B4: Sync problems with Zen Vision:M

[heronheart]

I've noticed that my Sansa E250 takes about 3 minutes to prepare the list of tracks if I use the WMDM plugin but only takes about 5 seconds if I use the USBmass1 plugin.

[shotofadds]

Mine takes 3 minutes too - I'm sure the WMDM sync was much faster in MM2.5. Unfortunately MTP is the only option on the Zen

One more final problem: I updated the Year and cover image for an album in my auto-sync list, pressed Sync and what happens? Nothing - no tracks were copied whatsoever.

I did have "modify timestamp when writing tags" UNticked at this time, but surely MM uses a field in the database rather than the file timestamp to determine whether to copy a track?

EDIT: Even after enabling "modify timestamp", explicitly saving the tags and doing a re-sync, the tag metadata on the player has been updated, but the album still has no album art. Grrrrrrrr!

[shotofadds]

More weird things:

a) the text "converting to mp3" never appears, even though I can see from the debug log that converting is taking place.

b) the track names scrolling past in the debug log do not match the track names displayed on the status bar.....

c) I'm getting occasional error dialogs such as this popping up:

[rusty]

shotofadds,

I tested this time with a Zen Vision and couldn't reproduce _any_ of the problems you describe (btw, I can't seem to see your video either--is it only me?).

Before you switch back to B4, can you try to reproduce the problems you describe using a smaller subset of tracks, and send me a debug log that shows the problem? If there is an issue, we'd really like to fix it.

Thx.

-Rusty

[shotofadds]

I just tested the video here at work and it plays OK (I converted it to Flash which is probably the problem). Using IE6 or 7 it seems ok, maybe it requires Flash 9 or something.

I'll try and reproduce these problems on a small subset of tracks later - with the number of problems I'm seeing I can't believe I'm the only one seeing them. B4 was a whole lot better for syncing.

btw. I am now using a clean install of RC1 (not upgraded from previous betas) and a freshly scanned database. doesn't seem to make any difference

[nynaevelan]

shotofadds,

I tested this time with a Zen Vision and couldn't reproduce _any_ of the problems you describe (btw, I can't seem to see your video either--is it only me?).

Before you switch back to B4, can you try to reproduce the problems you describe using a smaller subset of tracks, and send me a debug log that shows the problem? If there is an issue, we'd really like to fix it.

Thx.

-Rusty

Rusty:

Although my sync problems are not as extensive as Shotofadds, probably because I became disgusted and stopped trying to sync, my Zen Vision M60 is not able to sync either. Although with my problem, I never get to the part where it is actually trying to remove the old content as referred here:

http://www.mediamonkey.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=22050

Nyn

[shotofadds]

Ok, I've reproduced some of the above problems with a small subset of tracks (nb: any kind of tracks seem to trigger this, it's not specific to these files).

See log file and accompanying video (recorded with CamStudio) here:
http://www.shot-of-adds.co.uk/mm_sync1.zip

1. "Copying XX of YY" does not reflect the actual progress made.

See how quickly it counts upwards at the beginning of the sync, then stays at 12 - durnig which time about 7 tracks are copied. The green bar does appear to be correct, though.

2. "1 track to be tagged" popping up throughout the sync. What is this - why is MM altering any files when there should be no background operations running?

3. Tracks in the log file don't appear in order - the log starts off referring to Track 10... Is there some other processing going on that is not visible?

It looks like the problem where "removing old content" takes many minutes to remove a small number of tracks only appears when there are a large number of tracks on the player. For a speed comparison, I removed the entire contents of Music folder (~2700 tracks) using Explorer in about 30 seconds. Yesterday MM took over 4 minutes to remove 15 tracks.

On the plus side, album art was copied properly this time - and no tracks are re-sync'd if I quit and re-start MM. On the minus side, as I've both rebuilt my library and deleted all tracks from the player at different times over the last couple of days, I've lost the play counts for all my tracks

I will keep trying to reproduce the other problems (missing album art, error boxes etc).

[shotofadds]

The error box I captured occurs every time MM tries to sync a track that has the Read Only attribute set in Explorer.

[rusty]

Shotofadds,

Thanks. Jiri's going to check this out. I retested on various devices and still couldn't reproduce any of it. This would imply that:

a) it might be device-specific (doubtful)
b) it might be config-related (e.g. something specific on the device or in MM)
c) it might be that MM install is somehow corrupted (e.g. 2.5.x elements are being used because it's running or because they weren't overwritten correctly)

Jiri will look into the first two. Please re-verify that your install is truly clean.

Thx.

-Rusty

[shotofadds]

Thanks for looking into it. At present I have a working MM2.5 in Program Files\MediaMonkey, alongside RC1 in Program Files\MediaMonkey3. I uninstalled MM3 B4 and removed its Application Data folder before installing RC1, and I'm using a freshly-scanned database (not upgraded from 2.5).

MM2.5 hasn't been run for several weeks, although it didn't seem to affect Beta4. I will try uninstalling both MM2.5 and RC1 and starting from scratch sometime over the weekend.

One more thing I've noticed: the weird "Copying XX of YY" behaviour only seems to happen when doing a full Auto-Sync. If I send tracks to the player using Right Click, Send To it seems to display correctly (though the Read Only / "1 track to be tagged" problems still exist).

[shotofadds]

Hi rusty,

So far today I've tried the following procedure:

- Uninstall both RC1 and 2.5.5
- Rename My Music\MediaMonkey folder (keeping 2.5.5 backup)
- Rename Application Data\MediaMonkey folder (keeping RC1 backup)
- Reboot
- Delete Program Files\MediaMonkey and Program Files\MediaMonkey3
- Install RC1 (1098)

I then scanned a single folder of MP3s (one album, 13 tracks) and added that folder (by location) to the Auto-Sync list. I updated the Genre tag and performed an auto-update. At this stage I have not entered my Gold registration.

The result? The sync worked perfectly - the "Copying XX of YY" behaved as expected, there were no unexpected "1 track to be tagged" popping up; and most of all boy was it fast compared to before the re-install. I even made one of the files Read Only in explorer, which yesterday would have caused the error box above. This worked perfectly as well.

One thing I did notice, the recurring My Documents > Music > Music > Music > .... from another thread was still present, even after a full reinstall.

I will do some further testing - eg. reverting to my backed-up RC1 DB - and post here to let you know how it goes....

[shotofadds]

Some progress:

- Everything works well after a full re-scan
- Everything works well when using my old backed-up RC1 DB.

I entered my Gold registration and set up my usual Auto-Conversion rules:

1. Convert incompatible tracks to 192k CBR
2. Convert tracks with bitrate over 256k to 192k CBR
3. Level volume when syncronizing

It is the "level volume" option that causes the problems to appear: both the weird "Copying XX of YY" and "1 track to be tagged" behaviour, and also the error with Read Only tracks too.

Can this be fixed for RC2, pretty please

EDIT: Presumably, this doesn't have anything to do with the Vision:M....

[HeistMonkey]

Nice job shotofadds. Good info.

Some progress:

- Everything works well after a full re-scan
- Everything works well when using my old backed-up RC1 DB.

I entered my Gold registration and set up my usual Auto-Conversion rules:

1. Convert incompatible tracks to 192k CBR
2. Convert tracks with bitrate over 256k to 192k CBR
3. Level volume when syncronizing

It is the "level volume" option that causes the problems to appear: both the weird "Copying XX of YY" and "1 track to be tagged" behaviour, and also the error with Read Only tracks too.

Can this be fixed for RC2, pretty please

[shotofadds]

All these problems (the weird status bar behaviour, levelling read-only tracks on-the-fly, slow MTP deletions) seem to be fixed in RC2, thanks guys!

Syncing to the Vision:M is now speedy and happy again

[nynaevelan]

Are all your songs syncing during an autosync?? I ask because I am able to sync now but when I check the tracks that are in the playlists on the players 8 out of 10 of them are missing tracks.

Nyn