talon90

Just a quick tutorial to take some of the mystery out of creating and using playlists for the Stingray Infotainment system. Same format that you are used to seeing from me with basic step by step information and pictures to illustrate each step of the process.

Please note, this assumes you have iTunes and some music present in your iTunes Music folder. This is for creating custom playlists of songs or to play a complete album in order (classical musicians rejoice) as you can play the songs in the order the composer intended. This is for use with a SD card or USB media drive. Also note If you have playlists sync'd to your iPhone or iPod you won't need this as the MyLink system will natively support those playlists directly from the device when hooked up via the USB cable.

You can download it from my website here:

www.theredlion.us

Select the Seventh Generation link, Select Navigation and scroll down the page to find it. It is a PDF document that you can click to open or right click to save as.

Paul

Zymurgy

Added link to this thread in the Manuals, Reference Material, Online Order Guide, Order Tracking, etc. sticky thread.

talon90

Thanks John.

Woodson

Thank you.

ckwhite

Many thanks!

MrBrightside

Amazing thank you!

sstew

Great info, nice work!! Thanks

C7Kevin

Thanks very much Paul.
This is some help I can REALLY put to use.

LT1 Z51

Using iTunesExport, is way easier than this. You can export any playlist (even smart playlists) and change the paths while you export (so no find and replace later).

I use it on all my cars to make M3U playlists.

If anyone wants detailed instructions I can post up an example.

PegasusCapital

Yes, please provide more information about how to do this.

LT1 Z51

So first you need to download iTunesExport, just Google it to find it.

Once installed run the app.

1. First screen presents the location of your iTunes XML file. This is the file that stores all your iTunes information. It's typically located at C:\Users\Username\Music\iTunes\

2. Second screen presents you a list of all your playlists including some built in ones (if you have anything organized into "folders" in iTunes they are also presented as playlists). Select the playlists you want to export.

3. Third screen is where the magic happens. Here is where you set all the settings to allow things to work

a. Output directory, this is where the .m3u files will be saved. I have mine as a random folder on my HD
b. Playlist format, set to M3U and leave the check boxes unchecked.
c. File Types, set to MP3 Files Only this removes an non-MP3 files from playlists
d. Music Folder (Pre-fix) this is THE MOST IMPORTANT THING! This setting is the "path" to where your music files are. In Talon's setup, this is what you are "find and replacing" manually. I keep my Playlists in a "Playlist" folder in the root of my USB stick (so playlists are Playlists\PlaylistName.m3u), so I set this to ..\ so all my playlists look like ..\Artist\Album\Song.mp3. I have iTunes manage my library so I know the Artist\Album\Song.mp3 part won't change. If you want to store the Playlists in the root of the USB drive leave this BLANK! This makes your .m3u files all have Artist\Album\Song.mp3.
e. Copy Files, set to Don't Copy Music

Clicking next makes .m3u files for each playlist.

I have iTunes manage my music so I just copy the entire Music folder to the USB drive (without the iTunes and Tones subfolders). If you want to make it even easier you can change option (a.) to be your USB drive (like E:\), and set option (e.) to copy the files for you, by selecting "Copy iTunes Structure"

This tool works for any modern car stereo that uses .m3u files (so I also use it with SYNC on my Ford).

I did this because I have 135 Playlists and I didn't want to manage all of them. I have a 128 GB USB drive with 8500 songs on it, so it works quite well for such a large library.

PegasusCapital

Thanks, I'll give it a try.

LT1 Z51

I threw this together:

It's a nice supplement to what Talon90 wrote, and if someone wants to host it feel free.

ladiver

Nice write ups! I have transferred my songs and some playlists. But, I do have something weird happening where several songs are being skipped. If I try selecting certain songs directly, they are not played. I can play the songs off the usb on my computer.

## SOLUTION ##

Make sure they are mp3! Duh, I had several m4a files and those are not compatible. I used a free converter and now everything looks better. I did have to update the playlist through a txt editor and change m4a to mp3.

Rossi6998

rettop

Thank You Sir. Thank you, thank you thank you...

SCRed

Awesome information guys!

GTVETT

Hi Paul
I'm fairly computer literate using my PC with the latest version of iTunes on a Windows 7 machine. I have exported a playlist to a .m3u file, but the only programs that will open it are: iTunes, Quick Time, and Windows Media player, not Notepad. ????

defaria

An .m3u file is nothing more than a text file. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M3U. Yes Notepad will open it but you have to tell Notepad not to restrict the File Open dialog to just .txt files because you want to open a .m3u file.

Given the file format described in Wikipedia, and the fact that my music store is already organized as Genre / Artist / Album, it was simple to write a Perl script to scan the directories and for each album, generate an .m3u file. I don't remember if I bothered opening the .mp3 files looking for track number so as to order it properly but that wouldn't be hard to add. Then just re-synchronize your music store to a USB and the .m3u files should show up as playlists.

clark6ar

The link referenced to the website doesn't seem to be working anymore... anyone have the .pdf?