Syncing with Palm Pre?

[RandomEngy]

The Palm Pre came out recently. How does syncing to it work? Does it sync ratings and playlists correctly?

[palmcrash]

Clicking on the toolbar icon for the device/drive does not do anything (tried both Media Sync and USB Drive modes), but right-clicking on the left-pane device list and selecting auto-sync worked. Clicking on the toolbar still works for iRiver Clix 2 and SD cards, so I guess it's some bug. Playlists don't seem to work on the Pre, though (synced as USB Drive), as /Playlists got created and populated, but the Music Player app didn't find any playlists. WMA is not supported on the Pre, so I had to setup the WMA-to-MP3 conversion for the Pre.

[rusty]

palmcrash,

Do you know where the Pre expects to find its playlists? MediaMonkey can be configured to sync them to another location.

-Rusty

[palmcrash]

I tried \playlists & \music\playlists, but no go. Sine the Pre is supposed to be an "iPod", Pre's music player probably requires iPod/iTunes playlist, which I understand is an .xml, not the standard .m3u. I never had an iPod/iTunes (only had Rio & iRiver), so I'm not sure. Media Monkey also sees the Pre as a USB Drive even with Pre in media mode, perhaps because I don't have iTunes installed. This is the kind of reason I've always avoided iCruds...

[Kurt4949]

I also have the palm pre. Should I press media sync or usb drive on the phone when I plug it in? If I press media sync, windows thinks it's an ipod. Which method would be best?

[palmcrash]

You're supposed to select Media Sync, which properly shows up as iPod on iTunes & WinAmp, but MediaMonkey still thinks it's a WMDM (Plays for Sure) device, so it won't create the iPod-style playlists (can't use M3U on Pre/iPod), although it sync music. I tried upgrading MM from 3.0.7 to the latest 3.1.0.1256, but same thing.

I hope Apple disables Pre on iTunes soon, so Palm will have to update the Music app to NOT ape an iPod. If I wanted to use iTunes, I would've bought an iPhone!

[djshack]

Can someone create a Palm Pre plugin for MediaMonkey? It seems the devices are all plugins of a sort, so I imagine this would be possible in some way or another.

[nohitter151]

Can someone create a Palm Pre plugin for MediaMonkey? It seems the devices are all plugins of a sort, so I imagine this would be possible in some way or another.

I don't see why a custom one would be needed. If you can connect to the device via normal USB and windows explorer, then MM will already sync to it without any problem.

[palmcrash]

Can someone create a Palm Pre plugin for MediaMonkey? It seems the devices are all plugins of a sort, so I imagine this would be possible in some way or another.

I don't see why a custom one would be needed. If you can connect to the device via normal USB and windows explorer, then MM will already sync to it without any problem.

Problem is, we can't get any playlists onto Palm Pre. As a gold member, I, for one, would like a plugin or a workaround.

[nohitter151]

Can someone create a Palm Pre plugin for MediaMonkey? It seems the devices are all plugins of a sort, so I imagine this would be possible in some way or another.

I don't see why a custom one would be needed. If you can connect to the device via normal USB and windows explorer, then MM will already sync to it without any problem.

Problem is, we can't get any playlists onto Palm Pre. As a gold member, I, for one, would like a plugin or a workaround.

Well, what kind of playlists does it accept?

[palmcrash]

Well, what kind of playlists does it accept?

Ipod proprietary database, which is not manually editable.

[nohitter151]

Well, what kind of playlists does it accept?

Ipod proprietary database, which is not manually editable.

Well in that case I guess the devs just have to modify the iPod plugin. I don't see why it would need its own.

[landale]

Hopefully this can be worked out pretty easily. Don't have a pre yet but hate the idea of having to use itunes to sync my music over.

[palmcrash]

Hallelujah, MediaMonkey 3.2 to the rescue! Finally, music AND playlists (even auto-playlists) sync perfectly now from MM to Pre via Media-Sync mode (shows iPod icon, but says Palm's "Nova" code-name). A bit long in coming, but thanks devs!! Gold membership's been worth every penny!

On a side note, what's with iTunes/iPod using such non-sensical directory/filename layout (F01-F49 directories with truncated filenames)? I hate this Apple proprietary @#$%. Palm should just use MTP mode like every other non-Apple music player already.

[mikesm]

Hallelujah, MediaMonkey 3.2 to the rescue! Finally, music AND playlists (even auto-playlists) sync perfectly now from MM to Pre via Media-Sync mode (shows iPod icon, but says Palm's "Nova" code-name). A bit long in coming, but thanks devs!! Gold membership's been worth every penny!

On a side note, what's with iTunes/iPod using such non-sensical directory/filename layout (F01-F49 directories with truncated filenames)? I hate this Apple proprietary @#$%. Palm should just use MTP mode like every other non-Apple music player already.

This is a nice feature, but I still have to use iTunes to sync to my Pre. I store all my music in FLAC, and if I try and sync to the Pre directly, esp for a large number of songs, it takes forever as it transcodes each song to mp3. This can take a long time even on a fast quadcore system like I have, and I am usually trying to sync at the last minute before heading out the door.

What I do is I have mediamonkey sync to a network drive and regularly convert any new FLAC's to update an mp3 library. I then point itunes at that mp3 library, and then use iTunes to sync with the Pre. No transcoding needed.

I sure wish the mediamonkey devs would support maintaining a pre transcoded library for mobile devices so music is transcoded once and if a copy of a track is already available transcoded, then you push that version instead. Disk space is so cheap it's well worth keeping a lossy copy of every song around to speed syncing.