I have a Sansa Zip Clip 8gb with a 32 gb micro card. I have installed music on this before using WMP to rip and sync and have had no problems. I have recently riped some CDs using WMP 12 and syny to my Zip Clip to the external card and when I go to play the album all the songs are not showing. The last songs from the alum are not there. I took the card out and checked on my PC and it shows the songs there and plays them. I tried to to just copy and paste to the card and the same thing happens. When I go to the folder section on the player it will show the album with all the songs but not if I just go and look under artist or album section. I have tried changing the USB modes on the player to all different versions and still the same. I’m using the latest firware version on the player and my PC is running Windows 7. Any help would very much be welcomed. Thank You
And are the ID3 tags for the songs filled in? That’s the info. the player uses under the database selections, for display purposes.
As Miikerman said, it’s a tag issue. Download the free MP3Tag program and edit the tags of the ones that aren’t displaying.
I checked the tags and all looks normal. Any other thoughts?
Check again. There’s something in those tags preventing the player from reading them. Are they the format needed (ID3v2.3 ISO 8859-1)? Is there anything in the Comments field? If so, delete it. Is there excessively large album/cover art embedded in the tag?
Edit: One more thought . . . you didn’t say how many songs in total you have on the player and card. While the [semi]official database limit is 8000, most people run into problems at or around 5000 tracks. After you hit this ceiling, songs woun’t show up in the database but will still be displayed and able to play from the Folder view.
It sounds pretty clearly like you are up against the database limit since you can see the tracks in Folders.
You can install Rockbox to get rid of the database limit, but Rockbox is pretty geek-oriented, so look at the manual first.
You could also make some more space in the Sansa database by getting rid of embedded art (and comments too).
If you have embedded art in your tags you can dump it with mp3tag.
http://www.mp3tag.de/en/download.html
Download the mp3tagv(xxx)setup.exe file, not other junk on the page.
When installing, allow it to add itself to context menus.
Open it, go to Tools/Options/Tags/Mpeg and under Write set default to ID3v2.3 ISO-8859-1. Save that so it’s the default.
Right-click on an album folder (the version in the Clip) and open it with Mp3tag.
CTRL-A to highlight all files.
If you see Comments, click on that field and switch it to <blank> and Save.
If album art shows up on the lower left, it’s embedded. Go to View/Extended Tags.
Click on the red X to dump the embedded art. That can carve out some extra space in the database.
I understand the issue and solutions, but the idea that I would need to delete standard embedded album art to cater to the Clip just rankles. What, and have 2 music collection copies?
When I check the player it shows that there are 4973 songs. I used WMP to check the tags and I could not find anything wrong. Is this something I’m going to just have to live with? Really wish Sansa would start making decent player again. There are not many choices out there any more for MP3 players.
@jamessveta wrote:
When I check the player it shows that there are 4973 songs.
As I said, most people run into issues at or around 5000 songs. I concur with Black-Rectangle; you’ve hit the ceiling.
@jamessveta wrote:
Is this something I’m going to just have to live with?
Yes.
@jamessveta wrote:
I used WMP to check the tags and I could not find anything wrong.
Not that it probably matters in this case, but WMP isn’t the best at tag-editing. That’s why I advised getting MP3Tag.
The default for WMP is to rip to protected WMA. Are the songs you ripped in mp3 format? If they are WMA, they may be protected, in which case they need to be transferred to the player in MTP mode, and WMP(or other media player that transfers licenses) must be used to transfer them. If you songs are in WMA, I suggest that you rerip them as mp3 files. I suggest using a bitrate of at least 256kbps.
All Sansas have this same database limitation AFAIK. It’s not new. In fact, it’s probably a remnant of the days before 32GB microSD cards.
To lift it, use Rockbox or clear out the tags.
Two collections?
You could use mp3tag in the files on the Clip or card to get rid of embedded art. In fact, you could run mp3tag (View Extended Tags, click the red X) on a bunch of albums at once. I’m not sure what the limit is, or if indeed there is one for mp3tag.
Meanwhile you could still have all of that wonderful, hugely redundant embedded art in your main storage collection.
Presumably your only copies aren’t the ones on the Clip/card.
Why use embedded album art? I have the album art stored in a folder.jpg file within the folder for the album. I don’t use embedded album art. Embedded album art will greatly reduce the number of songs the player database can handle.
It seems that embedded art often is the norm.
Perhaps it is the norm because so many people buy single songs.
But if you have albums with the same art embedded in 10 songs, it’s a matter of seconds to have mp3tag save one as folder.jpg and then get rid of embedded art.
I have seen giant embedded .png files that are half the size of the song. Get rid of those and your database will refresh a lot faster. There’s no reason to have any art at all in the files on the Clip +.
I don’t disagree at all. But the issue remains: SanDisk players using a different cover art option from others in the industry (and/or vice-versa), leaving consumers in a hassled position. No, I’m not going to keep–and maintain, with each new album–2 separate copies of my 60+ GB music collection, each storing cover art in a different fashion . . . .
Sansa will deal with the “normal” embedded art–it will just clutter up your database and slow your refresh.
I haven’t used a doPi player lately but I have used a Fiio player and it also is happy with folder.jpg or cover.jpg and no embedded art for songs within the same album folder. I suspect other players will also do that–possibly industry-wide. Mp3tag wouldn’t have that function just for the Sansa.
No one is asking you to maintain two collections. Presumably you have your 80GB and copy some of it onto the card/memory of the Sansa.
So leave all the embedded junk you want in your main collection. And when something goes to the Clip, run mp3tag on the copy and strip out the art that it can’t display anyway. My main collection includes some lyric sheets, credits, hi-res photos, etc. I copy the folder to the Sansa and then take those out of the folder that’s on the Sansa. And when I use mp3tag to fix tags on anything I’m sending to the Sansa, I also check for and remove embedded art.
My Clip collection would be the same as, or a signicant part of, my whole collection. And maintaining one set with embedded art and one without just doesn’t seem feasible/convenient to me (but, I guess, do-able–just use MP3Tag to strip album after album, during an evening of television).
It just seems to be where the industry has gone, perhaps, as was said above, due to the prevelance of single tracks nowadays. I don’t like the extra overhead either, but it is what it is (and ai try to limit the orhead by using reasonable size album art–but it still will add up).
Another alternative being: live with the extra overhard and cover all bases by maintaining a collection with both embedded art and a cover.jpg file in each folder.
My Clip collection would be the same as, or a significant part of, my whole collection. And maintaining one set with embedded art and one without just doesn’t seem feasible/convenient to me (but, I guess, do-able–just use MP3Tag to strip album after album, during an evening of television).
It just seems to be where the industry has gone, perhaps, as was said above, due to the prevelance of single tracks nowadays. I don’t like the extra overhead either, but it is what it is (and I try to limit the overhead by using reasonable-size embedded album art–but it still will add up).
Another alternative being: live with the extra overhard and cover all bases by maintaining a collection with both embedded art and a cover.jpg file in each folder.
I don’t understand. Why not just strip what you send to the Clip after it’s on the Clip? The main collection stays untouched, and whatever is on the Clip is optimized. If you take something off the Clip, just delete it, and strip it the next time you send it over from the main collection
I just looked it up and apparently doPi players need individually embedded art or artwork from an iTunes Store account. Tyrannical enough? But even Mac prisoners have a workaround.
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/851876
Also, when iTunes is used for ripping, it stupidly reads the Artist tag to make separate folders so Artist featuring Guest 1, Artist featuring Guest 2, etc. are all separate folders–fabulous for hip-hop albums–so you need the embedded art.
But unless you’re also using your collection in Apple’s walled garden, you’re wasting a lot of space on the embedded stuff. I’ll shut up now–it’s up to you how you want to run your collection.
Um, the time and effort in having to maintain a collection 2 different ways? ;) Stripping the album art off of 400+ albums (no idea how long that would take) and having to remember to keep album art 2 separate ways for each additional album purchased? Potentially, having to keep an extra/separate back-up of the collection on the Clip, should there be an issue with the microSD card in the player and/or the Clip’s internal memory and one not wanting to have to spend the time to re-strip the album art yet again and create the cover.jpg files yet again?
Just saying–standards can be a good thing. 
