Sansa Fuze Firmware Update 01.02.31 & 02.03.33

I’m just a little confused.  There’s this Phillips mp3 player that doesn’t refresh when I put music on it.  I unplugged it and it just started up.  No refresh.

Am I missing something? 

saxmaster765 wrote:

I’m just a little confused.  There’s this Phillips mp3 player that doesn’t refresh when I put music on it.  I unplugged it and it just started up.  No refresh.

 

Am I missing something? 

 

Depends on what you’re confused about … :wink:

Having the Sansa append the database file without having to go through the whole “refresh” is a key method in shortening the process.  Perhaps this can be added in a future firmware build.

As we are loading our Sansas with larger µSDHC cards, it makes sense for SanDisk to address this issue.  It will improve the overall experience with the device, and it will encourage sales of larger capacity cards too.

Bob  :smileyvery-happy: 

@promisedplanet wrote:


What’s possible is the ability for a player to be aware of what media is being copied to / deleted from it, and immediately refresh its internal database with just that delta, without having to re-read the entire contents of its internal memory and expansion card.

How would that be done? In neither MSC or MTP mode the Fuze is ‘active’ and it doesn’t ‘know’ anything about the data that is being copied to it or deleted from it. It’s basically a dumb storage device. That’s why the Fuze is scanning all its storage each time for all the files that are there, and removes removed files from the database while adding new files to it. 

What would make more sense to me is that the Fuze boots straight to its menu, allowing you to use it normally, but updates the database in the background. Of you course you can’t expect newly added files to immediately show up, and you need a way to deal with selecting files from the database that have been removed already. As long as you would try to play files that had been on the device before, it would still work without the refresh and it can do that refresh in the background where nobody cares too much how long it takes.

(Btw, this updating in the background is how it is done in Rockbox. I have no idea about other firmwares on other players, as I don’t own any other that need a ‘database refresh’).

Message Edited by 7o9 on 01-26-2010 10:51 PM

7o9;

“How would that be done?”

I guess it would be done the way the Sansa Connect does it, right?

Message Edited by PromisedPlanet on 01-27-2010 09:14 AM

Upon transfer, the Fuze does manipulate the freshly transferred files a bit.  If you transfer a video, there’s a wee thm file with a screen capture.  If you transfer an audio file with “podcast” in the genre field, the Sansa “steals” this file over to the podcast folder.

I’ve wondered if making a large transfer of music files “en masse” overwhelms the process a wee bit, as several users have reported.

I’d love to see the code changed a bit to streamline the database refresh, in regards to “append” versus “rebuild completely” upon music transfer.  With a µSD card, a simple ID file can be stored on the card, allowing the Sansa to recognize a “familiar” card.  There are quite a few possibilities available, depending upon the time-to-coffee ratio in development.

Bob  :smileyvery-happy: 

Before I say this, I don’t really know anything about programming (except, ironically, a little BASIC).

Would it be possible for it to refresh only the parts that have changed?

Interesting theory, except what happens if a card is removed, modified externally, then reinserted?  What if the Fuze creates a list of files, as well as any other relevant data, including the date that the file was modified, and ID3 data (maybe some kind of *.ini file?), and quickly add/remove/mod data while it scans.  Then, it could *hopefully* just perform a basic scan.  My idea is that it will look for the date of the last modification while it scans current files, and not updating information that may have changed.  Also, what if Sandisk adds a *complete manual refresh* button, just in case something weird happens.

Interesting.  If the card has had anything written to, or removed from (which is actually a rewrite), the card, there’s going to be a change in the file allocation table / directory table.  We could use a checksum method, comparing the log generated by the Sansa with the tables on the card.

Bob  :smiley:

Has anyone else experienced the disappearance of “Goodbye” after doing the firmware update?

Fred

Running 01.02.31; Goodbye message is still present.

Another technique might be for the Fuze to retain a config file for every card inserted.  Most users will only have a handful of cards so the amount of data wouldn’t be huge and it wouldn’t be hard to add some user settings to aid in managing cards.

neutron_bob wrote:

Upon transfer, the Fuze does manipulate the freshly transferred files a bit.  If you transfer a video, there’s a wee thm file with a screen capture.  If you transfer an audio file with “podcast” in the genre field, the Sansa “steals” this file over to the podcast folder.

 

I’ve wondered if making a large transfer of music files “en masse” overwhelms the process a wee bit, as several users have reported.

 

I’m not sure how this explains why the Fuze chooses to re-read the microSD card when just the internal memory’s contents have been modified.

 

It seems like the firmware’s algorithm is basically “if anything has changed, re-read everything”.  Apparently it DOES know that some media has changed.  It just doesn’t know what, or where.  Unlike the Sansa Connect.

still no gapless, shame really, looks like I will giving rockbox a go. Also I have noticed that the ‘high’ option has been removed for European locations. I saw that the volume in normal has been reduced but there was no mention of removing the high/loud option, I have just selected ‘rest of the world’ option as a location to get it back. (USA had the horrible slotradio icon!)

I can’t see us getting another update for a long time if at all. 

Message Edited by s4vva on 01-28-2010 07:53 AM

With Rockbox you have to initiate the refresh. Good for most, but for the not so tech savy it might be confusing.

Peregrine wrote:

With Rockbox you have to initiate the refresh. Good for most, but for the not so tech savy it might be confusing.

 

 

Doesn’t Rockbox have a background refresh function?  Or does this not work on the implementation of Rockbox for the Fuze?

@promisedplanet wrote:


Doesn’t Rockbox have a background refresh function?  Or does this not work on the implementation of Rockbox for the Fuze?

It has it and it works on the Fuze.

However, the ‘database’ function in Rockbox is off by default. Perhaps Peregrine means you have to turn off the database function manually. After that it can auto-refresh fine.

@promisedplanet wrote:

I guess it would be done the way the Sansa Connect does it, right?

I don’t have any experience with the ‘Connect’ so I can only guess at how it works. If it uses a database like the Fuze, it would surprise me if it got incrementally auto-updated in MSC mode. If it uses MTP, it might rebuild the database while syncing (which would be a great moment for it in my opinion).

As for a partial update, perhaps it’s my lack of imagination. I am assuming the Fuze firmware has some method of identifying what files it already knew about. Checking the creation/modification date of all files to that stored in the database could be one method. It would still have to check all files though (not just the new ones) to even check which are new. Perhaps the Fuze looks at the actual contents (some sort of checksum?) of all files (for comparison against a value in the database0 which could account for the time it takes.

It’s all speculation, but I think most people agree that having a more responsive/sensible way for the database update process would be a great improvement for the Fuze. Personally, it would be the #1 thing for me.

7o9 wrote:


@promisedplanet wrote:

I guess it would be done the way the Sansa Connect does it, right?


I don’t have any experience with the ‘Connect’ so I can only guess at how it works. If it uses a database like the Fuze, it would surprise me if it got incrementally auto-updated in MSC mode. If it uses MTP, it might rebuild the database while syncing (which would be a great moment for it in my opinion).

 

The Connect only has MTP mode.  As I described in my earlier post, it does indeed rebuild its database while syncing.

PromisedPlanet wrote: …

Sorry, I missed that. Sensible choice for those who use MTP. I don’t want to use MTP though :slight_smile: