Playlists for dummies: taming the sansa clip

The URL for the bash script has gone bad.

I’m not surprised, after almost 4 years. This forum went through a complete re-vamp and new host a couple years ago. All previously good links were broken. Your best bet now would probably be Google.

 :smiley: Thank you so much for your help, Billy; you gave the solution that worked!

How do you change to MTP mode in the Sansa Clipsport? I cannot find the option in the settings option on the device.

You’re in the wrong forum–there’s a separate one for Clip Sport.

But the Sport does not have MTP mode, only  MSC.

http://kb.sandisk.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/61/~/enabling-or-forcing-msc-mode-on-your-sansa-player

Thanks! I always thought that all players have the option to have both MTP and MSC mode. I just wondered why it’s not available on all.

No doubt, an engineering decision to try to save costs, in the cut-down Sport.

Or maybe the whole MTP project of digital rights management/misery/mess was finally seen as the infringement on consumer options that it is. You can find mp3s of anything. The whole protected/encrypted/MTP thing was too restrictive.

Except that, MTP mode still is needed for many services, such as Rhapsody and some library lending services.

Just wanted to share my new discovery. There is an application called Sansa Clip Playlist Creator which automates the process of creating a playlist, using it is easy as counting to three so I won’t write tutorials here. Tested it and works wonderfully. So if any of you folks still have old clip in your shelf it’s time to blow out the dust and check this little baby here. Props for anyone who created it.

Thank you for these instructions. I’ve followed them to the letter but am only getting empty .pla files (0 bytes).

I tried downloading the Sansa Clip playlist creator tool that someone recommended but I keep getting an error with that as well: “one or some file paths doesn’t exist in player.  Tracks without valid paths will not be working.”

Extremely frustrating!

I’m not a big playlister, but here are a few things to keep in mind: 

.pla playlists always show up as 0 bytes. If I understand it right, they are binary sets of commands that are tiny. 

Playlists are lists of instructions. They aren’t folders full of music files–they just tell the player “get this file from this directory.” Because you are getting the path error, the playlist might be telling the Sansa to look where it can’t find the files. It is possible that you have made .pla playlists that are telling the player  to get the file from the directory where it is located on your computer–not on the player.

I’m not familiar with this playlist creator tool, but if you can’t make the .pla playlists work, it looks like the Playlist Creator can make .m3u playlists instead. They are readable as txt files with Wordpad or Notepad, and you can see where they are telling the player to look for the files.  

Another program that was good for making Sansa playlists was Winamp, now discontinued. But you can still find it at www.oldversion.com . You can also try the free version of www.mediamonkey.com, which will make playlists. For both of those, put the Sansa in Settings/System Settings/USB Mode/MSC. 

Or you could just use Windows Media Player, though I believe the limitation of WMP is that all the files have to be EITHER in the internal memory or on the card, so it can’t bounce back and forth. 

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I gave up on this long ago. Spent countless hours on it. Wanted to have multiple playlists that pulled from both the internal and extended memory. MTP mode won’t let you backup playlists that you spent hours on. Thought I had the solution then found out that the Clip only supports a maximum of 999 songs on a playlist. Finally just bought a bigger card, out all my music on the card in MSC mode, installed rockbox, and made my playlists in winamp. all is well now.

:slight_smile:

Hi

I did exactly according to your explaination and was so excited to see the playlists finally appear on my Sandisk. Unfortunaltely, after I created 2 different playlists with different songs it appears that the same songs appear on both different playlists…

I tried to do the process opening the files in “Playlists” or in “Music” but the same error occured…

Thanks in advance for your feedback!

I had the same problem with 2 playlists in the music folder.  I moved them to the “playlists” folder, and it works now.

@roundancingfool wrote:

I had the same problem with 2 playlists in the music folder.  I moved them to the “playlists” folder, and it works now.

It depends on the type/format of the playlist files where they need to be. PLA playlist files go in the Playlist folder; M3U playlist files go in the music folder that contains the individual song files. :wink:

Right making a playlist as described here worked with my wonderful Clip Zip, so I do know how to use it. Unfortunately, I have tried that routine and when I right click to make a playlist, I am not given that chice!

I never mucked about with playlists, but had the notion that if I ever wanted to, I’d do it this way (because they look like a royal PITA!):

Get mp3 tag and use one of the more useless categories (and one that rockbox uses) to simply make a batch of tracks with a name: then just use that name as a playlist from the database menu. Make one for every playlist. No limits.

I’ve done what you said and the result I get when I’m syncing is the sansa tells me the song is already on the sansa. So basically it doesn’t create a playlist. I’ve gone as far as making a new album with the songs I want in it and sync’d that up to the sansa. That worked but, now I had two of each song on the sansa. I’m still trying to find a way to create a playlist that is smart enough to find the songs already on the sansa and play those songs.

SOLVED: I found out exactly what I needed to do to get my Playlist working using m3u file and I didn’t have to duplicate any existing songs already on the player : )