More testing, using three sets of identical files. I wrote a quickie program to set all file dates to be identical: Same date and time for Date Created, Date Modified and Date Accessed for all files. And sizes are of course the same since they’re all copies of the same song.
All groups have six files, names 01.mp3 to 06.mp3. All tag information is blank for all files execpt where noted:
Blank (no tag info)
In Order: 03 02 05 06 04 01
Reverse: 04 01 02 05 03 06
Special: 01 02 03 04 05 06
Ascending: (Title set to “01” through “06”, same order as file names)
In Order: 03 02 05 06 04 01
Reverse: 04 01 02 05 03 06
Special: 01 02 03 04 05 06
Descending: (Title set to “06 01” through “01 06”; opposite order of file names with original # preserved for checking)
In Order: 03 06 05 02 04 01
Reverse: 04 05 02 01 03 06
Special: 01 04 03 02 05 06
“In Order” refers to copying files one at a time, in ascending order. “Reverse” is doing the same thing backwards, copying 06 first and 01 last.
“Special” refers to copying files in the order of how they appear in the “In Order” list. So, for example, looking at the Blank list, when copying in order the files show up like this:
03 02 05 06 04 01
The special order for this list is:
06 (the first file copied shows up last)
02 (02 properly shows in position 2)
01 (the third file copied shows up in first position)
05 (fourth file copied shows up in position 5)
03 (fifth file copied shows up in the third position)
04 (last file copied shows up in fifth position)
As can be seen from the results, copying files in this “special” order does indeed list the tracks in my desired order. So that is progress. This same technique works great for copying files that actually have title information that matches the desired play order, as seen from the results of the Ascending group.
For the Descending group, which has title tags in the opposite order of the filenames, this technique breaks down. However, if we look more closely:
Descending
In Order: 03 06 05 02 04 01
If we swap out the filenames for the actual tag order we end up with:
Descending
In Order: 04 01 02 05 03 06
I happened to notice that this matches the “blank” results when copying files in reverse order:
Blank
Reverse: 04 01 02 05 03 06
This gives me an initial hypothesis that the title tag info overrides the filename if it exists.
One other note of high importance: I confirmed that the order you copy files over can be simulated by moving files to a temp folder then moving them back in the “special” order. This makes life much, much easier. For example, I selected all six “blank” files and bulk copied them to a temp folder on the player under audiobooks. (I called it Unsorted) Next, I opened Unsorted in explorer and manually dragged each file, one at a time, into the audiobooks folder using the special order: 06 02 01 05 03 04. Then I deleted the Unsorted folder.
The Clip Jam then properly showed those six tracks in sorted order.
Next up is to figure out if I can predict the Jam’s play order ahead of time, so I don’t have to manually figure out the special order and manually move files around every time I copy files over. But that will have to wait another week, until the next time I copy (new) audiobooks over.
Also, I’m confused why copying files in reverse order doesn’t just reverse the results. I’m not overly worried about it, though.