Sorting audiobook mp3s

HI Miikerman,
Thank you for the response.  I am not sure if i am using a clip plus. The device says Sansa on the front, on the back it says SandDisk 4GB.  Upon further investigation i did notice what the issue could be but I am still not sure how to fix:
I will give a brief example:
I may have MP3s in a folder called 01_Matthew they are called: 01_matthewchapter1.mp2, 0!_matthewchatper2.mp3 etc.
I may have a folder called Mark and in 02_Mark there are files named 02_Markchapter1.mp3, 02_markchapter2.mp3.   This goes like this for all 66 books. But on the Sandisk player when I look at the folder called Wordofpromisebilble it shows up in this order 01_Matthewchapter1.mp3, 02_Markchapter1.mp3, 01_Matthewchapter2.mp2, 02_Markchapter2.mp3, 01_Matthewchapter3.mp3, 02Markchapter3.mp3, etc.

So if i played it in order it will play just like this.  Matthewchapter1.mp3, markchapte1.mp3, matthewchapter2.mp3, markchapter2.mp3, etc.  
As you see i would be listening to the first chapter of all the books of the bible then the second chapter then the third, etc or i would have to scroll through 65 mp3s to get chapter 2 of matthew.

What i would like to do is have an album called matthew, go into that album and listen to all of the chapters.  an album called mark go into that album and listen to all chapters, and so fort.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

First, it is helpful to know if you have an original Clip or a Clip+.  Does your player have a slot for a microSD card on the right side as you look at it?  Alternatively, is the on/off switch a button at the top?  If so, you have a Clip+.  (If the on/off switch is a slider at the left side of the player, you have an original Clip.)

If you have a Clip+, you can play your files just like on your computer, via folders and file names.  See my earlier comment above, in that case.  If you have an original Clip, you can’t do so–folder view and playing only works on the Clip+.

Second, if you have an original Clip and can’t do folder navigation, or if you have a Clip+ and just don’t want to, you need to edit/add in your ID3 tags.  Apart from folder view/navigation, the Clips generally use ID3 tags to organize what you can select to play.  ID3 tags are bits of information put into music and spoken word files, that indicate aspects of the files, typically, track name, album/book name, artist, genre, year, and track no.  Even if the files’  file names are correct, if the ID3 info. is incorrect, things will be mixed up, as it is the ID3 tags that are used to organize and display. 

The good news is, your ID3 tags can easily be added and fixed, most easily with a tag editor such as MP3Tag (readily available Internet freeware:  http://www.mp3tag.de/en/).  Windows also allows you to edit ID3 tag information under the Properties screen for the files (but it is easier to work with tags, oftentimes, with a dedicated tag editor). 

The Clips do have an exception to the use of ID3 tags for navigation and display:  for files without tags (I believe; I don’t think this works if the files have tags, but I might be mistaken) put into the Audiobooks or Podcasts folders on the Clip, or for files stored elsewhere on the Clip but that have the Genre tag filled in with the word Podcast or Audiobook, the Clips will use the folder and file names for navigation and display purposes.

And so, the short (long?) answer is:  if you have a Clip+, you can use the Folders option under the Music listing to navigate.  Otherwise, you need to handle your ID3 tags and edit them to contain the correct information, for organizational purposes (or otherwise, you need to adjust/delete (possibly) the tags and file locations on the Clip to fall under the exception noted above).

It takes a little bit of time to get this down, but then it becomes fairly automatic.  I hope this helps–

And, further information about ID3 tags and the editing of them, from the SanDisk KnowledgeBase and Wikipedia:

http://kb.sandisk.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/198/kw/id3%20tags/r_id/101834

http://kb.sandisk.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/115/kw/id3%20tags/r_id/101834

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ID3

I think I’ve got it. Thanks for all of your help and information.

Certainly you have to tell us what the fix for you is/was! :wink:

It was indeed an issue with the tags. I went into each folder while mp3 s were on my computer did a select all (makes it a lot quicker) then I chose properties and adjusted title artist and album. By doing this it did indeed work and separated all books as I expected.

Cool–the tags hit again …  And in the future, easy enough to adjust the tags as you get the files (and less painful than doing a whole lot at one time). 

Hi,

I have the similar problem. My Clip+ sorts the audiobook files in a very strange way. The files in naming convention like 001-name.mp3, 002-name.mp3, …,0214-name.mp3 are sorted in the following way:

010-name.mp3

020-name.mp3

030-name.mp3

090-name.mp3

100-name.mp3

110-name.mp3

190-name.mp3

200-name.mp3

210-name.mp3

001-name.mp3

011-name.mp3

021-name.mp3

031-name.mp3

091-name.mp3

101-name.mp3

The tagging is correct. What can I do to correct the sorting?

Thanks.

Obviously, the player is doping sorting in a numerical way that makes sense to it, rather than to human beings. This probably is impractical to do, but I wonder if putting the name of the book before the numbering would flip the player to sort correctly.

Obviously, the player is doing sorting in a numerical way that makes sense to it, rather than to human beings. This probably is impractical to do, but I wonder if putting the name of the book before the numbering in each file name would flip the player to sort correctly. Or even just adding the word “Part” at the front (which is how my audiobooks tend to be named, seemingly with no Clip issue).

jarekt70, what do the title tags look like? I get it is sorting based on the title tags. Use a good tag editing program like mp3Tag. Give all the files in the book the same album tag. Use the track number tag to order the files.

@Miikerman

The sorting is not in a numerical way as 001 is after (greater than) 010 for the player. It seems that it sorts based on the 3-rd digit in the first place and then based on the first two digits. If this is the rule, the sorting is correct although I don’t understand why. The sorting is correct when the number in the files is two digits only (a different audiobook). I’ve tried adding “part” in front of the name but it didn’t help.  

@JK98

The title tag value is like the file name. All the files have the same album tag. So It is not the case.

I found a possible cause of the sorting problem . The track tags was set like “001/214”, “002/214”, …, “214/214” but the player sees it all as “214”. When I changed the track tags for simple 001, 002, …, 214 it started to sort correctly. 

Just to summarize - it seems that the player does not support naming convention for track tag like “<track number>/<number of tracks>” and additionally it has an issue sorting files having numbers with more that 2 digits.   

'Just to summarize - it seems that the player does not support naming convention for track tag like “/” and additionally it has an issue sorting files having numbers with more that 2 digits. "

i have not had any problems with the player sorting 3 digit track numbers. Having the numbers with leading zeros is what is needed, ie 001, 002,… , 099, etc. I do find it easier though to start numbering at 101 when using 3 digit track numbers.

'The sorting is not in a numerical way as 001 is after (greater than) 010 for the player."

That doesn’t sound right. are you sure the first or second digit is the number zero, and not the letter O? i get the tracks in order, then use mp3Tag to autonumber them. When numbering manually or entering tags manually, one blank space that goes unnoticed somewhere will alter the sort sequence. That is why using an autonumbering function avoids these problems. I also  got some strange sorting of files until I started using the mp3Tag autonumber function.

@jarekt70 wrote:

 

Just to summarize - it seems that the player does not support naming convention for track tag like “<track number>/<number of tracks>”

That’s correct, it does not.

@JK98

I double checked the names. I can confirm that it is 001 (zero zero one) not letter O. In fact, the names and tagging are correct and are sorted correctly in both my computer file system and mp3Tag. Of course it is the case, when the tag track is in format 001/214. When I corrected the tagging to with simple number it sorted correctly.   

If you edit the tags on files on  the player itself, the files might not sort properly. You need to edit the tags on the copy in the pc, delete the copy in the player, then copy them to the player again.

It seems that editing tags directly in the player is not the problem in my case. When I changed the track tag directly on the player it started sorting correctly. Every time I disconnect the player from computer, it updates the files library. 

I had a similar problem, an MP3 course with 167 files.

For my case, on the Clip+, I used EasyTag to remove the 2nd part of the track number, so instead of

01/167

the track number became

01

in the MP3 file’s header (ie, the ID3v2 tag).  I verified this using the ‘id3v2 -l’ command in Linux.

Once I got rid of the total number of tracks, the sorting worked. YAY!  I’ve been using the Clip and Clip+ for years and this audiobook sort problem always bothered me.  Thanks to the posters here for sorting this out!

Systemcheck, that was it!  I’ve been fighting with this for a few days now and it was driving me crazy.  I found if a book had more that 100 tracks, it would fail, less than 100 was no problem.  I started to split books into pt 1 and pt 2.  But, like you said, in EasyTag if you delete the second part of the xx/xx then it works fine past 100 tracks.  

I think it’s pretty clear this is a bug.

Good work-around, though.  Thanks!!!