This is a copy of my blog post: Sandisk Sansa View on Ubuntu Linux I thought some users of this forum (Linux users) might find it useful.

My girlfriend bought an 8GB Sansa View recently and I've been doing a lot of tinkering with it in Ubuntu 8.04 (both AMD64 and x86). Here is some of the knowledge I've gained in regards to the Sansa View and Ubuntu Linux. Please reply if you know any of this to be incorrect.

First of all, there are 2 modes you can use this device in, and they are mutually exclusive as far as working with them in Linux (that is, you don't have access to files added in MTP mode if you mount it in MSC mode).

To mount the device in MSC mode, you put the device in hold (slide the power switch down) and then hold down the left button on the direction pad for about 5 seconds and then connect it to your USB port. The device should then auto mount into '/media/Sansa View' as a flash drive and an icon should show up on your desktop.

Rhythmbox will not initially identify the device. To get rhythmbox to see the device, you simply place a text file into the root directory of the player named '.is_audio_player' (/media/Sansa View/.is_audio_player). Then it will show up in Rhythmbox and you can drag and drop your music onto it. However, rhythmbox seems to copy the music into the root instead of the 'MUSIC' folder. To change that behaviour, you can edit that '.is_audio_player' file to tell it where to copy the music. The following should work good for a '.is_audio_player' file for the Sansa View:

audio_folders=MUSIC/
folder_depth=2

This method should also work for other audio players like Amarok, Banshee, etc.

The Sansa View seems to prefer id3v2.3 tags, however, newver versions of id3 tagging libraries often use id3v2.4 tags. I use a program called easytag to organize my tags. You can install easy tag with:

sudo aptitude install easytag

You can setup easy tag to use the correct id3 tags by going into 'Settings' > 'Preferences' and clicking the 'ID3 Tag Settings' tab. You want to change the version setting for the id3v2 tags to 'id3v2.3' and leave it in UTF-16 encoding. Here is a screenshot of my preferences:

Once you change this setting, any files which have tags that are NOT in this version will show up red (unsaved). So you can simply load the folder you store your media in, select all, and save. They should now pass through correctly to the Sansa View in MSC mode (including album art discussed below).

Album art in MSC mode can be achieved at least 2 different ways (that I've found). First, you can drop a 300x300 jpg version of the album art named 'folder.jpg' into the folder containing the songs for that album (ie: /media/Sansa View/MUSIC/some_artist/some_album/folder.jpg). Secondly, you can embed the 300x300 jpg file into the id3v2 tag. If you have setup easy tag as discussed in the previous section, this will work.

As far as I can tell, the Sansa View does not support playlists in MSC mode! Correct me if I'm wrong. This was a deal breaker for me which is why I've been working in MTP mode.

It's important to understand that MTP mode is a different animal and the normal rules regarding playlists, album art, and ID3 tags do not apply.

The Sansa View's default mode is MTP, so that's why you aren't seeing an icon popup on your Ubuntu desktop as soon as you plug it in. To use it in MTP mode, you should install libmtp, the library for accessing MTP devices. It's also handy to install mtp-tools and mtpfs which I'll discuss later. You can install all 3 packages using:

sudo aptitude install libmtp mtp-tools mtpfs

Open Rythmbox. Select 'Edit' > 'Plugins' and enable 'MTP Portable Devices' plugin. You can now drop your music onto your device in Rhythmbox, however, playlist support isn't quite working and album art is not supported (as of time of writing). I wasn't successful getting playlists and album art working in Amorok or Banshee either, however, since I use Rhythmbox, I didn't try very hard.

These utilities are some example programs from the libmtp source. Granted you can do just about anything you need to with these tools (create/delete tracks, folders, albums, album art, files, etc.), they are command line tools and doing so can be a bit tedious because of the nature of MTP. But it's a good way to experiment and ensure your MTP device is detected by libmtp. You could also use these tools with your own script if you needs are minimal. Start by typing 'mtp-detect' to find your device. Then type 'man mtp-connect' to see all the commands at your disposal.

In MTP mode, the device isn't using the ID3 tags, but instead is given this information when added to the device (typically the program feeding the information *does* pull this from the ID3 tags). So when using the mtp-tools, you'll have to pass the meta data for tracks or albums along with the file.

This was a bit buggy for me, but you can try. Using mtpfs (uses FUSE) you can mount your device in MTP mode and browse like any other file system

sudo mtpfs -o allow_other /media/SansaView

sudo fusermount -u /media/SansaView

Playlists in MTP mode might work in some audio players in the future, but right now, the support was either non-existent or very buggy. It would be pretty easy to write a script to convert your .m3u or .pla playlists using mtp-tools (mtp-playlists mtp-newplaylist and mtp-delfile), however, I couldn't find anything reliable as of yet. That's why I started writing my own application for MTP devices--specifically my Sansa View. Read below...

I'm working on a GUI media organizer as a front end to libmtp... which you can see below:

This project was only started a few days ago at the time of writing, and so it is still in very early development. However, I expect to have some files posted on sourceforge within a couple weeks. Email me if you would like to be emailed when some beta source is available and you can help me test it.

If you want to keep up, the project page is here: MOrganize

EDIT: In MTP mode, Amarok works very well with the Sansa View including playlist support. Although the album art didn't work for me, I didn't test very thoroughly as I dont' use Amarok and am not going to. However, it seems to be the best option currently avialable for the Sansa View in Ubuntu. You can get it using:

sudo aptitude install amarok

Wow, this is a great post. I'm going to float this for users to access it easier.

Well done!

Update:

I'm finding that embedding album art into the file using id3v2.3 UTF16 is also working in MTP mode. This is done in easy tag as well. 

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MicahCarrick wrote:

EDIT: In MTP mode, Amarok works very well with the Sansa View including playlist support.

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First of all: thanks for writing that all up. 

Did you ever check if the playlists themselves also appear on the View in the playlist menu? The files in the playlist do appear and get transferredand the actual playlists as well because they are visible again in Amarok or Gnomad2 after reconnecting.

However they do not show up in the Views playlist to be actually played.

Did you ever get a playlist to not only transfer but actually show up on the view to be played?

Is that something that would either work with the commandline tools of libmtp or with your frontend to it?

Additionally I would like to add to use albumart-qt for tagging album art directly into the mp3. It can be found here.

Its advantages are that it automatically searches the internet for cover art, downloads it and embeds it into all files of the album. I found that a bit easier to use than downloading the cover from somewhere and manually adding it with easytag to the mp3s of an album.

You're right, the amarok playlist is not showing up on the device's interface. I'm pretty sure I was able to get one transfered over in earlier tests, but not sure. I'm actually about to start implementing playlist support in my app Morganize (screenshot) now that it's able to add/delete tracks with album art. I'll probably get to tinkering either tonight after work or over the weekend.

I'll post what I learn about playlists using libmtp and the mtp-tools. 

By default, libmtp creates playlists with a .zpl extension (from the Creative Zen devices) as that's the only thing they had seen when they wrote it. The Sansa View will only recognize .pla extensions for playlists. I have setup my application (MOrganize) to allow overriding that extension when creating new playlists and it's working fine.

However, I let the libmtp develop know and he put a hack into the version currently in CVS which uses .zpl on the Zens and .pla on anything else. I just tested this CVS version and it worked great with my Sansa View. So, this playlist issue should be resolved in upcoming versions of libmtp.

Hi Micah,

I saw  your posts on the libmtp mailing list.

Thanks a big bunch for bringing it up there!

Looks like I need to check the latest CVS now and/or will try your app .

Looks like I will finally switch to use MTP now.

Bumping this to ask, will these same rules apply for the Fuze ?

D,