Why can't RockBox play my music files, as it used to do?

[martybarol]

I had lots of FLAC, MP3, and WMA files on my all sorts of files on my iRiver H10 20GB, playing under RockBox. In May I, with difficulty, installed the current build of RockBox, but in the process deleted all the files from the H10's drive. No problem; they were still on my computer's big external hard disk. But now I cannot get most of them to play on the H10.
   When I attach the H10 to the computer, the computer sees all of the music files on the H10 AND CAN PLAY THEM. But RockBox sees only a small fraction, and plays only a small fraction of those.
   It SUCCEEDS IN PLAYING a newly ripped file, plus any music that did not come from a commercial CD, plus SOME of the files from commercial CDs. And if I start SOME albums on the H10 it skips from track to track in the directory and then bounces back to the album's track list, or plays the first playable track whose name starts with the same letter, or -- well that is about all of the permutations.
   I figure it must be the ID tagging, since any of the Windows audio players read and play the audio tracks from the H10 just fine. And some of my Windows software may have modified the tags since the files were first placed on the H10.
Any ideas? Do I have to rip all this music all over again?

[saratoga]

What happens when it fails to play a file?

[martybarol]

Many thanks for your reply. When it fails to play a file it does one of three things:
1. It shows the WPS screen for the track but does not play it;
2. On the WPS screen it flips through all the track titles in the album and then goes back to the list of tracks on that album; or
3. Instead of playing the selected track it flashes the titles of some others but then plays the next functioning track whose title begins with the same first letter.
I know the problem is in tagging, because when I hook up the H10 to my computer, Windows Explorer (for example) sees all of the files and any mp3-type software (MediaMonkey, winamp, what have you) plays them just fine, whatever the codec (MP3, Flac, WMA).

[Lear]

That doesn't necessarily mean it is the tagging... Next step is to note the format of some of the files that doesn't play, and see if any pattern emerges. Or did you mean that you have already done that, and the failing files include all three formats you mentioned?

[martybarol]

Correct. Some mp3s work fine, some flac, and some wma. I am sorely tempted at this stage to copy all my music files to a new directory on the big external disk, try to strip out the tags en masse, and then put those on the player, and see what happens. that might tell me whether it is just faulty tags, in which case I could try to tag them better. pain in the neck. but thanks for your interest.

[Lear]

Or just test a few tracks first. But if that has any effect, I, or someone else, would be interested in taking a look at problematic files/tags. Correct tagging shouldn't prevent playback...

For WMA, there are other possibilities, like unsupported version (WMA Pro) or DRM, but it doesn't sound like the case here.

[martybarol]

Well, stripping out the tags didn't work, and neither did some other tag massaging I tried as an inexperienced tagger with mp3Tag and MediaMonkey. I guess I will just re-rip some of the disks. But I wont't delete the old tracks from the big hard drive -- just in case someone has a good idea about all of this. Thanks for your efforts, folks.

[gevaerts]

Have you tried checking the filesystem?