Running Ubuntu 11.10 and Banshee - Rockbox compatibility?

[callmebruce]

I'm running Ubuntu 11.10 and Banshee. Have a nice library of some 1200 songs in MP3 format (only MP3 format). I use a Motorola Karma QA1 phone as my MP3 player, and it synchs just fine. (I had to set up an .is_audio_player file for the phone, and connect it as Mass Storage). However, Playlists don't work at all, and it's an odd experience going from Classic to Surf to Rock to Folk in a random order.

So - considering buying an MP3 player (thinking Sansa Fuze + or Sansa Clip + - but open to suggestions). Just needs to have at least 8 Gigs of storage. More would be better. Would be cool if it played video (I downloaded some Film Noir classic from the 40's and early 50's off the Internet Archive and reformatted into 3GP 320x240 format - and kinda enjoy watching old films while hanging out).

So: how is Rockbox and Banshee integration? Would I need to make an .is_audio_player file to make Ubuntu and Banshee see and synch to the MP3 player? Is it easy to transfer playlists from Banshee to an MP3 player and recognize it under Rockbox?

Any gotcha's in loading firmware from Ubuntu? Or just drag 'n drop? Any gotcha's in synching between Banshee and a Rockbox'd MP3 player? Video support okay? I'm thinking Sansa Fuze + or Sansa Clip + - are there other recommendations in the appr. 100 bucks or less range? Especially something that works well with external speakers (I have an old '65 Rambler American with no audio of any sort - so might use MP3 player for tunes if simple enough to manage)

[Falco98]

I don't know about Banshee but most people who use Rockboxed players do so by simply copying their mp3 (and other) files straight onto the player like an external drive.  Some people (i guess) use Itunes to synch to their players, and then use Rockbox's built-in DB program to see and play the files.  The answer to your question completely depends on what Banshee does when it "synchs", whether it copies the files over straight or renames/reorganizes them in its own way.

[callmebruce]

Thank you for answering. I reread my post, and immediately looked for a delete button! I'll read the manual on Playlist support and the db.

[Falco98]

No need to delete, really - I as well as others would be happy to answer any questions you may have about Rockbox's playlist system.  You would do well, of course, to browse the manual(s) first, but if you'd like to ask me for any clarifications then certainly feel free - Rockbox's dynamic playlist system is powerful and can be used in various ways in different combinations, but the side-effect can be that it's hard to understand at first.

[callmebruce]

Reading the manual, especially the sections on Playlists and the Database solved my problems with the MP3 player on my phone! That should be required reading for everyone wanting to stream music files in anything other than an entirely random order.

Reading the manual helped me understand tagging. The reason I had 1200 songs with over 1100 "Unknown" is that my tags were missing or messed up. I used EasyTag to go through my MP3's. It got the list of Unknown songs down to 364, assigning artist and album successfully to a large percentage of my MP3s. I then used MusicBrainz Picard to get my list of Unknown songs down to a little over 100. Now my MP3 player on my phone displays and plays songs by Artist and by Album! (got to play Chet Atkins last night!)

I saw that Genre worked for a few of my songs, so took a closer look at the Genre tag. Yep - it was blank for over 1100 songs. I tried automatically updating Genre using Picard, but the Genre tags are really strange (as in - What? Wanda Jackson is Rockabilly! What's that tag doing there?). Now I'm manually tagging the Genre field, I just do not like the automatic tagging of Genre.

All that is to say that anyone else reading this - if you think there is a problem with your player (even your Rockbox player) as it does not show Album, Artist and Genre correctly - first look at your music files. Perhaps they are tagged incorrectly. I was hoping Rockbox would solve a problem for me - but the problem was in how I ripped and stored my CD's and how I converted them from OGG to MP3 format.

Now I can go back to reading about Rockbox. My phone will do just fine - but it also has a digital camera, and I use a dedicated camera as it takes better pictures. It has a video camera, but I use a little Kodak Zi10 as that does a better job with video, especially with a little Sony mic attached. So my camera can play MP3s - but I'm thinking a dedicated MP3 player might do a much better job of it, and I'll have a better chance of successfully playing songs by Artist, Album, Genre (based on a corrected database) and Playlist!