Samsung Galaxy S3 sync

[BomBoora]

Some playlist sync correct with the Samsung Galaxy S3, and some playlist remain empty, although the tracks are copied.

Any solutions?

[rovingcowboy]

wait for mm android to be released they are trying to get an beta test version out this month.
until then try to put up with it as much as you can, i believe the playlists will sync with mm android better then other players of course this is where you could be a great beta tester of it.

[Everlast]

Hello

I'm trying to sync to my new GS3 with MM 4.06.1501

MM copies the files and a .pla playlist file to the phone but the playlist file is empty. Trying to view the music files in Playlist or Folder views produces nothing.

I tried suggestions in this thread but still no luck.
http://www.mediamonkey.com/forum/viewto ... 50#p338250

I did discover one thing. If I renamed a folder containing a playlist on the phone that MM created, the phone's Folder view in the music player will now see the files. When I say 'rename', I mean adding one character to the folder name.

On top of that, I manually copied a folder of music to the phone and created a M3U playlist myself as shown in this example:

/music/Licensed to Ill/01 - Rhymin & Stealin.mp3
/music/Licensed to Ill/02 - The New Style.mp3
/music/Licensed to Ill/03 - She's Crafty.mp3
/music/Licensed to Ill/04 - Posse in Effect.mp3
/music/Licensed to Ill/05 - Slow Ride.mp3
/music/Licensed to Ill/06 - Girls.mp3
/music/Licensed to Ill/07 - Fight for Your Right.mp3
/music/Licensed to Ill/08 - No Sleep Till Brooklyn.mp3
/music/Licensed to Ill/09 - Paul Revere.mp3
/music/Licensed to Ill/10 - Hold It Now, Hit It.mp3
/music/Licensed to Ill/11 - Brass Monkey.mp3
/music/Licensed to Ill/12 - Slow and Low.mp3
/music/Licensed to Ill/13 - Time to Get Ill.mp3

The playlist and folder views worked perfectly.

I don't understand what is going on here.

Thanks

[Vitus]

I actually have an S2 but it has stock ICS 4.0.3 installed and I seem to be having the same issues as other people with S3. Some people are saying the .pla and .alb files are blank. However, although they are 0 byte files if in Windows you right-click on them and look at the 'references' tab in properties you can see they do indeed carry all the playlist or album information. If you look at the actual data base (using aSQLiteManager) which is updated when a media scan takes place, you can find entries which point to these files. I don't think the problems we are having have so much to do with MM as with the way media databases are updated in ICS.

I find that the following procedure works if you want to update a playlist of podcasts, for example, which is changing all the time. Step 1 is to use autsync - this deletes all the tracks (or podcasts) which are no longer on the playlist, but I suspect it doesn't overwrite the .pla file with the new playlist information. (In fact, I checked this once by looking at the properties in windows (as described aboveI after an autosync.) In the samsung stock music player you will also find 'Unkown' entries in the 'album' and 'artist' sections. Step 2 is to select the playlist in question, and then re-sync it by using the 'send to' option. It usually doesn't work the first time so you just keep doing it until there are no 'Unknown' entries, sometimes four or five times. Strangley, if you re-zap it just when the 'media scan completed' message comes up, that seems to work better. Maybe it's a way of forcing the media scan to fully update the data base and get rid of orphan entries.

It's a bit frustrating it doesn't work as it did pre ICS but there you go. Maybe a new Android MM can solve the problem but I have a feeling it's just something that doesn't work as it should in ICS.

[MicroNix]

I actually have an S2 but it has stock ICS 4.0.3 installed and I seem to be having the same issues as other people with S3. Some people are saying the .pla and .alb files are blank. However, although they are 0 byte files if in Windows you right-click on them and look at the 'references' tab in properties you can see they do indeed carry all the playlist or album information. If you look at the actual data base (using aSQLiteManager) which is updated when a media scan takes place, you can find entries which point to these files. I don't think the problems we are having have so much to do with MM as with the way media databases are updated in ICS.

I got the playlists working on mine after trying different things. Here's the setup:

* S3 Sync Directory = Ext SD Card /music/

* S3 Player = PowerAMP (is there anything else?)

* PowerAMP scan directory set to Ext SD Card /music/ (I also have MM put the playlists in that directory)

* Ran a sync (yes, these take forever for some reason even when there's nothing to change. Didn't do that with my old phone (Droid3)) and the playlist files were zero bytes with nothing in them but the "reference" tab did list all the tracks.

* Opened the Samsung music player. It was very slow (assuming it was scanning) and it found the playlists and displayed all the tracks unlike PowerAMP

* Went into PowerAMP's settings > Folders and Library > Playlists Import/Export > Import System Library Playlists

Viola! PowerAMP now has the playlists. Would love to know how to get the playlists to sync with data in them but for now this at least gets me somewhere!

[vitus]

- this deletes all the tracks (or podcasts) which are no longer on the playlist, but I suspect it doesn't overwrite the .pla file with the new playlist information. (In fact, I checked this once by looking at the properties in windows (as described aboveI after an autosync.)

I was wrong about this - I checked again and when you autosync it does in fact update the .pla file, whether you are just removing tracks or adding new ones. So MM is not at fault here.

[Guest]

I got the playlists working on mine after trying different things. Here's the setup:

* S3 Sync Directory = Ext SD Card /music/

* S3 Player = PowerAMP (is there anything else?)

* PowerAMP scan directory set to Ext SD Card /music/ (I also have MM put the playlists in that directory)

* Ran a sync (yes, these take forever for some reason even when there's nothing to change. Didn't do that with my old phone (Droid3)) and the playlist files were zero bytes with nothing in them but the "reference" tab did list all the tracks.

* Opened the Samsung music player. It was very slow (assuming it was scanning) and it found the playlists and displayed all the tracks unlike PowerAMP

* Went into PowerAMP's settings > Folders and Library > Playlists Import/Export > Import System Library Playlists

Viola! PowerAMP now has the playlists. Would love to know how to get the playlists to sync with data in them but for now this at least gets me somewhere!

PowerAMP doesn't recognise .pla files. The way you are doing it works because it depends on the system libary database being updated with the information in the .pla files. The method I described above of re-syncing two or three times only seems to be necessary with the Samsung stock player, the latest Google music, which I believe now reads the system data base rather than playlist files (as as well as playlist files like m3u) seems to update the info first time. However, for one reason and another I prefer the stock player to both PowerAmp and Google music. I can feel another theory coming on here - perhaps you need to kill the stock player process before syncing ....

[Guest]

PowerAMP doesn't recognise .pla files. The way you are doing it works because it depends on the system libary database being updated with the information in the .pla files. The method I described above of re-syncing two or three times only seems to be necessary with the Samsung stock player, the latest Google music, which I believe now reads the system data base rather than playlist files (as as well as playlist files like m3u) seems to update the info first time. However, for one reason and another I prefer the stock player to both PowerAmp and Google music. I can feel another theory coming on here - perhaps you need to kill the stock player process before syncing ....

No, killing processes doesn't help - with either the stock player or google music. However, if you just remove tracks from a playlist it updates perfectly first time with autosync. On the other hand, if you add tracks to the playlist - that's when you end up with 'unknown' entries and blank playlists. Next step would be to try the PowerAmp route described above after adding tracks to a playlist, so see if what is imports from the data base is correct. I suspect it wouldn't be because when I checked out the data base with SQLite Manager I found it hadn't been updated properly.

[Otherguest]

Is the Mediamonkey team involved in trying to find a solution? Several pages earlier a bug report was opened http://www.ventismedia.com/mantis/view.php?id=9518 but it looks closed since July...

[Lowlander]

The team is, but no debug logs have been submitted with more information. The only thing known is that some 64GB cards cause problems.

[RunnerBrett]

The team is, but no debug logs have been submitted with more information. The only thing known is that some 64GB cards cause problems.

I have been experiencing this problem too and would like to help solve it. I REALLY enjoy Media Monkey so please let me know what I can do to help.

In other words, I am willing to send my log files but I want to make sure I send the correct information. Please feel free to contact me and tell me what I can do to help.

Thanks for looking into the issue.

[Lowlander]

Start with step 4b: http://www.mediamonkey.com/forum/viewto ... ?f=12&t=69

[schwinn8]

Very surprised that no one provided logs... so I started to dig into it myself. I started with my wife's SGS3, as she uses her phone as her music player more than I do.

Got the debug version running (4.0.6.1501). Amazingly enough, it seems to be syncing to the phone now... not sure why it's working. I will have to try the non-debug again, to see if that's the difference. Alternatively, the phone has since received a few updates (Verizon SGS3 with VRALHE baseband version)... so maybe that helped it too, I don't know.

In any case, I also noticed the massively slow behavior after the actual song syncing is done. MM seems to hang with the progress bar at 100%, and people don't know what's going on. The debug version (and DebugView) show you what's going on... it appears to be scanning the entire library (AGAIN?! After all, it scanned when first mounted, so why are we rescanning again here?)... and during my first sync, this is when it appears that album art was being uploaded (based on the debug lines). Not sure why this isn't done when songs are uploaded... nor do I agree with the thought of NOT telling the user this is what's happening. I recommend letting the user know what's going on here!

In any case, this event took 22minutes to complete... granted it's a large library of songs, but holy crap.

I then closed out MM, disconnected the phone, rebooted it, and then brought it all back and resynced, to see if anything was "missing"... and sure enough MM found 27 more songs to upload. Why were these missed before?

In any case, again, after the uploading was completed, it hung there scanning the device for another 12 minutes... while showing the user nothing.

I am happy to provide logs for these two syncs, if desired... I have collected them (only the activity after the uploads from the first sync, which took a LONG time, but I do have all of the second sync).

Next up, see what happens when my own SGS3 is connected.

In summary:
- MM should sync album art with the songs, not at the end... or at least provide a real progress indication of this activity, instead of leaving the user hanging for 10-20 minutes
- What is the purpose of the rescanning during this time? Just checking for art again?
- The SGS still shows up incorrectly in MM - the "I535 - Phone" is actually the SDCard, and the "I535 - Card" is actually the phone memory. Again, Windows gets this right, but MM does not?


EDIT: Resynced a 3rd time, without disconnect/reboot... just to see what happens. No new songs, but again it's scanning through the device (presumably looking for album art?) without telling the user what's happening. Progress bar is at 100% during this time, and showing nothing of use.

FYI, in my device options, Tagging, I don't have anything selected... maybe I need to select "Sync all Artwork to file folders"? After all, Google "Play Music" app doesn't see the album art for all the tracks properly... so I imagine these are only uploaded to the Android DB somewhere?

[Lowlander]

I also noticed the massively slow behavior after the actual song syncing is done.

this is when Art and Playlists are synced to the device.

4.0.7.1507 may improve on this when made available.

[schwinn8]

Ok, that's what I was seeing.

Again, at a bare minimum, hopefully the new version tells you what's happening during this time more clearly. Ideally, it should be done in a faster way if possible - crazy to have to wait this long for this little bit of data/syncing.

I am looking forward to seeing what happens there... I will test my GS3 later... spent way too much time on this today already!