Advice for a present I'm making

[basicchannel]

I'm making a compilation for someone for Christmas (like in the old days when we used to give friends proper cassettes), only this one is a usb stick disguised in an old cassette I found lying around my folks' house. So the person opens up what looks like a tape, they pull out the USB stick and it blows their mind (or that's the idea).

 

Anyway, what would be really cool is when the plugged it in it automatically launched a player which played the music in the correct order, rather than the person having to faff around opening up folders and creating their own playlist. It would be almost like playing a cassette, where you just stick it in the player, press play and that was it.

 

Has anyone got any cool ideas they can suggest to do something like this? Obviously if this is both PC and Mac compatible that would be an added bonus.

 

Thanks

[Rawns]

You could always make a playlist and save it as an M3U file. Whiole it won't play automatically, the Windows prompt should give them an option to "play playlist".

 

This may be of use?

 

How To Create a Basic autorun USB

To get started, we need a USB flash drive, Notepad (other editors are not recommended as they add extra coding), an application you wish to run when the stick is plugged into the USB port.

 

Now follow these steps:

 

1. Run Notepad

2. Type in:

 

[Autorun]

Open=MyApp.exe

Action=Start MyApp

Label=My Portable PC

Icon=MyApp.exe

 

3. Save the file as autorun.inf in the root of the USB flash drive

 

In this sample, the Action command will place the text "Start MyApp" in the autoplay USB dialog. The item will be selected by default. Next to the text, the icon specified by the Icon command is shown. And when the user chooses the selected item, the program file specified by the Open command is launched.

 

http://visualdesigning.com/autorun-usb/

Edited December 19, 2012 by Rawns

[basicchannel]

You could always make a playlist and save it as an M3U file. Whiole it won't play automatically, the Windows prompt should give them an option to "play playlist".

 

This may be of use?

 

 

 

How to create Autorun USB

 

I like the playlist idea. I did think autorun but then read that Windows 7 doesn't do autorun anymore. So my plan might actually not be possible.

[Rodan]

Edit the track metadata/details in File explorer if they're mp3s so that they list and play in the order you want. To ensure this rename the files 01 - Track1Name, 02- Track2Name as well as the track property. Edited December 19, 2012 by Rodan
spelling

[dhicks]

Obviously if this is both PC and Mac compatible that would be an added bonus.

 

An HTML page on the USB stick with an embedded Flash (or otherwise) MP3 player might be your best cross-platform bet, although you'd need to test it beforehand.