suggestions from a newby to newbies...with using WMP (long winded)

Hi all

I had a few interesting experiences loading stuff on the ol’ FUZE and I can give you a few tidbits of info that might help.

First, check the forum there are tons of posts regarding album art.

Second, Make sure you are on the same page as others (which USB mode are you using) If you don’t know it is probably using the factory default to auto detect so if you are using Windows XP probably it is using MTP)

Thirdly, if you use Windows Media Palyer 11 (which I am. I was too excited about the new FUZE thing and ripped and added, ripped and added around 400 albums before I saw some problems emerge) clean up your library to be just the way you NEED it.

Now everyone will have different needs. I like what I do now…(after learning from some my mistakes) to drag the whole artist “stack” to the playlist window I don’t ever make playlists, I use the original album they act as playlists

But I suggest you play around with things before assuming you wont have problems. Dont do as I did and shove everything on it and wonder why I am having trouble with this or that. 

You need to know some things about how WMP organizes things and how the FUZE does also. (I still find some mysteries with the latter, haha!) This is especially importatn if you are going to use external microSDHC cards.

When you use WMP you will see an album artist label and a contributing artist label. The fuze uses the latter, so if you want to find stuff under the artist index on the fuze the name you want to look for is the name that should be under the contributing artist label that you see when you look at the album in WMP.

I would make sure that you have the settings to NOT rip automatically. So you have a chance to tweak the album before there are any settings/labels stored.  This can be trouble later. So fix all the labels then rip!

The database that WMP checks for album info/art can use all manner of variants for contributing artists. Some albums will have Frank Zappa, some will be Frank Zappa and the Mothers, then theres Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention, and of course, The Mothers of Invention…etc.  you get the idea.

So check the contributing artist label. Keeping in mind WMP sorts artist by the artist tag/label which can be different! Also WMP sorts ingoring the initial THE as in The Kronos Quartet…where as the Fuze will sort any contributing artist label that begins with “The” under th letter T.

Also the default tag system (ID3?) that the Fuze uses is limited to 30 chararcters for album title (all titles per?) but this is especially problematic for album titles for them to show up in the index well.  I had a Miles album ( Live at the Fillmore East (March 7, 1970): It’s About That Time ) which has two disks that would be listed but only a few tracks (keep in mind that some of the two tracks had the same names different two sets/preformances on the sam night) so I had to tweak the title because the Fuze only saw the first 30 characters of the album title.

I have had trouble ripping bit by bit and adding them to the fuze bit by bit. (I had my albums scattered and thus not added to my WMP library in any sort of order.  I assumed there wont be any trouble or tweaking I’ll need to do. Well as my internal drive filled up and I started on the external card any tweaking that had to be done on the external card…such as the Miles example didn’t take very well.  Just deleting the Fillmore album from the card and tweaking the

album details in thw WMP library then readding it…didn’t do the trick!  There is something in the indexing software that the Fuze uses that seems to be resident on the internal memory (I haven’t received a good answer from tech support and no one here has replied to my posting so I must be the only one this happens to!) that prevents recognizing a tweaked album once it is remove and re-added. Some how the original inof is stuck.  I’ve removed files many times but ended up reformating both internal memory and external to get things straight!

Anyway…if you stick with using WMP and MTP do the tweaking before ripping. Be sure you have it the way you want it if you want to avoid reformating again latter!

-Good luck and enjoy!

Message Edited by bobletteross on 07-23-2008 07:48 AM

Message Edited by bobletteross on 07-23-2008 07:50 AM

Message Edited by bobletteross on 07-23-2008 07:51 AM

Very good post,you’ve done a fine job and no your not alone in some of the strangeness that sometimes takes place with these little babies.I see though that you didn’t even get into the Sansa Media Converter.Thats a whole 'nother story.