Guide on making a playlist for MMI SD cards on a Mac
 

First I want to thank Teddyoh for his excellent thread on SD cards and MMI as well as playlists. It got me started on making a playlist and was of great help and I would not have known how to organize my music without his guide. . However, it didn't work on a Mac. So here are the steps for anyone who is interested in making on on their mac.

First you will want to copy your music to your SD card. I simply went into the music folder on my mac and copied over the artist folders that I wanted. This also makes it easy for your playlists.

Next, you will need to download TextWrangler (free) from the following site:

http://www.barebones.com/products/textwrangler/

Once you have text wrangler follow these steps:

1. Create your playlist in iTunes
2. Right click or control click on the playlist and select export in M3U format
3. Open Text Wrangler
4. Select Open from the File menu, set the enable menu to everything and open the newly exported playlist

Now you will see something like this:

#EXTM3U
#EXTINF:159,Divine idylle - Vanessa Paradis
/Users/username/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music/Vanessa Paradis/Divinidylle/01 Divine idylle.m4a
#EXTINF:179,Chet Baker - Vanessa Paradis
/Users/username/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music/Vanessa Paradis/Divinidylle/02 Chet Baker.m4a
#EXTINF:167,Les piles - Vanessa Paradis
/Users/username/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music/Vanessa Paradis/Divinidylle/03 Les piles.m4a
#EXTINF:203,Dès que j'te vois - Vanessa Paradis

5. Remove everything to the left of the / before the artists name which will leave something like this:

#EXTM3U
#EXTINF:159,Divine idylle - Vanessa Paradis
/Vanessa Paradis/Divinidylle/01 Divine idylle.m4a
#EXTINF:179,Chet Baker - Vanessa Paradis
/Vanessa Paradis/Divinidylle/02 Chet Baker.m4a
#EXTINF:167,Les piles - Vanessa Paradis
/Vanessa Paradis/Divinidylle/03 Les piles.m4a
#EXTINF:203,Dès que j'te vois - Vanessa Paradis

6. Select Save as from the File menu
7. Change line breaks to Windows (CRLF) and leave encoding as is.
8. Rename your playlist if you like or just click save and overwrite the old one.

Now copy the playlist to your SD card along with your music and you should be set.

The editing must be done in TextWrangler as it allows you to save the file with the proper line breaks. If you edit in the text edit software provided on your mac it will save line breaks as CR which the MMI system doesn't understand.

Hope this is helpful to Mac owners!

I guess I'm not allowed to edit my posts? Perhaps I don't have enough post count yet. I just wanted to include a link to the SD Card and MMI thread as well:

https://www.audiworld.com/forums/sho....php?t=2809202

post here to request edit rights -> https://www.audiworld.com/forums/sho...ght=edit+posts

How is this different from just drag songs from iTunes into folders created in SD card?
I created folders based on my playlist on SD card, then drag all the songs in that particular playlist to the folders. It seems to work for me on mac.

It's creating a playlist. You are organizing your music to mirror your playlists. With a playlist you don't have to make a bunch of folders.

Hope this helps.

I'm working with Audi Concert in a 2014 A4 and Mac.

1) Export a playlist from iTunes to create a .m3u file.
2) Open with text editor.
3) Leave the first # line. The rest can go.
4) Follow format of /Artist/Album/Track.
5) Leave the .m3u file in the root directory of the SD card.
6) Leave the songs where they are, just link to where they are on the SD card.

Because the playlist is at the root, linking should be fairly straightforward.

I didn't have to use any fancy text editors or programs or apps or what have you. The only thing I would suggest is using something called Max to encode your files.

Originally I had .m4a's downloaded from iTunes, and ripped cd's with AIFF format. I currently use AAC (no fancy stuff, just AAC) with an .mp4 extension.

Everything just works now.

THANK YOU MorganB
 

thanks MorganB for the great tip on using TextWrangler in MacOSX. I have been trying all the hints, tips, tricks and advice found on all the different fora on how to get a MacOSX iTunes playlist to play on my 2015 SQ5's MMI for the last two weeks without success. But finally, using TextWrangler to edit the exported playlist worked.

Hello Guys,
MorganB thank you for the tutorial. Very useful !
About 2 years ago I used your information to start using playlists.
I just have a question now.
Has anyone managed to use playlists for video files?.
I have a SD card filled with some music videos and I would like to organize them on playlists too.
I tried kind of following this pattern from the audio files but I didn't succeed. Any help?
Thank you

Waking up an old thread, but what about multiple playlists on one card?

Anyone successful in doing this?

not an issue at all. mmi will show each playlist as separate. I have 5 different playlists on one SD card for my 2019 A4 allroad. my 2021 A6 Allroad has the same residing on a USB-C thumb drive.

https://cimg5.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.aud...f1fd7b00cc.png