MP3 Playlists

farss wrote on 1/20/2004, 5:31 AM

I'm about to start on a project that involves putting 100s of mp3 tracks onto CD. Just before anyone gets the wrong idea these are audio recordings from a national archive. Given cost constraints, to make them accessible to the public mp3 compression is the only feasible way to proceed.

From my Googling it seems that only PC based mp3 players understand M3U playlists. The only way to organise mp3 files on a CD are by prefixing them numerically.

Is this the current state of play or are there more advanced ways of doing this?
I appreciate that not all CD players support mp3 and of the ones that do new standards may be a way off being implemented in what's available but as these recordings will be in use for many years to come I want to make them as future proof and as easily accessible as possible.

Comments

Chienworks wrote on 1/20/2004, 5:50 AM

Most any hardware or software player will also understand directories. You can categorize by placing files in subdirectories. Also, give each file a good descriptive name. For my own use, i usually name the files with a very short vesion of the artist name & album name followed by a track number and then the name of the song. For example, For the song "Sometimes by Step", which is the 2nd track from Rich Mullins' album "The World As Best As I Remember It, Volume 2", i would name the file "rm-world2-02-sometimes_by_step.mp3" (make sure you prefix single digit track numbers with 0 so that they sort properly, if that's important to you). Of course, since this is for my personal use i instantly recognize what "rm-world2" means. You may want to be more explicit. On the other hand, many hardware players will only show the first few characters of the file name so extreme abbreviation could be useful. This might be a case where you use a full artist name for the directory name and initials for the file names.

If at all possible, include lists of the tracks and more detailed information both in a printed card included in the CD package and as a text file on the disc.

farss wrote on 1/20/2004, 12:34 PM

Thanks,
you've pretty much confirmed what I'd learnt so far. There is going to be a pretty heavy book that goes with the CDs.
I think the producers have read all the good oil about mu3 playlists like you can use on a PC or an iPod and assume the same thing can be done on a CD MP3 player.
The CD mp3 players as you rightly say may only display of few characters of text so I think I'm going to have to author it for the lowest common denominator.