View photos from a USB memory key in a specific order on a TV

Q I have been using Picasa for some time now and have been very pleased with the program. However, I have now decided to save photos onto a USB memory key to play back on a new TV set through a Panasonic recorder that has a USB port.

I have sorted the photos in Picasa to get them into a desirable order, but when I copy them onto the memory key to view on the telly, the photos revert back to their original order. Is there something I can do to set the photographs into the order I require for playback?
David Ward

A The photo catalogue and index built with and maintained by Picasa can be copied from PC to PC, but the Panasonic device you are using for USB playback would have no way of interpreting it.

By coincidence, some home-cinema equipment, including TVs made by Panasonic, do have a Picasa application built in. However, these are internet-connected devices designed to interact with Picasa’s online web albums so would be no use in this situation anyway.

Our guess is that the recorder is displaying the photos stored on the memory key in filename order; for example, DSC0001.jpg is displayed first, followed by DSC0002.jpg and so on.

Really, then, there are only two things that can help. First check the Panasonic device’s playback settings to see if they can be tweaked. It is possible that the device will instead allow your photos to be played back in date order (the files will carry an electronic time and date stamp), which may be more useful.

Also, some home-entertainment devices with photo playback features have their own built-in indexing and organisation tools: Panansonic’s DMR-XW380 DVD recorder, for example, lets users sort photos into albums.

If no such facility exists on your Panasonic device, then the only option left is to manually rename the files in a sequential order that reflects the preferred playback order.