Playlist creator app for XC40 Sensus (JAVA)

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ChrisS777
Posts: 75
Joined: Mon Mar 26, 2018 7:32 pm

Post by ChrisS777 »

Hi all,
as I would rather use the folder structure rather than tags (which sensus seems to be heavily depending on) for selecting music media off my usb disk, I had to start utilizing playlists.

I created a JAVA application to assist me on creating automatically playlists based on the folder structure of my USB disk and it is supposed to handle non Latin characters as well (like Greek etc).

I have tested this on Linux O/S (being my main O/S) but it should work in Windows as well.

The next command can run the application assuming you have JAVA installed:
java -jar dirs2playlists.jar

It can be found at:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/8blq3bgyksgdy ... s.jar?dl=0

A 3 page guide can be found at:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/br6pvkildefit ... s.pdf?dl=0

If you have any comments please let me know.

Enjoy
Chris

Rifleman
Posts: 435
Joined: Wed Mar 21, 2018 2:21 pm
Location: Nottingham, UK

Post by Rifleman »

Don’t forget that there is a max limit of 100 playlists for the Sensus system. Probably not the best route to take...
XC40 | First Edition | 2.0 D4 AWD | Bursting Blue | 19" wheels | Ordered 11/03/18 | Delivered 19th October 2018.
ChrisS777
Posts: 75
Joined: Mon Mar 26, 2018 7:32 pm

Post by ChrisS777 »

Thanks for the info.
As i basically like to combine albums together when listening to them, i found that using playlists does the trick.
So i am copying the albums to combine, under a single directory and a playlist is created with these files in round robin order.
Playlist number is still around 30 so i guess its OK.
ejd
Posts: 8
Joined: Thu May 02, 2019 8:22 am

Post by ejd »

Sensus seems fine for single-artist albums: one can pick the required genre, then select the artist. If there is just one album by that artist, it is available immediately, if there are more than one by the artist, one can choose the album.

But as has been pointed out, for compilation albums it's a disaster. It treats each (album, artist) combination as a separate "pseudo album" - so 10 albums, each with 20 different artists appear as 200 albums. Furthermore, if one of these pseudo albums is selected, just the one track gets played with no way of playing the rest of the real album. This makes Sensus unusable for compilations without extra work.

My solution has been to create a playlist for each compilation album - or group of compilation albums; I don't mind grouping them and then using shuffle since I just want a random collection anyway. To avoid the pseudo albums cluttering up the album list and the genre information, I renamed all the compilation albums from "album" to "z album" and the genre of all tracks on compilation albums from "genre" to "z genre". These items then appear at the end of the album and genre screens and I can just ignore them.

I found Mp3tag easy to use to do all this. It's also good at deriving tags (eg album) from file names.
ChrisS777
Posts: 75
Joined: Mon Mar 26, 2018 7:32 pm

Post by ChrisS777 »

Thanks ejd, you described my problem very precisely.

I would rather not change the tags since they could be displayed on screen, but better rely on folder structure.

Linux is my main O/S and s/w development my hobby, as such created this app to meet my custom needs :)
ejd
Posts: 8
Joined: Thu May 02, 2019 8:22 am

Post by ejd »

Just to be clear: I wasn't meaning to suggest my solution is somehow better than others - I just thought I'd offer it to everyone as an alternative for what seems a real problem with how Sensus handles compilations.
ejd
Posts: 8
Joined: Thu May 02, 2019 8:22 am

Post by ejd »

I have just discovered that all my careful work setting up tags is simply ignored by the Volvo system, in what is a terrible piece of customer unfriendliness - see the "Gracenote" thread in the Faults forum.
ChrisS777
Posts: 75
Joined: Mon Mar 26, 2018 7:32 pm

Post by ChrisS777 »

Yes thanks for the info.
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