The Wheel

SanDisk MP3 players Sansa® Fuze™
1

Another downgrade from the E200 series,

The wheel won’t go from the top of a list up to the bottom of the list,

only down to the bottom of the list.

So you have to scroll all the way down your list to get there.

Too bad, Wilco!

Can that be fixed with firmware?

Lack of recognition of album art is the other.

2

Wrap around scolling is already requested and will likely show up soon.  Album art works, so I’m not sure what your specific issue is.

3

I believe his issue is the lack of embedded Album Art support.  The E200’s supported embedded Album Art, the Fuze does not.  That may be due to the new SOC (chipset) used by the Fuze/Clip, vs the SOC used by the E200 v1’s.

Wheel scroll is likely to be fixed by firmware, embedded album art support, that may be a trade off for the superior sound handling of the Fuze’s SOC over the older E200.

Personally, since I use MP3Tag to embedd my art (for archival purposes), it is not a big deal to use MP3Tag to export it either.

Heck, even Rockbox won’t read embedded album art. 

As we all know, Album Art is nowhere a completely “hands off” proposition.  Embedded Album Art support is not a deal killer for me, since I have to manually embed it in the first place.  Embedd art just makes sure that my tracks always have it. 

I just wish I didn’t have to hide the folder.jpg file to prevent the album art from appearing in my photo’s location.  But such is life.

4

p_opus-

I ran head on into the album art issue experimenting with the e280v2 and the µSD card: the album art files are appearing as “photos” on the card, and they’re listed under “Photos”. Did you individually set the jpg attributes to “hidden” on your device?

Not to worry about the embedded album art issue, as the v2 series has no issues with them.

The v2 and Fuze are literally “birds of a feather”, with the newer generation firmware code for the Fuze simply in need of a little ironing.

Quite a few glitches with the e200v2 have been solved with the Fuze’s firmware build. All that’s needed for the Fuze is a wee bit of “gene splicing”, as the solutions are blended between the two devices’ respective branches of code.

I’m cracking my knuckles in anticipation of the next firmware build. Between the rollover menu (like the e200) and album art (at least in cases where the files are transferred without WiMP or Rhapsody), these wee beasties are close to exceeding all federal standards of cool.

Bob :smileyvery-happy:

Message Edited by neutron_bob on 07-01-2008 12:07 PM

5

Next Fuse release is in QA testing. 

Cheers SansaFix 

6

Yes,

I simply connected the Fuze in MSC mode and ran command line and did an Attrib +h folder.jpg /s command which basically set the hidden attribute on all files named folder.jpg on the current drive and it’s subdirectories.  That fixed it for me.  I just wish it wasn’t necessary.  When I use MP3Tag to export the folder.jpg from the embedded album art, it creates the folder.jpg file, but won’t hide it automatically, so I have to do that manually.

If the new Fuze firmware will recognize embedded album art, then I can simply use winamp to transfer all the files over, and then the fuze should read the embedded album art on each track and I shouldn’t have to deal with this.

Again, minor glitches, are to be expected on all new players.  I didn’t purchase an E200R until well after a year of it’s release, and so it’s firmware was very mature.

The fuze, I’m much closer to initial release, and have to deal with some of these things.   I’d really like it if Sandisk would include some features offered in “lower cost” players such as a sleep timer, into it’s higher end products.  The fact that my older bullet M240 1GB player has a sleep timer, and my brand new shiny fuze doesn’t is pretty cheesy.

But I’m a patient man.  The sansa fuze is pretty solid out of the box, and I love the new form factor and the improvements over the E200’s.  (such as resume on power up and the fast boot time). 

Of course 8GB SDHC Micro support is also a big plus.

7

@p_opus wrote:

If the new Fuze firmware will recognize embedded album art, then I can simply use winamp to transfer all the files over, and then the fuze should read the embedded album art on each track and I shouldn’t have to deal with this.

If you have folder.jpg files in your main library the latest version of Winamp will copy them to the Fuze when syncing.  I don’t remember seeing the feature listed anywhere in the release notes, but it does work.  Only problem is it doesn’t resize them, so I still end up running a script to resize them to 200x200 anyway.

I actually prefer folder.jpg over embedded for space efficiency and ease of updates if you want to change the art.  But I can see how people would like the convienience of embedded art.

8

All my album art does reside in the folders with their associated tracks, so it should be a part of my Library.  However, I sync in Winamp in MSC mode because of the known issue of Winamp crashing if it detects my device in MTP mode (conflict between WMA 11 and Winamp in handling the MTP drivers).  Also, syncing in MSC mode hides my “Rhapsody Channel” and “Rhapsody subscritpion” tracks from Winamp, and as such I can sync safely without Winamp trying to erase my channel content or subscription content during an “autofill”.

Thus, using the psp_usb.dll file for MSC transfers, Winamp doesn’t transfer the album art, unless I’m missing a basic setup of winamp.  For me, the minor inconvenience of running MP3Tag against my player in MSC mode is more than made up by keeping my subscription and Rhapsody channel content from being overwritten by Winamp. 

Message Edited by p_opus on 07-02-2008 12:33 PM

9

@p_opus wrote:

All my album art does reside in the folders with their associated tracks, so it should be a part of my Library.  However, I sync in Winamp in MSC mode because of the known issue of Winamp crashing if it detects my device in MTP mode (conflict between WMA 11 and Winamp in handling the MTP drivers).  Also, syncing in MSC mode hides my “Rhapsody Channel” and “Rhapsody subscritpion” tracks from Winamp, and as such I can sync safely without Winamp trying to erase my channel content or subscription content during an “autofill”.

 

Thus, using the psp_usb.dll file for MSC transfers, Winamp doesn’t transfer the album art, unless I’m missing a basic setup of winamp.  For me, the minor inconvenience of running MP3Tag against my player in MSC mode is more than made up by keeping my subscription and Rhapsody channel content from being overwritten by Winamp. 

Message Edited by p_opus on 07-02-2008 12:33 PM

Hmm…  Maybe it’s a difference with autofill mode.  I sync selected playlists and don’t use autofill.

10

Yeah, Autofill is like advanced shuffle, where it will attempt to fill a certain percentage of your player with continually new content.

I use Autofill with full Albums only, so that it tries to fill my player with full albums.  It keeps track of ones that it has previously loaded and loaded new ones.

Since it is fully automated, it will automatically erase existing content for new content.  As such, my subscription tracks and Channels would be likely erased for new content since there is not “exception” list or “exception folder” I can define.

So MSC is a cool way.  That way, Winamp doesn’t even “see” anything that was added in MTP mode via Rhapsody.

It’s a perfect way to also “protect” certain albums.  I load them via MTP, and as such I can sheild them from autofill.  I actually see that as a huge benefit, and the album art administration I have to do is well worth the protection.