The next step, once MM is installed and has scanned your library is to setup the proper settings for the USB thumb drive you wish to use in your vehicle. The first thing you need to do is select the drive on your PC. See "Select USB device.jpg"
The next step is to correct two settings that are needed in order for the playlists to be recognized properly by Ford Sync. See "Correct settings for proper playlist functionality.jpg"
It is essential for the playlists to sync to the exact same root directory that your music is syncing too. Otherwise you will get an error that the playlist is corrupt or unusable.
I have tested this on MFT in my '13 Focus and also on standard Sync in a '12 Fiesta.
Playlists are essential for me so I am sure there are others who will find this useful.
There are other ways to do this but this seems the least painful way from my perspective. This also provides a way to easily add and update content and playlists to your USB drive.
Also, one other thing to note is that for standard Sync you have to format the drive with FAT32. On MFT you can use either FAT32 or exFAT. The reason for the difference is that MFT supports USB hard drives and standard Sync does not. If you format it with exFAT on MFT it will see it as a USB DSK.
[][][][][][][][][][][][] Mac users see posts #6 & 12 [][][][][][][][][][][][]
this may be a dumb qeustion but would this also work to totally elimnate have the ipod in the car? just put your whole library on a thumb drive and just leav it plugged in your car all the time
wow you just made me a happy man I never thought of this and my ipod is full and I didnt want to go by a new one with bigger memory but now i can just go buy a huge flash drive and never have to worry about filling it and its way cheaper thanks again
I will do some web searching in a couple minutes. The bottom line is that the playlists must reside in the same root folder as your music. These playlists must also have recursive paths to each files. In other words, they must not have drive letters in the path, such as "h:\music\album\song" but instead just have "album\song" for the path to each song.
So last night I was searching the Mac App Store and I came across a gem for $4.99 that will create playlists that work with Sync and copy the music and playlists into a folder structure that Sync works with. This application converts iTunes format playlists into many different formats, a couple that Sync understands (I chose m3u Extended). The name of the application is "Playlist Exporter"...
One other thing to note is that for standard Sync you have to format the drive with FAT32. On MFT you can use either FAT32 or exFAT. The reason for the difference is that MFT supports USB hard drives and standard Sync does not. If you format it with exFAT on MFT it will see it as a USB DSK.
this is turning out to be a lot harder then planned haha with just basic computer skills im having a rough time, i couldnt find that app to download so ill keep trying something thanks again for the help
well i downloaded it and went out to try it and it didnt work so i plugged my iopd back in and now i cant get sync to read usb at all i hope i didnt screw something up
Did you make sure the USB drive is formatted to FAT32? That is the only format that seems to work with standard Sync. There is a way to delete devices and have them redetected.
ya tried that with the usb drive but now its not reading anything usb it says initializing then goes back to line in, geez im frustrated shouldnt of messed with it haha
First I ran the health check and downloaded the SYNC update for my vehicle to a USB memory. Followed the instructions on the Ford website to load into SYNC. Still had the same problem when trying my iPod 6gen. Connected the iPod to iTunes and loaded the latest release of iTunes to my laptop. I went to my iPod screen name, verified I had 1.1 on the iPod and then did a factory restore on the iPod. Next, I reloaded all of my iTunes library from the laptop to the iPod. Then, I made sure my iPod was fully charged. Finally, I went to the truck and performed the following connection process.
With the iPod disconnected, I started my truck and waited for the SYNC system to fully boot up, including my Bluetooth connection to my Blackberry Bold. After the system said my phone was connected, I used my original Apple iPod 6 gen cable that came with the iPod and plugged it in to the iPod end only and then turned on the iPod. After the iPod finished booting up, I plugged the cable into the USB port and the system began indexing the device. When it finished, all my songs worked from the sync display and all artists, titles and albums were displayed in SYNC! Hallelujah!
EggYolkBill, I tried copying tunes from iTunes to my usb drive. It is FAT32. I was able to do it but it then required all me to do it in folders. Did that and now it plays everything in alphabetical order. Real pain. If I do what you've suggested viz. Media Monkey and set up playlists in my USB drive, will it still play the songs in alphabetical order?
My iTunes started doing this when syncing up my iPod. I have yet to find a way to revert it back to the order they are on the albums.
I did the thumb drive thing and all I had to do was open windows media player. It then pulled all my music from iTunes and then I was able to sync up the thumb drive to windows media player and it works like a charm. Yeah all the music is alphabetical, even on each individual album, but that doesn't bother me.
Sync developers can't integrate Windows Media Libraries worth a damn
I have used a FAT32 harddrive with just over 100gb that were in wma lossless, so I was momentarilly impressed, but (not related to Ford) WMP wouldn't recognize it to sync additional tunes, and most importantly playlists. I just put playlists on a 32 gb flash and after a verbal warning from Sync that the drive didn't support DRM or something, it played the drive but did not find the playlists. The killer for me is that I want to listen to tracks in the order they were created (especially live albums) but the only way to do this without a playlist is to select an individual album (and if I only saved a couple or more tracks, that's several button pushes to get to each small album). I've forgotten the sequence, but I don' t think I could shortcut it with voice commands and don' t use them since I haven't memorized my large but edited library. The other huge flaw is that Sync reads the Contributing Artist field as Artist so that splits up more things that should be easily addressed. How Microsoft could screw up reading their own media libraries is beyond me.
I was finally able to create a playlist on my 128 gb thumb drive AND have it be recognized by the radio. I thought all was good, so I started another playlist and added a bunch of songs to it. Now both playlists are on the drive but only one is recognized as a valid format in the radio. Any ideas?
"Correct settings for proper playlist functionality.jpg"
Probably me being stupid, but where do I find above? Whatever I do, just get message "USB media not recognised, or it plays tracks in alphabetical order, not consecutively.
side question if I use usb to play music, it can only play mp3, wmv, aac files right? just audio files and not video files. I have some mkv, mp4 music video files. If I want to be able to play those I need to replace the whole audio system I guess?
I have some mp4 files but they are audio files, if I change the extension to mp3, wmv do you think it will work?
Yes, okaythen, it should work if you change it to an mp3 or wmv file, and you are correct that it can only play audio not video (via USB flash drive). Try changing some of the files to mp3 and test it again. Let me know how it goes.
Rebecca
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