Restrict Sense Music Player to play music from one folder? - General Questions and Answers

All,
I've searched the forums and I've seen that people are asking how to exclude certain folders from the search path of the htc music engine. While this approach may work for some, it doesn't work for me, because I would have to know all the folders where music is stored to exclude them, and that can be a pain if you have several programs installed on your device.
What I've been trying to do is I've been trying to find out how to restrict or "force" the htc engine to search for music in one folder that I can configure and only in that folder. I save all my music to
\Stogare Card\Music\
But i have audio books in \Storage Card\My Documents\My Books\Audiobooks\
and when i go to the music tab, it tries to play my books (very annoying) and also, it plays the system sounds from the \Windows folder and any other sounds that it finds from the \Program Files\ folder, etc...
Does anyone have any idea how to tell the player to ONLY scan the \Storage Card\Music\ folder for music?
Any help will be greatly appreciated.
Cheers!

ZaidSenall said:
All,
I've searched the forums and I've seen that people are asking how to exclude certain folders from the search path of the htc music engine. While this approach may work for some, it doesn't work for me, because I would have to know all the folders where music is stored to exclude them, and that can be a pain if you have several programs installed on your device.
What I've been trying to do is I've been trying to find out how to restrict or "force" the htc engine to search for music in one folder that I can configure and only in that folder. I save all my music to
\Stogare Card\Music\
But i have audio books in \Storage Card\My Documents\My Books\Audiobooks\
and when i go to the music tab, it tries to play my books (very annoying) and also, it plays the system sounds from the \Windows folder and any other sounds that it finds from the \Program Files\ folder, etc...
Does anyone have any idea how to tell the player to ONLY scan the \Storage Card\Music\ folder for music?
Any help will be greatly appreciated.
Cheers!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Dunno about Sense Music Player (I stay away from HTC bloatware and only use third party or MS apps), but some decent 3rd party media players that allow for excluding dirs when building up their library. See the "Library scanning: ex/including folders?" row in the chart in my dedicated article at http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=415063
btw, my article has a lot of other goodies you may find extremely useful

Menneisyys said:
Dunno about Sense Music Player (I stay away from HTC bloatware and only use third party or MS apps), but some decent 3rd party media players that allow for excluding dirs when building up their library. See the "Library scanning: ex/including folders?" row in the chart in my dedicated article at http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=415063
btw, my article has a lot of other goodies you may find extremely useful
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I've tried using third party players (TCPMP, Nitrogen, Mortplayer) but i can't control any of those with the forward/back buttons on the HD2 hands free, and when I lock the phone with the end key to put it in my pocket, the only player that keeps playing music is the Sense Music Player, all the others stop playing and i have to unlock the phone and hit play again.
Also, with Sense Music Player, I can be reading something on the internet, or using my GPS and I can still change songs without having to go to the music tab or switching applications by simply using the forward/back buttons on my hands free, so i prefer to skip the files i don't want to listen to (little annoyance) to having to switch applications or to not being able to lock the phone (big annoyance)
So in my opinion, the only thing that the Sense Music player is missing to be perfect is the ability to tell it which folders to scan for music, like Mortplayer does, for instance.
I use mortplayer for audiobooks, the ability to add bookmarks to mp3 audiobooks is great, no other player can do that as far as i know. (there is Overdrive Media Console, but you have to use THEIR audiobooks)
thanks for your reply, though... as i said, all help is appreciated.

ZaidSenall said:
I've tried using third party players (TCPMP, Nitrogen, Mortplayer) but i can't control any of those with the forward/back buttons on the HD2 hands free, and when I lock the phone with the end key to put it in my pocket, the only player that keeps playing music is the Sense Music Player, all the others stop playing and i have to unlock the phone and hit play again.
Also, with Sense Music Player, I can be reading something on the internet, or using my GPS and I can still change songs without having to go to the music tab or switching applications by simply using the forward/back buttons on my hands free, so i prefer to skip the files i don't want to listen to (little annoyance) to having to switch applications or to not being able to lock the phone (big annoyance)
So in my opinion, the only thing that the Sense Music player is missing to be perfect is the ability to tell it which folders to scan for music, like Mortplayer does, for instance.
I use mortplayer for audiobooks, the ability to add bookmarks to mp3 audiobooks is great, no other player can do that as far as i know. (there is Overdrive Media Console, but you have to use THEIR audiobooks)
thanks for your reply, though... as i said, all help is appreciated.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
btw, as far as button assignment problems are concerned, did you try third-party tools? see my dedicated article at http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=337602

Create a file named .nomedia in the directory in which you don't want them to show up. This works on Android, not sure what OS you're using.
Edit: You're using sense. It will work. Worked for me anyways. I have "Better Keyboard" installed and it stores all sounds on SD Card so I created .nomedia and viola, it's all gone from my music player. File needs to be blank, just needs to be named .nomedia.
Another edit: I guess you're not android. I thought you were talking about Android Sense. I'm sorry, but I can't help on this matter. Very sorry. However, if you ever get Android, there's a trick for you.

will check this out and see what I can do with it.
Menneisyys said:
btw, as far as button assignment problems are concerned, did you try third-party tools? see my dedicated article at http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=337602
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Tried it, but windows doesn't let you create a file with only an extension and no file name... it would have been great if it had worked! There's got to be a registry setting somewhere! if only somebody knew it and shared it!
thank you for your help, though! I appreciate it!
r3s-rt said:
Create a file named .nomedia in the directory in which you don't want them to show up. This works on Android, not sure what OS you're using.
Edit: You're using sense. It will work. Worked for me anyways. I have "Better Keyboard" installed and it stores all sounds on SD Card so I created .nomedia and viola, it's all gone from my music player. File needs to be blank, just needs to be named .nomedia.
Another edit: I guess you're not android. I thought you were talking about Android Sense. I'm sorry, but I can't help on this matter. Very sorry. However, if you ever get Android, there's a trick for you.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

One workaround i found is making a playlist with all the songs on the device and skip all other audio files, but this is annoying and takes a lot of time...

try using A_C S2P AND S2U2

S2P will only detect play/pause. It will not detect track forward/backwards.

iam also looking for this solution on my omnia 2 with sense 2.5, went to the registry with no luck

Another option is to hide all folders you don't want SENSE to scan. Read more here: http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?p=5504259

I have the same problem... I can't believe HTC didn't think about this issue!

In old version of windows mobile a dummy "ignore_my_docs" file use to do the trick.
Don't know if it is still effective in wm6 or if it works with the sense media player....

+1 i have the same question

The .nomedia works
This is what I did, I followed the advise of the .nomedia, but since windows does not allow a nameless file I created a "a.nomedia" and pasted into the folder I wanted to exclude.
Then with ES File Explorer in the phone I did a rename and removed the "a". It worked like a charm!! Now I can use HTC Sense Music and no third party.

.
Thread moved to Q&A due to it being a question. Would advise you to read forum rules and post in correct section.

The .nomedia worked however how do i remove it if I wanted to?
Hidden file?
Es file explore doesn't find it

Related

Windows Media Exclude Folders

Hi there,
Is there a way to force windows media not to update a library with a certain folders music, I have loads of music I want separate from my Windows Media library. I don't want to go through the library deleting music I don't want there every time I update it since its a bit of a pain.
E.G: My music located on the storage card I want to update into the library. But I don't want Misc Music also contained in My Music to update to the library.
I am using WM6 on T-Mobile MDA Vario II. If this is not possible are there any workarounds?
Thanks in advance
Anti
Not any that i know of, but i would really like to know... i have all my music on my memory card but the ringtones are still on the phone, and since wmp finds the ringtones it starts with the phones media library as standard, i dont like changing it at every start up
I have the same problem. I want to random play all my songs on my storage card, but I really want to exclude my audiobook/radio drama files!
Yet I also want easy access to play those files when required!
So, if I can set media player to exclude some album/genre in the "play all" option, I will be happy! Is it too much to ask for???
Yeah, REALLY annoying problem! Specially in combination with the m2d music tab.. Hope anyone finds a way to exclude specific folders.. (pm me if u found it?)
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=4825935&postcount=7085
May be it helps...
Bump
Bumping this back up this list. Does anyone know a way to do this with the htc windows mobile music player???

Transferring Music to TP

Is there ANY other program you can use to sync songs to a TP besides WMP? I've been using WMP, but it keeps on making random duplicates of all my songs, and it's REALLY annoying.
I would greatly appreciate any advice.
Oh and I don't want to just drag+drop, I would like some sort of program.
Thanks.
i agree i moved from a iphone and i got to say its annoying, the way windows mobile phones organize music, and when i use windows media player mobile to update my library it seaches the entire device and grabs even system sounds.
Hmm, I just put my microsd card into my computer and dump all the music I want to listen to (mp3, flak, ogg, what ever) into the music folder to play with the built in player / core player.
Eric03 said:
Is there ANY other program you can use to sync songs to a TP besides WMP? I've been using WMP, but it keeps on making random duplicates of all my songs, and it's REALLY annoying.
I would greatly appreciate any advice.
Oh and I don't want to just drag+drop, I would like some sort of program.
Thanks.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
How is drag and drop ANY more difficult than a program?
dr g said:
How is drag and drop ANY more difficult than a program?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Well at least with WMP I can see my music in a "library" setup, as opposed to just opening my music folder which has thousands upon thousands of subfolders. It's just much easier for me (at least the way my music folder is setup) to use a program such as WMP.... but WMP sucks. That is why I am asking for an alternative to WMP.
10332007 said:
Hmm, I just put my microsd card into my computer and dump all the music I want to listen to (mp3, flak, ogg, what ever) into the music folder to play with the built in player / core player.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thats exactly what I do and it works like a charm. It is easier than using a program in my opinion. Are you doing something wrong? is it giving you trouble moving the files to the microSD card?
When I start Winamp and have my phone plugged in, it detects it and asks if I want to use it to manage my music on the phone. Winamp has a great name out there, maybe it oculd be useful.
I also used Yahoo Music Engine at once point and that worked great, like itunes. I think that whole deal is still around too, albeit Yahoo music has changed a bit, the app was called Yahoo Music Engine.
I have not tried sync with WM11. There must be a simple option or something you are missing. Perhaps it has to do with Media Player on WM6 and the library function. If you scan the device and organize the library to ignore your Windows folder then it probably won't be a problem on the WM11 side.
Does that make any sense?
WM11 is simple drag and drop; the problem is that when it loads music onto your Phone/SD card it puts it into the file structure Artist/Album/Track based off id3 tags. So if your music is improperly tagged or if you have more than one copy of a song like an album and a compilation album you'll end up with duplicates.
Personally I just wipe out the Music folder on my SD card every 2 weeks or so and dump a new playlist onto it. You can use the WMP sort function in the playlist to eliminate any duplicates before you copy them over. You can still add to the card later and it won't reinstall the same file so long as it's not a duplicate on your desktop like I mentioned above.
As for getting rid of ringtones showing up in your library on your phone I use Pocket Player for my MP3 player and it has an "Exclude Directory" option on it so it will only update from the SD card music folder.
Did Wm4 or CE or whatever handle music?
So that whole development time while WM5 was on market and ipod appeared, was MS just sitting there saying, "Well these are business devices let's focus on getting four Excel cells to show up on this ****tay 320x240 screen instead"
Great.
And the even funier part is the new Blackberry virtualization occurring over WM6. If they were so good at business apps then why is this occurring, HELP ME UNDERSTAND hahahhaha
This was all tongue in cheek utterance from a bewildered fan of MS and their spastic roll outs!!!!!

Best Audio Player?

Is anyone working on a S2P type audio player for Android? One reason that I regret going to Android is the lack of any good audio players. Using Nemoplayer and it is alright...but I want my S2P!
Until then, can anyone recommend an audio player that DOES NOT scan then entire SD card for audio files? As much as I like my 1 second audio clip for notifications, I don't want it to be included in my playlist.
S2P was ideal because all music needed to be in the /music directory. Thanks ahead of time!
You can put an empty file named .nomedia (the dot is important!) in the directories you don't want scanned.
You have just made my day! Thanks very much.
Well, that fixed my audio player issue, but now that essentially is preventing android from seeing my ringtones. So now I can either have my ringtones or an audio player that will not play my ringtones. Any way of having both?
My ringtones don't show up in the Music application, are you doing something differently?
Try Mortplayer. You can even find info about it in this forum. It doesn't use the Android media database. It scans only the folder and subfolders you designate.
guags99, mortplayer is exactly what I am talking about. Thanks for the information!
For all those who prefer other players, try to put a file named .nomedia in the directories you don't like to have scanned for Android's media library.
MortPlayer doesn't handle that file since I think it's enough to point it to the correct main folder, so you could even use .nomedia to omit audio books from your favorite tag based media player and play them with MortPlayer Audio Books.
(Of course I hope many like MortPlayer, but of course folder based navigation isn't for everybody. And I didn't like to code the 5,000,000th iTunes clone...)
Edit: Oops, skipped an important post... I think ringtones in /media/audio/ringtones (resp. .../notifications or .../alarms for those) should be regarded even with .nomedia.
brummiesteven said:
My ringtones don't show up in the Music application, are you doing something differently?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Mine don't either. Maybe it's a difference between different versions of Android?
Careful
Hey guys - be careful with .nomedia - you can loose all your media files due to a silly bug in Android...
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showpost.php?p=6782845&postcount=1
I quite like btunes. You can specify which folders for it to look into. Ive just got all my mp3s in my music folder.
Audiobooks ive got in another folder and use an audio book reader for them so btunes works pretty well for me. Also like the interface.
The key to keeping ring, notification,and alarm tones from showing up in the media player is to have them in the correct folders. And there is where the "why didn't I think of that" comes into play.
At the root of your sd card:
alarm tones go in the "alarms" folder
notification tones go in the "notifications" folder
ring tones go in the "ringtones" folder
Now your phone will be able to see the tones and use them properly, but they will not show up as media files in any media player unless you tell it to look for them (some players, such as Meridian for example, allow you to exclude folders in the application setting).
Android Delight has a great comparison between Cubed and DoubleTwist. (can't post links yet)
Those are my two favorite music apps. Cubed was my fav but for reasons in the article (syncing, ease, etc.) DoubleTwist is taking over.
I'm using btunes right now. You select the folder with your music manually. I used to use Meridian where you also selected the folders. I changed because of a bug after an update, but that might have been fixed now. I like them both becaus you can skip, fast forward by swyping (best on meridian)
one of the best audio player is deadbeef. simply to use, GUI is perfect, sound is clear.

Windows Media and Music Tab standard issues.. Detailed

I recently decided to start using my music player on my HD2 due to the newest Cookies HT 1.8 update, and Windows Media and Sense Music player seems to have lots of bugs within the music player and/or missing options and other stuff i cant seem to figure out. I'm just puzzled and thought maybe others are having the same problem
1. I had a ton of music all mislabeled tags and no artwork, so first i tried to use the update on Sense tab to replace the artwork with the generic melody icon. ***That feature NEVER works for me, It doesn't seem to work even on very well labeled music tags. even when i enable WiFi, it doesn't give me artwork. (this is the first issue)
2. Why can I play music from both Windows Media, and Sense Music. its kinda an issue. Sometime I like to go my SD and play a MP3 file, But I'd rather have Sense Music player do all the work, it seems to run much smoother than Windows Media player. How do you relink your mp3's to play to Sense music player when clicking on a Mp3 files from the SD Card??
3. I updated my library using Windows Media, since Sense Music tab seemed to be lacking that feature to update the library altogether. Adding Music, Sense is kinda glitchy and I sometimes just have to soft reset to find a new mp3 just added. Using Windows Media to update your library is a nightmare!! Windows Media took 50++ of my ringtones and placed them into my Music library. then to make it even worst, it added every single sound effect from my phone and all 30 so games with sound effects installed on my SD card. (No one wants to be jamming out, then the music player flips to the next song that just happens to be a Japanese airplane pilot from "Flight Commander" Then another good song. oh back to the Japanese pilot again.) Now i dont know how to untangle this mess. I hate Windows Media. Why wont it just allow me to pick what folder I want to update rather than scan unnecessary files throughout my whole device that i may not want in my library? i get even more angry when of course I can only delete one file at a time from my music library after it just added an unnecessary 200 sound effects; which is now mixed all through my music library list.
___________________________________________________________________________
I am hoping someone here is an expert with the music library and tell me what file to delete to reset the library memory or maybe a way to avoid the media player from adding useless sound effects to my library. perhaps someone that can modify the music player to add features or a program to help modify the music experience.
Thank you
1. I've got this problem too, and I guess it's the lack of sense supporting the ID3v1 or ID3v2 meta data tags. You could use this application to check and edit the data, but -as I said- that's only a guess.
2. No, that's just not possible
3. Open your favorite registry editor, and browse to
Code:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE \ Software \ Microsoft \ MediaPlayer \ Preferences \ FoldersExcludedFromLibrary
set the value to the folders you would like to exclude from indexing, like:
Code:
FoldersExcludedFromLibrary="\Storage Card\My Documents\My Ringtones;\Storage Card\Program Files\Flight Commander;"
Good luck!
I can't thank you enough for the info to exclude folders in my music file. YES!!! I'll give it a try... i'll probably have to hand delete unwanted stuff? or will it disengage once i type in the excluded?
can i get sense music to update, or do i have to use the dual setup from media player to search and update tags? i used media monkey to update my tags, but sense shows outdated info. its kinda strange it's sticking on the old file tags as well
Does this effect both music players????
3. It's not working with this registry value! Does it have to be to an specify folder or can i make it broad?
(I tried this to eliminate a whole mess of sound making programs and games)
FoldersExcludedFromLibrary="\Storage Card\Program Files" meaning everything within program files are excluded.
***so far it doesn't recognize this value at all. it's frustrating if I have to add each independent file within a game, ringtone, garmin, etc... that's a lot of research and coding
aoakes said:
I can't thank you enough for the info to exclude folders in my music file. YES!!! I'll give it a try... i'll probably have to hand delete unwanted stuff? or will it disengage once i type in the excluded?
can i get sense music to update, or do i have to use the dual setup from media player to search and update tags? i used media monkey to update my tags, but sense shows outdated info. its kinda strange it's sticking on the old file tags as well
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Go to \Application Data\HTC\AudioManager_Eng\ and delete the file AudioManager_Eng.vol that should delete the sense music library, which will be rebuild after a restart of your device. Note that this folder and file may be hidden.
aoakes said:
Does this effect both music players????
3. It's not working with this registry value! Does it have to be to an specify folder or can i make it broad?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
No, it does only effect the windows media player. Have you done a softreset after applying the registry changes? (Then update lib in media player)
Yes, I've been dozens of soft resets after editing my registry. its kinda an automatic thing since i know it must boot the modded material before it can fix/ correct the issue.
In this case, i don't see why i'm adding entries into the registry to exclude folders; if it has absolutely no impact on Sense Music player. I need Sense MP to not play my game sounds effects if i am randomly playing all songs.
I have found a cab that resets my sense library every time i restart my phone, so it doesn't take up additional boot time, with the added benefit of rebuilding the library. I guess truly, i must create a playlist in order to avoid this issue... i wish for a program like the iphone music player but incorporated like Sense MP.
aoakes said:
In this case, i don't see why i'm adding entries into the registry to exclude folders; if it has absolutely no impact on Sense Music player.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
As said before the registrykey only affects the windows media player library settings.
I found these keys:
Code:
HKLM\Software\HTC\AudioManager_Eng\Config
device_scan_path, device_scan_path_0, ring_tone_path
Edit as follows:
Set device_scan_path_path and device_scan_path_path_0 to \Storage Card\Music
Haven't tested it, but it should work. The ringtonepath can be used as a single exclusion path
I was curious if you updated your rom? I, too, started paying more attention to my music player after updating co0kies to 1.8. I have read on dozens of threads about the issues on the sense music player and have experienced most of them at one point or another to the point of not wanting to even use it. Anyway, after updating to the new rom the player and audio eng. miraculously became dramatically more stable. It didn't solve everything but certainly cleaned it up alot. Just wondering....
eph533 said:
I was curious if you updated your rom?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Look at my signature
i use cht 1.8, but I'm sure that doesn't effect the problems you're facing
yeah, I've updated my Rom a while ago. just updated stock T mobile USA Rom, but i don't think any of this should be an impact because its still sense 2.5 (ver. 2012) within both stock and update.
I think I'll just remove some of the games causing the conflict since i don't even play them. i've cleaned up the music library as good as i could. when i find the cab file, I'll post it on here so others can refresh their library.

Music app

OK so I want to use the stock music app (music player) so I mounted my phone and made a new folder called music on the SD card(internal)
Is there any way to have it see only that folder? Rite now it shows all music on phone including ringtones. I normally just would run a shuffle mode.
Thanks
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I897 using XDA App
Yea I'd like an answer to this one to. I poked around a little but couldn't make it work.
(BTW OP GM for the win. Nice!)
Do you have your ringtones in a folder titled ringtones? I did this on mine and seem to remember them not showing up in my music player when I was using it.
I (and many other people with the captivate/galaxy s) have had issues with the stock music player, although not directly related to the issue you mentioned. I believe that Meridian does what you are looking for, but doesn't look quite as nice as the Samsung app. I can't check because I decided I liked the look of tunewiki better (it doesn't have the ability to choose your folders.)
Yes ringtones and notify sounds have there own folder.
I found a apparently that seems to do it pretty well. Mixzing. Only shows my full lenght songs
Still if someone know a way let me know
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SGH-I897 using XDA App
I'd also like to know how to fix this. I have stuff in my music player that's like... my photos? I don't want to use an alternative because I love the little pull-down interface on the locked main screen for controlling the native music player.
Oh this is easy. Just open notepad, choose all file types and save a file called ".nomedia" without quotes, and with period. Then put that folder in all places where you dont want applications to grab media. I put it in my ringtone folder and my gameloft folders (because gallery was showing game photos)

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