Large USB Drive replacing CDs with Playlists

[Blair]

My wife had CDs in her previous car and I found that Folders on a USB drive were not quite simple enough to replace the ease of just inserting and playing a CD.
I had gotten a number of smaller USB Drives (1 GB) which hold the ripped content of a single CD pretty easily but there are multiple USB drives involved and these aren't as convenient as we had hoped for.
I have a larger (64GB) USB Drive but was looking for a solution that would be simpler than "Browsing" thru Folders.
I was able to get Playlists to work after some investigation and created a PowerShell script (attached) which can read thru a USB drive with MP3 and M4A files in Artist and/or Album Folders and create Playlists representing the "Album" (CD) with the Playlist name being "Artist - Album"; all these Playlists created at the "root" of the USB Drive, So far it tested well on the Encore's Infotainment System.
If you are looking for a simple to use equivalent to CDs, I am offering you this PS script for free. No special installs needed; one simple PS script. The script is attached. Please rename this to "CreateCarPlaylists_v01.ps1" once you download it. You can rename to whatever you wish BUT it must continue to have a ".ps1" extension and not the ".txt" extension as it has currently in the attachment. Put this file somewhere on your Windows PC but avoid putting it on the USB drive you are preparing Playlists on. I will help you as I have time if you post your question on this thread. PS: This works best if the MP3 and M4A files have the Media Tags inside them (Artist/Album/Title/etc). This script will work without these but the resultant playlist will not be as easy to read. Please examine the script as much as you want. There is nothing to hide in it.

 

[Blair]

My wife had CDs in her previous car and I found that Folders were not quite simple enough to replace the ease of playing a CD.
I had gotten a number of smaller USB Drives (1 GB) which hold the ripped content of a single CD pretty easily but there are multiple USB drives involved and these aren't as convenient as we had hoped for.
I have a larger (64GB) USB Drive but was looking for a solution that would be simpler than "Browsing" thru Folders.
I was able to get Playlists to work after some investigation and created a PowerShell script (attached) which can read thru a USB drive with MP3 and M4A files in Artist and/or Album Folders and create Playlists representing the "Album" (CD) with the Playlist name being "Artist - Album"; all these Playlists created at the "root" of the USB Drive, So far it tested well on the Encore's Infotainment System.
If you are looking for a simple to use equivalent to CDs, I am offering you this PS script for free. No special installs needed; one simple PS script. The script is attached. Please rename this to "CreateCarPlaylists_v01.ps1" once you download it. You can rename to whatever you wish BUT it must continue to have a ".ps1" extension and not the ".txt" extension as it has currently in the attachment. Put this file somewhere on your Windows PC but avoid putting it on the USB drive you are preparing Playlists on. I will help you as I have time if you post your question on this thread. PS: This works best if the MP3 and M4A files have the Media Tags inside them (Artist/Album/Title/etc). This script will work without these but the resultant playlist will not be as easy to read. Please examine the script as much as you want. There is nothing to hide in it.

If your MP3 or M4A files are lacking the media tags in them for some reason, VLC Media Player can "fingerprint" them easily, either individually or as a group of files in a folder. Also, Microsoft's Windows Media Player will do it automatically over time but I didn't investigate how to "jumpstart" the process. I also downloaded and used a product called "Musicbrainz Picard" which did a great job as well. If you want to use VLC Media Player which is popular and free to download, attached are the instructions on how to "fingerprint" each MP3/M4A with the correct media tags for Artist, Album, Title, Year and Length (Time).