Slow sync to Nomad Jukebox Zen Xtra

portabella · Post by **portabella** » Tue Jun 27, 2006 3:40 pm

Hello all.

I tried searching for this topic and I am not sure that this is the right forum, but the syncing option to my Nomad Jukebox Zen Xtra, while a great feature, is extremely slow, even if not doing any format conversions.

Is this a known issue? Is there anything that can be done about it? I use version 2.5.3.954 Gold.

Thanks.

Edit: I have the "plays for sure" firmware update installed on my Nomad

Post by **Lowlander** » Tue Jun 27, 2006 5:02 pm

Do you have a USB 1.1 or 2 connection? Is MediaMonkey slow in comparison to other software or does it just feel slow?

portabella · Post by **portabella** » Tue Jun 27, 2006 10:29 pm

I have a USB 2.0 connection. MM is definetly much slower that Notmad explorer, creative's mediasource and, even, windows media player.

I definetly do not want to use the latter two, and notmad has given me trouble ever since I upgraded to the "plays for sure" firmware.

I really like the ability to sync within MM. It just takes so long to sync, and I wonder whether other users have reported this.

rovingcowboy · Post by **rovingcowboy** » Wed Jun 28, 2006 12:58 am

there was an update to the usb drivers in pc's a couple months back.

check for any on ms's site or the free software sites like majorgeeks.com or even check creative's updates list and see if they have the usb update listed. i can not remember when it was out just know it was this year some time.

also i have digital camera's and other usb devices and when i use the camera i have to reinstall the usb drivers cause one of the cameras messes up the other device's drivers.

also turn off the usb device monitors they slow down things too, and even block some things. on my system.

Post by **Lowlander** » Wed Jun 28, 2006 9:01 am

I don't know if there are any issues with synchornization speed with portable players.

RovingCowboys advice shouldn't be of influence as updating the portable player works much faster thru other software. So this is most likely a MediaMonkey issue.

Do you apply any conversion of filetype/bitrate in MediaMonkey which you haven't done in other software?

portabella · Post by **portabella** » Wed Jun 28, 2006 12:48 pm

Lowlander wrote:Do you apply any conversion of filetype/bitrate in MediaMonkey which you haven't done in other software?

No, I do not. The "slowness" is something I note simply with copying files from computer to Nomad.

Hube · Post by **Hube** » Wed Jun 28, 2006 1:55 pm

With you, Portabella. I'm another MM 2.3 Gold user and MM is definitely slower than W Media Player and Creative's own which I just don't like. Sticking with MM but speeding it up would be great guys. Get to work!

schex · Post by **schex** » Sat Jul 01, 2006 5:04 pm

I too have been having this issue with MM and Zen Xtra for quite some time now. When I saw this post I just couldn't resist sharing my experience. And before anyone jumps in with a generic USB or driver tip, yes I'm using using USB 2.0 and I have the latest drivers and Plays for Sure firmware.

I also have a Creative Photo 8 GB player (the one with the touch pad and color screen) which works with no problems whatsoever, and is also a Plays for Sure device.

I believe the problem lies in playlist generation from MM to the Zen Xtra. Song files transfer to the Zen Xtra at roughly the same rate as other players. If I choose a syncronization option that only includes say a folder or albums with no playlist then the process completes in the normal amount of time. If I do try to sync playlists, then the time involved seems to depend almost exponentially on the number of items in the total number of playlists.

I've tested this out with long and short playlists. If I sync only 1 short playlist with 50 items, MM will process this in just a few hours. Playlists with 1000's of items literally take days to process. Now mind you, the music files are transferred over regardless of this playlist generation, so if you say, cancel the transfer before it completes, your music will be on the player, and you will have an incomplete playlist/s residing on the Zen Xtra.

billy · Post by **billy** » Thu Aug 03, 2006 8:38 pm

Yeah, I'm with you all. My Zen Vision M syncs extremely fast with WMP and Creative Media explorer, but honestly I love MM's features and the only draw back is it's slow syncs.

Everything starts out fast. Removes files, adds files, etc. pretty fast. Then when my status bar looks complete, it just sits there for about 20 minutes before completing. It does seem like it's writing the playlists then because if I unplug it at this time I get incomplete playlists on the device.

I'll admit I have about 8,000 wma's on the device, 9 playlists, and those playlists have a lot of songs in some of them... BUT can you explain why WMP and Creative can sync it all so much faster?

It has to be an MM issue, and not drivers or fireware. To many people claim fast syncs with WMP and the others, but we all seem to be loving MM's great features. Now if it would sync fast for us we'd probably call it god

If you can work on this in a future release I'm sure some people might not call this software "crap" (I'm not calling it that, I like it) and give up on it when they go through the painful process of syncing.

Billy · Post by **Billy** » Mon Aug 07, 2006 7:19 am

Well after that last post I actually got it to sync pretty fast. It turns out that under the files I needed to edit section there was this list of "dead links". I don't know exactly why that was there and why they are dead, but I went and deleted those.

Right after I decided to sync and it went really fast.

Don't know if this will help anyone else, but I was glad it helped in solving my issues with Mediamonkey.

schex86 · Post by **schex86** » Sun Aug 27, 2006 3:49 am

Billy, you did it!! I removed the "dead links" entries and voila, MM and my Zen Xtra get along perfectly now, like they always should have. I have been dealing with this for over a year now, and finally, someone figured it out.

Anyway, sounds like a bug to me. Maybe the MM team can remove this anomaly in future updates. If not, at least we know how to deal with the problem.