Synching from a Collection

[jaybea179943]

I am using MM4 and I am having problems synching my Walkman. In MM3 I used to synch from an Autoplaylist, using the Random Subset option to fill up the 14Gb on the device from the 50Gb in my library. I would re-synch every few weeks to get a new selection of music and this would remove sufficient tracks to fit on the new tracks.

The functionality has changed slightly in MM4, so I now have a Collection which has similar rules to the Synch Playlist in MM3. However, when I try to synch, nothing happens. "Preparing list of tracks" appears very briefly and then disappears and the process ends. I can force the synch by deleting everything on the device, but this is a long-winded process and takes a long time.

Am I missing something obvious? I want the old functionality where each synch would produce a new random subset of tracks up to device capacity, and delete as many tracks as necessary to make room.

[Lowlander]

Maybe Random Subset fails. Maybe a debug log (step 4b) send to support will help show why: http://www.mediamonkey.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=69

[jaybea179943]

I have prepared a set of log files, which I will upload shortly. In the meantime, I think I have identified what the problem is, although I don't understand the mechanism.

The Walkman was reported as full, so as an experiment, I deleted an album from the device and then tried synchronising. This time, MM4 produced a list of files to synchronise to use up the space that I had freed. I then tried synchronising again, and this time MM4 give me a list of tracks to delete in order to create room for the new tracks, as it should do, but only using tracks in the space I had originally created, and does not look at the rest of the tracks on the player. I had problems synchronising with MM4 the first time, so resorted to wiping the device and then Synchronising. MM4 does not seem to regard these tracks as available for future synchronisation.

I am going to delete all the tracks from the device again and see whether a subsequent Synchronisation will cure the problem. Hopefully the logs might identify the actual problem.

[Lowlander]

Do you have the option to remove files not on sync list enabled? If not it won't sync any new files when the device is full.

[jaybea179943]

Do you have the option to remove files not on sync list enabled? If not it won't sync any new files when the device is full.

Yes, this was enabled and it worked on the small set of files that I synch'd after manually deleting some files.

I have now deleted all the files on the device and re-synch'd. This time it looks like it works as it should, so there must have been a problem with the flagging of the files as synchronised by MM4 the first time I did it. The device seemed to be full to capacity with "files" rather than music, and new the contents show as "music".

[jaybea179943]

This problem has cropped up again, having previously wiped and re-synched the device. On the Device Summary page in MM4, the bar at the bottom showing capacity shows that the device is full of Files, and not music. As far as MM is concerned, the device is full and it will not delete any of the existing music tracks to make room for new ones. I have not plugged the device into the PC since last week's synch, so I don't know what is happening. It looks like the music tracks on the device are being incorrectly tagged so that MM cannot recognise them as tracks it has previously synchronised. Although the "Delete files and playlists not in the auto-sych list from the device" option is selected, MM is ignoring this, I guess because of the incorrect tagging.

Contemplating a return to MM3, which worked perfectly.