This took a ridiculous amount of trial and error and looking for clues in this forum, but I finally managed to sync playlists onto my Clip Zip’s sdhc card using Media Monkey. This is what worked for me – I make no promises that it will work for anyone else.
First, make sure you are able to sync to your card at all. I had to try three different cards before I found one that worked with my device. Fortunately, my Sansa Fuze and my phone were less picky, so I had different cards to try. The one that worked was a Sandisk 16GB Micro SDHC, Class 2. If you can’t even sync music, the problem may be your card.
Downgrade your firmware to version clipzip01.01.12. I could not get it to work with the current version.
Connect your device. The device should show up in the tree in the left-hand column of the page. The device and card will be listed as two separate devices. Click on the listing for the card.
Media Monkey should take you to a Summary page. In at the top of the center cection of the screen, click the “Auto-Sync list” and select the playlists you want to sync.
Under options, click “Playlists”.
Check box next to “Sync playlists.”
Under “Generate device Playlists for”, click “Library Playlists.”
Under Destination directory, enter "Music\Playlists". (No quotation marks.)
Check box next to “Force relative paths.” Leave other boxes (e.g., “use unicode …”, “use extended M3U”, “Use Linux folder separator”) unchecked.
Click “Apply” to save your changes.
Right-click on the device and select “Auto-sync” to start syncing.
Unfortunately, playlists that were more than 1,000 songs were cut off at the 1000th song, but otherwise, it worked great!
Thanks very much for spending the time and energy researching this and posting these excellent step-by-step instructions. I’m sure they will help a lot of people.
Now if the SanDisk developement team can figure out what’s wrong with all the subsequent firmware updates playlist-wise, there will be even more
Thanks for the info on how to get playlists to work with Mediamonkey and a Clip Zip with music and playlists on the Micro SDHC card. Unfortunately, the version of firmware I used (clipzip01.01.12) produces static noise between some track transitions. I updated the firmware to the latest (01.18), and the static noise problem appears to be gone. But also gone are my playlists when viewed in the playlists menu on the CZ.
Does anyone have a solution to both the static noise problem and the playlists on a Micro SDHC card problem?
I’ve read that the static noise might be caused by some tag data, and that I can use mp3tag to strip off all fields except a crucial three. I was hoping I didn’t need to do that, as I would like to keep my tags the way they are.
It’s a known issue that the original firmware (01.01.12) produced a static burst occasionally between tracks. This was fixed with the 1st firmware update.
It’s also a known issue that every update since the original (01.01.12) the playlisting (.m3u) capability has been broken.
The development team is working on it and the next update should fix it. There is no time table as to when this will be released however.
Thanks for this info. Somehow I missed it while reading reviews of the CZ.
This is a deal breaker for me so I need to send this back to Amazon while I can. I also need to warn others that playlists don’t work on the CZ using the SDHC card. I like the unit, but if it doesn’t work the way I want it to then I don’t want it. And with no firm date of a fix for this problem I need to return it asap.
Are there any easy workarounds? Do playlists work on the internal memory? If so, maybe I can get by with less music and books.
Rockbox for the Zip player hasn’t quite reached the “stable” status yet, but it is workable for those willing to put up with those few bugs that haven’t been ironed out.
They’ll get there though; it’s just a matter of time.
I had trouble adding playlist I created in wmp. Played around and found that when making play list save list as all files and they show up in the play;ist on the sd card.
Rockbox = Freezbox
On Clipzip Rockbox to cause horror
Database Building impossible. Freez anytime.
Building Playlist from SD Card not work.
File Play Freeze anytime.
USB Connection Freez anytime.
You’re the only one with this many problems. I’ve been using Rockbox on my Zips for months, from the very earliest initial builds, and mine have worked very well. I’m suspecting a potential PEBKAC issue is your culprit.
Show the Thread,. You See Original Firmware Work. Here is no defect oder SD-Card inkompatible issue, The Original Firmware work. You can not ignore that.
Now can a Problem with the MP3 Files. Ok
Foobar / lame mp3 v2 MP3. Make from Flac. Original Firmware Perfekt. No language issue. No Play issue.
On Rockbox freez MP3, freez Flac from SD-Card
Or Rockbox is not SD-Card compatible. With Original Firmware the Card Work. I can not buy tonns of SD-Cards to see witch is work with Rockbox.!!!
And disses are not Helpfull. Is not resolve the Problem.
Since you have a dozen different problems that no one else has heard of you probably have something special about your player. Regarding help, its difficult to give advice since your situation seems to be unique. You may have to stick with the sandisk firmware, at least for now.
I have Clip+ with the 16 gbyte SDHC. I use Windows Explorer to drag my folders and subfolders of .mp3 files from the PC into the music folder. Then, holding the Ctrl key down, I can select some of them, right-click, and choose " Create Playlist" from the popup menu. That choice appears when Settings > System settings > USB mode is set to auto-detect , which is the initial setting of a new device. It creates a .pla file in the folder I have open with the name “New Playlist”, which has to be renamed and dragged into the Playlists folder. That process works well for me, because I am not trying to make a playlist of individual tracks selected from multiple folders.
I also experimented with Winamp , which is better for those who want to pick individual tracks from a variety of folders. The USB mode has to be set to MSC. At one point Winamp asked if I wanted to manage the Clip+ “as a Winamp device”. Assuming I had no choice, I said yes. But I discovered later that means the " Create Playlist" option gets replaced by the Enqueue in Winamp option. To get back to the mode I prefer, I did several things, which might not all be necessary. (1) Set the USB mode back to auto-detect. (2) Uninstall Winamp from the PC. (3) Format the Clip+, which only affects the internal memory, not the SDHC. It took some combination of those 3 things to prevent the Clip+ from stubbornly reverting to its “Winamp device” identity without giving me a choice.
I also experimented with Media Monkey, but was too chicken to mess with my firmware version. I created playlists of type .m3u in the MUSIC folder of the external memory, but when viewed in the Clip+, they were always empty, no matter where I moved them to.
