11-17-2015, 08:36 PM | #45 |
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Hit a new limit: 16 bit limit on number of songs.
Encouraged by several, successful "big" reports by other members, I decided to go a bit bigger: 480GB SSD Drive, with about 320Gb content on it.
The hardware worked well, got recognized, played music, etc. BUT: I did encounter a strange behavior with folders "randomly disappearing." The behavior was not consistent so I decided to test more methodically. Wiped the drive clean and filled it with "fake" music. I picked a 1Mb song and replicated it under a carefully-designed folder structure, which proves, likely, that the BMW song indexer has a 16 bit limit (65,536 songs). The structure I created had: 16 Genres in the root (4 bits) 64 Artists under each Genre (6 bits) 8 Albums under each Artist (3 bits) 16 Songs under each Album (4 bits) Total: 17 bits, 131,072 songs, occupying, as expected, about 120GB on the drive. Each song has a unique file name and a corresponding ID3 tag specifying its "location." A file would look like "10.G06.AR18.AL06.mp3" I connected the drive with the test data and something very interesting happened: for the first few minutes, while the indexer was active, I couldn't browse by artist/album, etc. - only through folders. And I was able to browse the ENTIRE tree and play it. I saw all the Genres/Artists/Album, etc. BUT, once the indexer finished (took a few minutes there...) several folders disappeared. I could only see some of the Genres, some of the Artists under them and some of the Albums under each (visible) artist. I couldn't seem to find any consistent "pattern" to which folders remained and which disappeared. I wonder if any other people noticed a similar behavior with larger collections. I am going to repeat this experiment with half of the collection removed (16 bits, 65536 songs). I will report any findings once I have them. For the record, the car is a 2014 F30, with MN-003.001.002 / TN-003.001.002 (which appears to be the latest version as of today). Even if I'm right and there is indeed an indexer limit, I wonder why such a limit prevents simple folder browsing, as such activity requires no index. |
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11-17-2015, 09:13 PM | #46 |
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Great work! I am using a 2tb HDD to store about 37k songs. I am finding some strange behavior as well. For example voice search does not work. When I first tested it using only 2 artists, it worked fine. But now when I say "search artist" the car responds with something like "loading media" then nothing happens.
I am still trying to figure out if some of my artists are missing. |
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11-18-2015, 07:52 PM | #47 |
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I suspect EVERY file counts - not just music
My original media folder had about 55k songs. But with all the "secondary files" (JPG for covers, M3Us, thumbs.db from windows) the number of actual files got jacked up to almost 70k.
So if you noticed strange behavior with your collection, try to perform an actual file count. Still planning to test 65536 songs and will report findings. |
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11-19-2015, 09:19 AM | #48 |
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Even 65536 is acting up
Chopped down the song list from 17 to 16 bit: 65,536 songs.
Same behavior: after indexing the whole tree, some folders disappear. Unless I'm doing something wrong in my test procedure, this is quite disappointing. I realize that to many people this may seem like a hard limit to reach, but for many who amassed a larger collection over the years, this can be an annoying limitation. Also, with modern computers (even ones from the last 5 years), this should be very easy to index 100,000 files. I would venture to say even a million. I'll see if I can chop the collection a bit more (no pun intended), to find out (at least roughly) what is the hard limit on collection size. |
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11-19-2015, 09:24 AM | #49 |
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Yeah, I dont get whats happening either. Here are some things I noticed:
every time I start my car, it takes about 5 mins before I can do any sort of voice search. If do try, the car responds "loading media". I thought the car indexed my music library already?? I cannot do any sort of voice search on albums. I can search on artists but then the car responds with and error "that function is not available" My library is about 37K songs with no extra folder.jpg files or playlists.
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11-19-2015, 09:48 AM | #50 |
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It may all be related...
It may be safe to assume you can't voice-search while the indexer is active.
The question, as you put it, is why the indexer is active again after everything got indexed previously (without the media reinserted). Here's my theory: the same issue we're observing with "folders disappearing" is actually an error condition with the indexer running out of memory. The error condition likely leaves the collection flagged as non-indexed (partially?) so when the car is restarted at a later time, the indexer attempts to...index again. Again - only theory, but I may learn more if I manage to get the collection down to a size that avoids the error. I'll see if the problem you're reporting (I'll call it "redundant indexing") also disappears in that case. |
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11-19-2015, 10:18 AM | #51 |
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Agreed...why does the car seem to re-index or have to load the library every time I start the car? You are probably right in that BMW cheaped out on memory. The head unit probably has to do a bunch of memory swapping.
All I know is that this worked really well when I only had 2 artists and about 120 track on my HDD! LOL!
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11-19-2015, 12:07 PM | #52 |
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Well I hope the reindexing is unrelated to max tracks because mine does a reindex every time I start the system after sitting overnight. I think iDrive reboots after that amount of time and it may trigger the indexing. I only have around 3-4K tracks at the moment. It's just part of my full library.
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11-19-2015, 10:14 PM | #53 |
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Flash Drive Max size
In my 2016 340i, the iDrive only recognizes the first 500 of 2955 music files. A guy at BMW genius called me back to say capacity is lower in newer car.
Sticking with my iPhone right now. |
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11-20-2015, 10:54 AM | #54 |
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I've been playing with this voice search issue more. So my problem right now is that sometimes I can do a voice search on Artist only (after the car re-indexes my HDD after each startup, about 5 mins). As I understand, once I do an artist search, the car should respond with "select category". The categories should be Genre, Album, Tracks, etc.
For some artists, I can search on Artist then Album, Genre, etc. Other Artists, I get a "feature not supported" error immediately after I do the Artist voice search. Probably related, but I cannot initiate a search on Album at all.
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Last edited by tboooe; 11-20-2015 at 11:34 AM.. |
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10-25-2016, 02:17 PM | #55 | |
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Very strange limitation, but just create several playlists with 500 files at max and that's it.
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11-06-2016, 09:21 PM | #56 |
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You can just place all the music files in the root of the drive, and shuffle all. There is no limitation in size (that I've found). I have close to 3000 songs and it shuffles them all.
Makes loading new songs easier as well. You just copy them in there, and no mucking with playlists. (Assuming you just want to listen to everything, and don't have specific lists for different genres, etc). |
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11-07-2016, 05:46 AM | #57 |
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I've got a dedicated 128gb flash drive for the car. Loaded all my lossless music on it. Works great.
Got his for around $25 a few months ago: https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B01BG...StL&ref=plSrch |
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11-08-2016, 01:10 PM | #58 | |
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04-02-2017, 07:10 AM | #59 |
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I leave the Lexar USB 128GB in my car. Most the times it does not recognize it when I open the car and start driving. I need to pull the USB stick out of the socket and then back in. then it recognizes it and play all files perfectly.
Anyone a suggestion on what this could be? the USB itself or the FAT32 format (used a nice tool) with a certain default allocaion size (4k???) thanks |
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04-03-2017, 03:01 PM | #60 |
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Using Samsung 128 GB Thumbdrive, formatted NTFS, about 3500 FLAC music files and about 20 short videos and movies.
Music from CDs was ripped with Poweramp and tags edited with Tag&Rename. Thumbdrive takes about 5 minutes to index the first time. All works fine and consistently on an X5 and on a 435, both 2015 - thanks to good advice from other forum members. |
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04-03-2017, 07:31 PM | #61 |
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Great thread. I have the exact same problem with my STI's USB port. No matter how many songs I load up on a USB, the car only plays the first 255 songs. Annoying as all get out.
So you guys are saying that you only have to place the songs on the root of the drive and it will play however many are on the USB drive (i.e., not limited to a specific amount of songs)? I have a pretty extensive music catalog, but unfortunately most are in mp3 format. Fortunately though most of the collection is on CD so I just need to devote some time to rip all to FLAC files since the 340 obviously boasts a much better HK system than my STI.... |
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04-04-2017, 07:50 PM | #62 | |
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04-05-2017, 06:24 AM | #63 | |
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Long story short, someone with an older F30 with the 1.1 USB in the glove box is going to have different issues than someone with a 2.0 port and/or a newer car. |
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04-09-2017, 06:21 PM | #64 | |
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04-09-2017, 07:32 PM | #65 |
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Have a 2014 435i with HK / arm rest USB and it recognises a 1TB Samsung 850 EVO SSD formatted exfat. FLAC, and yes some mp3, and does work but..... First time hookup there was a very long scan to get all file data (4 minutes or so). Rescanning is only bout 20 seconds or so. All files good, genre, etc. When i restart car after long parking it seems to restart at diff song yet in same chosen genre (as i use genre on shuffle to enjoy music most of the time). So 1TB works, yet not perfectly. As for song qty, many, many thousands.
File system is band name folder, then album folder. Additional top folder for such things as Various Artists, or grouping Soundtrack, etc. BTW 128GB SanDisk worked file. PS: Enclosure said to be a known good for BMW is https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...?ie=UTF8&psc=1
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05-01-2017, 02:21 PM | #66 |
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In my 2014 X1 (so a 3 Series with a different body - right?)
File formats recognized: FAT32 (2Gb limit) NTFS (I've attached a 1Tb drive and it read it) ex-FAT - not recognized I'm trying to work out the file size limit with NTFS. I'm thinking in addition to a file NUMBER - the file name length might be a factor - so nesting within multiple folders could create long and unreadable/un-indexible file names. It is clear that the system reads and displays hidden files. So I'm also exploring: On a COPY of your music - set your computer to show hidden files. Search your folder structures for: desktop.ini thumbs.db *.jpg *.pdf (a few albums come with digital booklets which won't play!) and delete them all as each folder will contain these. Deleting the JPG's will not delete album art if it is already stored in your music ID tag. -- Copy this folder structure to a freshly formatted USB memory stick or pocket drive. (I've had some success with USB3 pocket drives running in the car's USB2 sockets). Do not copy the System Information or $Recycle Bin hidden folders. -- If you edit your drive - you are going to generate a $RecycleBin folder - Make sure to delete it to keep the file count down. -- To force a re-index of any drive you try - give it a name you have not used before. -- By this method I have about 45,000 song files working by the Directory Structure search. I've given up with a genre / artist / album title search. Can't get that to index at all. |
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