Knowing too much and too little. Need help with music organization and photo extensions.

SanDisk MP3 players Sansa® Fuze™
1

Hello and thanks for reading this.

Windows XP, sp3. I’ve never used Windows Media Player and would rather not have to if there’s another way.

I’ve just added an 8GB Fuze to my MP3 stable. My others are a tiny Philips GoGear (2GB) and another 8GB, the iAudio U5. Both of these players appear as drives off my root and happily accepts a (to me) logical directory structure. When I go to play back, I select whatever directory and have it play through all the items therein, repeating ad infinitum. Or until I stop it. :wink: With the Philips, I have to scroll through my directories to find the one I want; with the iAudio, I have a menu. After that, they both work the same.

Enter my new Fuze. It doesn’t exactly behave like a drive although I can check space used and remaining in Explorer. But I did upload a lot of my directories and they’re there. At first I couldn’t get anything but all or nothing when I went to play back. Finally, I ended up using something called Folders/MTP which at least did let me play back folder by folder. Which is okay but I’m thinking those other options ought to help me organize it all better. Somehow. Also, when I add a card, does the entire file system combine or will I access it separately?

Okay. Now I’m also a professional photographer and have many different file types in use. I realize it’s not likely the Fuze will accept RAW files but does it take anything but BMP? I can’t find that information anywhere. Maybe going at it wrong but I’d surely like to know. That’s not critical to me - only curious. My primary intention is to use it for music. I have severe tinnitus and play music through headphones many hours each day (and night).

Incidentally, I do have the manual printed out but I have to say I’m somewhat less than impressed with its scope. Is there no additional reference that expands on the topics skimmed over in the manual?

I don’t mean to carp. This seems to be a very nice little gadget and I’m looking forward to getting to know it better. Any help toward that end will be greatly appreciated.

Thanks so much for “listening”.

G.

2

The Fuze supports .JPG images as long as they are 1024x768 or smaller.

As for using tags, do a Google search on mp3 tags. There are many websites that explain tag use. also search these forums for information on tags.

3

Under Music you should see an option called Folders. That’s your old directory system.

However, mp3s have built-in electronic labels called ID3 tags: Artist, Album, Song, Genre. Where you see those on the Fuze, it is indexing ID3 tags as a database. So you can find your music without remembering the folder name. 

Unfortunately, the Fuze can’t read the many available varieties of ID3 tag.  And ID3 tags are not standardized. iTunes does one kind, Linux another, Windows Media Player another.

The Fuze likes ID3v2.3 ISO-8859-1. You can give it tags it will find just super yummy with free software called mp3tag. 

Install it, have it add itself to Context Menus (an option during install). Open it and go to Tools/Options/Tags/Mpeg–Write and choose ID3v2.3 ISO-8859-1. Make sure you save that, so it becomes the default. 

Then you can right-click on any album folder, choose mp3tag to open it, and see a list of files. I like to use one other mp3tag goodie, the Auto-Numbering Wizard. A lot of mp3 rippers put in track numbers as 1/12, 2/12, etc. Under Tools/Auto-Numbering Wizard, make sure the tags are in play order (top to bottom), highlight them all, and use the Auto-Numbering Wizard with Leading Zeroes. Run that, and you will have files tagged, 01, 02, etc.–just how the Fuze likes 'em–and since you changed the Write default, they will also now be ID3v2.3 ISO-8859-1. Your other units shouldn’t have any problems with those tags, either.  Takes about 2 seconds per album.