Sansa® Clip Zip™

[Linton]

All my downloads from Itunes have been corrupted once they get on to the Zip:

1) All tracks include the characters ":00z" in the Genre.

2) Most tracks play OK, but some dont play at all.  For example track 1 from Bernstein's Mahler Symphony No. 3.

Neither fault is evident when the track is played from the PC.

Anyone else seen this? Any solution?  I am running V1.01.18 firmware.

[Tapeworm]

Edit your tags. Also your Mac will insert Finder files that will confuse the player and will not play. These have the same file name except they will have a ._ at the beginning and are 0kb. Use Hidden Cleaner to remove them.

[Linton]

I am running windows 7, not Mac.

I do edit the tags so the Zip files the music consistently in a convenient location under composer/piece/track. There is nothing strange in them.

Some files play OK on the ZIP, some dont play at all.  There is no obvious difference in the tag values between the two sets of files.  I have copied a file which doesnt work on the Zip back to the PC - it is fine, the same as when copied to the Zip.

More info - the files which do not play do not show the Cover, the files which do play show the cover correctly, but again there is no obvious difference between the data associated with each file.  To repeat my initial info, all files copied from Itunes have a corrupted Genre.

[Linton]

New info - all the tracks which fail to play would appear to have an umlaut'ed (a with .. ) character in the file name and track name.  I have editted these to remove the umlaut but this hasnt solved the problem.

[Miikerman]

As mentioned above, when you transfer a file from a Mac to a non-Apple device (like the Clip), the Mac can corrupt the file name and/or create an additional "ghost" file on the device that will choke the device. This is the Mac's doing. To avoid this, you can use Internet freeware Hidden Cleaner to transfer files from a Mac--it handles the issues. Also, do make sure that the Clip is set to USB MSC mode--needed for use with a Mac. http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/27416/hidden-cleaner

[Linton]

That may well be true BUT I am not using a MAC - its a standard PC running windows 7.

The clip is permanently set to MSC.

Also - I have fixed the Genre corruption - it comes from Itunes setting the Date Tag to yyyy:mm:dd:hh:mm:ss or something like that. Reducing the tag to just yyyy enables the Genre to be shown correctly.  Unfortunately it didnt fix the non-playing tracks.

[Marvin_Martian]

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Linton wrote:

That may well be true BUT I am not using a MAC - its a standard PC running windows 7.

The clip is permanently set to MSC.

Also - I have fixed the Genre corruption - it comes from Itunes setting the Date Tag to yyyy:mm:dd:hh:mm:ss or something like that. Reducing the tag to just yyyy enables the Genre to be shown correctly.  Unfortunately it didnt fix the non-playing tracks.

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Unfortunately, the AAC support is still a work in progress.

[drlucky]

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Linton wrote:

  For example track 1 from Bernstein's Mahler Symphony No. 3.

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This track uses ALAC (Apple Lossless Audio Codec), not AAC. SanDisk support said ALAC is not a supported codec and there are no plans to support the ALAC codec.

For other files that are not working take a look at the codec. if they are ALAC it will need to be converted to either AAC or MP3 

[Linton]

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drlucky wrote:

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Linton wrote:

  For example track 1 from Bernstein's Mahler Symphony No. 3.

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This track uses ALAC (Apple Lossless Audio Codec), not AAC. SanDisk support said ALAC is not a supported codec and there are no plans to support the ALAC codec.

For other files that are not working take a look at the codec. if they are ALAC it will need to be converted to either AAC or MP3 

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Thanks for your interest in the problem.

Other tracks at that album play fine.  mp3tag claims that the track is MPEG-4 AAC.

[Linton]

I have downloaded 14 MP4-AAC tracks from Itunes.  The 3 or 4 tracks with an umlaut accented character in the title and file name fail to play on the zip.  All the others work fine.  This looks pretty conclusive to me.

Changing the character in both the file name and title does not fix the problem.  Perhaps there is data stored elsewhere than the tags readable by mp3tag?