How do I use bookmarks?

[swac]

I know this question sounds really stupid, but I can't figure out how to create bookmarks.  I listen to a lot of podcasts, so I can't live without my iPod remembering my positions in each podcast.  I've set Bookmarks to Yes in the settings and have tried to create a bookmark by holding select when a track is playing and selecting create new bookmark, but this doesn't seem to do anything.  What am I doing wrong?

Thanks in advance!

[Yotto]

Here's how I do bookmarks for my podcasts, and it works great for me:

Menu->Settings->General->Bookmarks->On Stop->Yes
Menu->Settings->General->Bookmarks->Load Last->Ask
Menu->Settings->General->Bookmarks->Recent->Unique Only

I have all my podcasts in one directory, and I "sync" to that directory all of my podcasts.  Rockbox, when you "play" one of the files in that directory, creates a dynamic playlist of all the files.  I listen, deleting podcasts as they get listened to, and when I'm ready to stop, I hold down "Play" (This is on an ipod, you may have a different way to stop playback) and a bookmark gets created without me having to think about it.  When I'm ready to start again, I hit "Menu", scroll to the top "Recent Bookmarks" and the last bookmarked podcast shows up there.  Also the last "music" I listened to from the big playlist of all mp3s on the player, and a couple other bookmarks of special playlists I've created.  Also, if I'm browsing and happen to be in the root folder, I'll sometimes go to the podcasts directory and hit select on a file. Because "Load Last" is set to "Ask", a list of all bookmarks I've ever made comes up.  I can choose to either play the file I selected, or scroll one down to the latest (or a couple more for previous, if that's necessary) bookmarks.

Bookmarks are love.  I almost never play a non-bookmark.

[bascule]

Bookmarks only work if you started playing from the File Browser (or playlist??). If you use the Database to commence music playback, bookmarks will not work.

EDIT: The manual is not very explicit on that point, however...

[riksweeney]

I don't understand, what's the difference between this and resume playback?

Do bookmarks essentially allow you to resume playback for different files?

[bascule]

Do bookmarks essentially allow you to resume playback for different files?

If you want to look at it like that, yes. A bookmark is a per-folder resume point.

So if you have a folder of audiobooks, listen to a bit of one, set a bookmark, then move onto listening to some music, the bookmark allows you to resume the audiobook at the same point when you listen to it again.

[tycho1974]

Bookmarks only work if you started playing from the File Browser (or playlist??). If you use the Database to commence music playback, bookmarks will not work.

EDIT: The manual is not very explicit on that point, however...

Okay, so this made a lot of sense to me as to why my bookmarks aren't working.  (I have a Sansa e260.) So I created a playlist, then viewed it, then saved it as whatever.m3u8; the problem is, I can't find the playlist. Well, not logically. In the same Playlist menu, when I click "View Catalog", it tells me that there are no playlists. But when I browse the files and find the whatever.m3u8 file, I can click that, and my playlist begins, and then the bookmarks work. Any specific reason for this?

[bascule]

Yes, the Playlist Catalog is a specific directory on  the disk (/Playlists by default). If you had saved your whatever.m3u8 to /Playlists/whatever.m3u8, you would have found it by browsing the Catalog.

Unfortunately, this is made less obvious on the Sansa, because the Original Firmware has a default and hidden directory called /PLAYLISTS that is (re)created every time you start the OF to charge or USB connect.

As it's hidden, it is only visible in the Rockbox file browser by changing the File View setting to 'All'. If you want to make the Catalog more visible, it can be done by changing the directory that is used for the Catalog to a different one by amending the configuration file /.rockbox.config.cfg

The way to make a Catalog playlist from a dynamic Database selection is as follows:

Go to Database, choose and start playing music
From the WPS, bring up the context menu (long Select)
Select Playlist
Select Save Current Playlist
Append the path /Playlist to the beginning of the playlist name in the virtual keyboard and save as normal.

Unfortunately, the manual is a bit unclear about all of this, but I'm trying to put some work into that. Additionally, there seems to be some appetite amongst the devs to consolidate the playlist management. This may take some time to bring to fruition, however.

[tycho1974]

Wow, totally awesome answer. I can see that database and playlist management are more complicated than I had thought, and the curveball of the Sansa's little quirk makes that a little more difficult. Thanks for the heads-up, I appreciate it.

[Bob_Taylor]

What key do you push to save the playlist? (e200) I have tried them all and none saves it. My thumbs are worn out and my eyes ache from negotiating that little keyboard and I lose the file every time. The manual seems to think that it is intuitive.

[AlexP]

Search the manual for "Virtual Keyboard", and see what button it says is save or accept for your target.

[Chronon]

If you wish to save the current dynamic playlist to the playlist catalog then you can also directly choose Playlist Catalog from the WPS context menu.  This brings you to the options View Catalog, Add to Playlist and Add to New Playlist.  If you choose Add to Playlist then you will be presented with the virtual keyboard and an initial path of /Playlists/ -- from here you can give the playlist any name you like and it will automatically be given an m3u8 extension.  The Add to Playlist option allows you to append the current playlist to the end of a playlist that has been previously saved to the playlist catalog.