Easy iTunes playlist syncing for Tesla USB flash drive

[tinm]

Two questions:

1) Is this still limited to Yosemite or will it now with in more recent versions of the OS, like 10.11.3?

2) Will this work with SD card / USB hybrids? (I recall long long ago on TMC people were raving about this particular tiny USB stick that was actually like a 32GB or 64GB SD card... no idea where that thread is post TMC-redo)

 

[msnow]

Two questions:

1) Is this still limited to Yosemite or will it now with in more recent versions of the OS, like 10.11.3?

2) Will this work with SD card / USB hybrids? (I recall long long ago on TMC people were raving about this particular tiny USB stick that was actually like a 32GB or 64GB SD card... no idea where that thread is post TMC-redo)

If you're talking about Tesla Tunes it works for me with El Capitan. Don't know about #2 but @BertL probably would.

 

[BertL]

Two questions:

1) Is this still limited to Yosemite or will it now with in more recent versions of the OS, like 10.11.3?

2) Will this work with SD card / USB hybrids? (I recall long long ago on TMC people were raving about this particular tiny USB stick that was actually like a 32GB or 64GB SD card... no idea where that thread is post TMC-redo)

#1: Assuming you're asking about @majorlance's Applescript, IDK as I switched over to TeslaTunes because of some of it's additional features that help me workaround Media Player deficiencies. If @majorlance does not see your question, you may want to message with him directly.

#2: I rummaged through my collection of old SD cards and sticks and no longer have one of the USB SDHC readers to give it a try for you. They look to be ~$7 on Amazon if you have some old SDHC or similar "mini" cards sitting around and want to try it yourself. Unless you have those cards already, and your goal is maximizing storage with minimal form factor, I instead suggest you check out one of the SanDisk Ultrafits -- IDK of anything smaller on the market today for a USB device -- they range from $7-$29 for 16-128GB and are USB 3.0 to speed up getting your music onto the stick from your computer. I have one of the 128GB versions and it works well in my MS.

 

[Infinite]

@ra-san - Thank you so much for the app. It worked perfectly to transfer my entire library on to a 128GB low profile stick. Did that transfer a couple of days back and tested it on our X yesterday evening when we picked her up from the factory. Was worried about the lack of iPhone integration but your app has solved the problem.

One Question - If I add more songs to my existing playlists will your app just sync those new songs or will it have to rewrite the whole folder>

 

[tinm]

My S is nearly 3 years old but today I went and bought a SanDisk 64GB USB drive, and then came here to get the link to download TeslaTunes, which is now underway copying a gazillion MP3s over to the drive. Prolly take until Sunday at the rate it's goin'.

But just wanted to add to the chorus of THANK YOUS for making TeslaTunes available. It's great!

p.s. One possible bug: I selected as "Destination Music Location" the name of the USB drive itself, then selected all the playlists etc and clicked "Do it." It failed. So I created a folder on the USB drive called "Music," made that the Destination, then tried "Do it" again -- it worked, and is currently purring away.

 

[msnow]

My S is nearly 3 years old but today I went and bought a SanDisk 64GB USB drive, and then came here to get the link to download TeslaTunes, which is now underway copying a gazillion MP3s over to the drive. Prolly take until Sunday at the rate it's goin'.

But just wanted to add to the chorus of THANK YOUS for making TeslaTunes available. It's great!

p.s. One possible bug: I selected as "Destination Music Location" the name of the USB drive itself, then selected all the playlists etc and clicked "Do it." It failed. So I created a folder on the USB drive called "Music," made that the Destination, then tried "Do it" again -- it worked, and is currently purring away.

Sunday is a good estimate.

 

[BertL]

My S is nearly 3 years old but today I went and bought a SanDisk 64GB USB drive, and then came here to get the link to download TeslaTunes, which is now underway copying a gazillion MP3s over to the drive. Prolly take until Sunday at the rate it's goin'.

But just wanted to add to the chorus of THANK YOUS for making TeslaTunes available. It's great!

p.s. One possible bug: I selected as "Destination Music Location" the name of the USB drive itself, then selected all the playlists etc and clicked "Do it." It failed. So I created a folder on the USB drive called "Music," made that the Destination, then tried "Do it" again -- it worked, and is currently purring away.

I suggest we all post future items related to TeslaTunes here: Easy iTunes playlist syncing for Tesla USB flash drive . This is the wrong thread for TeslaTunes topics. This thread is for a somewhat similar, but very different AppleScript application.

 

[tinm]

I suggest we all post future items related to TeslaTunes here: Easy iTunes playlist syncing for Tesla USB flash drive . This is the wrong thread for TeslaTunes topics. This thread is for a somewhat similar, but very different AppleScript application.

yikes! sorry! my bad

(I blame the TMC forum software... hard to find things!)

 

[Soundchasr]

Which works on Windows?

 

[BertL]

Which works on Windows?

Neither.

 

[Soundchasr]

Ugh!

 

[ny888]

Does Major Lance script still work? I am on OSX 10.9.5

I'm getting this error - Can’t set «class ppgc» to t. Access not allowed. Are there permissions I need to set?

 

[rjt65]

Unfortunately looks like Tesla tunes nogo with 8.0 upgrade. it plays but as Tesla killed the letter search it is nightmare to scroll thru all the artists alphabetically. I plan to creat/use folder subfolders for quicker access to scan my ripped usb songs. anyone else fins any other workarounds?

 

[BertL]

I think there are two separate tools being mixed up again.

This thread was originally about a unique AppleScript tool to assist with building USB media for Tesla.

IMHO that was a good start, but TeslaTunes is a more functionally rich macOS application discussed here: Easy iTunes playlist syncing for Tesla USB flash drive. It still pretty much works for 8.0, but I have found one conversion bug related to Album Art with AIF to FLAC (the others work fine).​

Either way, yes, 8.0 has added USB issues. The discussion related to all that is primarily going on the Comprehensive USB Bug thread. IMHO it's not so much an issue of workaround tools being the problem as it is Tesla having not considered those of us with larger USB music libraries, and not resolving a number of long standing bugs. The best workaround due to the lack of the vertical alpha selection bar is as @rjt65 suggests, use Folders to create your own sort of index. You will though still encounter other bugs and limitations as everyone else is.

 

[ra-san]

I haven't stopped by and reviewed this thread in ages. You're welcome to those thank you's posted earlier. I'm glad some people have found the app useful.

I do still wish Tesla would support playlist files - would make everything so much better in terms of being able to organize without duplication.

I did a minor update to the app a bit ago to handle embedded artwork in Apple Lossless files getting copied over into the FLAC conversions, as well as adding the ability to ignore missing files (user requested and provided feature - handy thanks to Apple Music files in playlists).

If you were already using it, it *should* have alerted you and offered to update if you had auto-update turned on, but if not it's still at the linked location on github or teslatunes.loci.net

While I still keep a large library of lossless files hooked up in the car and occasionally update that using my app, I do find that mostly I'm just using AAC over Bluetooth and Apple Music, etc. for listening to new music. As a result, though I may not be actively following discussions in the forum threads here, I will still be notified about and will look at anything posted in the app's github issues, etc.

 

[ra-san]

@ra-san - Thank you so much for the app. It worked perfectly to transfer my entire library on to a 128GB low profile stick. Did that transfer a couple of days back and tested it on our X yesterday evening when we picked her up from the factory. Was worried about the lack of iPhone integration but your app has solved the problem.

One Question - If I add more songs to my existing playlists will your app just sync those new songs or will it have to rewrite the whole folder>

I do wish Tesla supported CarPlay, but I do find their Bluetooth implementation (which does support AAC) and using the iPhone's interface to work pretty well. To answer your question though:

For playlists:
If you add more songs to your playlists, the app will just copy the new songs. If you delete songs from the *playlists* or deselect a playlist from being copied, it will delete the removed songs or playlists.

For copy folder:
If you run the app again after adding some new songs, it'll scan the whole folder hierarchy and only copy songs that aren't already at the destination. It will *not* delete any files at the destination that are no longer in the source folders.

Why the difference? Well, mostly because I think of playlists as being more likely to change and more important to exactly mirror whereas the whole library structure, I almost always use as an additive collection (can't remember the last time I *removed* something from my library altogether) and it made the app easier to treat the folders this way

 

[ra-san]

Unfortunately looks like Tesla tunes nogo with 8.0 upgrade. it plays but as Tesla killed the letter search it is nightmare to scroll thru all the artists alphabetically. I plan to creat/use folder subfolders for quicker access to scan my ripped usb songs. anyone else fins any other workarounds?

I really don't know how much workaround junk we want to keep doing for this ongoing saga of …challenged… media player support…
but that said, I can think of a couple things one could do. Even ignoring the amount of work one would have to do to do it though, I think they are crappy choices.

1) You could use smart playlists and on each do a "artist" (or album, or whatever) begins with "A" repeated through Z and then a playlist with multiple rules for 0-9, place all those in a playlist folder named Alpha (for example), then (and this part is conjecture - haven't tried this rule type) one final smart playlist that has the rule playlist is not Alpha.

2) I think it'd be fairly easy to make the app map to the destination differently when copying by folder, perhaps adding a subfolder by taking the first letter of the … what? Artist name? Track name? Album? … Currently I mirror the source directory structure for the destination. Typically that's reasonable in terms of organization. With this option, I'm not sure that works anymore. Too many edge cases pop up that make things weird I think.

With either choice though, you have to either choose one and only one way to split things into alphabetical folders, or you have to duplicate files which will not only use up more room but also clutter the Tesla's display with duplicates when you look at them in any ways *besides* by folder.

 

[ra-san]

And as it turns out. AIFF is a compatible formet with the Tesla audio system. Fortunately I didn't spend the time converting all my AIFF to FLAC. At least I'll have a little more room on my USB for future purchases!

Sorry I missed this till now. Issues filed on the project page will send notifications to me I'm more likely to notice.

Files with the extension ".aiff" get copied, but from your screenshot it looks like yours were ".aif". I'll update the list of extensions I'll copy to include that. Given this was reported eons ago I'm reasonably sure it's not a pressing need for anyone right now, but it'll be in the next update I do.