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[tombert]

Hi MC team,

My library is of very good ogg Q8 or > mp3 192 kBs quality and I always downconverting to 128 kBs for my portable.
MC tells me that there is not enough space on the device to copy the files - thats correct for the original size (which MC seems to check to fit on the device) - but what MC doesn't take into account is that I'am downconverting!
So I have to to: take a few Albums, copy and convert them to my portable. After this finishes I take again a few Albums, copy and convert them to my portable. After this finishes I ....

Maybe you could think about disabling this size checking feature somehow? Would be nice ... and stop coping when there is no space left ... or at least for MC12 ...

ciao

[newsposter]

Granted, it would be grand if MC would check the available or total space on a 'target device' and make re-sampling adjustments to fit.  Lot's of variables to be taken into account including the real and imagined 'audio quality concerns' of each and every MC user.

Or you can experiment with reducing the bitrate for your portable even more.

For playback from a Sansa e140 (1Gb flash plus a real SD slot), I tend to run audio books at 32 kbps with some heavy compression and music about 75 kbps with minimal compression.

Look at the specs on your earbuds/headphones and see if they are even capable of reproducing music from a 128 kbps source.

I've got all of The daVinci Code (13 CDs) on a 128 Mb SD card and a 20 disk set of Mozart on a 512 Mb card.

[benn600]

I am also very interested in this issue.  I have a 6GB Sansa e270 and am carefully rating songs from my 7K song collection to create smart playlists based on certain factors (shown below) and I am not quite to the limit but I am sure I will have trouble coming up when I go to sync.  I am upgrading to this player from a 128MB player I got for like $40 a while back and had many problems synchronizing since it is so small to start with!

This is a great configuration line for a playlist that others may want to consider using.  I have been tweaking it as I see fit but this is the latest and greatest, version 2.2 (not joking about version):

([Rating]=>=3 or [Number Plays]=>5) -[Genre]=[Children],[Christmas],[Classical],[Comedy],[Halloween],[Meditation],[Nature],[Poetry] ~nodup=[Artist],[Name] ~sort=[Rating]-d,[Number Plays]-d

It does it all...from picking intelligently based on rating and number of plays, including sorting by the best option for this.  Now I just need to see if I can add an IF statement so I could make it do even more ideal things.  But this removes genres I definitely do not want (I could add Christmas around the season and automatically get my favorite christmas songs added).  It finally checks for duplicates based on artist and name because I have many greatest hits albums which overlap with other CDs.

[tombert]

>>> Look at the specs on your earbuds/headphones and see if they are even capable of reproducing music from a 128 kbps source. <<<

?? I have never seen headphones with a kps spec - only a frequency spectra - or asked in another way: whats the possible frequency range in a 128 kbs mp3 song?

>>> 20 disk set of Mozart on a 512 Mb card. <<<
That would mean that you have 35 Mb per disc which would result in lets say 96 kbps ?? some people would kill for such a fraud 

[newsposter]

No 'fraud' just judicious use of re-encoding with the capabilities of the target device in mind.

[Alex B]

If I had such a small portable (up to a few gigs) I would keep, for example, about a 20-30 GB subset of my audio files in more compressed format on another HD folder structure. I'd use MC's Handheld function in folder mode for getting the files there and import the playlists to a separate MC library for managing the portable.

It would be fast and easy to change which files the portable has from that bigger already compressed selection.

[tombert]

Keeping a smaller library:
Hmmm - I thought about that solution as well - but it seems to me to much overhead ...
If nothing helps I think I will do it that way ...

[Rob L]

Is it really too big a change to incorporate at some point, though, to get MC to just forego the up-front check and instead just keep checking as it goes?

This isn't the first time there's been a thread about it, so there are certainly a number of people that would find it useful, me included :-)

[benn600]

The problem is that there are no real good solutions for limiting playlist sizes.  You can use the limit to MB but if I re-encode to MP3 upon copying, the limiter is worthless because it limits based on FLAC files, which are huge.

Therefore, there is no good solution that I can think of at the moment.  I am always willing to add steps to get it figured out but there aren't really any that help.

One attempt would be to limit by time, but VBR again poses a problem because it doesn't match a specific bitrate all the time, so you can't predict.

Ideally, MC would just keep copying until it gets the standard message that there is not enough space.  It could simply do a check before copying each file, too, which would be better and stop it before copying.  Then, a simple check for shorter songs would allow it to copy those and at least get some additional songs on the player.

[adamsp70]

I also want the check (optionally) disabled.

I convert my MP3s down to 128 in a folder on my machine before downloading to the DAP. If my disk is full, i get told i can't fit it on, so i delete stuff off my disk but it still won't let me unless i rescan the entire disk (taking ages!)

Cheers...

[tombert]

thx for support - the more posts the better the chance that we get it (hopefully ;-)

[Matt]

MC will factor in conversion when doing size estimates for a handheld. 

I'm not sure what the issue is.  Try a few different encoders and bitrates just to see if MC is readjusting the space needed when you change the conversion settings.

Thanks.

[Rob L]

This was discussed elsewhere before, and I thought you said before that it only did that calculation if you were changing formats.

Certainly for me, it doesn't do it when I convert from a high bitrate MP3 to a lower bitrate MP3, though the fact that I'm converting from VBR to CBR might be a factor...