Help Galaxy S media players not finding files

[jmcshopes]

Hey Everyone,

Been looking around on the Android Forums for a while and not been able to find a similar problem; was hoping someone out there could help.

Simply put, the Music Players in my Galaxy S won't find most of the music files that I've loaded onto the Internal SD Card. It doesn't seem to be related to the file types; both the files it has found and those it hasn't contain a mix of mp3s and m4as.

If I bring them up manually in file manager, the files will play in all three of the music players I have installed (Winamp, DoubleTwist and default Music Player), but the artists do not appear up in the artist list of the player (same for albums etc...). I can only play most of the tracks one at a time, by selecting them in their folder.

I've loaded the files onto the Galaxy S by syncing; first with Winamp, then with DoubleTwist, as I wanted to use the iTunes playlist I used to use for my iPod. Oddly, I had the same problem of the players not finding certain artists, but it was different artists for the two syncs. Syncing with Winamp gave abut 1/10 of the artists, whereas syncing with DoubleTwist has put 12 songs (out of over a thousand) into the media players.

Most of my problem is that I'm completely new to the Android format; I don't even know where to start. I can't seem to find a function in any of the players that will scan the phone for music, as you get on a PC. Is there a similar, central function on the Galaxy S?

Hope someone can help. Thank you in advance!

Jack

 

[Nevy P]

Hello jmcshopes !!

I am not too sure about 'syncing and playlist' problem but getting audio files onto your phone is pretty easy.

It is probable that the Itunes playlists etc are causing the issues that you have - but you can create playlists from the phones music player instead!

Kies is a waste of time for transferring files to your phone - it is better just to move them 'manually' by setting the phone to Mass Storage Device

So you could try the following:

Depending on your Android version go to settings - about phone - usb settings OR settings - wireless and network - usb settings and change it from Kies to Mass Storage Device.
Connect your phone to your pc and it will install the drivers (if Kies fires up just exit it)

You may need to pull down the notification screen and press 'mount'

Then go to My Computer and the sd card will show up as a drive ( like a memory stick or camera)

Open the drive and you will see your audio files etc.

For test purposes delete all the audio files and playlists etc

Then create a folder called 'Sounds' (capital S)

Copy some audio files (pref MP3) from your pc to this folder (but not M3U or playlists as i think this is causing the problem)
You may has problems with music from bought Itunes as Apple have them locked so they only work on Ipods Iphones etc - so just try standard MP3s.
If you have albums in folders just copy the files from inside the folder - as MP3 players only use the tagging information to arrange the albums.

Make sure you eject the drive from your pc - safely remove hardware or turn off usb from phone screen or you may damage the sd card.

The phone will then scan for files

If this works OK then just repeat for more music and create playlists using Music Player

Hope this helps

Report back with your findings

Cheers

Nevy P

p.s the scanning only applies to the stock music player!

There should be a function in the other players to do this but i am not famliar with these Apps

 

[jmcshopes]

Thanks Nevy,

Yeah, adding the files manually worked fine, but was a bit of a pain (for instance, if I wanted to add just a few songs by a certain artist, I had to set up equivalent folders on the android and select; all a bit messy).

My microSD card arrived today. Having loaded all the files that I'd synced onto that, the audio players seem to have no problem finding them. Have added more files to the playlist on the laptop and synced them since. Has worked absolutely fine.

Seems that the audio players only automatically scan the external SD card for tracks or something. Probably to keep application sounds from turning up in the music players (bit of a hack fix, if you ask me, but then I'm not able to design an Android platform music player, so I guess I can't criticize).

Thanks for your help in the mean time, Nevy.
If anyone does know a general fix for those who don't have external SDs, I'm sure it would be appreciated by those who have this problem in the future.

Jack

 

[Nevy P]

Glad that i could help you somewhat !!

I am a bit confused about about your internal sd card versus external sd card issues.
When the phone is in mass storage mode (usb settings) both sd cards should display as drives and you can manually copy files to both.
The internal card also contains Android folders but you can also add a 'Sounds' folder or other of you own folders with no problems.
On restart the phone should scan both drives for media files.
I have 24gb of storage 8gb int. and 16gb ext. mainly used for music all of which are MP3's which are fully tagged and all of the files are in just the one 'Sounds' folder - if your files are tagged with artist, album , genre etc the phone will group them correctly (without using other folders)
The 'Sounds' folder should be used for music as if you used Kies it would create this folder as default.
I dont think the phone is too bothered about photos and videos being in a specific folder but again i use 'Videos' and 'Images' for these type of files so they are easy to indentify when making changes!

If you manually copy photos create a folder with a useful name i.e 'Our Holiday' etc and copy your photos to it and then copy that to the 'Images' folder - that way all of your pics will be grouped in 'categories' when viewed in the the Gallery.

Cheers

Nevy P

 

[Gluske]

Question: do you use the official twitter app? (or have it?)

 

[jmcshopes]

Sorry Nevy, I wasn't clear on the SD front. Both internal and external drives function fine and can have files copied to/from/edited etc when the phone is mounted by USB. For some reason, media players won't find tracks if they're stored on the internal SD, but will if they're on the external. This only applied to tracks that had been synced, i.e. copied to the device automatically via music management software. I've changed the software's settings to create a file on the external SD and it all works fine.

Gluske, no I don't use the Twitter App. Have users been experiencing similar problems?

Jack

 

[Aatos.1]

Both internal and external drives function fine and can have files copied to/from/edited etc when the phone is mounted by USB.

This is one of my favorite features of Android, due to the fact that I have a certain subset of files I must have with me at all times due to my work commitments. As a result instead of having to carry another media like a flash drive I can simply put them on my phone. It's a great benefit for me.

 

[Gluske]

Sorry Nevy, I wasn't clear on the SD front. Both internal and external drives function fine and can have files copied to/from/edited etc when the phone is mounted by USB. For some reason, media players won't find tracks if they're stored on the internal SD, but will if they're on the external. This only applied to tracks that had been synced, i.e. copied to the device automatically via music management software. I've changed the software's settings to create a file on the external SD and it all works fine.

Gluske, no I don't use the Twitter App. Have users been experiencing similar problems?

Jack

You might be experiencing a different problem. Can you still play videos? or other media without issue? There's a common SGS bug currently associated with the twitter app where all media files fail to play :S