Playing music from a flash drive... wtf!

[Drunktank]

So I FINALLY went and bought myself a little 32GB flash drive for the sole purpose of playing MP3's in my truck.

I loaded it up with 300 of my most recent downloads... all of them purchased and downloaded via Amazon for the past year or two. Anyhow, I go to play them and it appears that there are a ton of them that wont play and I get a little window saying some stuff about unsupported file type of security jazz. Then theres a ton of songs that play perfectly fine!

I came home and checked the file info on some of the songs that played and some of the ones that wouldnt and theyre all MP3 Audio.

Anyone know what Im missing here? Seems pretty odd....

Thanks!

Edit: And the drive is formatted FAT32 so that should all be good.

 

[Harblar]

So the file extension on all files is *.mp3?

If that's the case, my guess would be that some have built in copy protection so they won't play on anything other than what they were originally downloaded on. (Getting to be pretty common these days, especially on amazon stuff)

Best bet would be to convert them to a different format with a program like dB Power amp. This should get rid of any of the built in copy protection causing the problem.

On a related note, this is exactly why I always purchase music and movies on an actual physical disc. Not only do I get the highest audio quality when I rip them, I never have to worry about copy protection bs.

 

[jondle]

MP3 files themselves don't inherently support DRM. There are ways around that, as there is anything with computers, but I'm 99% sure amazon sells all DRM-free MP3's. If they were going to sell DRM'd music, they wouldn't use MP3 as the codec.

My guess would be the bit-rate. I think all of Amazon's MP3's are 320Kbps, but I could be wrong. In Windows, if you right-click the file, select Properties, select the Details tab, you can see the bit-rate. Compare a working file to a non-working file and see what you get. It is easy to re-encode files to any other bit-rate. Lower bit-rates are lower quality audio. Increasing the bit-rate on an mp3 will only make the file larger, it won't increase quality. From my experience, 128Kbps is the most compatible bit rate.

That is all referring to constant bit rate (CBR). There is also something called variable bit rate (VBR). With VBR, the bit-rate listed is the average bit-rate attempted, but it can be anything at any given time. If you have these, I would definitely re-encode them to CBR 128Kbps to get the most compatibility.

My second guess would be the ID3 tags. ID3 tags are used to store artist, title, album, etc. in the file itself. There are two versions of ID3 tags and both are stored separately in the file even if the data overlaps. Some players don't support version 2 or get messed up when they exist or are inconsistent. Try stripping the ID3 tag all together on one non-working song to see if that is the issue. You might end up having to strip the version 2 tag on all songs.

If it isn't either of those things...I'm very confused. MP3 is a very simple and old technology. Harblar has it right though, re-encoding using something like DB Power Amp or Audacity should take care of most issues. I use Tag-N-Rename to fix the ID3 tags, but I can't remember if it will outright strip them.

 

[cups]

Is there a solution that will do a bulk save/convert to a folder for later transfer to a usb?


6.2 - Power To Do More

 

[jondle]

Is there a solution that will do a bulk save/convert to a folder for later transfer to a usb?

I don't have a clear-cut answer for you.

My first suggestion would be try something like DoubleTwist. It is a library manager, similar to iTunes, without being locked down. It supports two-way sync'ing, so if you added files to the USB disk from outside your computer it will then add them to your computer. The question I couldn't find an answer to is if it will re-encode before copying to the target. Either way, this should help managing music on a USB disk.

Both DB Power Amp and Audacity have batch converters to convert multiple files at the same time. The latter option is free, but to work with MP3 files you have to follow these instructions to install the LAME MP3 codec after you install Audacity, which happens because MP3 is actually a licensed, proprietary format so it shouldn't be bundled with free software.

---------- Post added at 01:20 PM ---------- Previous post was at 01:15 PM ----------

Oh, and for the record, I use an old 120GB Zune for this very reason. The Zune software works great for managing the music library and keeping the player in sync with your computer/library.

Microsoft made the Zune. Microsoft makes Ford Sync. Harmony!

IMHO, it would be very worth it to see if you could find a used Zune on eBay. So much less headache than a flat-file USB drive.

I have a 2011 though. In 2012 Ford switched to the My Ford Touch or something like that. YMMV if you have a 2012+.

 

[Drunktank]

The plot thickens! Looks like its not the individual song... its EVERY song. There appears to be two files for every song. All the song titles that start with "._ " are the ones that dont play... unrecognized format or corrupt file. Then all the other files play just dandy. Any idea on what this is???

 

[Harblar]

If I had to guess, I'd say your id3 tags are messed up some how. Without being able to see the file properties it's hard to say for sure or determine why they are causing issues.

MFT came out in 13 and is still Microsoft sync. What jondle said about the zune is probably true. I had issues too until I converted everything to windows media audio. After that, zero problems. dB Power amp isn't free, but it is worth the price and, IMO, the best audio conversion/ripping software out there.

If it is and id3 tag issue, converting to a different file format(wma) may solve the problem, but more than likely you're going to need some kind of tag cleaning software. I use Tuneup for iTunes. It's fairly well automated and even handles cover art. Worth a look. Good luck!