From: Mike Holden <rockbox_at_mikeholden.uklinux.net>
Date: Sun, 2 May 2004 21:10:22 +0100 (BST)

As has been discussed on here many times, the problem is in accumulating
the information before sorting it. Disk access on the Archos is ezpensive
in terms of battery drain. To sort an entire directory requires that we
open every mp3 file in it, read the id3 info (not a trivial task in
itself), and then load all that information into memory, before finally
sorting the tracks. This all requires a lot of disk access and memory,
especially when potentially several hundred (or even several thousand)
files are in the directory.

This problem is far better solved by you either naming your files
appropriately, or by you using a playlist to force the order that you want
to play the files in. There are many programs out there that can create
playlists for you based on id3 information, and this is best done on your
PC, where you have unlimited power and a fast disk.

Lucas said:
> It's not a problem, nor is it hard to put a number in front of a song
> title. However, it takes up valuable LCD real estate when you're
> browsing your songs with rockbox. If it was automatically sorted by
> rockbox (which is what's done in Winamp btw), then you could get away
> without including the numbers and still have your files sorted by order
> on the album. I just think that's a much cleaner approach. It's not
> harder or easier (it's basically the same thing), but then you can
> browse your song titles without the numbers.
>
> Another solution would be the display of id2 tag information in the
> browsing menu instead of just the filename. That's also what's done in
> most mp3 programs and I would hope that's less controversial than adding
> support for the id2 tag track #.
>
> Has there been any discussion about changing the display in the file
> browsing system to support id2 tags?
>
> "Brian Wolven" <brian.wolven_at_verizon.net> wrote in message
> news:c73ien$19b$1_at_sea.gmane.org...
>> Lucas wrote:
>> > Is there anyway to sort songs by album track #? ID2 tags have the
> ability to
>> > include track #, which many people do when they rip cd's. It would
>> be
> very
>> > convenient to utilize this instead of having to include 01, 02,
>> etc...
> in
>> > front of all my track #'s in order to arrange them by song position
>> on
> the
>> > album.
>> >
>> > This works especially well for folders where one just has one album.
>> However, if you can compare the the album name (also available on
>> the
> id2
>> > tag), and make sure it's the same before sorting by track #, it
>> would
> also
>> > work for folders that included many albums.
>> >
>> > Anyone have any comments? (other than do it yourself) :)
>>
>> I (and many others) name all my song files with a two digit track
>> number at the front - it's done automatically when I rip them. Why is
>> that a problem?
>>
>> If you really despise that approach, make a playlist for the songs,
>> using the criteria you mentioned above. Rockbox won't sort them by
>> track number unless it's part of the filename, any more than windows
>> would. If you don't want to make playlists yourself, use the id3browse
>> program to index and make playlists for your whole collection. It will
>> read the tags and do everything for you. Then you can browse playlists
>> by artist/album/genre/year, etc., just like on an Ipod.
>>
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>>
>
>
>
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-- 
Mike Holden
Rockbox page: http://www.mikeholden.org/~rockbox
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Received on 2004-05-02