USB Operation & Album Creation Help

carlos50 · 06-01-2012, 01:36 PM

Hi All

Im looking for some help with the operation of and the creation of albums onto a USB stick. I have a small stick so i can plug directly into the USB port in the arm rest on my X6 rather than using the cable and whilst its only 3GB (am just using an existing one to try it out) the albums i wanted to put on it are only 669MB yet i get the "not enough memory on the stick" message when i try to put them on. Ive only managed to get 1 album on there.

I have formatted the stick to FAT32 as recommend online, is this a problem?

Files are Windows Media Player readable MP3 format.

The stick works in the car, albeit sound quality doesn't seem quite right, had to turn the volume right up too, but the album name and tracks were all there.

Id like to put several albums on, help and advice needed please? The manual says 4 USB sticks before it starts to delete previous ones and 16,000 songs, once they have been uploaded to the X6 can i remove them from the stick and put new ones on it then upload those also?

I have also noticed is that if i turn the car off it switches to standard radio when it get back in and i have to go back to the USB, a favourite button may sort that but i also found that i have to pull the USB out and plug it back in again for the car to read the stick, is that right?

Im new to using a USB in my car so need all the advice offered by all.

Car is a mid 2009 with the older CCC I Drive without the buttons around the I Drive controller.

Thanks

Carl

carlos50 · 06-01-2012, 02:54 PM

Update, ive just went to format the stick and its saying 481MB so there must be a fault with it hence why i cant load more than 1 album

Id still like to know about the other stuff

I wiped the stick from the first album then put a new one on and when i went back to the car the first album wasnt there so hadnt uploaded to the car, what went wrong?

kennynevermind · 06-10-2012, 02:59 AM

If you google this there's loads of stuff out there that relates to this so worth trying..

I've done the same as I used to use my ipod but it would constantly need charging and the sound quality isn't as good as usb. I bought a 64GB memory stick which works great and houses my whole music collection - first bit of advice is check the physical size of the stick as the angle for the usb slot is quite tight and I ended up having to take a chunk out of my usb stick so it would fit.

As you know the stick has to be FAT32 which in itslef was a task but there are utils out there that will do this. I then simply copied my iTunes folder structure on to the stick which I already have well organised and labelled - Strucutre is fairly standard in that it is by Artist with each Album being a subfolder. The thing that is important is that all the ID Tags should be completed as this will allow you to use the built in iDrive search options - Album, Artist, Genere etc. To be fari this is an easy task in iTunes and if you're like me this is already done, however if you haven't done this its worth doing.

The next thing is Playlists. You can also export your playlists on to the USB drive and if you leave them at top level the iDrive will pick them up and present them as it would using an ipod. The way to do this right-click the playlist in iTunes and Export - Save as .m3u extension.

It also goes without saying that the format of all my music is MP3 not AAC.

That's it. There isn't anything more required....

However the important thing to note is that your iDrive will take some time to read the USB stick especially if its 64GB - some people have said up to 10 minutes before you can select USB option in iDrive but mine was more like 3 minutes but at that point it will only let me browse the folder structure, none of the search options were available (highlighted) this took another 15-20 minutes on first operation. This is down to the fact that the iDrive has to index all you music including its ID Tags and so the larger the collection the longer the time. I've only really found this to be an issue the first time I plugged the drive in but on subsequent journeys its still taken a couple of minutes for the search options to appear - playback is instantanious you just can't go up a menu to the search opiotns for a few minutes. Again this hasn't been an issue for me as I generally listen to music via playlists and when I've got back in the car as with my ipod the last song I was listening to plays which as its in a paylist allows me to browse them all while the indexing is happening in the background. Appreciate this may sound confusing but you'll understand once you start using a USB stick of size - with a 3GB stick you shouldn't find any delays in playback or search options as the music collections is quite small.

Hopefully that helps.. Its not complicated and ther BMW is really good in this respect and I think sound quality is a lot better using USB as opposed to the ipod - plus you don't have to keep charging it..

As I said at the beginning its worth doing a search on this as its a common issue for BMW drivers and in some cases I've seen forum discussions where people are using external hard drives (500GB) instead of USB sticks - god knows how long that would take to index!

Kenny.

06-01-2012, 01:36 PM	#1
carlos50 Private 6 Rep 55 Posts Drives: X6 35d Dynamic Join Date: Mar 2012 Location: United Kingdom iTrader: (0)	USB Operation & Album Creation Help Hi All Im looking for some help with the operation of and the creation of albums onto a USB stick. I have a small stick so i can plug directly into the USB port in the arm rest on my X6 rather than using the cable and whilst its only 3GB (am just using an existing one to try it out) the albums i wanted to put on it are only 669MB yet i get the "not enough memory on the stick" message when i try to put them on. Ive only managed to get 1 album on there. I have formatted the stick to FAT32 as recommend online, is this a problem? Files are Windows Media Player readable MP3 format. The stick works in the car, albeit sound quality doesn't seem quite right, had to turn the volume right up too, but the album name and tracks were all there. Id like to put several albums on, help and advice needed please? The manual says 4 USB sticks before it starts to delete previous ones and 16,000 songs, once they have been uploaded to the X6 can i remove them from the stick and put new ones on it then upload those also? I have also noticed is that if i turn the car off it switches to standard radio when it get back in and i have to go back to the USB, a favourite button may sort that but i also found that i have to pull the USB out and plug it back in again for the car to read the stick, is that right? Im new to using a USB in my car so need all the advice offered by all. Car is a mid 2009 with the older CCC I Drive without the buttons around the I Drive controller. Thanks Carl
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06-01-2012, 02:54 PM	#2
carlos50 Private 6 Rep 55 Posts Drives: X6 35d Dynamic Join Date: Mar 2012 Location: United Kingdom iTrader: (0)	Update, ive just went to format the stick and its saying 481MB so there must be a fault with it hence why i cant load more than 1 album Id still like to know about the other stuff I wiped the stick from the first album then put a new one on and when i went back to the car the first album wasnt there so hadnt uploaded to the car, what went wrong?
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06-10-2012, 02:59 AM	#3
kennynevermind New Member 0 Rep 7 Posts Drives: BMW X6 Join Date: Feb 2011 Location: UK iTrader: (0)	If you google this there's loads of stuff out there that relates to this so worth trying.. I've done the same as I used to use my ipod but it would constantly need charging and the sound quality isn't as good as usb. I bought a 64GB memory stick which works great and houses my whole music collection - first bit of advice is check the physical size of the stick as the angle for the usb slot is quite tight and I ended up having to take a chunk out of my usb stick so it would fit. As you know the stick has to be FAT32 which in itslef was a task but there are utils out there that will do this. I then simply copied my iTunes folder structure on to the stick which I already have well organised and labelled - Strucutre is fairly standard in that it is by Artist with each Album being a subfolder. The thing that is important is that all the ID Tags should be completed as this will allow you to use the built in iDrive search options - Album, Artist, Genere etc. To be fari this is an easy task in iTunes and if you're like me this is already done, however if you haven't done this its worth doing. The next thing is Playlists. You can also export your playlists on to the USB drive and if you leave them at top level the iDrive will pick them up and present them as it would using an ipod. The way to do this right-click the playlist in iTunes and Export - Save as .m3u extension. It also goes without saying that the format of all my music is MP3 not AAC. That's it. There isn't anything more required.... However the important thing to note is that your iDrive will take some time to read the USB stick especially if its 64GB - some people have said up to 10 minutes before you can select USB option in iDrive but mine was more like 3 minutes but at that point it will only let me browse the folder structure, none of the search options were available (highlighted) this took another 15-20 minutes on first operation. This is down to the fact that the iDrive has to index all you music including its ID Tags and so the larger the collection the longer the time. I've only really found this to be an issue the first time I plugged the drive in but on subsequent journeys its still taken a couple of minutes for the search options to appear - playback is instantanious you just can't go up a menu to the search opiotns for a few minutes. Again this hasn't been an issue for me as I generally listen to music via playlists and when I've got back in the car as with my ipod the last song I was listening to plays which as its in a paylist allows me to browse them all while the indexing is happening in the background. Appreciate this may sound confusing but you'll understand once you start using a USB stick of size - with a 3GB stick you shouldn't find any delays in playback or search options as the music collections is quite small. Hopefully that helps.. Its not complicated and ther BMW is really good in this respect and I think sound quality is a lot better using USB as opposed to the ipod - plus you don't have to keep charging it.. As I said at the beginning its worth doing a search on this as its a common issue for BMW drivers and in some cases I've seen forum discussions where people are using external hard drives (500GB) instead of USB sticks - god knows how long that would take to index! Kenny.
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