This isn't audio per se but I don't know what other catagory would be most appropriate.

I put three audio books on a CD-R, each in its own folder. I made a playback test on the living room DVD player. Two books seem ok, at least they start playing with track 1, but not the third one. It starts on the last track. On the TV screen attached to the DVD player, a list of that folder shows the tracks as #53, #02, #03, ... #52, #01.

Putting the disk into a computer CD drive allowed me to drag the folder onto the hard drive. Windows, and Windows applications such as foobar200 and Winamp, show the list of tracks as 01 through 53. Invoking the DOS Prompt and doing a directory listening, however, shows the same thing as the TV display: 53 first, 01 last, with 02 through 52 between them in the correct order. It appears that the physical order in the folder has track 53 and track 01 exchanged.

I understand this is what happens in most Windows programs if one selects a range of files for processing by clicking on the first, then the last, I just never though of it causing a problem with a CD-R made from the resultant processing. Apparently, if I select a batch of files to process in a mp3 encoder GUI, such as RazorLame, I run the risk of creating this difficulty.

Has anyone else run into such a problem? Is it possible that some hardware players, like perhaps all Windows applications, go by name sequence rather than physical sequence when they are just pointed at a folder, so the physical sequence doesn't matter?

Things can be stranger still. As an experiment, in Windows Explorer I select the first file Windows shows, #01, held down the shift key, then clicked on the last file in the list, #53. This selected all 53 files. I dragged them to another folder where Windows, of course, still lists them as 01 through 53, just like before.

Based on previous considerations, I expected the DOS directory listing to now show the correct sequence, 01 through 53, since this method of selection so often reverses the first and last file positions. What the DOS dir listing shows, however, is 21, 02, 03, ... 20, 01, 22, 23, ... 52, 53. While it got the last file back into sequence, it did a seemingly weird thing with 21 and 01. This appears to defy all logic.

Usually I select the input to RazorLame with Ctrl_A. That displays files in the correct sequence within RazorLame's display, but by now I'm not certain if what it actually does is consistent. Most of the book tapes I've converted to mp3 (and these have mainly started out from cassette tapes) have been done merely as backup for my daughter's somewhat expensive purchases. I haven't tried to use them except in test mode, such as seeing if Winamp will read and play the CD-R before I delete the original files from the hard drive. Winamp deals with the files in collating sequence, not physical sequence, so I'm not sure what I would find if I stuck more of these disks into a hardware player and settled down for "tell me a story."

I can correct this in a very tedious way before writing to a new CD-R. If I select and drag files, one by one, to a new folder, they end up in the sequence in which I handled them. If I do in it numerical order, they end up in numerical sequence. If I use some other selection criteria, the final result matches that. Windows doesn't tell me this, of course, but DOS does. There, unless I use a sorting parameter, I am shown the physical sequence on disk.

Is there any easier way to get the files into the right sequence? Some of the books I've done so far have produced hundreds of files. Fixing their positions one by one would be very tedious.

Doing a ‘select all' into the encoding program seems to handle the files in the correct sequence, at least within Windows. I also know how to exchange the first and last file positions, to put them back in correct sequence, if I need to select only a limited range from what is in a folder. I don't know if either of these approaches is guaranteed to get the right sequence onto the CD-R when I write that final folder to a data CD, however.

I bet when you drag your files, your cursor drags on file #21.

Windows Explorer has this stupid bug (?) that if you select multiple file, and drag them, the first file in the sequence gets swapped with the file the mouse drags.

So, you really should select them all, and make sure that you drag on the first file.

Edit: Or, to even be more sure, select #02 to #53, then ctrl-click #01, and drag #01.

Hope it helps.

I've found that selecting files in the opposite order (last to first) sometimes works to get around this behavior.

-brendan

Yes that would do also. To correct a slight mistake in my posting above, Windows Explorer swaps the first file in the list with the last focused file.

If the last focused file is the first file in the list, then it is swapped with itself, so no change.

Dragging files apparently shifts the focus to whatever file is under the cursor when the drag starts.

Right, I typically keyboard cut/paste instead of dragging, so I don't think I end up with the focus-reset-on-drag issue.

-brendan

Same here.

Edit: Well, I used to do keyboard copy-paste, except that now I use FolderBox (freeware from BaxBex Software), I fall into the drag-and-drop habit again. Drag & drop is *really* convenient with FolderBox installed, as it gives you a lower pane in your Windows Explorer enabling you to see both source & target folder in one Explorer window.