I found some weirdness during folder browsing, which was added by the x.02.26 firmware: Folders and files are missing or misplaced if folder names have the same root.
The first thing I noticed pretty soon was if you put a filled folder onto the fuze (MSC mode) which does not contain files with any recognized extension then that directory will not display. This could be counted as accepted behaviour: don’t show folders which have nothing to play on. On the other hand it might confuse users because they will see different things by browsing via computer or the Fuze.
But a few days ago I realized some more “hidden processing” of folder structures which is quite strange and must be considered as a bug.
I’ve done some testing on my v1 Fuze in MSC connection mode only. I copied my folders and files to the MUSIC folder on the internal flash. All test files have ID3v2.4 tags. To not mix with other potential issues I only used lower ASCII characters to fill in the tags fields. The genre, artist, album tags are identical.
First test case: similar folder names and different file names
folder dir contains file 01.mp3 with title a
folder dira contains file 02.mp3 with title b
folder navigation shows:
dir 01.mp3 02.mp3
Result: folder dira is missing and file 01.mp3 is misplaced
Second test case: similar folder names and identical file names
folder dir contains file 01.mp3 with title a
folder dira contains file 01.mp3 with title b
Folder navigation shows:
dir 01.mp3 (this is the one with title a)
Result: folder dira is missing and file 01.mp3 with title b is completely hidden, which means it can never be accessed via folder navigation! It should be mentioned that in any case both mp3 files can be selected via tag based browsing (genre, artist, album …).
Could somebody please confirm my findings?
Is there a chance to see this issue fixed in a next firmware update?
I was just coming to post similar but slightly different issues.
I have files (happened to be podcasts) that I split into different directories because the Fuze couldn’t get the playlists right (the playlists copied over but they were empty, even though all the files copied). Since these podcasts are many files in a bunch of series, if I couldn’t have them in a playlist, I thought I could organize them in directories so they were easier to play in order.
So, I moved them to directories. It looked find plugged in to Windows Explorer. But, when I unplugged and looked on the fuze, one directory was gone entirely and one of the others was named “New Folder” instead of the name I gave it (Providence, I think). So I plugged back in, renamed the folder again, unplugged, and it still says “New Folder”. I have no idea what to do now.
So, I have 2 issues… one with strange playlist behavior and the other with disappearing directories. I should add that all of these files should be OK for the fuze as I had listened to them just fine before I moved them around.
You are using MSC USB connection mode, right? Where do you create your directories on the Fuze, below MUSIC or PODCASTS folder? Have you checked if there are valid audio files within the folder which is not shown on the player?
Only a suggestion which has been reported to work for others - but not in my case: If you rename some directories and the Fuze seems to ignore your changes it might help if you delete the MTABLE.SYS file (the song database). This way the player is forced to rebuild its (corrupted?) database after it gets disconnected from the computer.
I too have this phenomenon with my V2.x 8GB Fuze. I created some folders, put ONLY music into them, all of which I carefully tagged one by one, and the copied them over to the fuze’s music folder. All I see under the music folder are the folders that have only numbers (eg. “2007”, “2008”, “2009”, etc.) but none of the ones that contain letters (eg. “Workout”) - instead it added a “New Folder” unto itself and combined the missing folder music inside this folder but even then some music files are missing.
I renamed the folders to include numbers only for the directory sub folders under music, but that had no impact. It is the strangest thing and one I hope gets resolved VERY soon as I prefer to search and play music by folders, not by tags. I hope the Sansa people see this!
@Ive: It looks similar to the issue posted by roseg but different from the one I described initially.
I’d like to ask a few questions about your specific case: Are you using MSC USB connection mode when you transfer files from pc to the Fuze? Are you sure that the file transfer has finished before disconnecting the device (on Windows it’s a matter of secure removal of USB mass storage devices)? Can you reproduce your findings, that is if you remove the copied files/directories and repeat the same transfers to the fuze will you see the same oddities again?
In my original couple of tries, I did let the transfer finish completely - sometimes waiting 5+ minutes before disconnecting the player from the Vista PC.
You gave me an idea that I think solved my issue. When I was transfering the music originally, the player was in Auto Detect/MTP mode. So what I did was format the player (internally), then forced the USB connection to MSC and transfered the music to the MUSIC folder that way. After disconnect and letting the player finish compiling the play list, the ‘Folders’ view now displays the directory tree structure and file names correctly, as well there are no more missing music files. So it looks like for me it was the USB connetion setting. If left in the default ‘Auto Detect’ mode, it seems to ALWAYS choose MTP mode. By forcing MSC mode, it seems to have solved my issues. Thanks very much for your input!!
An side-note oddity though… Before I formated the player of its music, I forced MSC mode first to see if there were any hidden files/directories that were viewable under Windows Explorer that weren’t under MTP mode, and although I COULD see some extra files, etc., the music that I know was still in the player was NOT viewable under FUZE\MUSIC\ in Windows Explorer like it is when in MTP mode. I don’t know if this is the nature of the connection or not, but I found that strange.
Anyways, thanks again for your input ewelot!
@roseg: try what I did (force MSC mode) and it may work for you too.
An side-note oddity though… Before I formated the player of its music, I forced MSC mode first to see if there were any hidden files/directories that were viewable under Windows Explorer that weren’t under MTP mode, and although I COULD see some extra files, etc., the music that I know was still in the player was NOT viewable under FUZE\MUSIC\ in Windows Explorer like it is when in MTP mode. I don’t know if this is the nature of the connection or not, but I found that strange.
…
Indeed, that is the expected behaviour: files transfered to the Fuze in MTP mode are not visible on pc in MSC mode and vice versa. All files can be accessed from the Fuze of cause, both by tag based browsing (genre, artist, album …) and folder navigation.
Glad to here that I could help you in some way. Enjoy your Fuze …
I got one! I pulled out the SD card to update and when I reinstalled it, all the file names where blank. I could see just the folder icon with no names so I couldn’t figure out which folder was which … I went back to browsing by genre and haven’t checked again. but it was weird
I can confirm ewelot’s issue on my 8GB Sansa Fuze with firmware 2.02.26. I discovered it when I had several folders with the same name but with Roman numerals (I, II, III, etc.) appended to them. Renaming them to use 1, 2, 3, etc. seems to work around the problem for now.
I’m not sure if the firmware developers check this forum, so I decided to send in a technical support request to see if it was a known issue. The reply I got said that it is indeed an issue, and while there isn’t currently a fix, one may be considered in a later firmware version.
I can confirm ewelot’s issue on my 8GB Sansa Fuze with firmware 2.02.26. I discovered it when I had several folders with the same name but with Roman numerals (I, II, III, etc.) appended to them. Renaming them to use 1, 2, 3, etc. seems to work around the problem for now.
I’m not sure if the firmware developers check this forum, so I decided to send in a technical support request to see if it was a known issue. The reply I got said that it is indeed an issue, and while there isn’t currently a fix, one may be considered in a later firmware version.
Message Edited by tev on 11-09-2009 07:13 PM
Thanks for confirmation. Until now I didn’t check with the newest .28 firmware version but the reply from technical support indicates that it has not been fixed. Too bad …
