individual files doesn't matter. Each file only counts as one song no matter how big it is.

Some people have gotten around the limit, for example, by combining all the songs from one album into a single file. But this may be unwieldy for some situations. But it is a work around.

After 2 days of trying everything I can think of using media monkey I can NOT get a playlist to work on my 750. I have my mp3's on SD card. Please anyone that can give a step by step process with media monkey I would really appreciate any help. Thanks in Advance and hope every one didn't eat to much yesterday.

My guess is that the file references are wrong.

Check out this format.

#EXTM3U
#EXTIN172,Joss Stone - Arms Of My Baby
\garmin\mp3\my music\Joss Stone - Arms Of My Baby.mp3
#EXTIN193,Jack Johnson - Banana Pancakes
\garmin\mp3\Jack Johnson\In Between Dreams (Bonus Track Version)\03 Banana Pancakes.mp3
#EXTIN253,Janis Joplin - Piece of My Heart
\garmin\mp3\Janis Joplin\Janis Joplin's Greatest Hits\01 Piece of My Heart.mp3

You want to make sure that don't have any references to the E: drive (or any other drive designation).

I downloaded playlist generator mentioned toward the top of post and finally got that figured out. I have never had so much trouble. Either things are getting harder to figure out or I'm just getting older. Thanks for Help

Here are the steps to create a playlist using MediaMonkey and XP. YMMV with Vista or Macs:

1. Plug Garmin into USB port and wait for computer to recognize the device.

2. Open MediaMonkey. On the left hand side you should see an explorer window. Scroll down until you see the drive for the Garmin SD card. On my computer it shows as "Removable Disk (J)". Double click on the drive (or click the + sign).

3. Select the folder containing your mp3 files. MediaMonkey will read the SD card and show all of your songs in the main window. This may take a minute or two depending on how many songs you have on the card.

4. Hold down the CTRL key and then highlight each song you want to add to the playlist. Once all of the songs are highlighted, select File - Export to Playlist. A new window will open. Click on the Save In window and select the Garmin SD drive. Name the playlist and then click Save. You are done.