Music on SD Card, How to switch folders? Garmin 660

 

Got a 4Gb SD card today... Decided to create new music Disk....

Prior to today, I was using a 1Gb SD card.. and the 1 Gb card was nearly full with music.

When I got the 4Gb card.. I left the rock in the root directory, and created a second directory, JAZZ, and put all my Jazz in that directory....

I'm finding that all the files are being seen, rock and jazz, even though they are in different folders....

Any way of getting Garmin to limit viewing to a paticular folder, so as to keep the music type separate???

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A 2689LMT in both our cars that we love... and a Nuvi 660 with Lifetime Maps that we have had literally forever.... And a 2011 Ford Escape with Nav System that is totally ignored!

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There's a limit to the number of files that can be read from the ROOT directory.

Create a subdirectory and move all the music there.

The Garmin doesn't read the folder structure in order to get the Genre, Artist, and Album information. It reads the track tags.

That doesn't work very

That doesn't work very well....

I have moved the files such that there is nothing in root directory, and 2 directories below that, Rock, and Jazz...

When I put that back into the Garmin, 90%+ show up as UNKNOWN, and a few as Jazz, but none as Rock....
If I go into the Unknown Genre, I get a combination of Rock and Jazz. Only a couple of the Jazz show up as Jazz...

Under Album search most all of everything show up as Unknown....

Same for Artist....

95% of these recordings were originally analog recordings from 1950--1985.. Few were from CD's

You're telling me that separating by Folder will never work?

Am I missing something, or is this incredibly dumb?

Reason why I'm trying to separate them....

Wife Likes Rock Only.... But I like Jazz.

Reason why I put rock in root directory... (which has worked well)... is that we have cheapie MP3 players, (Which DOES support directory structure) and it defaults to root directory for playing, so I put ROCK in ROOT So she wouldn't have to fight through a directory structure.... and Jazz in a sub-directory.. and this way they are kept separate...

But Garmin doesn't recognize a directory structure on SD card? OH that's 'different'!

Is there a way to edit a genre into .mp3 files one at a time to make the garmin happy?
By that, I mean edit a Jazz Genre into the MP3 Jazz files, and edit a Rock Genre into the MP3 Rock files.

--
A 2689LMT in both our cars that we love... and a Nuvi 660 with Lifetime Maps that we have had literally forever.... And a 2011 Ford Escape with Nav System that is totally ignored!

Directory

My directory on my SD is my poi file, and the artist folders i.e Tina Turner, CCR, Mixed, etc. It plays under the various artists, or I can choose play all.

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nüvi 3790T | Those who make peaceful revolution impossible, will make violent revolution inevitable ~ JFK

file structure

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nüvi 3790T | Those who make peaceful revolution impossible, will make violent revolution inevitable ~ JFK

You need an MP3 Tag Editor

JanJ wrote:

That doesn't work very well....

I have moved the files such that there is nothing in root directory, and 2 directories below that, Rock, and Jazz...

When I put that back into the Garmin, 90%+ show up as UNKNOWN, and a few as Jazz, but none as Rock....
If I go into the Unknown Genre, I get a combination of Rock and Jazz. Only a couple of the Jazz show up as Jazz...

Is there a way to edit a genre into .mp3 files one at a time to make the garmin happy?
By that, I mean edit a Jazz Genre into the MP3 Jazz files, and edit a Rock Genre into the MP3 Rock files.

Garmin isn't paying attention to the directory structure. It scans the whole card, looking for *.mp3 files. It gets the Genre information from the MP3 tags in the files themselves. Google MP3 Tag Editor or ID3 Editor and you will bring up a lot of tools that will help you identify and insert any Genre information that you want. Most will allow you to select a whole bunch of files and update them all at once. Once you do this, ALL programs will be able to read this info.

Most of these programs will allow building playlists, which you might find useful, too.

You don't have to download anything to do this, actually. Windows Media Player will do this. You can even use Windows Explorer to add tag information.

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Yes. As I said, the GPS unit does not pay attention to the FOLDER STRUCTURE.

It reads the TRACK TAGS.

Use software on your computer to properly tag the songs and the GPS unit will read them.

It will not read the folder structure.

And there still is an operating system limit to the number of files that can be read from the root directory.

On my 680 I have all the

On my 680 I have all the music in one folder. When I choose music from the map screen there is a button for "browse". From there I can choose All, Artist, or Genre. You should be able to find your Rock, or Jazz in the Genre choices.

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nüvi 680, 265t, 295W, iFinder H2o

Tags

jonzim wrote:

On my 680 I have all the music in one folder. When I choose music from the map screen there is a button for "browse". From there I can choose All, Artist, or Genre. You should be able to find your Rock, or Jazz in the Genre choices.

Yes, if as Motorcycle Mama explained, each mp3 file has the tags filled in properly.

When I put together my music library, I made sure each file was tagged so that the Garmin would recognize them by title, artist and genre, like this:
arrow http://i48.tinypic.com/2eki2d2.jpg

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Tampa, FL - Garmin nüvi 660 (Software Ver 4.90), 2021.20 CN NA NT maps | Magellan Meridian Gold

Took a bit of time.... but Got it!

I finally got it... Took information from this, and another site.... but got it..

As illuded before, the history of these files contained nearly no tag data.... Put that together with me not knowing anything about tag data, and you have a recipe for confusion, and I was confused....

A combination of this site, This site: http://home.comcast.net/~ghayman3/garmin.gps/index.html
and a couple calls from my brother in law (He on XP, me on W7-64....) and a "Fun Time" was had by all!!

I ended up using WMP to change the Tags in genre area only, leaving the music in folders as before..... So I can use this card in an MP3 player as well as the Garmin!

This evening I tried that tag editor.... MUCH EASIER THAN WMP.

Thanks all!!!

--
A 2689LMT in both our cars that we love... and a Nuvi 660 with Lifetime Maps that we have had literally forever.... And a 2011 Ford Escape with Nav System that is totally ignored!

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Good that you found something to work with. I'm still going to put out my recommendation for MediaMonkey. It's one of the better taggers and organizers out, and able to embed album art directly into the mp3 file itself (not many taggers are actually capable of doing so, or capable of doing it in a compliant manner). Syncing options is also great, as you can setup separate sync options for different media and players. For instance, you can setup your 1GiB card to only carry Jazz tracks, and the 4Gib card to only carry Rock. Or setup the 1Gib as your designated favorites, while the 4GiB just carries a mix of everything. Playlist creation is also a breeze.

FOLDERING YOUR MP3S ON YOUR NÜVI

My blog/article that JanJ was referring to is titled

FOLDERING YOUR MP3S ON YOUR NÜVI
---- A Work Around To Let You Prepare Mixes Of Tunes And Play Them

and can be found on page 11 of the

Garmin Tricks & Tips WEB site

arrow http://bit.ly/garmin_gps_tricks

Some of you may find the presentation with detailed steps and graphics of value.

GARY HAYMAN

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Garmin DriveSmart 61 LMT-S, Prev.GPSs: Drive61 LM, nuvi 3790LMT, 755T & 650, GPSIII+, SP 2610, 250W; Magellan 2200T; Originator of GARMIN NUVI TRICKS, TIPS, WORKAROUNDS, HINTS, SECRETS & IDEAS http://bit.ly/GARMIN-TNT

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The big problem with the method you outline in your blog, is that your changing the genre of the song(s) simply to allow yourself a way to sort them AND making duplicates (triplicates, quadruplicates, etc etc) just to allow yourself a way to organize songs on your player.

That'll work fine... till you quickly run out of space on the portable player. Even my 30GB Zen doesnt have enough space to house my entire collection, let alone duplicates or more of each file. Forget about my 16GiB SDHC card housing duplicates. Even on that card space is at a premium for fitting my music.

The best way is to simply make a playlist file that will not require you to make any (unfavorable...) changes to your mp3 files or making copies of the same files over and over again. Playlist files take up little space (compared to an mp3), yet can be arranged a multitude of way to suit your taste.

Got some sweet driving music for those long rides?
Make a playlist.

Taking the significant other out and want to play some "mood" music?
Make a playlist.

Feeling aggravated after a long day at work and just feel like burning off some steam?
Make. A. Playlist.

You can make a playlist for whatever mood, time, or state of mind you could ever possibly be in, and just add in whatever tracks you want into your playlist.

This is very similar to the problems faced with organizing photos and going about it in (imo) the wrong and roundabout way. Family photos for instance; Do you make a seperate folder for each and every family member? Do you place the name of the people in the phote within the filename itself? What about the place the photo was taken at? Day? Year? What about photos that contain multiple people? Make a copy of that photo and place a copy within each and every folder for each and every person/place within?

That is just way too much headache and aggravation just to organize photos, but...

With a photo organizer, you can take your photos and place them anywhere you wish, even name the files or folders themselves some gibberish, because within the organizer you would apply keywords or tags to each and every photo. So now when you wanna look up a specific person, all the photos tagged with that name will come up in your search, regardless of what folder the photo is in, or what the filename is.

This is the same case with music files and ID3 tags. You use the ID3 tag to contain all the relevant information pertaining to the file within it, and the player/organizer will use that information to easily sort through and find specific files. The playlist is just another way to organize specific files for playback your way, without altering the original files name or ID3 tag, and most portable players (even our Nuvis) can use playlist made by most software now a days (Winamp, WMP and MediaMonkey playlist work just fine on Nuvis).

Again, I'm gonna recommend MediaMonkey for all your tagging and organizing needs. You can tag multiple genre's within the ID3 tag itself (although most player now will only read the first tag), and MediaMonkey can easily list those music files that contain the genre your looking for. You can sort by year as well (so long as you have the year field filled out), or even sort by multiple variables (Rock + 80s + Aerosmith for example). Whatever comes up in your search, you can simply create a playlist and sync the playlist over to the player/media. MediaMonkey does a great job with sync profiles as well.

One issue I ran into with

One issue I ran into with the tag editor is I couldn't do New Orleans Jazz, or any custom name.

But eventually found a way to do it... Which is so simple I can't believe it..

W7-64 Ultimate, by the way....

I have a backup list of the files on my SD card...
I had moved the New Orleans Jazz from the Jazz folder to a new one.

I then listed the files in that folder, switched to "Details" and at the top of this window, I right clicked on the folder list options and selected "More".
Then I selected genre, and "Show".
At this point I was able to see the genre of all files.
Highlighted All of the files... selected properties, and doubleclicked on genre, and changed the genre of these files from "Jazz" to: "New Orleans Jazz"

It stuck.. copied these to card....

GOOD TO GO!!!

This answer may have been in front of me all along.... I just never had to deal with editing tags in MP3's before.....

--
A 2689LMT in both our cars that we love... and a Nuvi 660 with Lifetime Maps that we have had literally forever.... And a 2011 Ford Escape with Nav System that is totally ignored!

An Update on my last

An Update on my last post......

There is a way to do a custom Name --- in Tag Editor.
The selection I was looking for just wasn't in the default list...and I mistakenly thought the list was the only selections.......
I was wrong...

--
A 2689LMT in both our cars that we love... and a Nuvi 660 with Lifetime Maps that we have had literally forever.... And a 2011 Ford Escape with Nav System that is totally ignored!