Come on people, what is this? My only significant gripe with the new Sansa clip + is that it breaks certain functionality that worked fine in the previous hardware. For some reason I can’t fathom, this device was designed so that if a file is marked as a podcast it will NOT show up in a playlist. That makes no sense at all. It’s great that it will show up as a podcast and I can select the podcast option and see it there, but I don’t generally do that. I add all of my files in a certain sequence that I want to hear (and rarely deviate from that), but now every time I sync up my device I forget that I must change every “podcast” to be something else so that it will show up in the playlist. Then, when I go to play my file and it’s not there, I have to plug it back into the computer, go into Windows Media Player, select all and change one of the podcast tags to change them all. Yes, I have the latest firmware update.
PLEASE change this for the next firmware. If I add a file to a playlist, it should appear in the playlist.
If you tag a file with the genre podcast or put it in the podcast folder, the player excludes it from the song database. If a file is excluded from the song database, then it can’t be part of a playlist. It is that simple.
I don’t see a need for having podcasts in a playlist. One can give a group of podcasts the same album tag, then use the track number tag to specify which order they will play in.
The firmware was designed this way intentionally. The majority of ‘playlists’ are comprised of music. If you want to include your podcasts, you’ll have to change the ID3 tag to something the Clip+ won’t recognize as a podcast. In other words, you have to trick it into seeing the podcast as just another music file. Change the genre and place the file in the Music folder, not the Podcasts folder.
“The firmware was designed this way intentionally. The majority of ‘playlists’ are comprised of music. If you want to include your podcasts, you’ll have to change the ID3 tag to something the Clip+ won’t recognize as a podcast. In other words, you have to trick it into seeing the podcast as just another music file. Change the genre and place the file in the Music folder, not the Podcasts folder.”
The problem with this is when you then shuffle all your music, podcasts will randomly start playing. Podcasts will also be listed in the song list.
Why can’t people just put together albums of podcasts and give them track numbers to play in order? That seems easier than making playlists, and keeps the podcasts out of the song database.
Yeah! It’s designed to be illogical and confusing! That’s exactly what I need, another manual fix for what used to be simple and require no extra work. Incidentally, for those who told me to do things like change the genre, how about you read what I posted. Obviously I know how to make it work, it’s just that it’s a big pain in the ass.
The need for having podcasts in a playlist is that this is how I put my podcasts together. About a third of my podcasts are labeled podcast when I download them. Those are the ones I have a problem with. I download them with iTunes and then select the files and add them to Windows Media Player’s play list (because Apple doesn’t want anyone to use anything but an iPod with iTunes or I’d just use iTunes). I then drag them over to a play list so that I can make them play in the order that I want. Simple. Oops. Except now. Furthermore, WMP 12 is a piece of ■■■■ and doesn’t let me immediately even change the Podcast label. I have to wait around for a while or something before the option is no longer greyed out. Maybe it’s adding the file to the library in the background or something. All this ■■■■ happens that prevents me from just adding a playlist (because I want to use a playlist). And what if I wanted to mix songs and podcasts? Oh no! That is forbidden by the geniuses up in software land!
Look, I understand the idea that separating them is a feature so that I can play podcasts by choosing podcast instead of playlist from the Clip plus menu, but it doesn’t actually make sense to allow me to add files to a play list, but ignore them when I play that play list. If I didn’t want them to play from the playlist, I wouldn’t add them would I? But no. I understand now that it was a screwy poorly thought through attempt to patch someone else’s annoyance. Patch patch patch. We need media players to catch up to the realities that have come about the last 3,4,5 years instead of just patch/breaking features. What’s it going to take? It wouldn’t be quite as bad if not ALL of the software involved was messed up in one way or another. (WMP12, iTunes, Sansa clip plus)
I am quite pleased at the functionality I have gotten from this device however. Thanks for inventing that and making it work “pretty well”. Just stop driving me crazy!!
The tag-based software and playlists and etc. are a real annoyance for those of us that don’t mind the (very little bit of) extra work of managing our files by hand like God intended.
I understand that they’re trying to provide something more user-friendly (aka ■■■■■-proof or Itunes-like). But it prevents doing many really basic things, and it can’t be turned off.
I just want a system that knows files and folders. I’ll do the rest of the work. But what I get is a folder view that is derived from tags. Or something like that. It’s buggy.
Tags are great, as they allow for extra info. and database manipulation. But they also require extra care and feeding over tried-and-true folder and file names. I think this is why so many of us want at least the back-up of folder and file navigation–always such a shame when manufacturers do not povide it (and it’s just amazing that the Clip+ does–if only the original Clip did as well!), seemingly in the name of making the player more “convenient” for users.
Tags are great, as they allow for extra info. and database manipulation. But they also require extra care and feeding over tried-and-true folder and file names. I think this is why so many of us want at least the back-up of folder and file navigation–always such a shame when manufacturers do not provide it (and it’s just amazing that the Clip+ does–if only the original Clip did as well!), seemingly in the name of making the player more “convenient” for users.
