@tapeworm wrote:
I think though, that if you plan to use Winamp to put the songs on your player (sync) as opposed to Windows Media Player, your player has to be in MTP mode.
MSC = Drag & Drop
MTP = Synchronize computer music library with player.
Actually, both modes support drag and drop and syncing. Winamp portables sync feature works great in MSC mode. Like Tapeworm, I only use MSC mode and I use Winamp for syncing selected playlists to the Fuze.
The real difference between the two modes is DRM and support for various tools. MTP is required for DRM protected files and because of it’s proprietary nature, has very limited tool support. MSC is the standard used by all removable storage and thus your options for tools & utilities is virtually infinite. MTP also has a very complex implementation that seems to be easily broken by new releases of WMP. In general, I would say MSC is strongly preferred unless you need DRM support.
The only issue with Winamp’s sync feature in MSC mode is that is puts full paths in the playlist file. Sansa players require the paths to be relative to the location of the playlist. See this post for details on Winamp MSC mode syncing and the relative path issue. The post is in the Clip forum, but it applies equally to the Fuze.
Also, in the previous build, Winamp was copying folder.jpgs automatically. I think this might be broken or removed from the current build. I’ll try to verify tonight when I get home.
Note that manually saving a playlist in Winamp (the method described in Tapeworm’s link) correctly uses relative paths. It’s just synced playlists that have the full paths for some reason. I’ve posted about it in Winamp’s forums but didn’t get any reply.
As for MediaMonkey, it’s a very powerful tool that I use occasionally for it’s advanced library management features. However, like Tapeworm, I just don’t like the interface very much. Winamp is much cleaner, simpler and customizable. MM’s syncing features are similar to Winamp’s, but I believe it has the same full path issue in synced playlists.
If anyone is interested, I’m working on a VBScript to automate a lot of post-syncing related tasks. The script does the following:
- Replace full paths with relative paths in all m3u playlists
- Apply MP3Gain to all files
- Copy any missing or updated album art
- Resize all album art to a user defined size
The script will keep track of the last time it was run, so by default it will only process files created/modified after the last run. The first time you run it can take a while, but subsequent runs are relatively quick. I have a bit more work to do before it’s complete, but if it would be useful to anyone else, I’d be happy to post it.
