Playlist Management and Bi-Directional Sync?

[Mangraa]

Forgive me if this is either a very obvious solution or if it has already been discussed (and hopefully resolved). Brain is fried, I've been going mad with this running in circles and whatnot. Here's the situation:

I have a large MP3 library on my PC.
I have a Nexus One, NOT ROOTED.
I have no problem getting music ONTO the device.
I'm still figuring out the nooks and crannies of how Media Monkey deals with playlists, but I have a feeling my question may shed some light on that.
I DO NOT USE iTUNES. I hate that piece of crap.

So here's the question: I'm the kind of guy who will get a mix CD in MP3 form, or just try out an entire album. I hardly ever sit at home and listen to MP3s, much less for the purpose of going through and saying "I like this track" etc. Instead, I put the whole thing onto the N1, I create a playlist, and as songs play on the device, I will sometimes delete them outright or add them to a "Favourites" playlist.

That's fine and dandy, except it would be nice to be able to edit the playlist which is stored on the N1 through a music manager like Media Monkey, Winamp, etc. I want to be able to quickly and easily look at what songs I have added to the N1 Favs playlist over the last couple of days, maybe add some stuff from my library that I remembered I want, etc.

The issue I am having is... well, I can't do that. I'm not sure what's going on, but I would have thought simply plugging in the N1, seeing the playlists stored as M3U files in a directory and editing them would be fine. But it's not. Half the time the playlists on the device are blank, or they're missing the files I manually added on the N1. Media Monkey has like a "master playlist" menu tree, including "imported m3u files" Once again, many times I've created playlists with stuff in it for the purpose of testing, only to find that when I look at it under the imported tab, it's empty.

I recently completely erased all my music on the N1 and have been re-installing it through Media Monkey in order to preserve any tracking of file locations and stuff. I'm oldschool, I like just dropping folders in and stuff, it's faster blablabla. But after awhile, I realized it'd be nice to back up my favs list etc. So I kinda gave in.

So that's what's up. I add things to a playlist on the n1, doesn't show up on the computer.

OH! Another question before I go: When creating a new playlist on the N1 in media player, where does it store this file? Am I right in thinking somewhere on the main storage area which is inaccessible unless I root the device? And if I did root it, would all of these snafus clear up tout suite?

Thanks for your time. Love the N1. LOOOOOOOOOVE!

 

[xanatos451]

Bump. Not sure if anyone's found a decent solution to this yet. I hear MM is coming out with bidirectional in the future, but it sounds like that could be a ways off. I've found music apps that let me edit the ratings and playlists on the device, but of course that is a real pain to sync when you edit files on the PC and the device.

Hope a savvy dev out there can flesh something out soon. I always tout how much I love my new EVO but I do have to admit that the iPhone platform does still have a much better solution in terms of syncing. Totally agree with you on the iTunes bit though. Biggest POS I've used as a music player. It's slow and it never writes the changes back to the file or save the album art with the files (or in the tags). I can't tell you how many times it screwed up my library or lost my ratings/album art. Oh wait, yes I can. Twice. After the second time I kicked it to the curb and used MM to sync my iPhone.

I've got the syncing working fairly well in MediaMonkey but I so long for the day when bidirectional is supported. Well that and actually being able to lock it down to a specific path. MM unfortunately scans every folder from the root of my SD card so all my ringtones or downloads are included in the remove from device group. I know you can setup exclusions but it's a real PITA when you have multiple directories or move stuff around. Honestly I'd call that a bug if it were me. Suffice it to say, still way better than most I've used (even though it does crash frequently).

 

[Winfield]

I'm having a similar issue. I have an HTC Incredible and I'd like to sync two ways with MM, but I can't figure out how. iSyncr works well with iTunes/Droid - two way synching, but I don't want to use iTunes!

I'm open to trying out new PC music management software or a new syncing app, but I'm really struggling to figure this all out.

 

[poppagai]

Yes, I am right there with all of you. I feel like I have hit a wall with this one and as I am not a developer will have to wait for a fix. The big problem... playlists... they (in my opinion) are not supported in andriod. Ouch! How could they make such a tragic mistake? Warning to all of you making playlists on your phones right now... there is no way to get that playlist back onto your laptop or desktop pc.

MediaMonkey makes great m3u playlists... send them over to the android... make some additions or subtractions via any media player on the android via meridian, mixzing, twist whatever, etc and then send that m3u playlist back to Mediamonkey on the PC and none of the changes are there.

Good luck finding the actual playlists on the android... they are buried deep.

I am not a computer expert... if anyone has any tips on how to create or edit ANY kind of playlist on an android phone and then have that playlist work in a media player on the laptop please let me know, this is getting ridiculous.

There must be a way without using iSync and iTunes. Thanks.

 

[gloopylewdies]

Hopeful bump. I've recently purchased a motorola atrix and I've been suffering the awful playlist management (non-existant would be better) android has.

I thought I got it covered manually creating .m3u files for the music folders and files I copied to the memory, but I hit a major wall when it started to show me duplicate playists. Now I've got 500+ playlists, 1 for each folder and about three more empty duplicates. And the only way to erase them is go through them and deleting them one by one.

I came across a non official app that would delete the duplicates, but it crashes, and does no work...
So, any info about this? thanks.

 

[Scott76]

I'm having this issue also. I recently witched from an Iphone to an Atrix, and the music managment is driving me nuts.

All I want to be able to do is be able to rate a song when listening on the player, and then have the rating show up on the PC when I sync, so that I can delete the songs that I want from specific playlists so they don't keep getting re-added everytime I sync.

Is there a player out there that will transfer the ratings from the player, back to the PC playlist?

Or is there another way to accomplish what I am trying to do?

I am taking advantage of the Atirx's 32g SD card and have added over 3000 songs to it, but there's at least 500 there that will likely get trimmed out as time goes by.

 

[alostpacket]

Yes, I am right there with all of you. I feel like I have hit a wall with this one and as I am not a developer will have to wait for a fix. The big problem... playlists... they (in my opinion) are not supported in andriod. Ouch! How could they make such a tragic mistake? Warning to all of you making playlists on your phones right now... there is no way to get that playlist back onto your laptop or desktop pc.

MediaMonkey makes great m3u playlists... send them over to the android... make some additions or subtractions via any media player on the android via meridian, mixzing, twist whatever, etc and then send that m3u playlist back to Mediamonkey on the PC and none of the changes are there.

Good luck finding the actual playlists on the android... they are buried deep.

I am not a computer expert... if anyone has any tips on how to create or edit ANY kind of playlist on an android phone and then have that playlist work in a media player on the laptop please let me know, this is getting ridiculous.

There must be a way without using iSync and iTunes. Thanks.

My app BlueMuze (link in sig)will let you export the playlist to the SD card. However they will be based on the Android file system.

So the paths in the file are like this:

/mnt/sdcard/music/mysong.mp3


Whereas on Windows it is (something like)

C:\\My Documents\mysong.mp3


There is a post around here somewhere where a user of BlueMuze explains a script he setup to convert from one type of file path to the other.

I'll see if I can find it. Anyways just a note too: the playlist export is a beta feature in my app.

Hope that helps, (I don't mean to be too promotional but it sounds similar to what you're looking for).


As for the rest of the ideas in this thread they have caught my interest as possible features to come in the future. If I ever add them I will try and remember to post back here.