MMITunes: Create playlists for your Audi MMI/RNS-E on the Mac

I have an iPod Classic connected to the Audi Music Interface (AMI) in my car to listen to music over the Audi multimedia system MMI 3G. The iPod is able to store a vast collection of music but sometimes I just want to listen to the tracks I recently downloaded in the iTunes music store without having to walk down to the garage, disconnecting the iPod, sync it on my Mac and so on. I just want to drag ‘n drop a few dozen audio tracks from iTunes to an SD-card and insert the card into the MMI’s SD-card slot when I get to the car the next time.

Now, the problem is that there are no playlists on the SD-card and thus the tracks are played in the order the MMI finds them on the card. This is where MMITunes comes into play. MMITunes is a small tool that creates playlists for all audio tracks it finds on a SD-card. It even creates multiple playlists with different audio track sorting. One of the created playlists contains a random sort order. Actually, there’s a “mix” option in the MMI but it gets deactivated every now and then so having a randomized playlist might be a good thing. The following playlists are created by MMITunes:

• MMITunes_RND.m3u: Random sorting, as described above
• MMITunes_TRK_RND.m3u: Artists in alphabetical order but albums and tracks in random order
• MMITunes_SORTED.m3u: Artists, albums in alphabetical order, tracks in play order if track number is set in iTunes

Screenshot:

In case you’re using a folder structure on that SD-card to organize your music: MMITunes will take care of it and add playlist entries for audio tracks it finds in subfolders as well. I also added an option for Audi RNS-E users to delete all hidden files and directories on the SD-card. Unfortunately, the RNS-E displays hidden “.”-files as playable audio tracks.

The latest MMITunes release is available in the downloads area. It requires the latest and greatest version of Mac OS X. It’s untested with Mac OS X versions prior to 10.6.4. MMITunes is free of charge and not bound by any particular license. Install it by opening the .dmg and drag n’ drop the application icon to the application folder.

If MMITunes isn’t exactly what you need you may want to have a look at Export to Audi MMI, iTunes Export and Blue Harvest.

• Enable VIM TV-playback using VCDS/VAG-COM in your Audi MMI
  Now, this is something for the Audi folks. If your Audi is equipped with a MMI TV-module or a DVD-player, security restrictions have been applied...