Arch Linux

Smith oo4

Member

From: Calgary, Alberta, Canada

Registered: 2007-12-30

Posts: 42

Tagging mp3s to work with my SanDisk player

Last Christmas I got a SanDisk sansa e280 MP3 player.  I like it with the exception of a few things.

1. It dose not play ogg
2. Tags need to be in ID3V2.3 format

As most of my collection is in mp3 I can live with the no ogg support.  Also, I use this scrip for the tag issue:

find /{path to music} -name *.[Mm][Pp]3 | while read file
do
    id3v2 --convert "$file"
done

the package "ID3v2" must be installed.  I would like to add to this scrip a way to remove any invalid or illegal characters in the file-names like '?' so I can put them to the fat32 file-system of myMP3 player, any suggestions.  Or, if someone has a different solution I am listening. I predominantly use Banshee (hope the Arch package gets updated soon) for music management.

Thank You

Sigi

Member

From: Thurgau, Switzerland

Registered: 2005-09-22

Posts: 1,131

Re: Tagging mp3s to work with my SanDisk player

I recently bought a SanDisk Sansa Fuze and had to look for similar things. I ended up switching from tagtool to easytag because of the id3v2.3 issue.
I also switched from using mpd/ncmpc to exaile and changed/wrote a plugin for exaile to store the music in "artist/album/title.mp3"-format. The plugin also moves the album art (which I downloaded with albumart-qt) for every transfered track to the sansa. Exaile is a little slow for my taste for day-to-day usage, so I switched back to mpd again. I'm thinking about writing a python script to transfer mp3s from playlists to the sansa in the same folder hierarchy as the plugin does it.

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Haven't been here in a while. Still rocking Arch.

Hohoho

Member

Registered: 2007-06-23

Posts: 222

Re: Tagging mp3s to work with my SanDisk player

I suggest using Rockbox for Sansa e2xx series, its just a whole lot better, the battery usage was worse before, now its better than official firmware, and its open-source

http://www.rockbox.org

Unfortunately SanDisk Sansa Fuze aint supported.

Smith oo4

Member

From: Calgary, Alberta, Canada

Registered: 2007-12-30

Posts: 42

Re: Tagging mp3s to work with my SanDisk player

I had looked at Rockbox before and when I did the track record of the firmware on the Sansa e200 was not that good.  I take it by your statement that this is no longer the case.  I will definitely look into it again.  If you don't mind me asking how is the documentation and form, also do you know of any good "how  to" sites? Does it still work well as a "Universal Mass Storage" on Linux and Windows, I think it should but I am just checking because that is the other thing I use it for a lot.

Last time I looked in to this I read that SanDisk would be publishing documentation on there players to help projects like Rockbox, did this ever happen?

Morgan Smith

Hohoho

Member

Registered: 2007-06-23

Posts: 222

Re: Tagging mp3s to work with my SanDisk player

What do you mean by "track record wasnt good"?

You still have to use official firmware to upload music on your player or other files, using UMS mode, but theyre currently working on the USB support for rockbox and its not so far away. Right now the default behaviour is, when you plug USB in a turned off Sansa, it boots into the official firmware. If its turned on, it just tries to charge, but for me that was buggy. That was some time ago, so its probably fixed now.

The Wiki and manual at rockbox.org pretty much covers all the things you need, the forums can offer more explanation too.

I haven't heard about SanDisk publishing documentation.

Moparx

Member

Registered: 2006-02-05

Posts: 136

Website

Re: Tagging mp3s to work with my SanDisk player

I suggest using Rockbox for Sansa e2xx series, its just a whole lot better, the battery usage was worse before, now its better than official firmware, and its open-source

Unfortunately, Rockbox doesn't work on the e2xx v2 series which all e2xx are if you bought them in late 2007.

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Smith oo4

Member

From: Calgary, Alberta, Canada

Registered: 2007-12-30

Posts: 42

Re: Tagging mp3s to work with my SanDisk player

Last time I read about Rockbox on the Sansa the port was new and not well tested (this is my second ScanDisk player so I think it was in late 2006), there was problems with power usage and freezing.  After looking into this again I see this is no longer the case.  I hope to find some time soon to give Rockbox a try.  Also I checked, my Sansa is a v1, I believe when my Mom bought it for me Best Buy was selling off there old stock as it was cheep.

Sigi

Member

From: Thurgau, Switzerland

Registered: 2005-09-22

Posts: 1,131

Re: Tagging mp3s to work with my SanDisk player

Lucky you. I read about rockbox for the first time after I bought my Fuze...

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Haven't been here in a while. Still rocking Arch.