Beginner's questions

Hi!

I just got my new Clip. Why battery chargerging takes so long? It showed 80% charge for quite a long time, until it got to 100%. When full, it even does not say battery charged or something, like all other gadgets.

When plugged in to the computer, I can’t navigate the menu system?

The auto radio station search seems to not find anything.

You need to have the headphones plugged in to autoscan for stations. The headphone cord is the FM antenna.When the battery is new it may take quite a while for the battery to charge completely. After a few charge cycles it won’t take so long. The charging icon on the player will go off when charging is complete. The player buttons don’t operate while the player is connected to the pc. If you want to use the player while charging, then get an AC USB wall charger.

Message Edited by JK98 on 08-08-2009 12:43 PM

I actually listen to a lot of stuff which are sorted in directories with a proper name, but in the directory only named like track01 and so on. I didn’t feel the need to tag them, since usually I listen to them onece, then delete.

Sansa seems to use tags only, so how shall I optimize my listening experience?

I tried to get to know foobar2000, maybe it is also good for easy tagging needs? But actually it is a little bit complicated. Do you know of a good guide to learn basic useful features of foobar2000? Or is it for the geeks only?

I use mp3 Tag for editing tags.

http://www.mp3tag.de/en/

It is free and easy to use. With one command it can set all the tags in a folder equal to the file names.

Don’t forget to use the save tag command after tag changes.

I’m not quite sure I know what you’re asking.  But you may find it handy to drop your files into the Clip’s Audiocasts or Podcasts folder, where the Clip will use the folder and file names if ID3 tags are not present.

Thank you for your replies.

I already figured out I better have a wall charger.

By changing my location I was also be able to scan for more FM stations. Is there a way to also name them?

The thing is with the Podcast and Audiobook folders is the following: I have some podcasts or audibooks in the following format:

folder\track01

folder\track02

and so on.

If I copy folder in the Audiobook or Podcast folder, track01, track02 and so on will be placed in the main Podcast folder. It is quite annoying. How shall I play these podcasts? I only want to listen to them once, so I may not want to tag them.

How compatible is the player with .wav files? If I record them with the player, it plays them. If I upload one to the voice memos folder, it does not recognize it. Strange. 

I posted same problem with files I uploaded to voice folder. It doesn’t seem to have much to do with them being .wav. A renamed file was also not recognized. This was NOT the case with my earlier M240. I suspect the clip is indexing the voice files as they are recorded and doesn’t recognize renamed or uploaded files.

I’ve not used the podcast, audible or audiobook folders.

I need some functionality between the Music folders and Audiobook/Playlist folders. Eg. I would like to resume Music too, if I forgot at which track I stopped listening an album, but the GoList feature would be useful for podcasts as well. I see some unnecessary artifical limitations within the system.

On the other hand, in which exact format can I manually upload playlist files to the Clip to understand them?

I tried two type of m3u files, the traditional relative

track01.mp3

track02.mp3

track03.mp3

And the

#EXTM3U

#EXTINF:

absolute path\track01.mp3

(Which format ■■■■■ big times, anyways, compared to the old one. Or it’s just me who don’t get it?)

So none of them worked on my Clip. Please help me, which one does? 

When the only option is to charge through the computer’s USB port, after awhile the screen of the Clip becomes dark, blank. What does it mean? Charge is still continuing or disrupted?

Thank you for your replies guys between the lines. However I still can’t consider the topic “solved”, as newer questions arise on the go. Cheers!

@market wrote:
When the only option is to charge through the computer’s USB port, after awhile the screen of the Clip becomes dark, blank. What does it mean? Charge is still continuing or disrupted?

The display shuts off after an hour, but the charging continues 'till it’s full.

As Tapeworm notes; that’s to preserve the screenlife.

No, there’s no way to re-name radio stations on the Clip.

And I guess I don’t understand the issue with placing untagged files in the Audiobooks and Podcasts folders.  In that case, the Clip will display the files by using the files’ folder and filenames (so that you don’t have to input ID3 tags for files you may only use once).  That’s what you want to happen–a convenience.  If you don’t like what’s being displayed, simply change the file and folder names, or fill in the ID3 tags for the files.

Thank you for your feedback on the screen. When it finishes charging, will it say anything like chage is complete? I didn’t get to that phase yet.

Can I see the file names when they don’t have tags in the podcast folder only? Actually I only get “Unknown” in the music folder.

When I put something in the podcast folder like

Podcast1\alpha

Podcast1\gamma

and also 

Podcast2\beta

Podcast2\theta

then I will see them in the main directory, not in Podcast1 and Podcast2 directories like

alpha

beta

gamma

theta

Is that normal? Is that you are refering to?

The screen remains blank/off; to check the status, just press the center button and check the battery icon to see if it is full and not flashing (meaning there is a full charge).

The use of folder/file names is unique to the Podcasts and Audiobooks folders, for untagged files; and to files with Podcast or Audiobook as the genre, stored wherever on the Clip.  Candidly, I don’t know where the listings show on the display on the Clip (I fill in my ID3 tags)–under Podcasts or Audiobooks?  Why not try it out (or just fill in the files’ ID3 tags) and check it out –

Thank yo for your reply Miikerman.

It seems I need to fill out the ID3 tags even on the files I want to listen to only once.

And the new question: with which software can I add ID3 tags to .wav files? Actually I want to listen to some voice recordings, and compressing those .wav’s to another format worsens the quality anyways, so it’s better to keep them a .wavs. But I need the ability to play them repeatedly, and in order to do so, I have to put them in the Music folder and hence tag them. What is the solution to my problem?

I needed to do exactly what you are doing to make a contact list. You can’t add tag info to .wav files (or at least, I don’t know a way). You also apparently cannot rename files in the record directory or convert to mp3 and keep them in the record directory.

The best I can come up with is to convert to mp3, tag with album name and filename and have them show up in the music directory. Actually, while it’s not quite as good for me as having it in the voice record folder, the way I’m doing it does work quite well. Using mp3tag makes the tagging straightforward. I convert using dbpoweramp but there’s probably a slew of utilities that will do that.

I also would think that you could convert the voice recordings to MP3 format where you wouldn’t be able to note any lessening of voice quality (even going to 320 kbps, if needed, although I would think a way lower setting would be more than sufficient for a voice recording), and you would save a great deal of space. 

32 kbps is fine for voice recordings. I have some 16 kbps voice recordings I downloaded that sound quite good, but not as good as the 32kbps ones from the same source. The sound quality for voice recordings doesn’t improve much using 64 kbps rather than 32 kbps. The most important factor for the quality of voice recordings is the quality of the original recording.

Always use mono for voice recordings if you have the option to do so. Using 32 kbps rather than 16 kbps also provides better compatability with other brands of mp3 players. Some other brands of mp3 players won’t play mp3 files below 32 kbps.

Converting the .wav voice recording even to the highest quality MP3 decreases the quality big time. But thanks for the idea, I may try to convert it to FLAC. The Clip supports the FLAC format by now, isn’t it? Though, on the official site I haven’t found any info on it.

My files taking more space on the player is not an issue for me. 

The latest firmwares support FLAC and ogg vorbis.

You may want to convert a voice recording to MP3 and then see if you really can detect any great lessening in quality.  I routinely read that especially with voice recordings, it’s not an issue.  A reason why podcasts often are at relatively low bitrates.  (But, then, all ears are different.)