track order issues

I recently bought a fuze.

it seems to be a nice little player thus far…

but Im having one, huge and critical issue with it…

no matter what I do, it never lists or plays songs in the correct order

even when…

-the filenames are numbered

-the track titles in the tag are numbered

-the track #  /  total tracks #  in the tag are set

it still dispalys and plays the tracks in a mysterious order

that seems to make no sense.

I am using Linux exclusively and got the fuze because of it’s claimed compatability.

I have also been unable to find anything that will write a usable playlist.

any input is appriciated.

thanks!

Are you sure the tracks are all numbered correctly? I had that issue with some files, and some track numbers were missing. You can download a free program called MP3Tag, which makes it easy to edit tags or groups of tags.

One other thing. When I had mixed mp3 and WMA files in the same album, the player puts all the mp3 files first in numerical order, then lists all the wma files in numerical order, and does not displayed them mixed together, as just looking at the track numbers would have them do. I don’t know any way around this. I am having this problem with podcasts that I want together in a certain order, and not music files. Navigation by tags only is by far the most frustrating thing about the Fuze. I wish a new firmware would be released for it that also allows navigation by folders.

http://www.mp3tag.de/en/download.html

Message Edited by JK98 on 09-14-2008 03:35 PM

I am very sure that all the tracks are numbered in all three ways,

.

this is absolutely fundamental.

 my podcasts and audio book chapters are the same way

I really hope there’s something  odd going on here because otherwise this  is an epic goof.

does someone have a link or info on the specific unique requirements of a zune  .m3u  playlist file?

it would also seem like a desirable basic function to be able to create playlists WITH it. 

Try renumbering the tags for track number manually for an album. Next delete it on the player, and transfer it again to the player. Are they mp3 or wma files, or mixed mp3 and wma files?

The Fuze uses the Track tag for sorting, so if that tag is populated and it’s not sorting right, then it probably means the Fuze is having trouble with your tag format.

The Fuze works fine with Linux, but it’s a little picky about the tag format.  Make sure you are using ID3v2 with ISO 8859-1 encoding.  There has been some reports of success with UTF16, but it seems pretty rough right now.  So it’s best to avoid any of the Unicode encodings for now.  I imagine this will improve in future FW.

EasyTag is a really good tagging/renaming tool for Linux.  You can use it to easily switch between tag formats.  If your tags are UTF8 or 16, you can use EasyTag to automatically switch them to ISO without having to reenter anything.

EasyTag will also create m3u playlists that should work with the Fuze.  Make sure you select the options to use relative paths and DOS directory separators.

Message Edited by Skinjob on 09-17-2008 09:47 AM

You don’t have a dual boot system(linux or Windows) or convenient access to a Windows pc? Most who use linux have a dual boot system or a separate Windows pc.

Thanks for the specs skinjob!

Im using easytag, so I’ll make sure they’re all right. 

“You don’t have a dual boot system(linux or Windows) or convenient access to a Windows pc? Most who use linux have a dual boot system or a separate Windows pc.”

it is in everyones best interest that I keep far, far away from microsoft products. 

Linux is generally estimated as about 1-2% of the market. So while your independent spirit is certainly to be applauded, it’s kind of wishful thinking to expect that Sansa is going to port everything for Linux. 

Unicode tags are probably causing the problem. So either find something to convert them to ISO under Linux,  or swallow your pride and take 15 minutes with mp3tag on a Windows machine to fix things up. 

Actually, I think mp3tag will run under WINE, so there’s no real need for Windows.  I’ve run mp3tag under WINE, but only did minimal testing.  It seemed to work fine.

I’m a total newbie at this, so I don’t know if this is any help, but I have noticed that if the track tags are written something like

1/5

2/5

3/5

4/5

5/5

etc., the fuze gets confused.  I’ve been just making the tag a single number, and it seems to work fine that way.

Sorry if my post is just noise.

Tom