[Trevman]

Has anybody tried using a playlist on a USB stick with the Visual Boost radio?

I've saved a couple of playlists in M3U format on the USB, but although the tracks will play, the unit seems not to recognise the playlists. When selecting the playlist option, it simply says there aren't any playlists there. I tried saving the playlists in a separate folder, and in the root of the USB, but to no avail.

I also asked the dealership, but they weren't able to help.

Any advice gratefully received!

 

[Matt]

playlists seem to come from my iphone / ipod... mainly!

all of my media shown to the mini on memory stick... playlists are ignored.
the headunit seems to scan the entire stick for media (video & audio) regardless of folder, and bungs it up on the screen as one lump. handy in one aspect but a real pain in another.

what you can do is make your own play lists and import media to that... but you will need the internal hard drive option for that.

 

[Trevman]

Thanks, Matt -


That seems to be exactly what I'm experiencing. It scans the whole stick and ignores the playlists. This makes it quite difficult to make use of.


Surely there's a way? - it seems a fairly sophisticated system. Would a different playlist format - such as xspf work?


Advice still gratefully received!

 

[MaskedAnkle]

I'm a bit "old school" here... Cassettes, LPs and CDs were my thing!

So my entire MP3 collection is very well organised in terms of Artist, Album, etc. I have never, not even once, built a play list.

Although it's a little cumbersome, I find this same arrangement reasonably effective in the Mini. Find the artist. Choose the album. And select Play. Seems to work fine.

And I like the fact that it remembers where you were on different memory sticks. It'll start playing from the same point if you take the stick out, and then put it back in later.

 

[only]

Has anybody tried using a playlist on a USB stick with the Visual Boost radio?

I've saved a couple of playlists in M3U format on the USB, but although the tracks will play, the unit seems not to recognise the playlists. When selecting the playlist option, it simply says there aren't any playlists there. I tried saving the playlists in a separate folder, and in the root of the USB, but to no avail.

I also asked the dealership, but they weren't able to help.

Any advice gratefully received!

http://www.miniusa.com/content/dam/miniusa/PDF/MINI_USB_EN.pdf
in the manual info

 

[Kumpfi]

It works on my Mini cooper 2014 model

I use a Kingston USB-stick with a total memory of 115GB. Here I have synced about 17500 songs organised in 65 Playlists in m3u format. The files are in a folder called Music and the playlists are in a folder called Playlists. I tried several sync options with my media monkey and in my esperience it worked best when syncing songs into as little folders as possible, so mine are now organized in only the name of the artist folder the songs are in in my original database. First I had a subfolder for every variation with multiple Artists. So check your setting there.

When first connecting it would not show a thing and it took the Mini some time to read everything. As I mainly drive short trips that took 2 weeks. I used the search funktion a lot and after a while he showed the playlists too. But the playlists are reduced to 500 Songs.

But it's better than with my iPod-Classic, which crashed every time being connected to the Mini and had to be replaced by Apple three times...

 

[vonpato]

1. Store your files on your USB stick in your usual manner.
2. Open a cmd windows and change to your usb drive (run command e:\dir /s/b > list.txt)
2. Open list.txt in Notepad in windows. (Press Windows+R to open RUN, type NOTEPAD, click OK)
3. In the Notepad window, edit this file and leave only music files in the order you want the playlist to play them.
You need to put the full path name of the file and the extension (e.g.:- .mp3 or .m4a).
If you have a file in a subfolder, put the name of the subfolder first, then a backslash (\) then the song name.
Continue like this if you have subfolders within subfolders.
4. If you have several folders (English, Japanese, Latin, Electronic) create files for each folder
5. In Notepad, click File then Save with extention ".m3u"
6. Press Save and close notepad.

 

[teeninvader]

1. Store your files on your USB stick in your usual manner.

2. Open a cmd windows and change to your usb drive (run command e:\dir /s/b > list.txt)

2. Open list.txt in Notepad in windows. (Press Windows+R to open RUN, type NOTEPAD, click OK)

3. In the Notepad window, edit this file and leave only music files in the order you want the playlist to play them.

You need to put the full path name of the file and the extension (e.g.:- .mp3 or .m4a).

If you have a file in a subfolder, put the name of the subfolder first, then a backslash (\) then the song name.

Continue like this if you have subfolders within subfolders.

4. If you have several folders (English, Japanese, Latin, Electronic) create files for each folder

5. In Notepad, click File then Save with extention ".m3u"

6. Press Save and close notepad.

And then you claim that the mini will recognize this as a playlist?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[mransr]

Has anyone made playlists work?


I have a 2017 Mini with the HK system, but not the XL package (I think that is the proper verbiage). I am using a 32GB USB mini drive and have about 25GBs of music on it. I have copies of the playlist in the "Playlist" folder and the root of the drive in both .m3u and .wpl formats and even after a couple hours of using the USB drive the display still shows "no playlist".


I have to say that after a couple weeks I am pretty disappointed with the infotainment system, as sophisticated as it seems to be, there also seems to be huge holes in what it can actually do. It is like they put a ton of effort into esoteric features and totally skipped the basics.

 

[spotted]

Has anyone made playlists work?


I have a 2017 Mini with the HK system, but not the XL package (I think that is the proper verbiage). I am using a 32GB USB mini drive and have about 25GBs of music on it. I have copies of the playlist in the "Playlist" folder and the root of the drive in both .m3u and .wpl formats and even after a couple hours of using the USB drive the display still shows "no playlist".


I have to say that after a couple weeks I am pretty disappointed with the infotainment system, as sophisticated as it seems to be, there also seems to be huge holes in what it can actually do. It is like they put a ton of effort into esoteric features and totally skipped the basics.

Here's what I did do use playlist in my F56.
Put all the songs you want in a folder on the drive.
Open up VLC Player
Drag all the songs you want into that playlist.
Drag them into the order you want them.
Save playlist (M3U) to the same folder those songs are in. I even name the playlist the same as the folder name.
Disconnect the drive then connected it to the usb in your car.
Give it a minute or two so it refreshes and it will appear on the screen.

This works with Mp3, WAV & FLAC files.
I use VLC in Windows and to edit mp3's & WAV's I use Mp3 Audio Editor (to amplify, normalize and equalize to give the songs more of an umph).

 

[mransr]

Thanks, I have used VLC for years.

I understand what you are saying, but for me the point of a playlist is be able to play songs from various locations so you don't have to copy them all into the same folder every time you want a new mix of songs. Otherwise you could just copy the files into a folder then number them how you like them to play and skip creating the playlist all together. To me it would seem a bit pointless if that is the only way the Mini infotainment system will access a playlist.

 

[mransr]

I think I stumbled across the key to making this work and I'm adding the info here to help anyone else that comes across this thread.

M3u playlists work fine, and the music can be saved by artist or album or whatever, the key seems to be the file path information in the playlist. Unlike most everything else I've dealt with, if the Mini infotainment system can't find the files in the playlist it doesn't display the playlist at all.

What works for me is to have all the playlists along with the music stored in top level of the USB drive in folders by artist then album. Then the file path in the playlist would be "artist name\album name\track.mp3".

I have always used more complete path names like "\music\artist name\album name\track.mp3" or "..\music\artist name\album name\track.mp3", but the Mini doesn't like the preceding "\" in the path. So using Notepad I edited out the unneeded path info in the playlists and now everything seems to work.

 

[umberto]

i have an F55 with HK and the 6 1/2 inch screen.....I put my entire itunes on a 64 GB USB drive and the car would show the playlist setting as being empty. DANG! But I played around and discovered that when playing a track if you scroll to 'music search' and click and then click on 'browse directory' (not on the sub-settings below browse directory) all my playlists were there and you can click on them ......works well for me

 

[Nobbyclark]

Does anyone know if there is a limit to the number of tracks referenced in the M3U file? One of mine has 593 tracks, but only 497 are available.

 

[gregoz]

Hi !

Thanks for help guys !
Did anyone mange how to arrange all playlist in alphabetical order? Most of them are in alphabetical order but there is a few folders (play lists) which are of order and they are first on the list (started from 'L'). Strange...

Any ideas why?

 

[JerrySmith1021]

I think maybe it since that the audio format M3U can't be recognized as a playlist, have you tried to convert M3U to MP3?

If your playlist from Spotify, you can batch convert Spotify playlist to MP3 with AudFree Spotify downloader for Mac, then you can transfer them to USB sticks and listen to then on your car.