Why SanDisk Doesn't Publish Rules for Playlists?

Why have customers pulling their hairs trying to figure something that should be in a manual? That’s bad customer service.

Playlists with Japanese (UTF-8) filenames that work in the Clip, don’t work anymore in the Clip+.

Message Edited by liyin on 01-29-2010 09:23 AM

Unfortunately, the manual has never been where it should be, to match the abilities of the Clips …

Miikerman wrote:
Unfortunately, the manual has never been where it should be, to match the abilities of the Clips …

Or any of the players in the Sansa line, for that matter.

@miikerman wrote:
Unfortunately, the manual has never been where it should be, to match the abilities of the Clips …

You mean… as a bundled audiobook?

Just imagine:

"Hey, and guess what? if you haven’t worked out how to adjust the volume yet, check out those buttons on the side… "

Or do you just mean that Sansa’s packaging and presentation avoids technical like it’s a disease?

I’ve always just put that down to the usual “keep-techies-away-from-marketing” approach that most companies have.

If they had a few manual pages devoted to playlists and other technical areas, most of us would be cheering. But the unwashed masses, most of them nervous about the idea of anything that isn’t actually an iPod, might be frightened off by such concepts.

And they’d be giving away trade-secret data. And they’d have to use more paper. And it would make the thing a fraction of a gram heavier. Or some other excuse.

I reckon the marketing people and anyone else involved with the production of manuals don’t know anything about how playlists are handled, and the techies who do are kept locked in a dark room and are not allowed to tell anyone. Or something.

Unfortunately, I have found that good manuals have been going by the wayside, with the user often left to discover many of a software’s abilities by him/herself.

Can’t a tech guy from SanDisk post in these forums a little bit of their knowledge about playlists, knowledge they must have as they programmed the firmware.

Now that I think of it, maybe the firmware is programmed in China, or maybe the engineers that created the Clip+'s audio chip also program the firmware under contract.

Or at the very list, they can put a sticky explaining why they can’t post basic information about the functionality of their products so users can use them.

Any way you look at it, it doesn’t make sense.

There are numerous threads already present here on the forum regarding sloutions to playlist creation. All you have to do is ferret them out.

It’s really not rocket science and there are several different ways to do it. Which is the best for your needs, only you can decide.

Here’s one way (using Winamp).

Here’s another (using a playlist creation program).

There are more like I said, but I’ll let you have the fun of looking them up if neither of the links I provided float your boat. :stuck_out_tongue:

There are numerous threads already present here on the forum regarding solutions to playlist creation. All you have to do is ferret them out.

It’s really not rocket science and there are several different ways to do it. Which is the best for your needs, only you can decide.

Here’s one way (using Winamp).

Here’s another (using a playlist creation program).

There are more like I said, but I’ll let you have the fun of looking them up if neither of the links I provided float your boat. :stuck_out_tongue:

Playlists…who needs 'em? :stuck_out_tongue:

or you could just look in the manual at page 11 under the section called creating playlists… just a thought though.

Manuals…who needs 'em? :smileyvery-happy:

Thanks for the links Tapeworm, but I had to program my own playlist creator to make valid playlists that work on the Clip (UTF-8, relative paths, natural sorting, etc).

The issue is the Clip+ handles playlists differently because playlists with Japanese filenames are not showing up anymore, they do in the Clip.

I searched for this info to make the playlist creator, plus trial & error, as there’s no single, complete source of info about playlists. Where’s the sticky for the Clip+?

Also, the info is a mess, I remember doing a lot of searching looking for something that works, not everybody likes going through all that for info that should be at least in a sticky and is validated by the creators of the firmware, as there’s info that didn’t work when I tried.

To avoid round trips, I’m looking for the details on how to create/edit a playlist, as I don’t want to depend on software like Winamp or Media Monkey. My Clips are in MSC mode.

Like I said in another post, my playlists are UTF-8 (m3u or m3u8), and filenames are in Japanese & English. English filenames show up, but not the Japanese ones.

This playlist appears fine in the Clip:

#EXTM3U
01 少女S.mp3
02 ナツネイロ.mp3
03a Future.mp3
03b So Easy.mp3
04 少女S (Inst).mp3

When I try the Clip+ only the English filenames are showing up:

03a Future.mp3
03b So Easy.mp3

Maybe there’s a bug in the way Japanese filenames are handled when the Clip+ is set to another language.

Message Edited by liyin on 02-14-2010 10:07 PM

Has anyone being successful using playlists with non-Latin / non-ASCII characters (Clip+ set to English language)?

If so, please post or upload a sample playlist.