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Author Topic: handheld sync weirdness and errors  (Read 3207 times)

JustinChase

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handheld sync weirdness and errors
« on: July 30, 2014, 11:02:11 am »

I'm trying to sync some music to my phone for an upcoming trip, and I've been seeing some strange things.

1. If I've already synced a track to the phone (Nexus 5), and that track is selected by my smartlist again, it shows up in the list as "In Queue" alongside the same track shown as "On Device".  But, the one shown as "On Device" has the artist name shown in the album field, which is incorrect.  I'm not sure what actually happens when I sync, but I think I end up with just one version on the device.

2. I'm getting several "errors" while trying to sync.  No explanation, and no rhyme or reason I can see to these errors.  Not sure what more information I can provide, other than the screenshots below.

*it would be MUCH easier to get screenshots, and look into this if the screen didn't constantly/automatically scroll to show the "completed" track every time one finishes.  When I try to scroll, it just goes back to the completed track, about every 1/2 second, so I can't get a good view of anything else while it's syncing.  Then, when finished syncing, the error tracks go away, so I can't get the screenshot.

With that said, it seems to have errors on any tracks with blank albums, or "..." in the album name (i.e. ...And Justice for All).  Not sure if that's accurate, due to the above issue with scrolling, but it's what I could see in the fractions of seconds while scrolling.

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BryanC

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Re: handheld sync weirdness and errors
« Reply #1 on: July 30, 2014, 11:19:13 am »

It appears that a program on your phone is automatically filling in the empty album field with the artist details?

You didn't post the filenames, but it's likely that the same program is moving the files on the phone's internal memory so that MC cannot see the existing songs.

What app are you using to play music on your nexus 5? Does it have some type of autosorting mechanism enabled?
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JustinChase

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Re: handheld sync weirdness and errors
« Reply #2 on: July 30, 2014, 11:42:16 am »

rocket player.  I don't know how or why it would be renaming/moving files around, it certainly shouldn't.  I've got a couple of other music apps installed also, so perhaps one of them is doing this, although I doubt it.  I especially doubt rocket player is doing this, since it doesn't even 'update' playlists on the device.  meaning: when I change songs on the phone, the playlist it shows continues to reflect the original playlist, and doesn't get updated to show the new/updated tracks in the playlist after the next upload, if that makes any sense.

That still doesn't explain why MC is giving errors when trying to load files with blank albums and/or ... in the album name.

The album shown in the screenshot has the full filename of

M:\Agnelli & Nelson - Unknown Album - 00 - Hudson Street (Album Epic Mix) - Trance.mp3

I did look thru the files on the phone as shown by MC, and didn't see any duplicates.  My phone is rebooting now, and I'll check on the phone for any duplicate files also.  If I find any, I'll report back.

**FYI - I'd happily pay a few $$ for Gizmo to play local files, and not have to use another/different player on my phone!!



****NOTE: I just checked, the file above is NOT duplicated on the device.
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BryanC

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Re: handheld sync weirdness and errors
« Reply #3 on: July 30, 2014, 12:10:54 pm »

*snip*

On the file transfer page, could you enable the filename column and make sure that the filenames are the same for the duplicate listings? This will make sure that songs without an album field have a filename that is not dependent on [Album] and if so, that they are syncing properly.

And also could you check the audio path settings in the handheld options?

I bet that either the audio path setting or the existing filename contains an [Album] field that is not being populated on sync and that Carnac is filling the album information incorrectly when the handheld is connected because that information is not present.

You might try removing references to [Album] in your handheld sync settings if you are transferring songs without those tags or storing [Album] information in the directory structure instead of the filename.

A long-term solution would be to replace the [Album] field with an isEmpty([Album],Unknown Album) placeholder in your filename and/or directory structure.
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JustinChase

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Re: handheld sync weirdness and errors
« Reply #4 on: July 30, 2014, 12:47:55 pm »

Okay, I connected again, and have another 'duplicate' as an example.  I have screenshots for the filename fields and the options, showing the path information.  Hopefully this helps find a resolution to what I still think is a bug.
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BryanC

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Re: handheld sync weirdness and errors
« Reply #5 on: July 30, 2014, 12:59:05 pm »

Okay, I connected again, and have another 'duplicate' as an example.  I have screenshots for the filename fields and the options, showing the path information.  Hopefully this helps find a resolution to what I still think is a bug.

Yes it looks like a bug when using empty album fields on handheld sync.

But there is a potential workaround in the meantime. Under "Audio Path" in your handheld settings, try changing it from Music\[Artist]\[Album]\ to just Music\[Artist]\

...or if you really need album directories Music\[Artist]\isEmpty([Album],Unknown Album)\
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JustinChase

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Re: handheld sync weirdness and errors
« Reply #6 on: July 30, 2014, 08:37:05 pm »

But there is a potential workaround in the meantime. Under "Audio Path" in your handheld settings, try changing it from Music\[Artist]\[Album]\ to just Music\[Artist]\

...or if you really need album directories Music\[Artist]\isEmpty([Album],Unknown Album)\

I first tried just changing it to \Music since I don't really need [Artist]\[Album]\ but that resulted in all unassigned albums showing the wrong cover art (folder.jpg), so I tried your suggestion, and all albums, existing or not ended up as 0 for the album name, which seems like a bad thing.

So, I ended up just finding all tracks that had no album and changing them all to "Unassigned", just to have something there.  I'm syncing again now.  I suspect this will work okay, until I can make the time to actually finish correcting all the tags on my music (which will certainly take waaaaay too long).

Hopefully this will work around the bug until Matt et all have time so fix it.
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