Newbie needs help

[sfosfan]

I replaced my iPod shuffle with a sansa clip zip and am having huge problems- I can't get playlists to work on the micro sd card.  I gave up trying to use iTunes to manage my music and playlists.  I was able to the VLC media player to put songs onto the clip and create playlists- this all worked fine, until I then put all 20GB's of music on the micro sd card.  I can listen to the songs, but I've not had any luck making and creating playlists. I am hoping to keep things simple- that is, now that all the music is on the card I want to manage it as easily as possible.  I have tried a bunch of music player utility programs and nothing is working.  Can someone offer some advice or point me in a direction like Rockbox for Dummies ?   

Thanks in advance,
sfosfan

[saratoga]

Playlists are just text files that list paths to individual music files.  If they don't work, its usually because the paths are wrong.

My random guess would be that you need to move the playlist files with the music files so that the paths are still correct.

[sfosfan]

That's what I don't quite get.  If the paths are incorrect, then why does the playlist work when I play the playlist with VLC?  It only doesn't work on the sansa clip zip.  The songs and the playlist are in the same folder on the sd card.  Sorry for the basic question, but this is quite frustrating and I can't find a resource that helps explain it. 

Maybe this will help.  In my playlist, I have this preceding the name of the song (The Human League, Don't Want Me):  /Volumes/SANSACARD/MUSIC/MyMusic/,

but in the playlist this precedes the name of the song:  #EXTINF:238,The Human League - Don't You Want Me
/Volumes/SANSACARD/MUSIC/MyMusic/

This is the part I don't understand: #EXTINF:238.  I get that in front of every song, and the number changes. 

[sfosfan]

The odd thing is that I go through the same process when using the clip zip memory and have no problems.  When I start trying to make playlists from music on the sd card, then I'm having problems.  Can't figure that one out.

[saratoga]

The odd thing is that I go through the same process when using the clip zip memory and have no problems.  When I start trying to make playlists from music on the sd card, then I'm having problems.  Can't figure that one out.

The SD card mounts in "/<microsd1>", whereas the internal memory is just "/", so thats probably part of it.  Recent versions of rockbox will automatically prepend the <microsd1> if the playlist is on the SD card and its ambiguous which disk you are referring to.  I forget the exact logic, but it may be that the way you've specified an absolute path (on the internal memory) overrides the microsd1 logic. 

[sfosfan]

The odd thing is that I go through the same process when using the clip zip memory and have no problems.  When I start trying to make playlists from music on the sd card, then I'm having problems.  Can't figure that one out.

The SD card mounts in "/<microsd1>", whereas the internal memory is just "/", so thats probably part of it.  Recent versions of rockbox will automatically prepend the <microsd1> if the playlist is on the SD card and its ambiguous which disk you are referring to.  I forget the exact logic, but it may be that the way you've specified an absolute path (on the internal memory) overrides the microsd1 logic.

That must be it.  Mine does not show <microsd1>.  But even so, the song and the playlist appear to have the same path.  I just reinstalled Rockbox and still have the same problem. I simply did the automatic install- please recommend what else I should try.

Here are the links to the song and playlist, and you'll see what I mean:

Song path:  file:///Volumes/SansaCard/MyMusic/Michael McDonald 2005-The Ultimate Collection/02-What A Fool Believes.mp3

Playlist path:  file:///Volumes/SansaCard/MyMusic/Chill.m3u

Thanks in advance!

[saratoga]

I think you are confusing the paths on your PC with the paths in rockbox.  When you mount your SD card in linux, its added to /Volumes, which is a directory on your PC.  There is no such directory on your player.