# Length of time to recognize playlists on USB stick



## James57 (May 5, 2008)

I recently "upgraded" to a 128 GB USB stick to get all of my music in one place in the car. I have close to 40 playlists. 

The system only recognized about 10 of them not long after first popping it in a couple of nights ago. I took it out yesterday and deleted one huge playlist that I thought might be hindering things. That made no difference, so I put that playlist back on. The system recognized only the original number playlists, minus the one I'd deleted (despite my having put it back). 

This morning, I see it's somehow recognized another 8 or so playlists. It would somehow seem to be doing so despite the ignition being turned off. Has anyone experienced this belated (and apparently unpowered) recognition of multiple playlists, and can perhaps give me hope that all of them will eventually be recognized within my lifetime?


----------



## mcleod52 (Jan 29, 2015)

I ended up renaming my stick when I made changes so it would get re-indexed, which was relatively quick (seemed to be done during my 1 hour commute). Can I ask how you have your stick organize (as in ... artist/album/songs)?


----------



## James57 (May 5, 2008)

mcleod52 said:


> I ended up renaming my stick when I made changes so it would get re-indexed, which was relatively quick (seemed to be done during my 1 hour commute). Can I ask how you have your stick organize (as in ... artist/album/songs)?


Actually, when I got in my car late yesterday afternoon, it had finally finished all of the playlists. So it was somewhere between 24-48 hours for the whole thing. I'm still not sure how the car did it with the ignition off and the ECU asleep (although I have comfort access, I'm parked far enough away that I couldn't have somehow woken it up with my keys).

The root directory of my stick contains the artist folders, organized artist\album\song, and the M3U playlist files. All tracks -- about 9,000 or so of them -- were recognized fairly quickly, along with artists and albums. But for some reason, the playlists took a loooong time.


----------



## James57 (May 5, 2008)

Just as a follow up here, while all of my playlists were eventually recognized, not all songs on the playlists have been recognized -- or at least all songs on one particular playlist. I created that playlist to eliminate certain music for random/shuffle play purposes, and it has about 2/3rds or 6,000 of the 9,000 songs that I have on the entire USB stick. The car's system never recognizes more than 500 or so.


----------



## riku2 (Apr 13, 2012)

I worked out how playlists and track recognition work with the F10. I wrote an explanation in post 42 of this thread http://www.bimmerfest.com/forums/showpost.php?p=9070822&postcount=42

The playlist recognition does take a long time. I have 15,000 tracks on my usb stick and about 70 playlists. There is a maximum limit for each playlist. I wrote a perl programme to split the tracks by artist but must keep each playlist < 1500 tracks. I didn't work out yet the maximum playlist length, but it's somewhere between 1500 and 2000 tracks. Once a playlist is over that length the car will not recognize any more playlists on that USB stick. 
If not all your tracks are recognized then beware of the issue with your 9000 track usb stick going over the total track memory for all four USB sticks that the car memorizes. The car fails to recognize tracks once this limit is reached. Clear the other memories by putting in a few USB sticks with only one track on each of them.

Finally don't move/edit playlists once the car has recognized the stick. It doesn't seem to update itself properly (eg you add a new playlist when it's already recognized the 70 on the stick). In this case I clear the memories (put in a few USB sticks), rename the USB stick and start recognition all over again.


----------



## James57 (May 5, 2008)

riku2 said:


> I worked out how playlists and track recognition work with the F10. I wrote an explanation in post 42 of this thread http://www.bimmerfest.com/forums/showpost.php?p=9070822&postcount=42
> 
> The playlist recognition does take a long time. I have 15,000 tracks on my usb stick and about 70 playlists. There is a maximum limit for each playlist. I wrote a perl programme to split the tracks by artist but must keep each playlist < 1500 tracks. I didn't work out yet the maximum playlist length, but it's somewhere between 1500 and 2000 tracks. Once a playlist is over that length the car will not recognize any more playlists on that USB stick.
> If not all your tracks are recognized then beware of the issue with your 9000 track usb stick going over the total track memory for all four USB sticks that the car memorizes. The car fails to recognize tracks once this limit is reached. Clear the other memories by putting in a few USB sticks with only one track on each of them.
> ...


Thanks. When I added a couple of new playlists, they weren't recognized (as you indicate happens), so I reformatted the stick (FAT32), renamed it, and the car didn't even recognize the stick anymore. I returned that stick thinking it was defective (thanks, Amazon!), and got a new one. Now I'm waiting for the car to recognize all of the playlists, but given what you've said about playlists with more than 2000 tracks, I see I may have a problem again.

How do you know that there is a four-stick memory limit? Is there documentation outside of the manual, or was this just trial and error?

Edit: never mind, I see in your other post that it's in the manual. I didn't see it in mine, though.


----------



## riku2 (Apr 13, 2012)

I wrote a guide to summarize my findings with USB sticks with lots of tracks and playlists: http://www.bimmerfest.com/forums/showthread.php?t=849630


----------



## James57 (May 5, 2008)

riku2 said:


> I wrote a guide to summarize my findings with USB sticks with lots of tracks and playlists: http://www.bimmerfest.com/forums/showthread.php?t=849630


Excellent work, thanks so much for this. I note it is also not 5 series specific -- the passage you quote from the 5 series online manual is identical to the one in the 3 series manual.


----------



## James57 (May 5, 2008)

Just to add here, I've noticed that the car sometimes "forgets" the USB stick and has to start from scratch reading all of the tracks, albums, and playlists. This has occurred at three distinct times for me: once, after disconnecting the USB stick and connecting my phone to the USB port (to try out BMW Apps, which I can live without); a second time after flashing a tune on the ECU; and then a third time when I connected another USB stick to the glove compartment port. Ironically, I connected this other USB stick to the glove compartment port to fill up the 12GB of free memory on the music player, for when/if the car might again forget the main USB stick under the armrest after flashing the ECU with a tune.


----------



## riku2 (Apr 13, 2012)

James57 said:


> Just to add here, I've noticed that the car sometimes "forgets" the USB stick and has to start from scratch reading all of the tracks, albums, and playlists.


Mine has done this also. Once when I did some coding changes and then again recently all by itself. I think the large number of tracks (23,000) and playlists is causing it a problem. In this second occurrence it would not let me search for folders or even change tracks. Taking the stick out and plugging it back in meant it didn't recognize the usb stick at all unless I stopped the car and turn the ignition off/on. Eventually it reset itself and started to read all the tracks from scratch again.

I wonder if BMW really tested the USB stick playback with such a large number of tracks. Ipods are different in that the player itself scans the tracks and tags, but only recently (past few years) have big USB sticks of 32G or more become common enough for the car to encounter 20k or more tracks on a USB stick.


----------



## James57 (May 5, 2008)

Last time it happened, I just hooked up my battery charger and kept the ignition on for a couple of hours. I figured I could move the read process along more that way.

Another thing I've noticed is that album art tends to be the very last thing to be read. I have album art on everything, but even after (I think) several days, tracks will still pop up without album art. 

32 GB sticks were readily available and fairly cheap (though not as cheap as they are now) when my car was made. I think music on USB sticks is an afterthought for European car manufacturers. For example, my wife has a 2015.5 Volvo. It doesn't read playlists at all because the system doesn't support M3U or any type playlists -- despite there being a playlist selection on the system menu.


----------

