MTP Bla bla bla is all Greek to me! My 4GB Sansa Fuze isn't recognizing all my music on my Mac!

MP3 players Sansa Fuze
1

So, I am reading all this stuff about MTP, MSP, MBA Bla bla blah, but my problem is this: I was given the sansa as a gift and it was formatted and filled with music very lovingly by my sister who has a PC. I am in France and currently have a Mac (A friend’s MacBook Pro is the only one it will load to, a whole OTHER problem!). Perhaps needless to say, not only cannot I not access the music that my sister downloaded but I can neither FIND or CHANGE the USB settings as described in many postings.  All it brings up is the sansa fuze folder that I can drop music into. AND when I REMOVE music it doesn’t empty any space!

What can I do without losing all the music that is on there?  Is there some boot mode that can help me find the USB setting?  Or am I going to have to try to find a computer with Windows to try to access this?  Seriously, it’s a bit of a problem!

I also can’t create playlists either. Basically I can only load up music!

HELP!!! (And please, can someone dumb down the help for me? Because changing the settings is all good but I need to start from the VERY beginning with this thing. Remember I got it already formatted!)

THANKS SO MUCH!

:smiley: 

2

It seems the music has been put in MTP. I don’t know if there are any tools out there for accessing MTP from a Mac. I think there’s a fuse filesystem for MTP, so it could be done with macfuse… but this won’t sound familiar to you, I suspect.

If you can’t find the usb settings, read the manual. Then, put it in MTP. Then, try accessing your fuze from your mac… which may not be an easy task.

3

The USB Mode change is on the Fuze, not via computer.

Here’s your step by step. Even in France someone must have Windows.  They’ll need Windows XP or Vista with Windows Media Player 10 or 11 (not 9). 

Turn on the Fuze ( disconnected from computer ). Rotate the wheel clockwise from Music to get to Settings. Click the center wheel and go to System Settings. Click on that to see and click on USB Mode. Make it MTP. Now have a Windows owner–with WMP 10 or 11 on their computer–look into the Fuze.

Right click on one of the files in Windows and look at Properties/Summary/Advanced. If it is a .wma file (not .mp3), then under “Origin” see if it’s Protected. If it is, leave it alone and see below. *

Not protected? Great. Copy the music onto the Windows computer (or some kind of storage). 

Disconnect the Fuze and go back to Settings/System Settings/USB Mode. Make it MSC. Dump all the music from the Windows computer back onto it in MSC mode.

Then leave it in MSC and connect it to your Mac. MSC works like any other USB drive. Party on.

What’s going on here? Stupid petty rivalry between Windows and Apple. 

You can’t see the music because it was transferred in MTP mode, which is a Windows protocol not supported by Apple. 

MTP mode and MSC mode are not both visible at the same time from the computer–though the Fuze itself doesn’t care how the music was transferred.

In its default Auto Detect mode, the Fuze will go to MTP if the computer it’s connected to has Windows Media Player 10 or 11–like your nice sister’s computer. 

Obviously, Auto Detect doesn’t find Windows Media Player on your Apple, so it goes to MSC mode, the more universal basic USB connection. 

The idea was to make the Fuze ■■■■■-proof and work automatically with WMP on Windows computers, but go to basic MSC on other computers. SanDisk didn’t count on the unit getting switched between computers with different operating systems.

If it were up to me the default setting would be MSC rather than Auto. But it’s not. 

* Just hope that Sis didn’t copy the music in “copy protected” .wma (Windows Media Audio) format, also the default, rather than good old plays-everywhere .mp3. Protected  .wma is going to be trouble.  The only way that will play is if you leave it on the Fuze where it was, in MTP. One reason MTP exists is to transfer ultra secret mysterious invisible digital-rights information for protected files, to keep you from copying them around.  (iTunes does the same with protected .aac (Apple proprietary) files, by the way.) Just delete the ones you don’t want while connected to the Windows computer, and leave anything you want to keep alone. You can’t move it around. Yes, it’s protected–from you. 

If the music is  in .wma format, protected or not,  the Fuze will play it but your Mac can’t. You can find a program to convert unprotected .wma into  .mp3–Google for .wma to .mp3 converters online. Don’t pay for a program–there are free ones, but make sure you check for viruses (even on a Mac) before installing. 

Message Edited by Black-Rectangle on 09-18-2009 05:58 PM