It is a known fact that HTC Sync does not see playlists on a PC, and therefore cannot copy them to the phone, so initially what I did was manually copy them to the phone's SD card via the Disk Drive setting in HT Sync.
The music app subsequently found them and they work just fine. However, when I manually copy new ones I make on the PC, they don't show up in the music app. Additionally, upon subsequent connections of the phone to the PC, the newly copied playlists are no longer in the destination. Interestingly, the ones I initially copied are also no longer where I copied them to, nor can I find them anywhere, yet they indeed still work on the phone.
Can anyone explain this phenomenom, and maybe shed some light on where they go and how I can once again experience success in manually copying playlists?
xv-6800 said:
It is a known fact that HTC Sync does not see playlists on a PC, and therefore cannot copy them to the phone, so initially what I did was manually copy them to the phone's SD card via the Disk Drive setting in HT Sync.
The music app subsequently found them and they work just fine. However, when I manually copy new ones I make on the PC, they don't show up in the music app. Additionally, upon subsequent connections of the phone to the PC, the newly copied playlists are no longer in the destination. Interestingly, the ones I initially copied are also no longer where I copied them to, nor can I find them anywhere, yet they indeed still work on the phone.
Can anyone explain this phenomenom, and maybe shed some light on where they go and how I can once again experience success in manually copying playlists?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
New music and playlist just don't automatically appear in the music app once you add them manually you have to reboot the phone to get the media scanner to run again. If your playlists are disappearing off your sdcard then something is wrong as they shouldn't be moving anywhere on their own or be deleted. Now there are also internally stored playlists such as the ones you can make using the music app and those are probably the ones you are seeing. It would appear that for some reason your external playlist have been turned into internal playlists and are being deleted. Are your playlists you make m3u or another format? I make all my playlist as m3u and store them on my external sdcard and they have never disappeared on me. I also do not add anything to a playlist using the function in the music app I do all this on my pc to keep them separated from the internal playlist. The music app cannot edit external playlists only its own.
The internal playlists are stored somewhere in the system folders but I can't remember where exactly but they are not in any type of format you can use. They are databases not playlists and can't be read by a pc using windows media player or other application.
kzoodroid said:
New music and playlist just don't automatically appear in the music app once you add them manually you have to reboot the phone to get the media scanner to run again. If your playlists are disappearing off your sdcard then something is wrong as they shouldn't be moving anywhere on their own or be deleted. Now there are also internally stored playlists such as the ones you can make using the music app and those are probably the ones you are seeing. It would appear that for some reason your external playlist have been turned into internal playlists and are being deleted. Are your playlists you make m3u or another format? I make all my playlist as m3u and store them on my external sdcard and they have never disappeared on me. I also do not add anything to a playlist using the function in the music app I do all this on my pc to keep them separated from the internal playlist. The music app cannot edit external playlists only its own.
The internal playlists are stored somewhere in the system folders but I can't remember where exactly but they are not in any type of format you can use. They are databases not playlists and can't be read by a pc using windows media player or other application.
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My lists are .WPLs (Windows Media Player lists), and I swear, they are indeed being converted and I assume the originals are being deleted after the conversion. What I want to know is where the converted lists would be stored on the phone. I, too, do not make lists on the phone, but did so just to test. I cannot find that one, either.
As far as rebooting is concerned, I have done that, but that does not help the music app find the lists I copied over... not after that initial first bunch of lists was copied, anyway.
The phone does not store playlists internally as any recognizable playlist type thats why you can't find them. I tried for years to find an answer as to where they are and how to recover them. The answer is you can't. Nothing except the phone itself can recognize them as playlists. You are better off converting the ones on your pc to m3u playlists from my experience as I've had nothing but problems with wpl's and I've never had a problem with m3u playlists.
In windows media player just open your playlist by doubling clicking it, it should start to play, at the top under Library>Playlists> right click on the name of the playlist and a new menu opens up and under File is the option to Save Now Playing List as: select M3U. You will then have two identical playlist in the playlists folder, one M3U the other WPL. I just deleted my wpl's once I was satified with the new m3u's. I then clear my phones media cache to delete all the internal playlist and store my m3u playlists in a folder on my sdcard, sdcard>music>playlists.
Doing some looking around and the playlists seem to be somewhere in /data/data/com.android.providers.media/databases/. These files are sql databases and useless for trying to get data out. I can't find the actual playlist in a readable form all I find is references to where they are, except for a test one I made using the music app, while it shows its name there is no location given for where it is.
kzoodroid said:
The phone does not store playlists internally as any recognizable playlist type thats why you can't find them. I tried for years to find an answer as to where they are and how to recover them. The answer is you can't. Nothing except the phone itself can recognize them as playlists. You are better off converting the ones on your pc to m3u playlists from my experience as I've had nothing but problems with wpl's and I've never had a problem with m3u playlists.
In windows media player just open your playlist by doubling clicking it, it should start to play, at the top under Library>Playlists> right click on the name of the playlist and a new menu opens up and under File is the option to Save Now Playing List as: select M3U. You will then have two identical playlist in the playlists folder, one M3U the other WPL. I just deleted my wpl's once I was satified with the new m3u's. I then clear my phones media cache to delete all the internal playlist and store my m3u playlists in a folder on my sdcard, sdcard>music>playlists.
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Click to collapse
OK, I converted a list to M3U. HT Sync still sees nothing in the UI. I changed to Disk Drive connection, copied the M3U from the PC to the folder on the SD card that I previously copied all my original lists to, and even did the safe removal of usb function on the PC. I also re-booted the phone. STILL no new playlist in either the music app, or in the folder I had just copied it to! I did not delete all playlists on the phone, as you do, for fear I will permanently lose all the ones that are already there. I gotta tell you, there seem to be so many things that don't work the way they should. How the heck did this phone (or is it Android itself, if that's the real culprit) get to be so popular?
I just enabled Documents syncing, and placed a .WPL and the new M3U files in an empty folder on my PC. I added that directory to the Document sync. Performed the sync, and those don't show up on the phone.
I then copied the files manually to the My Documents folder on the SD card. Changed connection to Charge Only, and then back, and the files were still there, untouched (at least not deleted. Problem is that the music app doesn't see them.
Disconnected and reconnected the phone. Alas, the files were gone!
For grins, in Documents sync option, added a folder that had other files in it, and no playlists. That didn't even sync!
So, this is a phone setup for music, and I can't send playlists to it.
This phone has a sync function with Documents and Playlists functions, and neither work. I guess I should be thankful I can sync Outlook contacts and Calendar.
Unless someone can tell me if all these problems are gone with ICS before my 14 "return" days are up, I might have to think strongly about whether I should go back to my Touch Pro 2, and wait for Windows Phone at the end of the year.
Tried one more thing, and got one step closer:
Opened Windows Media Player. Connected as Disk Drive. This enabled WMP to see the device as a Sync target. Made an M3U list with song on my PC that were already sync'd to the SD card. Ran the Sync. It re-sent the songs to another location, and put a folder in that new location called Playlists. Although the music player cannot see the playlist, it also did not delete it. Opened ES File Explorer and it saw the list. Only trouble is that it can't do anything with the Playlist. But, I am that much closer to getting a playlist to stick on the phone.
If I could only get the music app to recognize the playlist, I'd be in business! I even rebooted, and although the playlist is still there, the music app seems to not want to see lists copied OR sync'd to the device anymore, no matter what. Even if I installed another music app that COULD read the .M3U, if it has its own player, I would lose Beats Audio, like I do now if I try to open an .MP3 via ES File Explorer, even if I do choose to open it with the phone's default music app.
SIGH, it really should not be this hard.
Anybody have ANY ideas?
One thing it could be is that windows media player won't create an m3u playlist during a sync, if it copies music to your phone then creates a playlsit for that music it wil be in wpl format, and android phones have problems with the wpl format.
All I do is sync my music to my phone using windows media player. It automatically creates the directory sdcard/music. I then manually copy the m3u playlists to a new directory I make, sdcard/music/playlists. Then everytime I sync new music to the phone I manually update the m3u playlists, been doing it this way for about 2 years now without one problem.
And I have a huge mp3 collection on my phone, 8 playlists with over 3000 songs, 12 GB. It took me weeks to put them to together, manually embedding the album art in each mp3, so I'm pretty fussy about my phone recognizing them properly. My total collection is over 12,000 mp3's, 70 GB. I use the cloud if I want to listen to a full album.
kzoodroid said:
One thing it could be is that windows media player won't create an m3u playlist during a sync, if it copies music to your phone then creates a playlsit for that music it wil be in wpl format, and android phones have problems with the wpl format... All I do is sync my music to my phone using windows media player. It automatically creates the directory sdcard/music. I then manually copy the m3u playlists to a new directory I make, sdcard/music/playlists.
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Wait, WMP doesn't CREATE playlists during a sync. In WMP, when you connect a device and go to the WMP sync panel on the right, all you do is drop a playlist into the sync panel. When you sync, all songs in the play list, as well as the playlist itself, are sent to the device. What I described in my post above was that I created an M3U list in WMP (as you suggested previously), performed the sync, and the sync indeed occured. The music went into a music directory on the root of the card, just as you describe, and the M3U list went into a music/playlists folder AUTOMATICALLY. I did NOT have to manually copy the list.
EDIT: If you do this with a .WPL, the list never gets copied, and music goes into a slightly different location, however, all music (no matter if you use WMP Sync, or HT Sync, always syncs properly, and always works. It's the play list stuff that disgusts me.
ANOTHER EDIT: Never mind what I said about the Playlists staying there. First, I just went to look and the playlist was there, but it was empty, 0kb. I then changed back to Charge Only, and as expected the playlist was not readable. Checked to see of the Playlist was still there in the directory structure and it was gone. I think it's time to call a spade a spade.
Then everytime I sync new music to the phone I manually update the m3u playlists, been doing it this way for about 2 years now without one problem.
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Click to collapse
Now, that's weird. In my case I would NOT have to update the playlists because they are getting copied automatically. Trouble is, the Music App does not recognize them! What OS are you running?
I would assume there are other 3rd party music apps with sync that work, but if you go that route you lose beats audio, correct?
xv-6800 said:
Wait, WMP doesn't CREATE playlists during a sync. In WMP, when you connect a device and go to the WMP sync panel on the right, all you do is drop a playlist into the sync panel. When you sync, all songs in the play list, as well as the playlist itself, are sent to the device. What I described in my post above was that I created an M3U list in WMP (as you suggested previously), performed the sync, and the sync indeed occured. The music went into a music directory on the root of the card, just as you describe, and the M3U list went into a music/playlists folder AUTOMATICALLY. I did NOT have to manually copy the list.
EDIT: If you do this with a .WPL, the list never gets copied, and music goes into a slightly different location, however, all music (no matter if you use WMP Sync, or HT Sync, always syncs properly, and always works. It's the play list stuff that disgusts me.
ANOTHER EDIT: Never mind what I said about the Playlists staying there. First, I just went to look and the playlist was there, but it was empty, 0kb. I then changed back to Charge Only, and as expected the playlist was not readable. Checked to see of the Playlist was still there in the directory structure and it was gone. I think it's time to call a spade a spade.
Now, that's weird. In my case I would NOT have to update the playlists because they are getting copied automatically. Trouble is, the Music App does not recognize them! What OS are you running?
I would assume there are other 3rd party music apps with sync that work, but if you go that route you lose beats audio, correct?
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Click to collapse
I use the stock music app.
I don't not do any type of file management of my music using the phone period . I purchase all new music using my pc (windows 7) then add it to my playlists, sync the new music files to the phone over usb using Windows Media Player Sync then copy and paste the new playlists onto the phones sdcard. This way nothing gets screwed up. Windows Media Player has never copied over a playlist to my phone during a sync, even when I drag a whole playlist over to the sync box. So not sure why it did it for you unless the playlsit was a wpl then maybe thats why it was copied over. That said I really do not think android can even recognize wpl's and I stopped using them entirely 2 years ago. They gave me nothing but problems and now I srtrictly use m3u's.
kzoodroid said:
I use the stock music app.
I don't not do any type of file management of my music using the phone period . I purchase all new music using my pc (windows 7) then add it to my playlists, sync the new music files to the phone over usb using Windows Media Player Sync then copy and paste the new playlists onto the phones sdcard. This way nothing gets screwed up. Windows Media Player has never copied over a playlist to my phone during a sync, even when I drag a whole playlist over to the sync box. So not sure why it did it for you unless the playlsit was a wpl then maybe thats why it was copied over. That said I really do not think android can even recognize wpl's and I stopped using them entirely 2 years ago. They gave me nothing but problems and now I srtrictly use m3u's.
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Click to collapse
I don't get why it doesn't work for me. I mean, think about it. My first drag 'n' drop of my .WPL playlists worked! So I KNOW Android saw them, and converted them. Now, no matter what I do, NO playlist has ever again been able to be added, even if it is M3U. That said, I am going to wipe out all Music App storage, then use only WMP to sync the data, then copy over a M3U playlist manually. Maybe just the fact that the Music app converted the WPLs caused the playlist data file to be corrupted. You did say it was an SQL file, right? It's worth a shot. Here goes.
Then again, you are unlocked, too. Although it SHOULDN'T make a difference, SHOULDN'T is a big word in computers.
OK, guess what? I deleted all music. I then went into Manage Applications, and told the phone to delete all Music App data. It did not delete those initially converted playlists. I deleted all the playlists anyway, and rebooted.
Used WMP to sync, then dropped in a M3U. Just as I expected no playlist shows up on the phone AND I now lost every single playlist I previously had on the phone. I am now kicking myself in the ass for trying that!
This gets better. Now, HT Sync will no longer send ANY of my .MP3s to the phone! What terrible programming of both the phone and HTC Sync.
OK, looks like the sync function is not made well at all. When I deleted the files, the function still thinks they're on the phone, so they don't get copied again. I tested this by adding a new .mp3 into the music folder on my pc. When I invoked the sync, that particular file was then sent to the phone. So, I copied all the files back in manually. Still have no playlists though, so still a reall half-assed app, to say the least.
I don't use HTC Sync and that could be the problem you're having. I use Sync in Windows Media Player, I don't sync my phone to the pc either I just use the Sync function on the right hand side of WMP there two seperate functions. And if you have all your playlists on your pc in M3U format then you can never lose them if you wipe the phones cache. This is why I did this as I switched ROMs a lot and would always lose all my playlists, I tried MyBackup Pro to save them but sometimes it would work right and restore them and sometimes it wouldn't. So now I just stick to keeping my music and playlists on my pc and manage them from there and syncing them over.
Remember to reboot the phone after adding the playlists and depending upon the size and speed of your sdcard it can take up to 30 minutes once you reboot the phone for the playlists to reappear. My 32 GB class 6 micro sdcard takes forever to scan them back in on my Inc. I'm using the stock 16 GB in my Rezound and its slow too.
You also can skip syncing all together and just drag and drop your entire music library onto the sdcard. I do this in emergencies but prefer to sync the music with WMP as it then remembers what songs are on the device so I don't get duplicates. WMP stores the playlists in the same music directory on the pc as the mp3's so everything gets transfered.
Also the reason I wipe the music cache is if I don't I will get duplicates so I always wipe it if I'm doing a major overall of my music. And like I said everything I have is on my pc so I don't lose anything. And since all my music and playlists are all on the sdcard anyways wiping the cache really has no effect for me except to delete any internal playlists that might have crept in. Once the phone rescans the sdcard I'm golden.
The reason it takes awhile for your card to see the songs is because you likely have a ton of song files in the folder. ;-)
I already tried using WMP to sync, but it makes no difference. I made a M3U with 3 songs in it. I turned off HT Sync's Music option, then in WMP dragged the new M3U to the sync window on the right and sync'd. All songs in that playlist indeed sync'd. I then manually copied the M3U to a Playlist folder inside the Music folder on the SD card. For safety's sake, did the Windows stop USB to flush the RAM cache to the disk to ensure writing of the M3U files. Rebooted the phone.
I've even tried manually creating a playlist. All to no avail.
I wouldn't be surprised if this works for you simply because your phone is unlocked, but I've given up. I have a commercial band, and need playlist sync'ing functionality more than I need Beats, since the phone is a backup to my PC for in-between-sets music (in case we have PC problems at a gig), so I am now looking for a new music app that supports syncing from the PC. Know of any?
xv-6800 said:
The reason it takes awhile for your card to see the songs is because you likely have a ton of song files in the folder. ;-)
I already tried using WMP to sync, but it makes no difference. I made a M3U with 3 songs in it. I turned off HT Sync's Music option, then in WMP dragged the new M3U to the sync window on the right and sync'd. All songs in that playlist indeed sync'd. I then manually copied the M3U to a Playlist folder inside the Music folder on the SD card. For safety's sake, did the Windows stop USB to flush the RAM cache to the disk to ensure writing of the M3U files. Rebooted the phone.
I've even tried manually creating a playlist. All to no avail.
I wouldn't be surprised if this works for you simply because your phone is unlocked, but I've given up. I have a commercial band, and need playlist sync'ing functionality more than I need Beats, since the phone is a backup to my PC for in-between-sets music (in case we have PC problems at a gig), so I am now looking for a new music app that supports syncing from the PC. Know of any?
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Actually this all worked for me when I had the phone locked, its the first thing I set up when I got the Rezound a couple weeks ago. I actually just dragged and dropped my backed up music folder off my Incredible onto the phone and had no problems with it. Something is screwy on your phone because it should be able to read M3U's and not move or delete them at the most you would have duplicate playlists. Its as if something is writing to your sdcard overwritting this particular data. Weird.
Winamp I believe was actually trying for wireless syncing at one time. Poweramp is another good one but not sure about the syncing and its not free, like $5 or $15 somewhere in that range, the free version has like a 10 day trial period then it locks up. I've never used either for more than a day as I like the stock players widgets and every single music app out there has sucky widgets. I have used Mixzing (paid version) and actually like it over the others for its editng abilities but not sure if it has syncing and I haven't used it in over a year.
I also saw your other post on apps to sync but decided against replying to it. I've never found an app or program that can sync playlists and believe me I've searched. One of the problems is that the phone's playlists are stored in the cache folder and you need root access to get into it. Then they aren't stored in a playlist format so they can't really be read as such anyways. Just too many obstacles to overcome.
I've seen so many posts on the web about playlist problems, so I don't think I am the only one having this issue. In fact, you might be one of the LUCKY ones.
Hey, did you unlock per the HTC Dev instructions? You also said previously that the playlists are in a database format of some sort (SQL?), right? If that's the case, then we should be able to edit the files manually, right?
The reason I ask about the unlock thing is so I can get access to the playlist files. Maybe I can copy the file(s) to my PC, then just write a utility that will write to the playlists file(s), then just transfer whatever I need to the appropriate directory?
And, thanks for the insight on the other music apps. Now, I won't even bother trying to find something. I, too, prefer to use stock apps, but I gotta tell you, I've never encountered a device where so many built in things don't work right. And, to think Android has been out for quite some time; the implementation of some of these apps shocks the crap out of me. I mean, this is a music phone that can't sync playlists, without major headaches (even YOU should not have to copy lists manually, you know what I mean?). The MAJORITY of HTC Sync functions do NOT work (shouldn't it be the majority SHOULD work), (HT Sync connectivity is spotty as well), Voice Search doesn't work right, etc. Then again, maybe Android itself isn't all that it's cracked up to be... why else would playlist sync'ing, as well as other data sync'ing, not be as prevalent as you would think? These are, after all, devices designed to make data more portable, so sync should be a top priority. But, maybe the OS is just not robust enough, or just not mature enough to accommodate good developers.
I used the HTCdev unlock method on the HTC website, but it does wipe your phone completely if you do it.
I used to have all kinds of problems with my playlists on my Incredible until I switched to strictly using external M3U playlists on my sdcard and stopped using the internal playlist function all together. What I mean by this is that I used to download music directly to the phone then add it to a playlist using that function in the music app. However this would then create a duplicate internal playlist and not update the external playlist on the sdcard. Only the internal playlist would have the new music included in it as the phone can't write to external playlists. Having two different playlist locations really screwed up my music. So now I stick strictly to keeping only the M3U playlists that are on my sdcard. My phone does not copy them to the internal cache which appears to be what your phone is doing.
The internal playlists are stored in SQL databases, cache folder and you need root access to get into it, but I have not found anything looking like usable data in the ones I searched through on my Incredible. My Rezound is not rooted. My memory of how to access data in a database is failing and comes from the early 90's when you had to know such things.
Edit: Guess what I just checked my library and I now have duplicate playlists on my phone, this is pissing me off. I generally listen to the same playlist everyday so don't open the library very often but the last time I did, over a week ago probably a couple days after unlocking, I only had one set of playlists. So now my phone has copied my external playlists to the internal cache. This is only on my Rezound too the Incredible is untouched so something is different in how the music app's read and then store data. Bummer, I can't tell which playlists is internal or external as there is no properties function in the settings.
Edit 2: Okay cleared the data from media storage, rebooted the phone and I'm back to one set of playlists. We'll see how long this lasts.