It’s rather annoying to see all these posts about related problems. I had hoped things would be a little more straight forward when I bought mine. If I were buying a unit now, I would buy one with enough memory on the main unit for all my music. This would prevent all the frustration I think with playlists not recognizing the external memory, multiples of songs, etc.
In a way, playlists not recognizing memory on the external card is GOOD. For example, if I have my classical music on a seperate memory card (as I don’t listen to it that often) plugged in, and I decide to play a rock playlist … it won’t get hung up when it gets to a song that it can’t find (on the other external card), the songs will be on the main memory and it will play fine. I guess that’s OK, but not as desireable as having a unit with enough primary memory.
At this point, I am just putting playlists only (and just a few albums I listen to a LOT and have in a number of playlists) on the primary memory, and all albums, etc. on the external. Yeah, I still get duplicates, etc., it’s not ideal, but I think it’s the path of least frustration.
Chris
Im not to sure about what to uninstall to stop winamp from crashing when i try to sync. I can create playlist without clicking on sync on winamp… but previous playlist will take on the new one as i mentioned ealier. Still having problems… Reading up on the firmware updates and found something there about playlist. Also anyone know if the new SMC is anygood, the 4.256 or is the 4.236 better?
Thanks for your help tape, if not i woulda returned the e280v2 already. Its a shame too, I really would rather have some other media player instead of the ever so popular ipod and chose the sansa… why does it have to be such a hassle.
I acutally found the answer to creating playlists. The answer lies here. It should be the second post by iraisok. Even though his steps are a little confusing (really just a little on step c)I manged to create my playlists with no problems. I’ll list his steps here:
a. Run in MTP mode.
b. Create folder or drag a folder from PC to Sansa.
c. Right-mouse - there you see CREATE PLAYLIST as top option.
d. When done, for good organization and I think no other reason, move it the PLAYLIST folder.
This is copied from his post so dont give me credit. What you actually have to do is, If you already have your music files on your e200, plug it into your computer on MTP, open it as a window and go into your music folder. Then right-click the folder with music in it that you want to create a playlist for. eg. folder Fort Minor has an album i want to make a playlist for. I rightclick the folder and there should be a ‘create playlist’ option. Click that and you should have a playlist appear, just name it.
For multiple folder playlist just highlight more than 1 folder and do the same as above, rightclick and ‘create playlist’.
i tried leaving the playlist in the music folder and it seemed to work, not sure if any problems will arise though. I placed those created playlist into the playlist folder and the playlist have no problems now eg: no duplicates, nonew plylistoverridingold playlist etc.
Well so far this is going well for me. i feel a little more relived and happy I choose the sansa over ipod. Big Thanks to worm for the continuos help and iraisok for the resolved problem. now moving on haha those **bleep** videos and media converters!
I use the drag and drop method to put music on my player after messing around with sync-ing and finding it more trouble than it’s worth.
But… really would like to create some playlists.
Is it possible to create playlists in WMP, find them on your computer and drag and drop the files onto the sansa?
What you’d want to do is navigate to the folders/files on your player, and then you can drag & drop them into WMP, name the playlist and then save it to your player. Doing it the way you suggest will result in duplicate files on your Sansa, if I understand you correctly.
If you don’t want to deal with WMP at all for this, you can use Sanse Playlister if you have a v1 unit and Winamp if you have a v2. Both work very well and both are free. And neither one has the ‘control issues’ or tempermental behavior of WMP.
Tapeworm, Sanse Playlister works great! This is the answer. Thanks for posting this. Spent hours on…
Question though - If I manually modify a .PLA playlist using NotePad and copy it back to my e250, the player does not see it anymore. Is there a special format that the .PLA file has to be saved in? i.e. Unicode or ANSI or? Or is there something else that needs to be done? I have tried multiple variations without success and I just can’t let it go without knowing the answer! Thanks for any help. Tom
Tapeworm, Sanse Playlister works great! This is the answer. Thanks for posting this. Spent hours on…
Question though - If I manually modify a .PLA playlist using NotePad and copy it back to my e250, the player does not see it anymore. Is there a special format that the .PLA file has to be saved in? i.e. Unicode or ANSI or? Or is there something else that needs to be done? I have tried multiple variations without success and I just can’t let it go without knowing the answer! Thanks for any help. Tom
Sanse Playlister is indeed a SWEET piece of free software! It does what it needs to do, without bulk or complication. Definitely the way to go in ‘playlisting’ a v1 model. I only wish he/they would write a companion program for the v2’s. One curiosity is that while the v1’s will take a .pla playlist of any size, the v2’s for some reason are limited to 250 entries in that format. The .m3u format playlist that the v2’s will also read is un-limited, but one cannot combine songs from both memory sources (internal & uSD card) as can be done with .pla format. While the v2 models sport a number of improvements over their predecessor, I feel this situation goes in the minus (-) column.
There is a conversion program out there that will take the playlist created in the Playlister, and make it compatible with the v2 devices, but in my experience it still has some bugs, and besides it’s an extra step that shouldn’t be necessary.
As far as modifying or editing a .pla file in Notepad or other text-editor; I can’t say why it doesn’t work. The SP is so simple that I’ve never found a real need to try it. Just open SP again and make your changes there.
It seems you are goin’ the long way 'round the barn to get the job done; or maybe I don’t fully understand your reasoning in attempting this.
I am currently dealing with this issue. I have a good understanding of what I need to do, but I first need to find out if my E280 is a Version 1, 2, or Rhapsody machine. When I tried to access the link from this listing to figure out how to do that, I discovered that the link is now dead. Here’s what the name of that link was:
“How can I tell if my e200 is a Version 1, 2, or Rhapsody?”
If someone could repost this information, I’d be very grateful.
I am currently dealing with this issue. I have a good understanding of what I need to do, but I first need to find out if my E280 is a Version 1, 2, or Rhapsody machine. When I tried to access the link from this listing to figure out how to do that, I discovered that the link is now dead. Here’s what the name of that link was:
How can I tell if my e200 is a Version 1, 2, or Rhapsody?
If someone could repost this information, I’d be very grateful.
I should perhaps clarify exactly what it is I am trying to do. I just want to be able to access songs by Artist and/or Album. I assume that means creating a playlist, but perhaps I’m using the wrong terminology. On an older machine I had, you indexed the machine, and playlists were something you set up separately. If there’s a way to just index the machine so that I can access every song by Artist and/or Album, that’s what I would like to do.
But, before I can do that, it sounds like I may need to figure out if I have a Version 1 or Version 2 machine. So I’m still stuck on that for the moment and would be grateful for any help in figuring that out.
