8000+ song iPod Classic; Sync is always "Indexing" or "building command list"

[Aquineas]

We took delivery of my wife's 2013 HyTi on July 12. We use an 8000+ song iPod classic with it. For some inexplicable reason, Sync is constantly "indexing it." I thought that it would take a couple of weeks of driving for Ford to build up an index and a command list, but after that, provided none of the songs changed, it wouldn't need to keep indexing. That hasn't turned out to be the case. It seems it builds an index every time we start the car, and with that many songs, you have to drive for a couple of hours before it completes. I would think it would only need to do that when it found new files.

 

1. Is anyone using an iPod with a large library?
2. Are you seeing the same "Indexing" or "building commands" prompts every time you start the car?
3. Will this ever subside?

Thanks!

[corncobs]

I may have 10% of your song count on my SD card but maybe once a week it does the index and building voice commands dance. I think it has do with the 12 V getting low and losing the memory for the index.

 

In your case I would almost bet that you are exceeding the internal memory capacity of the MFT with 8000+ song that need to be indexed and voice recognition assigned to it. So it knows that is hasn't finished indexing but it also can't fit more indexes into memory luckily it doesn't crash writing over max memory.

Edited September 2, 2013 by corncobs

[neod192]

Do you plug in the iPod after you start the car? Try plugging it in before, so that it's not seen as a new device.

[acdii]

Do you plug in the iPod after you start the car? Try plugging it in before, so that it's not seen as a new device.

This^^ Whenever the device is disconnected, for whatever reason while the MFT is active, it will need to re-index. It could also be that it never finises the index with that many tracks, and has to restart every time.

[Aquineas]

Do you plug in the iPod after you start the car? Try plugging it in before, so that it's not seen as a new device.

I usually just keep it plugged in... And I thought it might be that because of the number of songs that it never finished, but that's not the case. It has definitely finished in the past and I've been able to enjoy the luxury of saying, "Play (songname)". This is something I was greatly looking forward to as I can't do this on my 12 Genesis.

[Gregavi]

Why would anybody need (or want) to have 8000 songs? I use an ipod Classic 80 GB with just under 2500, and that's 5x more than I will ever listen to. My Sync sometimes indexes, but it only takes 10 or 15 seconds. I agree with corncobs that you are probably exceeding the internal memory capacity. Try an ipod with less songs on it, or remove 75% from the one you are using and see if that improves the indexing issue. It's an easy trouble shoot since it is easy to put the songs back on the pod.

[Quickdraw95]

I have this exact same issue (I have about 4500 songs on a Microsoft Zune), so it is not a Apple v. Microsoft issue. I think several of the respondents are right - simply too many songs to index. I have left it indexing just out of curiosity on long trips, and eventually it indexes the songs, but it can take an hour. I leave it plugged in, but it will still "de-sync" when the car is off, so I have decided to used an older Zune I had, delete everything, and only add in the podcasts and a few playlists I really like. I am hoping that does the trick.

 

As an alternative, I also purchased a 3 foot long RCA male-to-male splitter cable from Amazon - it has a 3.5mm headphone plug on one end, and the RCA red and white plugs on the other. I leave the red and white plugs hooked into the AV inputs in the console, and plug the other end into the headphone plug and control the songs via the MP3 player, using the "A/V" input to the stereo. It works perfectly, and sound quality is much better than bluetooth (works for my phone, too).

[headspace]

I am having this problem with mp3 files on a 64GB flash/usb drive. It WAS working, and now it shows the exact same messages.

[larrylwill]

I had this problem with a USB stick and 5 audio books, less than 200 tracks, sometimes it would index and never finish.