File sorting

[Destroyernr1]

Is there any way to sort the files correctly instead of:

Title1

Title10

Title11

Title12

...

Title2

Title20

....

It's really anoying when listening to music or watch pictures, that these don't come in the correct order. For me this is a very big issue...

I hope someone has an idea!

[yrtoren · Accepted solution]

Not the most elegant solution (though probably the most common), but you could just name things like this:

Title01

Title02

(...)

Title10

Title11

Then they would sort in the correct order without any issues.

[Destroyernr1]

Ok, I could do that... Looks like i've got lots of work ahead of me. Hope WD will fix this soon in a new update.

This is basic programming or am i incorrect?

I don't know who accepted this as descent enough sorting for a device that's meant to play music, video and pictures. This is a huge mistake WD!!!!!!

[Bill_S]

Actually, you have to do the same in Windows, or you end up with the exact same listings.  I don't believe it's an issue of bad programming, but rather a choice made by system programmers for how listings should work.  It's always been this way.

[pearl]

---

Bill_S wrote:

Actually, you have to do the same in Windows, or you end up with the exact same listings. .....

---

Bill, I am a bit confused on this issue as I had thought your statement to be correct and thus have named all my music tracks in the above order with 01. 02. etc. Took me a month to get it all done but does work flawlessly.

Anyways, I have since tested this in Windows on a Vista OS and in GUI, it does sort the songs in the order: 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11, etc, the opposite of what I had expected. My test was the same MP3 renamed to "#. track", with all having the same album and same artist info. If I sort by name, they are in the right order. On the other hand if I look at them in a DOS CMD window, they are not, and 11. is before 2.

Not really sure what this means, and like I said above, Ive already gone through serveral TB of musc adding a "0" before single digit numbers because the HUB does see it that way, even if my computers do not (have not tested on my win7 boxes)

So here are the pictures below. 17 tracks sorted by name in the Vista GUI, and the same in a DOS CMD window. Vista understand that this is a directory of music (although not in the predefined music directory) as it has the fields for "artist" and "album" etc. I am assuming this is just based on knowing the file format. Perhaps it alters the sort order due to that.

Anyways, all that matters is how the HUB sorts, but I found this interesting as the results were not at all was I had expected. Please feel free to correct me if I am missunderstanding something here, always just happy to be learning how stuff works.

-P

[Bill_S]

Wow, that is interesting.  I have Win7, and you're right, it does list them in order.  Unfortunately, I still use XP on all my other pc's, so I assumed it was the same. 

As for Dos, what it really means is that there could be grounds for conflict, but once Windows takes over then the list gets ordered correctly.  I guess it could also depend on which software may be looking at your lists.  Also, we're using gpl source code on the WD TV's, so lists may be dependent upon how the Linux code reads them - as you found with Dos.  I still think that you did right by recreating your lists.  That will always work right no matter what software, firmware, or OS, is reading the files.

[Kazgor]

FYI on windows XP you use TWEAKUI and choose how you want the sort order , 1,10,2,3 or 1,2,9,10,11

its not a bug its a windows feature.

http://nevcal.com/eclectic/file_sorting.html

[pearl]

@Bill_S

I think you are correct, and although this is interesting, all that matters is how the HUB sees it to me so 01, 02 etc is the smart move. Works on all OS. I have done that in the track naming as well as in the properties of each FLAC file using AudioShell Tag Editor. I know the HUB doesn't use that information yet, but since I was setting everything up, might as well do it right the first time so if a FW rev. comes out that does understand track properties, I wouldn't have to go back and go through thousands of songs again.

@Kazgor

Wow, that's very cool. I have used tweakui in the past but did not know it had the ability to tell windows how to sort. neat stuff.

-P

[Bill_S]

That's good to know.