Playlists on E280

I know its only been a day since i posted/replied, but im getting really fustrated with my e280v2. It seems to be more trouble than its worth… I had to download several media converters to convert video files. The first being Any Media Converter I believe, but the free one only allows 3 convertions and max 3mins per conversion. I dl Media Converter SA edition and that helped me convert my video files, but i had to convert one of my videos to mp4 just to get SMC to be able to convert it and put it in my e280v2. The quality on that comes out more poor than the 3min vids that AMC converted (need help with the quality of video conversion). Also the playlist thing is not working for me… I cannot drag and drop from the e280v2 to WMP it doesnt allow it. I was thinking that might have been the problem. If i can create a playlist from the e280v2, then the duplicaiton problem would not be there, but i cant make a playlist from my e280v2. Only allows me to syn my music from e280v2 to my computer. I still need help. Music files keep duplicating when I try to make a playlist and its beginning to really kill my hopes about this mp3 player

I too, have an e280v2 player and like you experienced WMP copying the complete song files over again instead of just making a playlist using the existing files.

So I gave up on WMP altogether. I now use Winamp (free version) to create .m3u playlists that work, instead of the hit-or-miss .pla playlists that WMP creates. I haven’t had one fail on me yet. The only thing (actually 2 things) you have to remember is to save the playlist file to the MUSIC folder on your player, and NOT put it in the PLAYLISTS folder as you must do with the .pla format. Secondly, you are limited to 250 songs in a .m3u format playlist.

Here are some step-by-step’s that should help you if you decide to give Winamp a try. :smiley:

Sorry, can’t help you on the video issue. Many others are in the same boat.

I too, have an e280v2 player and like you experienced WMP copying the complete song files over again instead of just making a playlist using the existing files.

So I gave up on WMP altogether. I now use Winamp (free version) to create .m3u playlists that work, instead of the hit-or-miss .pla playlists that WMP creates. I haven’t had one fail on me yet. The only thing you have to remember is to save the playlist file to the MUSIC folder on your player, and NOT put it in the PLAYLISTS folder as you must do with the .pla format. Also, there is NO song limt when using .m3u playlists. With .pla format, you’re limited to 250 songs.

Here are some step-by-step’s that should help you if you decide to give Winamp a try. :smiley:

Sorry, can’t help you on the video issue. Many others are in the same boat.

I’m having some trouble with your instructions. When I plug my e280v2 in on MSC mode, there is nothing in any of the folders.Are you using XP or vista? im on vista 32bit.

For the video problem… ehhh the only problem i ahve now is the quality on one of teh two videos i converted. 1 of them converted using only SMC and the quality on that one has no prblems. however the one i converted using MediaConverter then SMC has some quality issues… UAGH!!!

Anyone know if there will be a updated firmware for the e200’s and a better SMC coming out? Also Rockbox implications for the e200’s v2?

Thanks for the help Tape. Still wanna stab my sansa right now though haha.

@soggylobster wrote:

I’m having some trouble with your instructions. When I plug my e280v2 in on MSC mode, there is nothing in any of the folders.Are you using XP or vista? im on vista 32bit.

I’m using XP. Maybe your files are still ‘hidden’. They are by default, unless you’ve changed the setting. What mode did you put the music on in, MTP or MSC? Files put on it one mode cannot be seen or accessed in the other. So if you put them on in MTP, that would explain why they seem empty.

I’ve never tried to use Winamp in MTP mode, so can’t say if it will work the same. I’ve heard people say they use Winamp to ‘sync’ to their player, so it must work somehow. I prefer to control everything myself, rather than turning it over to a piece of software is all. You can try it. Otherwise you don’t have to drag & drop from Windows Explorer. It was just the easiest way to explain.

I have Winamp set to read my F:\Music & G:\Music drives (player and external memory card) as my ‘library’, not my C: or hard drive (My Music). Unlike Windows Media Player, it won’t try and scan everything it can find; only what you tell it to look at. You let it scan your player and/or card and then drag & drop from the list it creates to the playlist name in the other pane. All the other steps are the same. :wink:

See if this helps . . .

It seems to work a little differently. Using winamp all i need to do to create a playlist is create a new playlist and add songs. This creates a .PLA file in the playlist folder though. Now for the other problem im running into… When I create more than 1 playlist, all the playlist will not be the same. All previously created playlist will have the same songs in it as the last created playlist. For Example

Playlist:
A is first to be created
B 2nd
C last one

Playlist A and B will have the same songs in the playlist as C and will not contain any of the songs for the playlist it originally had. On winamp, it is the way its suppose to be. Playlist A has its songs, B has its, and C.
When i try to hit the sync button on winamp, winamp crashes…

Thanks for trying to help me Tape. This was getting somewhere and then it kicked me in the face…
Any help again?

As far as Winamp crashing . . . You are running Vista which probably has WMP 11 on it? I think I remember reading that there was a conflict between WMP 11 & Winamp that would cause this.

Ahhh, yes . . . here it is.

See why I prefer MSC mode? You couldn’t pay me enough to go through all the aggravation you & others have trying to get the simplest of things to work right in MTP mode! I just won’t do it. Life’s too short and I’d rather listen to my music rather than fiddling around with crappola protocols and programs trying to get it so I can listen to it the way I want to.

My new mantra:

MSC will set you free! :smileyvery-happy:

I decided to make the switch to MSC. The only problem i have now is that about half of my music is in an asian language and some of the characters are read as boxes on the player… and the artist the albums are not showing up correctly. The albums is seen as unkown and all the songs are under that instead of in seperate albums. As far as anything else goes tho, seems to be ok… uahhh…

It’s rather annoying to see all these posts about related problems. I had hoped things would be a little more straight forward when I bought mine. If I were buying a unit now, I would buy one with enough memory on the main unit for all my music. This would prevent all the frustration I think with playlists not recognizing the external memory, multiples of songs, etc.

In a way, playlists not recognizing memory on the external card is GOOD. For example, if I have my classical music on a seperate memory card (as I don’t listen to it that often) plugged in, and I decide to play a rock playlist … it won’t get hung up when it gets to a song that it can’t find (on the other external card), the songs will be on the main memory and it will play fine. I guess that’s OK, but not as desireable as having a unit with enough primary memory.

At this point, I am just putting playlists only (and just a few albums I listen to a LOT and have in a number of playlists) on the primary memory, and all albums, etc. on the external. Yeah, I still get duplicates, etc., it’s not ideal, but I think it’s the path of least frustration.
Chris

Im not to sure about what to uninstall to stop winamp from crashing when i try to sync. I can create playlist without clicking on sync on winamp… but previous playlist will take on the new one as i mentioned ealier. Still having problems… Reading up on the firmware updates and found something there about playlist. Also anyone know if the new SMC is anygood, the 4.256 or is the 4.236 better?

Thanks for your help tape, if not i woulda returned the e280v2 already. Its a shame too, I really would rather have some other media player instead of the ever so popular ipod and chose the sansa… why does it have to be such a hassle.

I acutally found the answer to creating playlists. The answer lies here. It should be the second post by iraisok. Even though his steps are a little confusing (really just a little on step c)I manged to create my playlists with no problems. I’ll list his steps here:

a. Run in MTP mode.

b. Create folder or drag a folder from PC to Sansa.

c. Right-mouse - there you see CREATE PLAYLIST as top option.

d. When done, for good organization and I think no other reason, move it the PLAYLIST folder.

This is copied from his post so dont give me credit. What you actually have to do is, If you already have your music files on your e200, plug it into your computer on MTP, open it as a window and go into your music folder. Then right-click the folder with music in it that you want to create  a playlist for. eg. folder Fort Minor has an album i want to make a playlist for. I rightclick the folder and there should be a ‘create playlist’ option. Click that and you should have a playlist appear, just name it.

For multiple folder playlist just highlight more than 1 folder and do the same as above, rightclick and ‘create playlist’.
i tried leaving the playlist in the music folder and it seemed to work, not sure if any problems will arise though. I placed those created playlist into the playlist folder and the playlist have no problems now eg: no duplicates, nonew plylistoverridingold playlist etc.

Well so far this is going well for me. i feel a little more relived and happy I choose the sansa over ipod. Big Thanks to worm for the continuos help and iraisok for the resolved problem. now moving on haha those **bleep** videos and media converters!

@tapeworm wrote:


@evurr wrote:

I use the drag and drop method to put music on my player after messing around with sync-ing and finding it more trouble than it’s worth.

 

But…  really would like to create some playlists.

 

Is it possible to create playlists in WMP, find them on your computer and drag and drop the files onto the sansa?


What you’d want to do is navigate to the folders/files on your player, and then you can drag & drop them into WMP, name the playlist and then save it to your player. Doing it the way you suggest will result in duplicate files on your Sansa, if I understand you correctly.

 

If you don’t want to deal with WMP at all for this, you can use Sanse Playlister if you have a v1 unit and Winamp if you have a v2. Both work very well and both are free. And neither one has the ‘control issues’ or tempermental behavior of WMP. :wink:

Tapeworm,  Sanse Playlister works great!  This is the answer.  Thanks for posting this.  Spent hours on…  

Question though - If I manually modify a .PLA playlist using NotePad and copy it back to my e250, the player does not see it anymore.  Is there a special format that the .PLA file has to be saved in? i.e. Unicode or ANSI or?  Or is there something else that needs to be done?  I have tried multiple variations without success and I just can’t let it go without knowing the answer!  Thanks for any help.  Tom

Skier176 wrote:

 

Tapeworm,  Sanse Playlister works great!  This is the answer.  Thanks for posting this.  Spent hours on…  

Question though - If I manually modify a .PLA playlist using NotePad and copy it back to my e250, the player does not see it anymore.  Is there a special format that the .PLA file has to be saved in? i.e. Unicode or ANSI or?  Or is there something else that needs to be done?  I have tried multiple variations without success and I just can’t let it go without knowing the answer!  Thanks for any help.  Tom

 

Sanse Playlister is indeed a SWEET piece of free software! It does what it needs to do, without bulk or complication. Definitely the way to go in ‘playlisting’ a v1 model. I only wish he/they would write a companion program for the v2’s. One curiosity is that while the v1’s will take a .pla playlist of any size, the v2’s for some reason are limited to 250 entries in that format. The .m3u format playlist that the v2’s will also read is un-limited, but one cannot combine songs from both memory sources (internal & uSD card) as can be done with .pla format. While the v2 models sport a number of improvements over their predecessor, I feel this situation goes in the minus (-) column.

There is a conversion program out there that will take the playlist created in the Playlister, and make it compatible with the v2 devices, but in my experience it still has some bugs, and besides it’s an extra step that shouldn’t be necessary.

As far as modifying or editing a .pla file in Notepad or other text-editor; I can’t say why it doesn’t work. The SP is so simple that I’ve never found a real need to try it. Just open SP again and make your changes there.

It seems you are goin’ the long way 'round the barn to get the job done; or maybe I don’t fully understand your reasoning in attempting this.

Re Sanse Playlister

I used this software and it’s great… the only problem is that I am now hoping to use a mac to mess around with my E280.

I don’t think this software runs on a mac… is there anything I can use on a mac?

Just want something really basic like the Sanse Playlister.

Cheers guys

I am currently dealing with this issue. I have a good understanding of what I need to do, but I first need to find out if my E280 is a Version 1, 2, or Rhapsody machine. When I tried to access the link from this listing to figure out how to do that, I discovered that the link is now dead. Here’s what the name of that link was:

  “How can I tell if my e200 is a Version 1, 2, or Rhapsody?”

If someone could repost this information, I’d be very grateful.

I am currently dealing with this issue. I have a good understanding of what I need to do, but I first need to find out if my E280 is a Version 1, 2, or Rhapsody machine. When I tried to access the link from this listing to figure out how to do that, I discovered that the link is now dead. Here’s what the name of that link was:

  How can I tell if my e200 is a Version 1, 2, or Rhapsody?

If someone could repost this information, I’d be very grateful.

I should perhaps clarify exactly what it is I am trying to do. I just want to be able to access songs by Artist and/or Album. I assume that means creating a playlist, but perhaps I’m using the wrong terminology. On an older machine I had, you indexed the machine, and playlists were something you set up separately. If there’s a way to just index the machine so that I can access every song by Artist and/or Album, that’s what I would like to do.

But, before I can do that, it sounds like I may need to figure out if I have a Version 1 or Version 2 machine. So I’m still stuck on that for the moment and would be grateful for any help in figuring that out.

Thanks.

E280 v1.02.18A

can’t create playlists

i create playlists in wm12.07 (the playlists show with a wpl extension) then synced to e280.

the playlists do not show up in the ‘Playlist’ section

**they do show up in the e280 ‘Playlist’ folder on the computer but not on the player itself

then i tried switching to MTP mode which did not work either.

do i need to upgrade the software?

i had no problem syncing so what am i missing?

also in the Music section 4 folders show up for one artist.

i am guessing this has to do with id tags because i only loaded one folder for the artist

thanks for any help

p.s. i just checked for updates and none are available

OK

finally got it working.

i was trying to use what was already loaded.

i removed everything and started from scratch.

playlists are showing.

How to tell if my e200 is Version 1, 2 or Rhapsody?

This link works.