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Ability to Sort Audio - Video Files on a USB Flash Drive


Monroe

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Have been storing more video type files on flash drives ... since newer DVD players and TV have USB connectors. When you put files on a flash drive they are usually in the order that they were placed on the drive ... which means the files (audio or video) will not be in the order that you might like them to be.

When you connect the USB drive to your computer ... everything looks great and new files being added or older files being removed will look OK until you connect the USB drive back to the DVD player.

I'm sure many people here had a solution for the problem and after about a month of searching around for a program that would fix this problem ... I was ready to ask on the forum and then early this morning I found such a program. It works like a charm ... to put all files in a "simple order" on a flash drive.

I was searching Google with a wrong term or I might have made this discovery earlier ... FAT32 USB File Sorter ... when FAT32 was added to the search, several hits and programs popped up.

In January I decided to remove .NET Framework from my computer and after cleaning, searching and more cleaning ... I finally had success and made new backups for the future. I can always put a .NET Framework version back on in the future.

So the first program I found really looked great ... downloaded it and then discovered it requires .NET Framework 3.5 ... went back to the search and found several more FAT32 sorting programs ... the second one I found is perfect ... no .NET Framework required ... it just works. All my files are in a "simple order" on the flash drive.

I post this here for anyone else with this flash drive sorting problem looking for a solution.

The name of the program is: Anerty's Lair - DriveSort

http://www.anerty.net/software/file/DriveSort.php

DriveSort v1.223

DriveSort sorts the directory tables of a volume formated in FAT12/FAT16/FAT32. This sort orders the files in each folder according to their short or long names alphabetic order.

The majority of recent operating systems sort the files before showing them to the user, either by name, by size or by whatever the user choose. However, it is not always the case in embedded OSes on small portable devices like MP3 players. On these platforms, the lack of resources (CPU, memory) can lead the developper to make it display or play the files in the order in which they are on the disk.

This order depends mostly of the order in which they were added to the disk. DriveSort can change this order to help such devices to play or view their files in the order you want, by putting them on the disk in a customizable order.

Two automated sort method are available :

The "LFN Sort", which sorts the files and directories according to the alphabetic order of their Long File Names.

The "SFN Sort (I-Bead)", which sorts the files and directories according to the alphabetic order of their Short File Names.

( A file or directory on a FAT volume has always a short file name, which is the old MS-DOS 8.3 name format. It means that the name part of a filename must have at most eight characters, and its extension at most three. A file or dir can also have a long file name, which can be a bit longer than 250 characters, and supports Unicode characters. If a filename contains mixed case, or has one part that doesn't fit in the 8.3 convention, the file has both short and long filenames. )

... there is more description at the home page link. Now the program only has three file extensions ... .MP3, .OGG and .WMA  ... but it is very easy to add more extensions ... click on the Extensions tab and you can add: avi, mp4 and so forth ... both audio and video files can be in the same order as you see them on your PC and now on the DVD player. Took me 30 minutes to figure it all out ... and don't forget ... after you add additional file extentions ... you have to hit "Save" ... finally got that figured out but it was 4 am in the morning ... kept going back several times from the PC to the DVD player and the files were not in the correct order ... until I thought it all out and searched around for the Save tab.

This is what is mentioned about Extensions:

The playlist mode is initially able to move .MP3, .OGG and .WMA files around, to avoid files that are not really part of a playlist, like system files. If you want to add other extensions to these, use the Extensions... menu in the playlist menu, or add them to the RecognizedExtensions option of the DriveSort.ini settings file.

As I said that can be avi, mp4 or whatever.

Now for those that have .NET Framework installed ... you might want to check this program out.

FAT Sorter v1.0.4

http://fat-sorter.software.informer.com/

...

Edited by monroe
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Nice find! :) (the DriveSort one)

The FAT sorter is seemingly - besides "inherently crappy" being .Net based :w00t::ph34r:- also hosted on a crappy site by your link.

The original site is MIA, but a copy is available on the Wayback Machine:
https://web.archive.org/web/20120207184803/http://www.holostek.net/FatSorter-1.0.4

https://web.archive.org/web/20120207184803/http://www.holostek.net/system/files/FatSorter-1.0.4.zip

And here:
http://fenux.net/story/fatsorteroneohfour

For the record there are similar programs here:
http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/95721/FAT-Sorter

http://www.luisrios.eti.br/public/en_us/projects/yafs/

And there is a fatsort tool (already in a few Linux distro's):

https://sourceforge.net/projects/fatsort/

On linux there is also a small bash script:
http://cdsoft.fr/fatsort/

http://cdsoft.fr/fatsort/fatsort

which makes me think that (most probably being MUCH slower AND having issues with temporary spaces needed) something similar can be made in "normal" batch, not unlike we used in good ol' NT4 to defragment FAT file systems (copying them elsewhere and then re-copying back the files in a given order)

Here is a page dedicated to the issue and similar tools:
http://www.murraymoffatt.com/software-problem-0010.html

The simpler/easier GUI one should be :unsure:
http://funblog.themeparks.de/2009/03/sort-mp3-files-in-fat-folders-mp3dirsorter/

whilst this one (VB.NET):
http://www.public.bplaced.net/

should be the most "flexible" one (as it allows manual ordering too).

BUT, once seen all these nice programs, it would make to me more sense to use a defragmenter that allows file sorting, such as Ultradefrag :
https://sourceforge.net/projects/ultradefrag/

as - while I don't use much these playing devices - I remember having seen some of them "choking" because of heavily fragmented filesystems.

I believe that a number of other "defragmenting" tools have this option as well.

jaclaz
 

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jaclaz ... thanks for reading and supplying more links and information on the subject. I was going to post that one link but you posted it ... the MurrayMoffatt.com link.

http://www.murraymoffatt.com/software-problem-0010.html

That's a good page and also where I discovered the Anerty's Lair - DriveSort program. Didn't bother trying the other links after I tried DriveSort program and it also didn't need any version of .NET Framework to work.

I would like to have the ability to do a "manual sort" so I will try the one you posted about:

"whilst this one (VB.NET): should be the most "flexible" one (as it allows manual ordering too)."

http://www.public.bplaced.net/

I also don't have a lot of files to store but I might in the future ... last summer I bought eight - 16 GB USB Flash drives from the summer "back-to-school" sale at Walmart ... they were only $4.97 as I remember so instead of burning DVDs for video files ... the 16 GB Flash Drives will hold almost four burned DVDs and then items can be added or removed with ease ... and storage of many little flash drives is much easier than many DVDs. A small little square plastic empty butter container will hold many small flash drives over boxes of DVDs or CDs ... and they stay clean of dust and moisture.

I need more 16 GB flash drives so I am hoping Walmart will have that "back-to-school" deal again in July / August.

...

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VB.NET does not work with my XP setup ... it was  a manual sort program. Has anyone else with XP tried this program and have it working on their setup?

http://www.public.bplaced.net/

I get this message box:

FAT Reader.exe - Application Error

The application failed to initialize properly (0xc0000135). Click on OK to terminate the application.

------------------------

If it required .NET Framework it would say that would it not? I don't see XP listed as such but it says this ... "Should work on all NT-based Windows versions" ... it's too bad this program doesn't work, looks very good. Anyone have any input or another manual sort program. Will search around for one.

...

Edited by monroe
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jumper ... thanks for confirming the error message. I was thinking .NET Framework might be involved somehow with that message.

However, I didn't give it much thought since the other program that I downloaded first ... FAT Sorter v1.0.4 ... had a message box pop up immediately saying:

This setup requires .NET Framework 3.5. Please install the .NET Framework and run this setup again.

Actually, I really don't need manual sorting anyway ... I'm happy just to have the ability to do "a simple sort" ... big improvement over what I had with files all over the place.

Thanks ...

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