Synching questions with a Zen Vision M

phasmaphobic · Post by **phasmaphobic** » Tue Dec 19, 2006 11:51 pm

I just recently discovered MediaMonkey, and hot flying monkey poop, this software is awesome! It so far does everything I want it to do, and more.

I've a question that is important to me, and I have yet to find an exact answer through searching, so I turn now to this forum.

I like to make full use of the Rating features of my mp3s, and I'm glad my Zen supports ratings. I often rate songs while I'm out and about listening to my Zen, as well as when I'm playing them on my computer at home.

With Mediamonkey, can I use and keep both ratings? Meaning, If I rate a song while on the go, and then synch my Zen with Mediamonkey, will the rating stay on the Zen? Will it also transfer to the matching file on the PC?

On on a related note, is there any functionality for reverse synching with Media Monkey? I often connect it to my computer at work to rate and play tunes while there, and to load on more mp3s. Can I put mp3s on my player somewhere else, then bring it home and have those files synch to the computer using just MediaMonkey? I know the built-in Zen software does this, but it would be nice to have it more seamlessly integrate with MM.

That's all for now. Thanks!

phasmaphobic · Post by **phasmaphobic** » Wed Dec 20, 2006 12:03 am

I thought I might have answered my own question when I found "Auto-Synchronize Tracks from the device to the PC" in the Synch options, but I can't for the life of me figure out how to turn the option on.

Guesty · Post by **Guesty** » Wed Dec 20, 2006 11:11 am

are you able to view all your music in the album/artist view with mediamonkey...and better yet...can you play your music off your player directly?

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Wed Dec 20, 2006 12:35 pm

Guesty wrote:are you able to view all your music in the album/artist view with mediamonkey...and better yet...can you play your music off your player directly?

Hmmm, well when I look at the folders I have set up on my Zen (set up automatically through custom synching options in MediaMonkey), I can see the music on the device while using MediaMonkey. I can also play those tunes on my Zen when out and about.

However, now that I check I don't seem to be able to play the tunes directly on the zen through the MM interface. I can play them in Winamp and directly through the creative explorer, though. However, this is something I never ever do, as I have the music on my computer as well, and always play it from there when using the computer.

phasmaphobic · Post by **phasmaphobic** » Wed Dec 20, 2006 12:36 pm

That last reply was from me, I forgot to log in.

Exaxxion · Post by **Exaxxion** » Tue Dec 26, 2006 2:58 am

I am also very annoyed with the fact that I cannot play music directly from the Zen itself. I lost my HDD with my music on it and I do not have enough space on my current one to back up the stuff on my Zen (60GB Vision M, about 45GB full).

Anyone know how or if MediaMonkey would be able to play off of a Zen? The problem might lie in that Windows does not recognize it as removable storage, but rather as a DRM-Enabled media player, and as such is not assigned a drive letter. This has the effect of disallowing media players from playing directly from it (the file has to be copied to a temporary location).

HeistMonkey · Post by **HeistMonkey** » Thu Jan 25, 2007 11:46 am

Exaxxion wrote:I am also very annoyed with the fact that I cannot play music directly from the Zen itself. I lost my HDD with my music on it and I do not have enough space on my current one to back up the stuff on my Zen (60GB Vision M, about 45GB full).

Anyone know how or if MediaMonkey would be able to play off of a Zen? The problem might lie in that Windows does not recognize it as removable storage, but rather as a DRM-Enabled media player, and as such is not assigned a drive letter. This has the effect of disallowing media players from playing directly from it (the file has to be copied to a temporary location).

I think you should be able to drag the artist folders from your Zen using Windows Explorer, but as of 2.5 release it's not possible to synch tracks from the Zen --> Computer.

Guest · Post by **Guest** » Thu May 10, 2007 5:59 am

HeistMonkey wrote:
Exaxxion wrote:I am also very annoyed with the fact that I cannot play music directly from the Zen itself. I lost my HDD with my music on it and I do not have enough space on my current one to back up the stuff on my Zen (60GB Vision M, about 45GB full).

Anyone know how or if MediaMonkey would be able to play off of a Zen? The problem might lie in that Windows does not recognize it as removable storage, but rather as a DRM-Enabled media player, and as such is not assigned a drive letter. This has the effect of disallowing media players from playing directly from it (the file has to be copied to a temporary location).
I think you should be able to drag the artist folders from your Zen using Windows Explorer, but as of 2.5 release it's not possible to synch tracks from the Zen --> Computer.

No syncing back for ZVM - why is that so?

Exaxxion · Post by **Exaxxion** » Thu May 10, 2007 4:08 pm

It has to do with Microsoft's MTP protocol, which the Zen uses in place of an original protocol to be listed as a Windows-ready device. This protocol allows a media player to have its own file system, but comes at the cost of not mounting as removable storage device (such as an external hard drive), which for example an iPod does. This inability to mount as removable storage means that Mediamonkey can't read media files directly from the device. Windows Media Player is capable of playing files "on the device" only because it detects that it uses the MTP protocol and knows to cache the file in the temporary file directory then read it from there. This protocol also causes computers to crash-reboot as soon as you plug it in if they don't have installed support for it. This makes it annoying because I can't charge it via USB when I'm in Linux

You can find more technical info about MTP on Wikipedia here

tl;dr version: It uses a weird protocol that doesn't let you read right from it like a hard drive.