Sansa® Fuze™

[Peregrine]

That's what it looked like. You said "read the contents of an inserted card".

My bad.

[PromisedPlanet]

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Peregrine wrote:

That's what it looked like. You said "read the contents of an inserted card".

My bad.

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Oops, you're right, I did say that.  MY bad. 

[neutron_bob]

Just what is possible?  SanDisk has actually implemented something cool on the humblest Sansa, the slotMusic player.  This wee beastie keeps track of the last song played, even if the µSD card is swapped, meaning that the information is held on the card.

This is exactly how I would personally do it.  On shutdown, simply store the status as a temporary (upgraded each cycle) "note" file.  That database refresh time can easily be minimized.  All it takes is a little more code.

Viva la Sansa!

Bob 

[PromisedPlanet]

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neutron_bob wrote:

This is exactly how I would personally do it.  On shutdown, simply store the status as a temporary (upgraded each cycle) "note" file.  That database refresh time can easily be minimized.  All it takes is a little more code.

Viva la Sansa!

Bob 

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Bob;

What's possible is the ability for a player to be aware of what media is being copied to / deleted from it, and immediately refresh its internal database with just that delta, without having to re-read the entire contents of its internal memory and expansion card.

Not sure I understand the suggestion regarding shutdown.  This is an issue regarding the firmware being aware as to whether or not the contents of the expansion card have been modified once a sync operation has been completed.

The database itself appears to be stored on flash, as it is not rebuilt upon startup.

Message Edited by PromisedPlanet on 01-26-2010 04:14 PM

[saxmaster765]

I'm just a little confused.  There's this Phillips mp3 player that doesn't refresh when I put music on it.  I unplugged it and it just started up.  No refresh.

Am I missing something? 

[PromisedPlanet]

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saxmaster765 wrote:

I'm just a little confused.  There's this Phillips mp3 player that doesn't refresh when I put music on it.  I unplugged it and it just started up.  No refresh.

Am I missing something? 

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Depends on what you're confused about ...

[neutron_bob]

Having the Sansa append the database file without having to go through the whole "refresh" is a key method in shortening the process.  Perhaps this can be added in a future firmware build.

As we are loading our Sansas with larger µSDHC cards, it makes sense for SanDisk to address this issue.  It will improve the overall experience with the device, and it will encourage sales of larger capacity cards too.

Bob   

[7o9]

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PromisedPlanet wrote:

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What's possible is the ability for a player to be aware of what media is being copied to / deleted from it, and immediately refresh its internal database with just that delta, without having to re-read the entire contents of its internal memory and expansion card.

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How would that be done? In neither MSC or MTP mode the Fuze is 'active' and it doesn't 'know' anything about the data that is being copied to it or deleted from it. It's basically a dumb storage device. That's why the Fuze is scanning all its storage each time for all the files that are there, and removes removed files from the database while adding new files to it. 

What would make more sense to me is that the Fuze boots straight to its menu, allowing you to use it normally, but updates the database in the background. Of you course you can't expect newly added files to immediately show up, and you need a way to deal with selecting files from the database that have been removed already. As long as you would try to play files that had been on the device before, it would still work without the refresh and it can do that refresh in the background where nobody cares too much how long it takes.

(Btw, this updating in the background is how it is done in Rockbox. I have no idea about other firmwares on other players, as I don't own any other that need a 'database refresh').

Message Edited by 7o9 on 01-26-2010 10:51 PM

[PromisedPlanet]

7o9;

"How would that be done?"

I guess it would be done the way the Sansa Connect does it, right?

Message Edited by PromisedPlanet on 01-27-2010 09:14 AM

[neutron_bob]

Upon transfer, the Fuze does manipulate the freshly transferred files a bit.  If you transfer a video, there's a wee thm file with a screen capture.  If you transfer an audio file with "podcast" in the genre field, the Sansa "steals" this file over to the podcast folder.

I've wondered if making a large transfer of music files "en masse" overwhelms the process a wee bit, as several users have reported.

I'd love to see the code changed a bit to streamline the database refresh, in regards to "append" versus "rebuild completely" upon music transfer.  With a µSD card, a simple ID file can be stored on the card, allowing the Sansa to recognize a "familiar" card.  There are quite a few possibilities available, depending upon the time-to-coffee ratio in development.

Bob