Introduction

The audio and video files we supply on USB sticks / thumb drives are compatible with and can be played on all modern devices including:

• Computers running Windows, MacOS and Linux
• Phones and Tablets running Android and iOS
• Smart televisions that can play audio and video files
• USB speakers can often play audio MP3 files
• Game consoles
• And many other assorted devices.

Our audio files are encoded in the universally compatible MP3 format, which will play on virtually any device and our video files are encoded using low complexity H.264 codec in .mp4 files. With the exception of some very old phones these video files will also play on virtually all devices.

Getting the Audio and Video Files on your Device

On devices that you can physically plug the USB stick into you can just plug it in and view the directory of the USB stick and click on or select the file you want to pay and it will play however this is not a very satisfying way to play the files. You will generally want to copy the files to your hard drive and load them into an MP3 player (see below for more details). That will enable you to take advantage of the tags enabling you to view the files by type [Album] and location [Genre].

On devices which you can not physically plug the USB thumb drive into like most phones and tablets generally you need to use a computer to transfer the files to your device.

For Android devices including phones and tablets you can plug your device into a computer and transfer the files to the "Audio" or "Video" folders on your device. For Windows computers your Android device will be automatically recognized as an external drive when you plug it into your computer and you can just navigate to the Audio or Video folder and use the Windows File Manager to drag and drop the audio and video files into your device.

Apple Mac computers running MacOS do not automatically recognize Android devices. So if you want to transfer the audio and video files from your Mac computer to an Android device you need to install the "Android File Transfer" app:

Download Android File Transfer

When you have this Android File Transfer app installed on your Mac computer as soon as you plug in your Android device a window will appear showing the directory of the files on your Android device. So you can then just drag and drop the audio and video files you want to transfer from the Mac Finder to your Android device.

These are the standard ways for getting the audio and video files from the USB sticks / thumb drives onto your devices. Another option is the open source audio and video player, VLC. VLC, in addition to being a very good player, allows you to transfer files from your computer to a mobile device on the same network. VLC runs on all devices.

Download VLC

You Need an MP3 Player App

If you do not already have a favorite  MP3 player we suggest, for Windows and Android you can use MediaMonkey but there are many others. But you have to install an MP3 player and load the files into the MP3 player to see them properly organized, sorted by type and location.

For Mac Computers and iOS devices including iPhones and iPads:

We used to recommend iTunes, but iTunes is no longer available on newer version of MacOS. It has been replaced with the Music app and the TV app which have the same functionality as the old iTunes.

So for Apple users all you need to do is go to File > Import in the Music app and select the folder where you have copied the MP3 files to and that will import and nicely organize all the Prabhupada audio. And once you have imported onto your Mac computer in the Music app you can easily transfer to any linked iPhone or other device.

Selecting the Audio and Video Recordings You Want to Play

For the video files it is sufficient to navigate through the directory structure of the USB stick / thumb drive and select the videos you want to play. The Video files also have iTunes Television Show tags in them that can be activated in iTunes, described in a separate help-desk article.

Audio files, however, have a lot of information stored in the MP3 tags. This information is not available from the file names. This MP3 tag information includes:

• Title: The recording date plus a description of the recording.
• Album: The type of recording (eg: Kirtan, Bhagavad-gita Class, Morning Walk, Room Conversation, Bhajan, etc.)
• Genre: The location of the recording (eg: Los Angeles, Mayapur, Sydney, etc)
• Year: The year the recording was made

So using these MP3 tags you can very easily select exactly what you want to hear. If you want to hear Morning Walks in Los Angeles you can select the album "Morning Walks" and the genre "Los Angeles" for example.

There are so many MP3 players available on all devices which will allow you to do this. VLC will do this on all devices. On all the Apple devices Music and the corresponding iOS apps will do it. On Windows there is Windows Media Player and so many other options. The MP3 tags we have used are very standard and will be recognized on virtually any MP3 playing device or app.

As mentioned before we are recommending you can use MediaMonkey on Windows and Android and for MacOS and iOS the builtin Music and TV apps are generally sufficient. But these are only suggestions, there are many other options, so feel free to use whatever MP3 and video player you find most convenient.

Chant Hare Krishna and be happy!

Your servants at

KrishnaStore.com