Audiobook File Order

I had already turned off Music Shuffle.

I’m not entirely sure what FOLDER MODE is.

In settings, I customized it so that the only two menu options I ever see are Settings and Books. I even tried a “reset options” and then redid my preferences before the test.

As an additional check, I removed the Track numbers from the ID3 tags, but the order is still random.

Until this discussion with you, I really thought I was able to provide helpful advice for other SanDisk Jam/Sport users.

     Now I am as confused as you about why your files are not playing in linear order.

Here is a solution that works for me when I want to play around with Folder Mode.

      Fat Sorter 1.0.4.0  from HolosTec

     http://www.techsupportalert.com/content/sort-files-alphabetically-usb-stick-or-mp3-player.htm

Until this discussion with you, I really thought my experience with 2 SanDisk Clip Sport players would enable me to provide helpful advice for SanDisk Clip Jam users.   I am confused about why your files are not playing in linear order.

 Maybe during the progressive evolution of several Clip Sport firmware versions over the past few years, the SanDisk programmers corrected an error in ID3 tag reading for linear playback ?

     Maybe the Clip Jam has not received the same firmware correction ??

I guess the main reasons why I bought the Clip Sport and not the Clip Jam were their in-store display in several electronics and department stores in my home town and the modest price of the player compared to iPod models. And looking at the clip art in the 1x1 inch display helps me to recognize the album playing without looking at scrolling text.

Try removing the track number from the ID3 tag. I saw on another forum this will let the Jam sort audiobooks correctly. 

I tested removing track numbers but the order still appears random. (Mentioned in my previous post.)

My audiobook needs are pretty minimal; generally I copy over six books at a time, once a week, and listen to them in order. So I started thinking that if the “random” order is consistent, I could figure out the algorithm and game the system to achieve the order I want.

Initial testing is with song tracks because they’re so much smaller and quicker to test with. Copying them to the audiobooks folder one at a time in specific orders to test:

Album 1

Copying in order 01-06 results in

03 05 02 06 04 01

Copying in order 01-06 again to see if it changes

03 05 02 06 04 01

Copying in reverse order

04 05 02 01 03 06

Album 2

Copying in order 01-06

03 06 05 02 04 01

Copying in reverse order

04 01 05 02 03 06

Still a long way to go until I figure this out, but a couple things seem immediately clear:

  1. The track order in not truly random. Copying the same files in the same order results in the same “shuffle.” Meaning there is some definite algorithm in play I should be able to figure out.

  2. The order in which the tracks are copied does change the resulting order, so some of the ordering can be manipulated by changing the order in which I physically copy files.

  3. Some unknown aspect of the files themselves matters. Given two different sets of six files, copying them both (separately, and after deleting all audiobooks in between) in the same order results in different orders. So the files themselves have some kind of tag info that is being processed. File dates / times? File sizes? IDv3 tags? Or maybe track number in IDv1 tags, which I think are the last two characters of the IDv1 name tag.

Much further testing is required. Just posting this initial info to track my progress.

EDIT: For my second test, I copied a single track to a new test file named 01.mp3, then removed all tag information from it, blanking every single field. Then I copied it five times, naming them 02-06. So now I have six identical files with no tag information whatsoever, all the same size, with only file dates differing. (I can set those the same, but haven’t yet.)

Copying in order 01-06

03 02 05 06 04 01

Copying in order 01-06 again to see if it changes

03 02 05 06 04 01

Copying in reverse order

04 01 02 05 03 06

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.

You are certainly patient, persistent and committed to getting your Clip Jam to play audiobook files in a logical order.

     I am impressed !!

You seem to be the perfect person to try out the updated firmware (1.05).  Please report back and let us know what happens.

    Be careful to follow the manual update method as described.

    There are a few scary reports of frozen Jams after the update was attempted.

http://forums.sandisk.com/t5/SanDisk-Clip-Jam/SanDisk-Clip-Jam-Firmware-1-05-Download-and-Installation/td-p/353488

Awesome!

Quick and painless to upgrade, and now audiobooks are listed in proper order. WOOHOO!!!

Thanks much for the head’s up, I really appreciate it.

Note: The firmware upgrade resets all your options to factory default, so maybe refresh your memory about your current settings before upgrading so you can quickly set them back how you like it. Took me around 5 minutes total from start (clicking your link) to finish (writing this post.)

Thanks again! So happy!

Yay !!!

You are the new Clip Jam Guru on the SanDisk User Forum.

So I’ve just stumbled on this thread. I have just received a clip jam and I’ve been putting some short books on there (re tagging them etc) without many problems. I’ve updated the firmware to 1.15. But I still can’t get the The first of many Harry Potter Books to go on the clip jam to work. I want the 400+ tracks to be in one folder so I rename the album to the same name.

I’ve read the clip jam can’t handle three digit track orders - is this still the case with the updated firmware? And what do I need to do to get these tracks ordered correctly?? Any tagging suggestions are welcome.

The Clip Jam and Clip Sport can nicely order your audio files with 2-digit track numbers for the first 99 files (01-99).

After that, I think 3-digit track numbers will play in the correct order.  Also, be careful with track names. They should only differ by the track number as a prefix.

I’m still having trouble getting it to work

I have tried all sorts of options the last two being.

Option1:

  1. Autonumbering the tracks (001-434)

  2. Album:HarryPotter1

  3. Changing all the titles to %Track% - %Album

Option 2:

  1. All files with the Album name: HarryPotter1

  2. Numbering the first 99 tracks (01-99)

  3. Changing those titles to 01Chapt-%Track%

  4. Numbering the next 99 tracks (01-99)

  5. Changing those titles to 02Chapt-%Track%

Any advice?

When transferred onto the clip jam they are out of order and it seems not all of them are there… so am I pushing the limitations? I find it hard to believe I’m going to have to have five folders on the top level for each Harry Potter Book for my Son to listen to whilst travelling…

From my experience your Option 2 is closer to a working solution.
Maybe try these suggestions and write back with your results.

Option 3:

  1. All files with the Album name: HarryPotter1
  2. Numbering the first 99 tracks (01-99)
  3. Changing those titles to %Track%-Chapt 01
  4. Numbering the next 99 tracks (01-99)
  5. Changing those titles to %Track%-Chapt 02

Recently, I discovered that Track numbers 101- 999 will be played in proper order (but no tracks with 2-digit numbers)
So, maybe this new idea will also work?    
Option 4:

  1. All files with the Album name: HarryPotter1
  2. Numbering the tracks with 3 digits, up to 999 tracks (as 101-999)
  3. Changing those titles to %Track%-HarryPotter1

Here is another variation that seems to work for me, with limited testing.

Option 3:

  1. All files with the Album name: HarryPotter1
  2. Numbering the tracks with 3 digits, up to 999 tracks (starting with 101, up to 999).  No 2-digit numbering.
  3. Changing those titles to %Track%-HarryPotter1

Option 3 works if I view the tracks by

Folders>Internal Memory>Audiobooks>HarryPotter1

But if I want to view them by

Books>Audiobooks>HarryPotter1 the numbering starts at 128-HarryPotter1 and Ends at 127-HarryPotter1 and the highest number it goes to is 298-HarryPotter1

So it the numbering was 101-534 and I have tracks 101-298 only and the first track that shows up is 128 and it goes to 298 before looping to 101 and ends on 127. So there must be limitations on how many tracks the Books>Audiobooks directory can show… whereas the Folders directory doesn’t have that limiation.

I am really sorry my 3-digit idea did not work.

Make sure you have the latest version of Jam Firmware.

Make sure you are using ID3 tag version 2.3   ISO 8859-1.   (Delete other non 2.3 tag data)

Revised Option 2 ??

  1. All files with the Album name: HarryPotter1
  2. Numbering the first 99 tracks (01-99)
  3. Changing those titles to %Track%-Chapt 01
  4. Numbering the next 99 tracks (01-99)
  5. Changing those titles to %Track%-Chapt 02

Make sure your Books database does not exceed 2000 files.

I am sorry my 3-digit tracking plan did not work on the Clip Jam.

I decided to simulate your situation with ~260 short mp3 files on my Clip Jam.  I verified exactly what you described.

My current & best advice is to subdivide the HarryPotter1 collection into multiple sub-collections

      Album name HP 1A contains the first 99 tracks, numbered 01-99 (Filenames and Track Titles = %Track%-HP 1A)

      Album name HP 1B contains the next 99 tracks numbered 01-99 (Filenames and Track Titles = %Track%-HP 1B)

      Album name HP-1C contains the next 99 tracks numbered 01-99 (Filenames and Track Titles = %Track%-HP 1C)

      etc, etc

I can confirm two results.   THIS PLAN WORKS   and   IT REQUIRES EXTRA EFFORT

I like to use the mp3 tagging software “mp3tag” with all the handy tagging commands built into the toolbar.

Using Windows Media Player, I ripped a multi disc book on CD directly to the audiobook directory on my Clip Jam mp3 player. This resulted in a directory for the Artist (Author), containing a directory for the book title distinguished by Volume (CD) number, and then under the book separte directories for each CD volume. The resulting track playback sequence was first track on the first disc and then the first track on the second disk. I deleted the book and ripped the CD’s to my laptop resulting in the same directory structure, but where I have the option on Windows 10 to select each track, left click to display the a drop down list of actions (Copy, Move, Delete, Rename, etc.) the last of which is Properties. The properties dialogue includes a tab for Details under which is # that apparently represents the play sequence of the track in the list. I edited this adding the disk number in front of the current sequence, # 1 on disk 2 becomes 21, # 2 from disc 2 become 22, etc. I’m guessing you can use other numbering conventions to get the proper sequence you want, but I know this one works. I also had the last disc in the book for some reason did not have the media information so it was ripped as Unknown Artist, Unknown Album. This was simply remedied by renaming the Unknown Album directory to the next book volume in the sequence and storing it in the Author directory with the other volumes.

My solution: I use a Mac (OS 12.1) but I think this might work on any platform. I plug in my Clip Jam to a usb port, and it displays on my desktop computer as an external drive. I zip the audiobook folder before moving it to the Clip Jam device. Then using my unzipping app (currently I use BetterZip, but I think any zip utility could do this) I navigate to the Clip Jam drive, and unzip it there. The chapters are in the correct order after unzipping.

Also be sure that Shuffle is turned off. Open an audibook file on your Clip Jam, click the bottom icon on the face of the Clip Jam (it looks like four lines) and select Shuffle:Off.