Fast, simple, easy unified playlist that includes internal & external memory

MP3 players Sansa Fuze
1

I am a VERY new owner of a Fuze, very new to mp3 for that matter.  As a newbie I have just spent about a week going around and around trying to get music management the way that I want it.  It’s all here in the forum and will seem obvious to many, but I thought a summary might be useful.

I have a 4GB Fuze and a 4GB uSD, with about 6GB used (1200 songs, more or less).  I use the MSC USB mode and Windows Explorer drag-and-drop to sync(1).  I have a single .pla playlist, with all the songs in random order, generated with Winamp & converted with Playlist.exe.

With the Fuze connected to my PC and using the Winamp “PLAYLIST EDITOR”:

  • File/New-playlist

  • File/Add-folder, then select SANSA FUZE (H:)/MUSIC in the popup window

  • File/Add-folder, then select Removable Disk (I:)/MUSIC in the popup window

  • Sort/Randomize-list

  • File/Save-playlist to SANSA FUZE (H:)/PLAYLISTS (m3u format)

Note that the playlist is being created from the Fuze files, NOT the PC’s.  Note also that the PLAYLISTS folder was not on the Fuze and I had to create it.  Its use is required for Playlist.exe.

See (2) for using drag-and-drop to create a Winamp playlist.

I have Playlist.exe(3) in the SANSA FUZE (H:)/PLAYLISTS folder and use Windows Explorer to run it.  It uses a popup window to ask for the drive letters for the internal and external “disks” (H & I for me).  Playlist.exe assumes (REQUIRES) that your music be in “MUSIC” folders on the Fuze drives and that the playlist be in the “PLAYLISTS” folder.  It will give a fatal “Path not found” error otherwise.

Clicking the “Create Playlist” button creates a .pla playlist from the .m3u one that Winamp created.  Same name.  I delete the .m3u playlist so that my Fuze only sees the .pla.  DONE!

Fast, simple, easy.

Bob

(1)Drag-and-drop syncing (TAPEWORM):

http://forums.sandisk.com/sansa/board/message?board.id=e200&message.id=27993&query.id=8115#M27993

(2)Drag-and-drop playlist creation (TAPEWORM):

http://forums.sandisk.com/sansa/board/message?board.id=sansafuse&message.id=2502#M2502

(3)Playlist.exe (ger):

http://forums.sandisk.com/sansa/board/message?board.id=e200&message.id=21516&query.id=8025#M21516 

2

If you’re running Windows, I think YAPL does a better job at playlist handling; otherwise video4fuze can also do the job.

3

I remember seeing YAPL in my searches, but I don’t remember why I didn’t pursue its use.  If I didn’t have a process that worked, I’d look into it.  But there’s NO WAY that I’m leaving my beaten path to go into that jungle again.

Thanks,

Bob 

4

Oh, wait - it doesn’t work right.  I was getting a lot of duplicate entries on the playlist and I found the culprit to be playlist.exe.  It was really screwing with the playlist, not just converting it to pla format.

It really shouldn’t be this hard,

Bob