Playlists doubled using auto-sync

[Richard Leonard]

When last using auto-sync on my Samsung Galaxy S3, some of my playlists were doubled up: each track in the playlist form MM Windows (MMW) is on the S3 playlist in MM Android (MMA) twice. This happened for some but not all of the playlists.

I am a lifetime Gold user of MMW. Current hard/soft configuration is:
PC running Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit and MMW v 4.1.1.1703
Samsung Galaxy S3 with a 32 GB external card running Android v 4.3 and MMA Pro (Beta) v 1.01.0240

I auto sync using a wired usb connection and have put my music collection on the external card. When connected via usb the S3 shows up in Windows Explorer as 2 nodes Card & phone. When I first connected the S3 via the usb cable MMW found the S3 and showed the same 2 nodes in the Portable Device Sync section of Options.

I use a simple system for my tracks: all are mp3, all are in a single folder on my PC with no sub-folders, all tracks have a unique name (no 2 share the same name). I am diligent in coding in tags (metadata) when I add mp3 tracks to my collection

I started using MMA about a month and a half ago. I have observed a number of issues, but nothing too serious. This is the 4th time I have auto-synced and I think the 1st time some of the playlists have been doubled which is not disastrous but certainly serious enough to warrant investigation.

I searched the forum on Galaxy S3 and doubled playlists but found no discussion.

Any one have a idea on this?

Richard

[Lowlander]

Are the files twice on the phone too?

[Richard Leonard]

They appear twice only on the phone's playlists. They do not appear twice elsewhere on the phone, say, under Artists or Tracks, only in certain but not all playlists.

Everything in ok on the PC in MM Windows

[Lowlander]

I'd suggest removing the Playlists on the device and then resyncing. If after a second resync you see doubling again it's time for a debug log.

[Richard Leonard]

Ok Lowlander, thanks for your input.

I'll zap the current playlists, re-auto-sync later today, and revert to this post when I have the results.

Richard

[Richard Leonard]

Well after searching high and low on my Galaxy S3 in MMA I could not find any way to remove the playlists in MMA on the Galaxy. I known how to find where playlists are stored on MMW on my desktop PC (in the data base under users, AppData, Roaming, MediaMonkey) but could not find where they are in MMA.

I have configured MMA in Options under "Choose library folders" to use External storage. But when from the main menu I look in Folders, External storage it shows the playlists folder as empty (same thing if I look at the playlists folder in Internal storage). Yet the playlists show up in "Playlists" icon on the Main Menu of MMA and if I choose a playlist from there I can play the tracks in it. Quite bewildering.

Not seeing any other option to remove playlists from MMA, I formatted the external SD card. All my tracks of course disappeared form the Galaxy, but when I opened MMA the playlists where still listed under the Playlist icon button in the main menu. Also all tracks were still listed under the "Artists", "Tracks" & "Genres" icon buttons, but no tracks were physically present on the Galaxy so none could be played. So the MMA playlists were still there somewhere. Where? And how to remove them?

I then went on to use MMW to copy all my tracks from my desktop PC to the Galaxy which got done. I then tried an auto-sync to see if I could get correct playlists on the Galaxy, but the same doubled playlists were still there and to boot a few of the other playlists which had previously been correct now were missing some tracks.

A bug?

Best regards,
Richard

[Lowlander]

Long press on any item in MMA including Playlists to expose menus, then select the trash can to remove the item.

[Richard Leonard]

Dear Lowlander,

Took a little bit of time over the Easter weekend to to run some trials to try and get things clear.

When I 1st used MMA I found an issue which I didn't think of much consequence. I'm a MMW user for, I don't know exactly, but probably 10 years +. For me it has been a program at the very top of the cost/quality ratio range, and I have always been extremely satisfied. I've always found it very easy to use and stable. To suit my own needs and taste, over the years I have created 10 Genres, one of which I named "Classical". I didn't know what MM "Types" were, didn't use them, didn't need them since I use MMW exclusively for my mp3 collection to the exclusion of other media files (no podcasts, videos, etc).

I only became aware of types when I used MMA for the first time and saw an icon for "Classical Music". I further found that my tracks tagged with my Genre "Classical" on MMW were divided into 2 on the Galaxy in MMA: some in the Classical Genre and some in the Classical Music Type. I had never activated the Classical Music type in the media tree on MMW, but clearly the 2 coexist quite happily in MMW (always exactly the same tracks in both nodes on the media tree). But this was not the case in MMA.

So I though best, using the properties window in MMW, to manually set all tracks in my Classical Genre to the "Classical Music" type in the hope that I would find all of them on MMA both in the Genre Classical and in the Type Classical Music.

I now wonder if this clash between my genre classical and the type classical music might be at issue with my sync problems.

As per your instructions I used long press to delete all my playlists. Given all the ups and downs on the last days, I though best to try and start from a clean slate, so I used Applications manager to clear all data from MMA beta and MMA Pro and then formatted the external card on the Galaxy.

1st I used sync in MMW to simply copy all 2,642 tracks on the HD of my PC to the Galaxy (the status bar in MMW showed this total as it copied). After sync the MMA folder icon showed 2,030 files as Music and 612 as Classical Music for the correct total of 2,642 tracks. At this time I had no playlists nor genres on MMA.

I then did a 2nd auto-sync for the playlists, genres, etc. In the status bar is said copying 590 tracks even though all tracks had already been copied. After this auto-sync the playlists were there but all of them were empty. So I re-ran auto-sync and it said copying 143 tracks. At the end the playlists were then populated with the correct number of tracks, but the total count of tracks was wrong. The folder icon showed 2,116 music tracks (86 too many) and the correct number (612) of Classical for a total of 2,728 tracks (86 too many).

To run a further test I then ripped and added 3 new tracks which I tagged as Genre=Classical and Type=Classical Music. Then auto-synced once again. Result: folder icon showed 2,116 music and 615 classical (612+3 as wanted) for a total of 2,731 (2,728 +3). Then I deleted the 3 new tracks for MMW and re-auto-synced. Folder icon showed 2,116 music and 615 classical music for a total of 2,731. So after deletion auto-sync did not correct for the deletions and the total stayed 86 over the true count. Moreover the Classical Music icon shows 701 tracks whereas in MMW there are only 612.

Could there be an issue with tags being used differently in MMW and MMA? Did my naming a genre "Classical" in MMW cause the problem? Did I use the wrong procedure after clearing all in MMA?

Best regards,
Richard

[Lowlander]

I think it's best to capture the sync as you're describing them in a debug log (step 4b) and send log to support: http://www.mediamonkey.com/forum/viewto ... ?f=21&t=69

As far as Type goes, Type determines in both MMA and MMW where you see the files. In MMA this isn't user customizable, so Type = Classical Music will only show in Classical music. In MMW this is user customizable. On a clean install of MediaMonkey 4.1.1 you should see Type = Classical Music in both Music and Classical Music Collections (not the case for those who upgrade to 4.0 from 3.x).

[Richard Leonard]

Ok Lowlander, I'll follow the instruction in the referenced topic and send in a bug report.

As I mentioned I am a long term user of MMW, so the v 4.1.1 I'm now running is the result of many upgrades one on top of the preceding versions certainly back to v 3.x at keast. So I'll first do a compete uninstall MMW and do a clean install of 4.1.1.

Thanks for your assistance.

Richard

[Lowlander]

No need to do a clean install. If you're a Gold user you can change Collections yourself under File > Manage Collections. Just add Type = Classical Music to the Music Collection if you want to see Classical Music in it. Note, this doesn't change anything in MMA.

[Richard Leonard]

Dear Lowlander,

Thanks for your tip. But when I went to Media Tree to have a look at the Music node it had type set by default to equal to Music, Classical Music and Music Video. So I left matters like that. This whole issue of the Type "Classical Music" is still a bit of a mystery to me. It appears that I'm best off manually making sure that when I add a track in MMW that I want to tag with my genre "Classical" I should verify that it's type is set to "Classical Music". On MMW my genre "Classical" and the node "Classical Music" coincide happily whether I set the type to Music or Classical Music, but if I set the type to Music and the genre to Classical, MMA gets confused. Not a big deal to do that if all else goes well since I always clean all tags before adding tracks to MMW and then use MMW to enter all tags.

This was after I did a clean install of 4.1.1. I preferred to do that just to eliminate any possible lingering gremlins from multiple upgrades. I used Revo Uninstaller Pro to uninstall the existing install of MMW v 4.1.1. Revo allows not only for uninstall but also allows cleaning out the registry.

Having done that and having done a clean install and reconfiguration of MMW v 4.1.1, clearing all data from MMA and formatting the external card on the Galaxy S3, I then did a wired (usb) auto-sync from MMW of the whole set of (2,642) tracks.

At first it looked like the old problems were still there but in the end that proved not to be the case. Auto-sync finished about bed time. When I looked at MMA immediately after the auto-sync finished MMA was not showing a successful job (missing tracks, no playlists, etc). So I left it as it was. The next day, MMA was showing a successfully completed job. Apparently, on a first time sync of a relatively large collection (2,642 tracjs) it is necessary to give a substantial amount of time to MMA on the Galaxy S3 to finish the job. On previous trials since I was attempting to go though the processing of clearing all out and redoing the whole thing I was not waiting a substantial amount of time for the sync to work its job through. In the past when I synced MMA with my Creative Zen mp3 player things happened very quickly so that is what I was expecting here. Is this just down to the way the Galaxy S3 and/or MMA need to handle multi-tasking given the CPU and internal memory?

Anyway, the Sysinternals dbgview.exe did not pick up any info on the process of syncing so I have no debug log to transmit.

The following day, as a trial I added two 2 tracks which I had cleared of all tags (using MP3Tag). Then in MMW I tagged them as genre = Classical leaving Type = Music and then reran a wired auto-sync.

They were correctly added in MMA The only anomaly was that the MMA genre "Classical" indicated 3 tracks even though only the 2 test tracks were listed and they were not listed under Classical Music.

I then deleted the 2 test tracks in MMW and reran a wired auto-sync. However, they were not deleted in MMA so I had to delete them manually from MMA.

My strategy is to manage my mp3 music collection exclusively from MMW. I never add, delete or modify tracks on the Galaxy. Also is it rare that I delete tracks in MMW. So this is a minor inconvenience for me as matters stand, at least if in the future when I add tracks to MMW they sync correctly to MMA

Thanks for your help and suggestions. I'll restart my regular weekly routine of adding a few new tracks this coming week. If all goes well I'll not come back to you on this issue.

Best regards,
Richard

[Lowlander]

Anyway, the Sysinternals dbgview.exe did not pick up any info on the process of syncing so I have no debug log to transmit.

Sounds like you didn't install the debug version of MediaMonkey (if you did you may need to run DBGView as Administrator).

The following day, as a trial I added two 2 tracks which I had cleared of all tags (using MP3Tag). Then in MMW I tagged them as genre = Classical leaving Type = Music and then reran a wired auto-sync. They were correctly added in MMA The only anomaly was that the MMA genre "Classical" indicated 3 tracks even though only the 2 test tracks were listed and they were not listed under Classical Music.

I wouldn't expect them to as Type = Classical Music is the rule to see files under Classical in MMA (as far as I know).

I then deleted the 2 test tracks in MMW and reran a wired auto-sync. However, they were not deleted in MMA so I had to delete them manually from MMA.

Only if you set it to delete all media files on sync list in the Device Profile in MMW will it remove files from the device that are no longer in MMW.

[Richard Leonard]

No I didn't install the debug version of MM, I followed the instructions in paragraph 4 b) of the post you pointed me to (viewtopic.php?f=21&t=69) which says to use the debug tool of sysinternals. The debug tool did register activity when I used my browser before and after so I think it was functioning Next time I run a trial, I'll try again. But I'm thinking that having done a clean install, since things went basically well (except deletions not being reflected in the sync results and the questions around "Type"), there were no bugs to find this time around.

Concerning deletions not being reflected in the auto-sync after deleting the 2 tracks from MMW, the only option for deletion during sync in the configuration of the Device Profile for my Samsung S3 card is the option "Delete other files and playlists in the device" under the "Auto-Sync (-> Device) tab" which I had activated prior to sync and deleting. However, I now see that the accompanying drop list was left set to the default value, "Unselected library files", and not to "All other media file". So maybe I need to use that later setting. I'll give it a try.

Thanks for your help.

Richard

[Lowlander]

I now see that the accompanying drop list was left set to the default value, "Unselected library files", and not to "All other media file". So maybe I need to use that later setting. I'll give it a try.

Yes, as the files are deleted, they're no longer library files.