Ok, I tried looking for a solution to my issue but I haven’t seen anything that was resolved or the same issue I am having. I am running a Windows 7 desktop and have a purple 4 gb Clip Zip. My primary issue is that music I have downloaded from eMusic and transfered via Windows Media Player. The songs will sometimes play on the Clip Zip. I say sometimes because at random entire albums or a song or two in an album will not play. These are your average 4-5 mb 192 mbps MP3 files, with no DRM. Has anyone identified a solution? I have reformatted, reinstalled firmware, and done everything short of reformatting the songs into something else.
Also, from time to time if I disconnect the clip zip that computer freezes up and I have to do a hard reboot. Has anyone else encountered this issue? Do I need to tell Windows to eject it?
There are a few separate issues there. First, the “crash” or reboot issue with the computer: normally, you should be able to unplug the Sansa as long as its display doesn’t show “transferring”, of you are using MTP mode.
In MSC mode, you should click on the “safely remove hardware” icon on the taskbar, then select the Sansa, just as you would do with any flash drive. In MTP mode, transfers are handled as a block, and there is no need to command a disconnect.
Second, the eMusic media should work fine on your device. The Clip Zip navigates using the embedded ID3 tags in the music tracks. If the desired track is “missing”, try using the folders mode under Music. You can navigate to the song based upon its Windows OS logical filename (which is usually the track title.)
If you have a track that will not play from this mode, the file has something that the player does not “like”, possibly something in the header area of the file (metadata and album art). To check if there may be something amiss in this area, an ID3 tag editor (Windows Media Player and Windows 7 do have editing capability) like MP3Tag might be the hot ticket. Look at the file that does not play and compare it against the ones that DO play.
Hope this helps!
Bob :smileyvery-happy:
I’ll keep in mind the MSC/MTP modes, I never changed them but I’ll just take the precaution of ejecting it from now on. I out of curiosity tried loading the problem songs onto the Clip Zip through the MSC mode, taking care to not copy over any header files or album art (I’m running the folder in “show all” mode). They now work. Maybe it was just an issue with Windows Media Player in copying the files over. Wouldn’t be the first time I suppose.
Since I have your ear, how does the Clip Zip handle the files in MSC mode? Can I just dump all the songs on or can I put them in folders (/artist/album/song.mp3)?
Thank you! Hopefully this can help someone else…
No worries, glad you have it running. Sometimes, Windows Media Player can have issues with transfers. Thankfully, it doesn’t happen too often. Using MSC mode, you have somplete control of the transfer, and the device is seen as a mass storage device by the computer. As long as your files have embedded album art, the Zip will use these images and all will be fine.
MTP mode is a “virtual” layer over MSC, where the player is addressed as a media device. As such, many things are automated in the background. Album art is sent to a special “albums” folder, and other information, such as the Clip Zip’s secure clock and device ID can be accessed for DRM needs (protected media) if needed. Oh, playlisting with .pla format lists is also possible- these lists are not path-specific as in MSC, meaning that folders and even whether the file is on the microSD card doesn’t matter.
Windows Media Player is happy with either mode, incidentally.
With the Clip Zip, the USB controller only handles one mode at a time for access. This is probably the one quirk that causes the most confusion. If you transfer a file in one mode, then switch to the other, the files you transferred in the alternate mode will not be visible from the computer, even though the Clip Zip itself can see both. For this reason, we recommend that folks choose one mode and stick with it, so that you can access everything from the computer.
Oh, one last thought- yes, you can simply drag and drop your music files to the music folder, and the player will locate them based upon the ID3 tags (album / artist / genre / song). For podcasts or audiobooks, you can drag the files to those folders, giving you additional functions for those files (elapsed time, playback speed).
Bob :smileyvery-happy:
