Sorry if my first post seems antagonistic, but I just applied the most recent firmware update only to learn that we didn’t really get “folder navigation” after all; folders aren’t navigated in real-time but have to be pre-read into the time-wasting tag database, which completely defeats the purpose. When oh when will we get the basic FAT-reading functionality common to all of the earliest MP3-capable portable CD players of 10 years ago?
I don’t know what your problem actually is. Are you expecting to see a Windows Explorer-like screen with a tree?
When I go to Folders it lists the two drives (Internal Memory/External MicroSD Card), then a click brings the folders within them, then another click brings the subfolders if they are there or the files within the folder. The looks like real folder navigation to me.
What exactly would you like to happen when you go to Folders?
As implemented, Folder View allows you to navigate via filename and/or subfolders, as in the case of albums.
The industry has essentially evolved beyond simple file navigation, supporting the ID3 tag structure that was (and is) part of the MP3 / WMA standard. If your files are from a reputable source, either ripped from personal CDs, or downloaded from a content vendor, all files will have ID3 tag information.
Folder view is quite handy for files with incorrect ID3 tags, to verify that the files are indeed on the device, and to access them.
Download and install a decent ID3 tag editor like MP3Tag, use Winamp, Media Monkey, or Windows Media Player, all of which have ID3 tag editing facilities.
It makes cataloguing your music so much better.
Bob :smileyvery-happy:
@black_rectangle wrote:
I don’t know what your problem actually is. Are you expecting to see a Windows Explorer-like screen with a tree?
When I go to Folders it lists the two drives (Internal Memory/External MicroSD Card), then a click brings the folders within them, then another click brings the subfolders if they are there or the files within the folder. The looks like real folder navigation to me.
What exactly would you like to happen when you go to Folders?
I suspect the OP doesn’t want to deal with the refresh time when content is updated. However, the refresh got significantly faster with this new firmware, so it is a moot point for me. I like the folder nav just the way it is.
Yes, and when I do file navigation in my laptop…it boots up instantly, doesn’t it?
I’m having big problems with “folder navigation”.
Not all of the folders I’ve added are displaying on the Fuze, and some are displaying incorrectly.
I’m using a 16gb micro sdhc card, and added a 12.8gb folder called “various”.
It contains many various artists single discs and multiple disc box sets for a total of 5,768 files in 286 folders.
I know of the 8,000 file limit but is there also a folder limit?
The Fuze doesn’t display the first dozen or so folders. It starts showing folders beginning with the letter “D”.
Another quirk I noticed are that it sometimes displays folders that are named in all lowercase (Windows Explorer) as all uppercase on the Fuze.
Also, I have 2 box sets in the various folder with similar names…The Doo Wop Box and The Doo Wop Box II, each a 4 disc box set.
The Fuze displays this as only one folder (The Doo Wop Box II) but all 8 sub folders are under this 1 main folder.
I’ve tried formatting the card and player several times but it still behaves the same way.
Is there a way to somehow prevent it from “refreshing your media” from the card?
I don’t need it to be integrated with the music on the players built-in memory, I just want to browse and play folders.
I thought maybe there was a problem with the sdhc card, but everything displays properly in Windows Explorer.
How soon before we get another firmware update?
I bought this player after the update was released that gave “folder navigation” because that’s what I was looking for.
Doesn’t seem to work very well though.
Personally I don’t understand the need for Folder Nav anyway.
Unless you are not using mp3 files.
With MP3 Tag, properaly adding album art, artist, album name, track ordering and genre is so easy, why not go that way?
I can navigate by Artist, by Album, and by Genre…what more do you need?!
Even if you make compilations of misc stuff in a folder, you can still use MP3Tag to tag an appropriate Album Name to all the tunes in a folder in several seconds.
Sorry, it’s just a personal preference.
I’ve tried navigating by tags, but I would rather browse folders.
If SanDisk is going to offer that feature then it should work properly, but as of today it doesn’t.
@blackdog_sansa wrote:
Personally I don’t understand the need for Folder Nav anyway.
Unless you are not using mp3 files.
With MP3 Tag, properaly adding album art, artist, album name, track ordering and genre is so easy, why not go that way?
I can navigate by Artist, by Album, and by Genre…what more do you need?!
Even if you make compilations of misc stuff in a folder, you can still use MP3Tag to tag an appropriate Album Name to all the tunes in a folder in several seconds.
1.) Because my tracks are organized in a methodical folder and file naming structure I developed when I started making MP3s of my LP and CD collections back in 1996, long before version 2 of the ID3 tag specification made it possible to store verbose track information, and I have no wish to go back and redo all my work. 2.) Because having to rebuild a cumbersome database every time you add so little as *one new track* is the epitome of time-wasting inefficiency. But thanks for letting me know what I “should” do. Always nice to be patronized by someone who thinks he knows better.
@rstugal wrote:
@blackdog_sansa wrote:
Personally I don’t understand the need for Folder Nav anyway.
Unless you are not using mp3 files.
With MP3 Tag, properaly adding album art, artist, album name, track ordering and genre is so easy, why not go that way?
I can navigate by Artist, by Album, and by Genre…what more do you need?!
Even if you make compilations of misc stuff in a folder, you can still use MP3Tag to tag an appropriate Album Name to all the tunes in a folder in several seconds.
1.) Because my tracks are organized in a methodical folder and file naming structure I developed when I started making MP3s of my LP and CD collections back in 1996, long before version 2 of the ID3 tag specification made it possible to store verbose track information, and I have no wish to go back and redo all my work. 2.) Because having to rebuild a cumbersome database every time you add so little as *one new track* is the epitome of time-wasting inefficiency. But thanks for letting me know what I “should” do. Always nice to be patronized by someone who thinks he knows better.
No one Patronized you… What was suggested is what you should do if you want the fuze to “Get it right” right now. I don’t think you should have to do that but its the facts of the matter that tagging is the way the fuze orders things whether in a folder or not. However for your first post to discount the folder nav that people begged for for years is making a big assumption, which is that you know what folder navigation is on a DAP, and that you know why we have to do folder nav this way. Sandisk did us a HUGE favor by adding this, many of the other leaders in the industry wont add it, and its not the most perfect way but its better than not having it at all. Consider yourself lucky (Like the rest of us) to have any kind of folder nav at all. I wouldn’t be surprised to see some upgrades and some changes to folder nav in the next firmware. But if you want it to work right until a time when/if we get the nav you suggest then do some tagging its not that hard.
@blackdog_sansa wrote:
I can navigate by Artist, by Album, and by Genre…what more do you need?!
Even if you make compilations of misc stuff in a folder, you can still use MP3Tag to tag an appropriate Album Name to all the tunes in a folder in several seconds.
If someone posts that a feature isn’t working, why must the response be that the feature isn’t needed?
@donp wrote:
@blackdog_sansa wrote:
I can navigate by Artist, by Album, and by Genre…what more do you need?!
Even if you make compilations of misc stuff in a folder, you can still use MP3Tag to tag an appropriate Album Name to all the tunes in a folder in several seconds.
If someone posts that a feature isn’t working, why must the response be that the feature isn’t needed?
@donp wrote:
@blackdog_sansa wrote:
I can navigate by Artist, by Album, and by Genre…what more do you need?!
Even if you make compilations of misc stuff in a folder, you can still use MP3Tag to tag an appropriate Album Name to all the tunes in a folder in several seconds.
If someone posts that a feature isn’t working, why must the response be that the feature isn’t needed?
Because Not everyone can see the need for certain features… I couldn’t understand the need for folders until we got them. The other thing is that the feature isn’t NEEDED but it was WANTED and is NICE TO HAVE. If the player didnt work with out folder nav then its NEEDED. Regardless of the language you use about that (I was just playing Devils Advocate), its a wonderful feature to have on the player and I think we can all agree that upgrades to this are needed and I hope they do come.
@donp wrote:
@blackdog_sansa wrote:
I can navigate by Artist, by Album, and by Genre…what more do you need?!
Even if you make compilations of misc stuff in a folder, you can still use MP3Tag to tag an appropriate Album Name to all the tunes in a folder in several seconds.
If someone posts that a feature isn’t working, why must the response be that the feature isn’t needed?
I don’t think that this was the intention behind this suggestion, or many others here that end up in verbal wars. All BD was doing is offering an alternative or work-around to the OP and stating his opinion on what works for him in the seemingly never-ending, hotly contested ‘Folders vs.Tags’ debate.
We can still offer up our opinions even if they differ from someone else’s here without someone taking offense and starting a flame war, can’t we? What works and/or is acceptable is different to different people. And since we are stuck with the folder navigation feature as SanDisk wrote it into the firmweare the way it is now until such time as they change it, that’s just the way it is.
It’s not that the ‘response was that the feature wasn’t needed’, but rather in the spirit of offering help saying, ‘I got nothin’ else, but maybe you could do it this way. Works for me.’
@donp wrote:
@blackdog_sansa wrote:
I can navigate by Artist, by Album, and by Genre…what more do you need?!
Even if you make compilations of misc stuff in a folder, you can still use MP3Tag to tag an appropriate Album Name to all the tunes in a folder in several seconds.
If someone posts that a feature isn’t working, why must the response be that the feature isn’t needed?
I don’t think that this was the intention behind this suggestion, or many others here that end up in verbal wars. All BD was doing is offering an alternative or work-around to the OP and stating his opinion on what works for him in the seemingly never-ending, hotly contested ‘Folders vs.Tags’ debate.
We can still offer up our opinions even if they differ from someone else’s here without someone taking offense and starting a flame war, can’t we? What works and/or is acceptable is different to different people. And since we are stuck with the folder navigation feature as SanDisk wrote it into the firmware the way it is now until such time as they change it, that’s just the way it is. There’s nothing we can do to change it. We have to wait & see if the dev. team will modify the way it works in a future f/w update.
It’s not that the ‘response was that the feature wasn’t needed’, but rather in the spirit of offering help saying, ‘I got nothin’ else, but maybe you could do it this way. Works for me.’
I bought my Fuze only after I heard about the firmware update to include folder navigation.
I sure hope they intend to improve it, because it was a selling point for me.
Otherwise I feel like I wasted the money for the Fuze and the 16gb card I bought for it.
The folder navigation on the Fuze works nowhere near as well as on my 3 year old Samsung YP-Z5.
Then again, the Z5 has nowhere near the storage space the Fuze has.
@happyschnapper wrote:
I bought my Fuze only after I heard about the firmware update to include folder navigation.
I sure hope they intend to improve it, because it was a selling point for me.
Otherwise I feel like I wasted the money for the Fuze and the 16gb card I bought for it.
The folder navigation on the Fuze works nowhere near as well as on my 3 year old Samsung YP-Z5.
Then again, the Z5 has nowhere near the storage space the Fuze has.
That’s essentially my situation, too. The folder navigation on my eight-year-old RioVolt SP250 blows that of the Fuze away. As you note, it has nowhere near the storage space of the Fuze, topping out at about 450 tracks per CD-R, but storage space that can’t be utilized because of the track limit – a byproduct of the database schema – is wasted. And when you swap in a new disk, you don’t have to wait up to 10 minutes for a “refresh” but can start navigating folders immediately.
Note to rstugal:
You said you have your files all named consistently. Mp3tag has a function that converts filenames to tags. So you could retag your whole collection pretty quickly if you want.
BlackRectangle, what makes you assume I am unfamiliar with popular MP3 tagging programs such as MP3Tag, or that my music files aren’t tagged?
My files are tagged. But I prefer navigating by folder – and the shorter load times that come with navigating by folder, and the removal of the limitation on the number of tracks imposed by the “database” method.
Earlier I took some flak from ConversionBox for lamenting the feeling of being patronized by those who feel the need to change our preferences. This does nothing to mitigate that feeling.
@rstugal wrote:
My files are tagged. But I prefer navigating by folder – and the shorter load times that come with navigating by folder, and the removal of the limitation on the number of tracks imposed by the “database” method.
How many tracks are you trying to fit on your Fuze?
rstugal, I can only bow to your incredible sophistication vis-a-vis software and hardware. If I ever wore a hat, it would certainly be off to you.
However, these are public forums that are not just read by the original posters. Someone else may be searching for a solution to a problem similar to yours. They may not know about mp3tag. And for those who are not as omniscient as you, but who have very consistent filenames, mp3tag is a great way to fill in missing tags.
Of course you already knew that. And perhaps everything else, too.
