Hide Mp3s from Sansa Firmware?

[Speedy64i]

I was wondering if anybody knows of a way to hide the mp3's from the sansa firmware while still allowing rockbox to see them.  I'd like to use the rhapsody side just for rhapsody stuff and the rockbox side for my personal mp3's.

Thank you,

JT

[zajacattack]

Yes, it's quite simple. Put your player in MSC mode and connect it. Go to the root directory (e.g. E:\). You will see a hidden folder named MUSIC. Create your own folder named Audio or something and drag and drop all you music from the MUSIC folder to your folder. Now, only Rockbox can see the music.

Just a side note, why is this necessary?

[Speedy64i]

Thanks, I might be doing something wrong but no matter what directory i put the mp3s in the Sansa firmware finds it.  The 2 main reasons i would like to do this is so i can keep my rhapsody library seperate from my mp3 library (then i dont have to create a "My Library" playlist each time i add or remove a song to make finding new songs easier); the second being with the device full of mp3's the sansa's database refresh takes upwards of 10 minutes after every usb connection.  Without the mp3's it takes a matter of seconds.

Thanks,

JT

[zajacattack]

Are you making sure to remove them from the MUSIC folder? And, are you sure that you are in MSC mode?

[Llorean]

As far as I know the Sansa original firmware will find songs even if they're not in the MUSIC folder.

[Speedy64i]

I've tried switching between both PlaysForSure and Rhapsody mode and it find them no matter what i do.  yeah, they are removed from the MUSIC directory... tried moving them to Audio, Audio2 and so on, even putting them under the .rockbox directory.

I'm just hoping for a way to keep the original functionality of my rhapsody to go and all the channels, without having to wait 10 minutes after updating the device to use it.  It takes longer to refresh the database than to update the device  

[John Brown]

you're wasting your time the only way to do that is to either encode your mp3s to a format that the OF does not support or get a MicroHC card that only  rockbox can read

[zajacattack]

Sorry, I was mistaken. My fault.

[Speedy64i]

Ah! The rockbox firmware will read the high capacity cards but rhapsody wont?  Thanks, that might be an option.  If I were to rename the file extensions of all my mp3s to somethgin that rhapsody wont read but rockbox will, will i actually have to transcode the files or will rockbox figure out the correct file format?

[Chronon]

Renaming to a different extension doesn't actually change the file type so you won't have to transcode anything.  But, it seems like renaming a lot of files on the player would be a pain.

[Speedy64i]

I did a ren *.mp3 *.ogg and the files no longer show up in the sansa firmware (excellent) but they also no longer play in rockbox, (which i expected).  I guess the only way for me to make this work would be to have some savvy person write something into the rockbox code to make a fictitious extension like MPS be handled in the same way as a standard MP3.  Unless there is an extension that already does this?

[linuxstb]

Rockbox accepts mp1, mp2, mp3 and mpa as valid extensions for MPEG audio files (which includes MP3 files)...

[grossaffe]

if you have an encoder, you could encode the music into formats that rockbox supports and the sansa doesn't.

[Speedy64i]

I'd rather not re-encode my files if at all possible, i tried to rename them to MP1 but it doesnt playback all files properly when i do that.  Thanks for all the help so far.

**edit**

Renaming them to mpa seems to have the desired effect! thanks for the help everyone.  

the Rhapsody side refreshes it's database VERY fast and I can use the VASTLY superior rockbox side for my mp3's.

[zajacattack]

Excellent! Glad you figured it out!