Playlists?

I can’t find anything definite on this so hopefully someone here can help? Can I load playlists on the Clip? I know there is a “Go List” but I’d like to have multiple playlists for different things on the clip. I tried to load a playlist from WMP11 but it just loaded the songs and not even in the same order as the playlist I loaded. Am I doing something wrong or is the Clip not capable this? Maybe there is a different term for what I’m looking for than simply playlist. If that’s the case, if someone could just point me in the right direction that would be great.

Message Edited by O_o on 04-21-2008 02:50 AM

The Clip supports M3U playlists. Many media management programs and MP3 tagging utilities have the ability to create playlists.

I’m surprised you found nothing helpful on this because there have been numerous threads about playlists here on the forum. Try searching again

rit click sansa in WMP11 library>> “set up sync”>>sync automatically>> personal playlists from drop down meun>> select the playlists to sync.

I think it supports just about any sync software. My wife plugged hers into her laptop and MusicMatch, her music organizer of choice, popped up ready to sync to the Clip without any type of setup. Just worked right off the bat.  So yes, it works with playlists.  I have 4 different playlists on mine right now.

that is exactly what’s happening to me

Check out this Sansa How to Video. 

Adding a playlist to your Sansa MP3 player in MTP mode using Windows Media Player 11 (Windows XP | Vista)

Go Sansa!

Simplified way to create multiple playlists using out of box settings.  No special transfer mode, etc. 

Here is how I created multiple playlists on the Sansa Clip.

1.  Plug in Clip to PC

2.  Navigate to Internal Memory directory via Windows Explorer or My Computer, etc. 

3.  Right click on Playlist and select create playlist.  If it gives you a message about no media, then go to the Albums or Audiobook directory and select an Album and do the same thing.   Rename as appropriate.   i.e. Country.pla 

 Or , if you have a playlist already created, then you can copy it and rename it to whatever you want. 

Either way, you will probably have to remove the songs you don’t want from that newly created list.  I use Rhapsody for that part. 

4.  Move these .pla files to the Internal Memory directory.   They will not be in the playlist directory

5.  Start music manager (Rhapsody in my case)  Select the Clip and it will find all the music and playlists there.

6.  In Rhapsody, cleanup the newly created playlists if needed. 

7.  You can load the playlist by select songs already on the Clip and right click -> add to  device playlist, or you can go to your PC library and drop and drag music to the playlist.  This will also add it to the Clip.

8.  Disconnect, let Clip Refresh Database

9.  Enjoy your new playlists. 

BradBain

p.s. I have three playlists  FastSongs, SlowSongs, Country(created to verify the list above) and they all work great.  So far, I love the clip.

Brad,

A couple of questions for you,

2.  Navigate to Internal Memory directory via Windows Explorer or My Computer, etc. 

Which internal memory?

3.  Right click on Playlist and select create playlist.  If it gives you a message about no media, then go to the Albums or Audiobook directory and select an Album and do the same thing.   Rename as appropriate.   i.e. Country.pla 

No playlist visible when I open the clip memory?

see responses below:

2.  Navigate to Internal Memory directory via Windows Explorer or My Computer, etc. 

Which internal memory? 

>>- (internal memory on the Clip device)

3.  Right click on Playlist and select create playlist.  If it gives you a message about no media, then go to the Albums or Audiobook directory and select an Album and do the same thing.   Rename as appropriate.   i.e. Country.pla 

No playlist visible when I open the clip memory?           

>> - (On the clip device(via explorer) you will have to create a playlist in a directory with music in it. then move it to the internal memory directory on the clip device.  Once it is there, you should be able to see it when the Clip refreshes and then via Rhapsody, you should be able to move music to that playlist, or clean out the songs from the playlist you just created. 

How did you load playlists using WMP11?  This is what I did (before I switched to MediaMonkey) …

  • Right-click on “Sansa Clip” displayed on left, select “Set Up Sync”

  • Check “Sync this device automatically”

  • add or remove playlists so that the “Playlists to sync” listbox on the right contains the playlists you want on your Clip

  • click on “Finish” button

  • WMP11 should start synchronizing songs to your Clip immediately.  Don’t interrupt the process as (I believe) the actual playlist is synced last, after the songs.

I don’t know about the process for WMP11 since I used Windows Explorer and Rhapsody to create and populate my Clip. 

Also, I didn’t change any of the transfer settings from what they were out of the box.   Anybody else have ideas for WMP11?   - Brad

How did you load playlists using WMP11?  This is what I did (before I switched to MediaMonkey) …

BradBain;

Sorry, I was responding to the original poster (O_o) and should have quoted his post.

What kind of M3U does it have to be (Text formatting) I’m using the program Auto M3U and Winamp to create playlists on my 4G clip

Auto M3U Supports 

 M3U (Latin1)

M3U (ACP)

M3U (ASCII)

M3U8

and what exectly are the *.pla files for and how do I use them?

Thanks

I’m slightly frustrated.  I’ve watched the WMP instructional video carefully and still get the same results when I think I’ve successfully synched a playlist to my Clip. 

My player is in MSC mode. After going through the steps, I disconnect my player, the display goes through the “Refreshing Database” phase, then I go in the player’s menu to “Playlists”, scroll to the newly transferred playlist, open it, and there’s no songs - only two solid yellow blocks on the left and right side of the display.  I’ve done the “Save Playlist As” .m3u deal, same results.  I’m also getting the same results when doing a playlist transfer using Winamp, which did not use to happen (in the past, I did successfully transfer playlists using Winamp). 

Here’s my question:  is there some setting on my computer I need to change that would cause the above to occur?  Also, when I rip tracks from CD’s, does it make a difference whether they’re ripped as MP3’s or Windows Media Files?  It’s got to be something simple, I just can’t figure it out!! 

 Thanks,   Rick

Message Edited by RickH on 01-17-2009 09:27 AM

Message Edited by RickH on 01-17-2009 09:45 AM

Until I have more time to mess with WMP11 and the Clip,  I’ll just use Winamp to put playlists on my Clip as it’s the only way I’ve been able to get playlists on my Clip.  Here’s what I’m doing, in case it helps someone who may be having the same problems (ie., lack of success with transferring playlists using WMP11).

  1. Create playlist in Winamp by opening your Clip song files via My Computer and dragging files from the player into your Winamp player.

  2. On the right lower corner of the Winamp player, click on “Manage Playlist”.   The “Save Playlist” pop-up appear - you will see the option, “Save Playlist”.  Click that and you’ll see the file type is already .M3U.  Name your playlist, go up top to “Save In”, choose “Sansa Clip”, click “Save”. 

  3. Disconnect the player, check under Playlists in the player’s menu and you’ll see your playlist.

If someone can explain to me a simpler way that works, please do so.  I’d love to be able to get a playlist transferred using WMP11 as it would be much more convenient. 

Message Edited by RickH on 01-17-2009 10:46 PM

I’m having the same issues as RickH.  Using automode on the clip, and using WMP11, I create and save playlists and sync them to the clip. Then disconnect it from the computer, it refreshes it’s database, but there are no playlists.  What it does is create folders that can be seen through the computer, but not on the Clip. 

This is way to frustrating and difficult.  It really should be easier.  There has got to be a way.

I’m wondering, since I’ve been using auto USB mode if I should just format the clip, change it to the proper mode, and re-do it.  Any help?

Hi, I’m having the same trouble- tried to use WMP as it is shown on the clip but no new list has appeared on my clip mp3…

I don’t use WMP and my clip is always in MSC mode. My guess is that informative video on syncing in an earlier thread using WMP assumes the player is in MTP mode. I have used winamp. In MSC mode, I select the clip itself as the music source, drag titles from the windows explorer window from folderon the clip into the winamp playlist. I then save that playlist to the music folder, i.e. one level above the windows explorer folder from which the music is selected.  I don’t use subfolders but am confident the same method would apply. Winamp makes the appropriate pathname reference.

Here’s the difficulties I think people are having. The clip is fussy about pathnames in the .m3u file. It doesn’t accept the full set of DOS pathname formats but doing as I said in winamp will give you a working playlist. You can look at this in a text editor and you can edit a playlist to make it work if you know what is needed.

Other software will work differently. You can have a playlist using song titles only as pathname and playlist is in same folder as titles (but this doesn’t permit mixing titles from different albums (folders) in the same playlist). Or you can store the playlist in the music directory and use a pathname of form foldername\songtitle which is what winamp does.

You cannot use fancy DOS variants like ‘…’ for one directory up and as I recall I didn’t have much luck with a full pathname starting from the root with ''. As far as I can tell, the clip uses the windows foldername/filename to read a playlist. That thread showing the method used in WMP looks good and hopefully someone can make sense of what I have written using winamp. Perhaps if others could list their experience with other software, particularly Rhapsody and MediaMonkey which would cover most situations. It’s important for posters on this an other topics to specify which usb mode they are using.

Hi Dave, thanks for the advice which had almost worked (downloaded winamp) now I have a new playlist name but for some reason it’s empty on the mp3…

any guess as to why?

and how can I see the playlists on the computer in case I decide to delete one of them?

Can you confirm that the songs that were in the playlist are actually on the Clip?  Do the entries in the playlist have the right paths to the songs?