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[Quaternary]

I recently purchased a Creative ZEN 16GB flash player.

For the most part it works well with MC12. I was pleased to see that the album artwork support works perfectly for this device, and that ratings made on the player are automatically transferred to MC's library when the player is connected. Unfortunately, the ratings transfer doesn't appear to work in the opposite direction. If MC could can out whether a file that is on the player has changed its rating and update its library accordingly, why can't it work out when a rating in its library has changed and apply that to files that are in the player?

My main concern with this device in MC12, though, is that there appear to be two issues with the Handheld details list/queue. The first is that if I connect the player and open the Handheld details view to see a list of files already on the player, every single song is listed twice. The dual listings appear to be identical, except where a track has been rated on the player, in which case the first listing shows the rating, and the second does not. The problem only appears to be aesthetic, since the list apparently still functions as it should... with one exception.

The exception is a problem regarding an inaccuracy in reported free space. Recently, I deleted an EP from the player using MC, fixed a tagging error, and tried to put it back onto the player. Although MC's Handheld details view told me there were 50MB or so of free space - and Windows Explorer agreed - when I tried to queue the EP (which was about 45MB), the Handheld drag-and-drop window told me I had queued files that were about 36MB over the capacity of the player. I appreciate that it might seem like quibbling, to focus on a relatively small amount of space in a 16GB player, but this inaccuracy makes me wonder if MC's integration with this player might have other issues that I may discover later on...

Do any of the problems I've listed have solutions that I have overlooked? Or are they most likely bugs? Any advice or suggestions would be greatly appreciated

[JimH]

Welcome to Interact.

Maybe Swellguy will answer tomorrow, but MC is probably using Microsoft's MTP (Microsoft Transfer Protocol) to manage the device.  If so, we have limited control.

On some devices, you can change this in setup.  MSC or MTP is the usual choice.  MSC is Mass Storage Something and it just presents the device as a drive.  In that case, MC can do more, but the device won't work for MS specific content like subscription tracks from Napster.

[KingSparta]

MSC (Mass Storage Class)

[Quaternary]

Thank you for moving this thread to the appropriate subforum. I was so focused on MC's own behaviour that I didn't think to post in the proper area for device-related inquiries.

After doing some further reading, the Creative ZEN flash players are, indeed, MTP devices. If the problems I've described are the result of limitations of the protocol, I can accept that, since you can only work within its boundaries.

Of the issues I mentioned, the apparent inconsistency with regard to free space is my only strong concern. The doubling of entries in the Handheld details list is just plain annoying, rather than anything else, and the idea of updating ratings from MC's library is a nice thought, but obviously not a fundamentally necessary function.

Ultimately, in all other respects the player works very well with MC it seems, and I'll be pleased to continue using it to manage the player in preference to the software that was provided with it.

[SwellGuy]

There is overhead for metadata, album art, etc. with each track to be transferred so the amount of space required to transfer 45MB worth of tracks is actually more than 45MB. We conservatively estimate what this overhead is but it shouldn't be off by the margin you're describing. We'll look into it...

The duplicate entries does bother me and I'll also look into that. In the meantime, you can clear this up deleting the MC database files on the Zen with Explorer. Close MC, find your Zen in Explorer and delete the JRState.xml and JRInfo.xml files. Restart MC.

We'll have to think through the ratings issue as well, that can be a little tricky.

[Quaternary]

A little bit of further information. The duplicate entries in the Handheld details list seem to occur after MC is used to delete files from the player. Also, when MC deletes an album, the folder and an .alb file are left behind.

By contrast, when I use the player itself to delete an album, nothing is left behind, and MC does not show the duplicate entries when the player is next connected. Not ideal, because I can only use the player to delete one release at a time, but it's a workaround, for the time being, if I want to free up space so I can use MC to put some new material on the player.

[brak_brak]

This is the exact behavior that I'm experiencing with my Zen.  I'm only wondering why this thread didn't come up when I searched the entire forum for "duplicate zen" but it did appear when I started sorting through the hundred or so hits for plain ol' "duplicate". 

I'm really frustrated by the duplicate entries because they seem to be tricking MC 13 into deleting almost all of the files on sync when I enable the "Delete from handheld any files not in sync list" setting, which I want to use because my Zen is only 4GB and I like to change my playlists.  Manually hunting down the files to remove isn't so hard, it's remembering in which direction I changed my mind yesterday, when my player wasn't docked, that is the difficult part.  Was there ever any resolution of this problem?