1242 - Autosync - Playlist/Track/Album Names Truncated

[nynaevelan]

Something is wrong with autosyncing on 1242, some of my playlists are being synced with the names either truncated or no name at all, although there is a blank space where the name should be. What is going on?

[chrisjj]

What device? How many chars in the playlist names being truncated?

[nynaevelan]

My Zen X-fi, and it varies, here are some examples:

As Heard on TV 2006 synced as As H
Blo Brotha synced as Blo Br
Old School Slow Jams synced as Old S
Top 50 Weekly synced as

And it turns out it is worse than that, not only have I lost my bookmarks, but I cannot save them back. So now I have to reformat my player and re-sync everything, and I AM NOT HAPPY ABOUT THAT!!!

[chrisjj]

> My Zen X-fi, and it varies, here are some examples:

Thanks. I have seen that occur on my ZEN as log ago as 1206.

> So now I have to reformat my player and re-sync everything

Same here.

> and I AM NOT HAPPY ABOUT THAT!!!

Same here, though (sadly) I have more serious MM-ZEN sync failure to worry about.

[nynaevelan]

> My Zen X-fi, and it varies, here are some examples:

Thanks. I have seen that occur on my ZEN as log ago as 1206.

> So now I have to reformat my player and re-sync everything

Same here.

> and I AM NOT HAPPY ABOUT THAT!!!

Same here, though (sadly) I have more serious MM-ZEN sync failure to worry about.

Yea I know you have some other issues, but this seems to be getting worse. If this reformat doesn't fix it, I am heading back to 1240. But one good thing is now that I have to re-format I can better test mine to see if it keeps having the same problems you are having.

[chrisjj]

> If this reformat doesn't fix it, I am heading back to 1240.

I have found that reformat always fixes the particular instance - by virtue of erasing it! - and since this failure mode is low-probability, resync usually recovers. BUT this IME of course does not fix the actual failure mode and it can just as likely recur. Please do keep us posted!

[nynaevelan]

> If this reformat doesn't fix it, I am heading back to 1240.

I have found that reformat always fixes the particular instance - by virtue of erasing it! - and since this failure mode is low-probability, resync usually recovers. BUT this IME of course does not fix the actual failure mode and it can just as likely recur. Please do keep us posted!

Yeah I know but not having my playlists available for a 90 minute train ride is not a very good thing, the devs better be lucky I was not physically close to them this morning. But I guess some would say that is what I get for syncing an untested build right before leaving the house.

[chrisjj]

> Yeah I know but not having my playlists available for a 90 minute train ride is not a very good thing

Sympathies. Such would be a death for this DJ, so I have three ZENs and sync in a round-robin, so Ialways have backup's 1 and 2.

[nynaevelan]

> Yeah I know but not having my playlists available for a 90 minute train ride is not a very good thing

Sympathies. Such would be a death for this DJ, so I have three ZENs and sync in a round-robin, so Ialways have backup's 1 and 2.

Unfortunately I made the mistake of having confidence MM would sync it correctly and I did not find out about the problem until I was at the train station, otherwise I would have brought my backup Zen with me. But lesson learned, I will never try a sync in the morning again.

Nyn

[nynaevelan]

I had to go back to 1240, 1242 is too unstable on my system for syncing my Zen. Not only is it syncing my playlist names in truncated form, but it is verrrrrry slow and it locks up the transition to the next playing song if MM is not the focus. What changed in syncing between 1240 and 1242?

Nyn

[nohitter151]

I had to go back to 1240, 1242 is too unstable on my system for syncing my Zen. Not only is it syncing my playlist names in truncated form, but it is verrrrrry slow and it locks up the transition to the next playing song if MM is not the focus. What changed in syncing between 1240 and 1242?

Nyn

From the looks of it, only:
http://www.ventismedia.com/mantis/view.php?id=5539
and
http://www.ventismedia.com/mantis/view.php?id=5499

I synced my iPhone yesterday, and didn't see these problems (but of course it uses a completely different plugin).

[nynaevelan]

I had to go back to 1240, 1242 is too unstable on my system for syncing my Zen. Not only is it syncing my playlist names in truncated form, but it is verrrrrry slow and it locks up the transition to the next playing song if MM is not the focus. What changed in syncing between 1240 and 1242?

Nyn

From the looks of it, only:
http://www.ventismedia.com/mantis/view.php?id=5539
and
http://www.ventismedia.com/mantis/view.php?id=5499

One or both of these could be what has "broken" the syncing on my Zen, but since I am the only one who seems to be having this problem.... And I tested this on a Win XP and Vista Ultimate machine and they both have the same problem.

I synced my iPhone yesterday, and didn't see these problems (but of course it uses a completely different plugin).

Yes and since the ipods have their own special plugins, I do not thnk this will help, since the Zens are using the generic plugin. The only time I have had problems with syncing, it was unrelated to MM, but this is directly related to 1242, which is completely useless for me because I sync my Zen 4 or more times a week and I need reliability.

[rusty]

Nyn,

This one is kind of strange because there weren't any changes made to synchronization functionality between 1240 and 1242.

Can you confirm a couple of things?
1) Are you using the USB Mass Storage plugin (rather than the wmdm plugin)?
2) When you say, "it is verrrrrry slow and it locks up the transition to the next playing song if MM is not the focus", can you elaborate re. what you mean? What operations are slow? What specifically happens at song transitions if MM isn't in focus?

Thanks.

-Rusty

[nynaevelan]

Nyn,

This one is kind of strange because there weren't any changes made to synchronization functionality between 1240 and 1242.

Can you confirm a couple of things?
1) Are you using the USB Mass Storage plugin (rather than the wmdm plugin)?

No, my Zen's are using the WDM plugin, but there is one thing that I should mention that has changed recently, I just started using the USB plugin to sync to one of my external drives. With all previous versions I had deleted the usb and ipod plugins from the plugins folder so that may play a factor. Also, while syncing I am usually editing tags, which I was not doing when syncing on XP so that may also play a factor. Since it does not crash I have not created any debug logs.

2) When you say, "it is verrrrrry slow and it locks up the transition to the next playing song if MM is not the focus", can you elaborate re. what you mean? What operations are slow? What specifically happens at song transitions if MM isn't in focus?

Syncing now for my Zen can take an hour or two whereas before it would take less than 30 minutes. And if MM is not in focus it will continuously play the last few seconds of the track until it moves on to the next track. And there is nothing you can do in MM until it moves on, I usually get the message from Vista stating the program has stopped responding and do I want to shut down or restart, which I always state no. However, let me add this little tidbit, although the truncated playlist syncing has stopped since I reformatted my player I have not had that problem again. And this only happens on my Zen X-Fi not the Zen player. Now that I know what to expect and have had many opportunities to test this weekend, I am back on 1242 but it is still a lot slower than 1240 was.

[rusty]

Nyn,

The existence of the USB MS and iPod plugins shouldn't impact performance of the MTP plugin, but the fact that you're observing general performance problems (e.g. the playback/focus issue) makes me think that a more general problem is occuring (either general to MediaMonkey or to your machine).

-Were both builds that you tested non-debug builds?
-Are the stats you've given re sync times for the same machine/same OS?

-Rusty