Folks,
I was frustrated sync'ing music and playlists on Galaxy S3. Basically I wanted to simply copy all my music folders and playlists to Galaxy S3. And then do the same incrementally thru some kinda automation tools. It's usually one-way sync since I don't make any changes on the Phone (like creating playlists). Occasionally though, I have my friends push music to my phone. I make it a point to copy that to my PC the next time I connect my phone to my PC.
After couple of days of reading and actually trying to setup my phone with music and playlists, I figured that the fastest way to sync music and playlists reliably is to do the creation, setup and sync manually. Since I am a hard core geeky coder I find it easy to by-pass the Kies software.
NOTE:
- If you're not familiar with using the command prompt, MP3Tag tool, editing text files using macros, etc., you might find this process extremely cumbersome. Better stop reading!
- The steps listed in this post are intented for a user to create playlists, copy music and playlists to the phone, evolve a process (with the help of tools/code/scripts) that works for him/her from scratch. If you have your music and stuff already on your phone do not follow these steps unless you really want to start fresh - read: setup music all over again.
- Read the whole post before executing any of the steps
- I am not responsible for any damages caused to you or your phone by following some or all of the steps below
- I have tried this only with my phone - Galaxy S3 International version with stock OS and Apps.
Knowing well that Kies doesn't allow you to sync playlists to the Galaxy S3, it is best to copy the playlists to the phone manually. The rest of this post will guide you in doing that and much more.
Step-by-step process:
1. Ready your music folder:
It is best to have one music folder consisting of your complete music repository. It could have folders based on Albums, Artists, etc., It is best to keep just music files (mp3 for example) in these folders.
2. Create sample list of files that you would like to be your playlist:
Galaxy S3 stock music player supports playlists in m3u format. It is a simple plain-text file format. Assuming you've a bunch of music files that must go into a playlist:
- Open a Command prompt window (Start -> Run -> Cmd.exe)
- Navigate to the folder where your music files are
- Run the dir command: dir /OD /B > <my_music_folder>\playlist-1.m3u
- In the above dir command stick in the path of your main music (top-level) folder in place of <my_music_folder>
- Open playlist-1.m3u. You will see the list of mp3 files that you intend to have in your playlist
- You could also create listing based on wild-cards like: dir MJ*.mp3 /OD /B > <my_music_folder>\playlist-1.m3u
- The above command will write the list of files starting with MJ to playlist-1.m3u
- Alternatively you could use MP3Tag tool (it's free and it works great) that let's you sort the files by tags of your choice and export the list of files on customized templates. I used MP3Tag to create the list of files that eventually transform into playlists - read on to see how.
3. Create playlist file:
- Open playlist-1.m3u
- Ensure that the files are listed in the following format:
#EXTM3U
/mnt/sdcard/media/<music-sub-folder>/Track 1.mp3
/mnt/sdcard/media/<music-sub-folder>/Track 2.mp3
/mnt/sdcard/media/<music-sub-folder>/Track 3.mp3
- You will have to insert #EXTM3U in the first line of the file. Elsewhere on the net I read that this is optional. But on my Galaxy S3 (intl. version) the stock music player ignores the first line if I have a track listed on the first line instead of #EXTM3U. That causes it to skip the first listed track.
- <music-sub-folder> = this is the path to the music folder under which you have your music files. For example: If on my PC the path looks like: D:\All-My-Music\Albums\Album-1\Track 1.mp3
I'll have /mnt/sdcard/media/Albums/Album-1/Track 1.mp3 in the playlist file.
- Once you're done creating the file consisting of the list of files in the format specified above, save the file in UTF-8 format. This is *****very very***** important. The stock music player is unable to read playlist files saved in other formats. UTF-8 allows the system to support all languages (all characters and not just the basic ASCII characters). All standard editors allow you to save files in UTF-8 format.
- I suggest that you save your playlist file under the top-level music folder. Under D:\All-My-Music for example.
4. Copy music and playlists to the phone:
- This is the easy part with just one quirk. First delete all existing playlists from your phone. This is not mandatory but if you plan to follow just one method to sync your music and playlists, it is best to delete the playlists that were probably created in a different way. If you don't follow this step you might notice the quirks - creation of strange duplicate playlists.
- You will have to delete the existing playlists in the phone. Run the stock music player on the phone. Click on Playlists -> Press and hold each playlist for a second -> From the pop-up menu select Delete.
- Connect your phone to the PC (if it's not connected already)
- Open windows explorer
- Open the Phone folder (device)
- When I connect my phone to my PC I am able to navigate to Computer\GT-I9300\Phone\media. I don't have an external SD card. I am using the stock 16 GB internal memory. Note: If you've external SD card installed you might have to navigate to a different folder.
- In the first point above I told you to delete your existing playlists in the phone - the reason being - for some strange reason a) I was not able to see some of the playlist files thru Windows explorer b) Even when I was able to see the playlist files in windows explorer, deleting them via my PC really didn't work. I believe there's some caching going on (perhaps a copy of the playlists are stored elsewhere in the phone that is not visible in Windows explorer)
- Final step: Copy your entire music folder to the phone via Windows explorer. Based on the examples provided above, this would mean copying D:\All-My-Music\*.* to Computer\GT-I9300\Phone\media
Safely disconnect your phone from the PC. You should see all your music and playlists on your phone.
NOTES:
- I understand that this is not the most elegant way to sync your music with your Galaxy S3. But if you're a developer or a person really good at doing things thru the backdoor, it could help you find the right tools to implement the steps listed in this post. I've automated most of it except deleting playlists manually on the phone. I am currently researching to find out how the phone is storing the playlists internally - that is preventing me to delete/edit playlists via my PC. If you happen to have technical information in this area please share pronto.
- While you're browsing your music files using Windows Explorer, check if you have xxxx.mp3.dup0 files. These are duplicate mp3 files that the music player/android creates in some situations. I found all my music files duplicated (the very first time I browsed the music folder). You know what that means? I'd 5GB of music and guess what? It was consuming 10GB of storage space. Crazy! Who's that developer who merrily wrote the code to create duplicate copies of music files? Hope they didn't do that for video/picture files. You might wanna delete the duplicate music files (if any) to recover lost storage space.
- The advantages of doing the music sync in your own customized way thru Windows explorer / tools / code / scripts are as follows:
- Complete control of music repository and playlists
- Copying file to the phone is super fast (Windows explorer treats the phone as a USB pen drive)
- No need to run Kies
- Migrating playlists from other players possible thru scripting (hey you know what's under the hood)
- Have fun doing it your way
- Some learning...
- It's a long post, if you find any errors, please don't beat me up but do point out.
This seems most apparent when adding files to a Fat32 formatted external card (but can occur on the internal carda s well)
It can be resolved by rebuilding the Mediastore process cache or formatting the extSD to exFAT before inserting it into the phone.
Related
I have found a (fairly) simple solution for how to have a playlist in the HTC Audio Manager that is sorted by something besides alphabetical order. It's really more of a workaround, but at least it's something.
As you probably know if you're reading this, when you use the HTC Audio Manager and go to create a playlist, all of the songs are presented in alphabetical order with no way to sort them any other way. The names given are short enough that you may not even be able to differentiate songs if they have similar names. E.g. on Pink Floyd's The Wall, you have 3 songs called Another Brick In The Wall. The HTCAM doesn't given you enough name to differentiate them just by looking.
Anyways, if you want to have a playlist sorted by name you either have to look at the album and select the songs in order, rather a PITA; OR you can open up Media Player on your device. Queue up the songs you want into a playlist there and then save it. HTC Audio Manager has the ability to open audio playlists and will search your playlist folder by default. When you go back into the Audio Manager you should see the playlist you created in WMP if you go to Playlists. It will have a Windows Media Player icon next to it and you won't be able to change the playlist, but at least everything will be in order. If you use WMP on your PC to sync music to your phone, you can create the playlists there as well and they should carry over. Although I'm not certain on this since I've got a couple of WMP playlists that didn't carry over. But those were there before I flashed the ROM and might possibly not be saved in the correct location for the Audio Manager to pick them up.
I know it's may not the most elegant solution and certainly not as good as native support, but it is something that really bothered a lot of people. I know that for me it was a deal breaker but I can tolerate this workaround.
can anyone confirm the ability to create playlists on the PC and move them to the phone? I have yet to be able to do this.
Something that really grates me about AudioManager is the ability to piss me off by adding ringtones stored in my storage card to the library. If anyone knows who to add exceptions to certain folders it would be really awesome
Playlist transfer from PC
After pulling half my hair out, I decided ot do this right, and found the way to transfer a playlist with appropriate sorting from Windows to my HTC Touch Pro Audio Manager.
The clue appears to make sure that all references in the playlist are relative to the location of the playlist. I.e. you must store the playlist on the same location as the files. To get this to work I had to work with the TouchPro as a disk drive - which assigns a drive letter and makes things work better in Windows Media Player.
a) Open WMP on the PC
b) Enter “Library”
c) Make a new (empty) playlist
d) Make sure the playlist pane is open on the right
e) Connect HTC as diskdrive
f) Search for all music on the drive in Windows Explorer
g) Select all music found
h) Right click and add to Windows Media Player playlist
i) In WMP – save playlist as
Filename: “Any_name.asx”
Remember to choose file type wpl, m3u, asx to get the format right
Export to the device to get the path right
Steps a-d+i in Windows Media Player (WMP) - e is chosen on the device and f-h in Windows explorer.
My use was to have my playlist shuffled while avoiding repeats - and that could be handled in WMP, but you could also choose the sequence manually or make any other sorting.
Note: some sources of error are: Saving the playlist on the PC will cause references to E:\Music\Song.wma (or whatever) which is likely to be different from the reference internally on the device (\Storage\Music\Song.wma or such).
I hope this helps - if nothing else; I feel a little better to have contributed in return for all the great advice found on the site.
I also investigated playlists created with Playlist Manager on the TouchPro, and to me it appeared that some had a conflicting structure, and would not read in HTC Audio Manager. I suspected the sequence of Title and other headings, but didn't investigate fully.
Regards, Anders
andbb said:
After pulling half my hair out, I decided ot do this right, and found the way to transfer a playlist with appropriate sorting from Windows to my HTC Touch Pro Audio Manager.
The clue appears to make sure that all references in the playlist are relative to the location of the playlist. I.e. you must store the playlist on the same location as the files. To get this to work I had to work with the TouchPro as a disk drive - which assigns a drive letter and makes things work better in Windows Media Player.
a) Open WMP on the PC
b) Enter “Library”
c) Make a new (empty) playlist
d) Make sure the playlist pane is open on the right
e) Connect HTC as diskdrive
f) Search for all music on the drive in Windows Explorer
g) Select all music found
h) Right click and add to Windows Media Player playlist
i) In WMP – save playlist as
Filename: “Any_name.asx”
Remember to choose file type wpl, m3u, asx to get the format right
Export to the device to get the path right
Steps a-d+i in Windows Media Player (WMP) - e is chosen on the device and f-h in Windows explorer.
My use was to have my playlist shuffled while avoiding repeats - and that could be handled in WMP, but you could also choose the sequence manually or make any other sorting.
Note: some sources of error are: Saving the playlist on the PC will cause references to E:\Music\Song.wma (or whatever) which is likely to be different from the reference internally on the device (\Storage\Music\Song.wma or such).
I hope this helps - if nothing else; I feel a little better to have contributed in return for all the great advice found on the site.
I also investigated playlists created with Playlist Manager on the TouchPro, and to me it appeared that some had a conflicting structure, and would not read in HTC Audio Manager. I suspected the sequence of Title and other headings, but didn't investigate fully.
Regards, Anders
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Will your method copy all actual music files in PC to device or it will sync only playlist file? Do playlist files itself - without actual music files - useful for copying to device or backuping?
My HD2 just searches all storage card for any music files and puts them into library.
Some of them are ringtones and other useless stuff. So I don't want them to be in my music library
Is there a way to choose folder where audio manager should search ?
I'm not sure why your library is showing ringtones. None of mine ever end up in the library.
I had Fring and Talkonout installed on storage card. I both have mp3 files for ringtones.
I deleted them both from storage card and files disappeared but that is not a solution :/
Is there a way to choose music folder ?
marcio123 said:
I had Fring and Talkonout installed on storage card. I both have mp3 files for ringtones.
I deleted them both from storage card and files disappeared but that is not a solution :/
Is there a way to choose music folder ?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
i got the same problem. all music files show in my music library when i pressed update library. +1 on how to choose music folder and disregard the rest.
mine does the same. My HD2 came preinstalled with Who Wants to Be a Millionaire game. The manila audio manager displays all the acc music files that came preinstalled... what a pain....
you can make HTC album to ignore some folders. Do the following:
Go to HKLM/Software/HTC/HTCAlbum/Ignore
and add a sting value with a name (choose whatever you want) and string (here you put the location of a particular folder)
So if I want HTC album to ignore My Music folder on my Storage card, I will add a new string value: name-My Music and string-\Storage Card\My Music
hope this helps
ah forgot to mention soft reset after that
Am I doing something wrong? I did a soft reset and still no exclusion from the folders I specified here:
Ignore not Ignored
Oh, should I rename that folder to ignore? Because my HD2's registry came like that with that folder called ingnored.
Maybe the TMOUS HD2 has the d added? Not sure why they would have done that.
marcio123 said:
My HD2 just searches all storage card for any music files and puts them into library.
Some of them are ringtones and other useless stuff. So I don't want them to be in my music library
Is there a way to choose folder where audio manager should search ?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Tap Library - Playlist - New playlist (for example playlist 1)
Tap playlist 1 - Add songs - All songs (on bottom of screen) - select all songs you need - Done
Tap 1 song in playlist 1. Music player will play that song and library will update to playlist 1.
I'm sorry about my English, I'm Vietnamese.
Good English! I understood great.
But, I did what you said about adding a playlist & adding songs and it seemed to work great, but then later I went back to play the playlist & nothing played at all. It is strange that this default player doesn't work anymore since I tried the playlist trick. In fact, when I try to find anything to play, the "Music Tab" just hangs and never populates with MP3s at all. I think I bricked my Music Tab of my HD2 (I don't know if I said that right but it sounded good ). Well, at least I didn't brick the entire phone! Now I am forced to use Windows Media Player for all music, which I don't mind at all, but it was nice to use the other player while on the road.
I may end up trying what they say here:
ruscik said:
Well a lot of people noticed a problem with HTC Music tab. Library shows not only music but ring tones and other sounds. One way to stop it is to hide offending folders. One problem with that is if you hide for example ring tone folder you can not select your ring tones as they are hidden as well.
What I did is as goes. I have music on SD card, also there is tomtom, copilot and some other apps. I have hidden all of the apps that might have sounds so they do not show up in library. Obviously left folder with music not hidden.
That will take care of SD card.
For My Device sounds do steps below:
1. Start from removing your card and then going to music tab so it rescans and states no music found. (Skip to step 3 if you are starting from clean rom)
2. Go to registry editor of your choice and navigate to:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\HTC\AudioManager_Eng (for german it will be AudioManager_Ger)\Information
Delete all items in that folder. You will not be able to delete Information it self.
If you are on clean rom you will not even have that folder it is created 1st time when music tab finds music.
3. Navigate to:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\Software\HTC\AudioManager_Eng\Config
In there change:
"device_scan_path_path" from what ever there is to \Windows
"device_scan_path_path_0" from what ever there is to \Windows
"ring_tone_path" from what ever there is to \Windows
What this will do is exclude all files in windows folder. If you have any files in my documents they will show up. I assume if you just put "\" instead of "\Windows" it will exclude entire my device but did not test it.
4. Soft reset, insert your SD card and enjoy.
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Click to collapse
I didn't want to do it that way, but it looks as if I may have to. I liked the first way better (...HTCAlbum > Ignored...)
(I removed "Music" from my Home Screen Tabs as there was no reason to have it there anymore)
I just create playlist and do nothing else. I needn't edit registry.
I have already read some other topics about this, and I know Google Music stores its offline cache in android/data/com.google.android.music/cache/music and that you need to delete the .nomedia files in the path for the songs to be available to other players.
I have noticed, however, that Google Music stores the files with random numeric names with no ID3 tags. So when you access them with other players, it's rrrrreally annoying to sort the songs out.
So my question is... how does Google Music know which file corresponds to which song? That info must be stored somewhere, right? Music is showing the ID3 info somehow.
Is it possible to create an app that renames and moves the cache files to other directory according to Google Music's internal information?
Thanks in advance.
Would love if there was a way, even if it involved hooking it up to a computer and getting another program to tag the songs.
Please use the Q&A Forum for questions Thanks
Moving to Q&A
In your sdcard, if your device has an internal sd it''l be there and not in the removable, go to Android/data/com.google.android.music/cache/music and rename the .nomedia file. I haven't tried this myself because I don't have another media player as i love the music beta player, but that file is what you put in a folder to tell the media service to not scan that directory so removing it will add those files to the media db. However that may cause issues with the Music Beta app so be cautious, hence rename instead of delete. I would reboot check the apps and if all is well u can then delete the file.
Offline Music Importer
Check out the app which makes this task easy.
The ID3 tag information is stored in Google Music's database on the phone. The app accesses that database and applies the proper ID3 tags and artwork to the cache files you're talking about.
With all that information added, the app moves the files to a public folder on your sdcard so that the Android Media Service Provider can see the files. The files then become available to any player on the device.
https://market.android.com/details?id=com.sapien.music.importer
I don't know how the syncing really works within the application or anything, but when I just installed Google Music, none of the playlists would download. I had to empty my music folder completely, and now everything syncs.
Is there anything that doesn't remove the music from Google Music's folder? It seems like moving it all would mess up the sync function. I'm just wondering if anyone knows before I subject myself to a day without music while the app downloads a couple thousand songs.
There is nothing on my local folder, android/data/com.google.android.music/cache/music, actually there's no "music" folder inside "cache". I have try the above app and also the app "Google Music Importer" (which appears to be the same) but nothing, it's doesn't recognize the downloaded albums. I'm on ICS 4.0.4 with a custom ROM. What can I do?
I have finally managed to import my music. First of all, you need the latest version of the import app: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.sapien.music.importer
If the music is not on your internal sdcard under android/data/com.google.android.music/cache/music then the path will be /data/data/com.google.android.music/cache/music. Now you have to set the proper permissions to the folder and files (I'm not sure if you have to set reading permissions or also write and execute ones, and also, I'm not sure if you have to set it only in the files or also on all the folders behind). You need to grant permissions on files under artwork and music folders .
You have to tell the import app your "cache" path under its settings. If your path is the second one, you will need root access (also configurable on the app's options).
Now the import app should recognize your music. If not, please let me know.
I have a problem here, how can I change permissions to more than just one file at the same time? Thanks.
It's a good idea
It doesn't work, sometimes the app recognizes the music and sometimes it doesn't. The funny thing is that sometimes it only recognizes the artwork, and not the music. This is starting to piss me off...
Hi
I have all my music organized in different folders. I want to be able to listen to these folders as playlists or albums. Can anyone tell me how to do this?
Thanks!
If you want to "create" albums containing the files of a folder, you could open all files of one folder in an ID3-Tag-Editor and change the "Album"-entry to the name you want. This might lead to all files having the same cover in the musicplayer, so you might consider creating playlists.
To create playlists I would do the following instead of creating playlists manually in the musicplayer on your phone:
Connect the phone to PC
Change the USB-connection to harddisk-mode
Drag the folder you want to create a playlist from into your media-player (e.g. Winamp)
Save the playlist from Winamp as a *.m3u-playlist on your phone
Repeat steps 3 and 4 if you want to create more playlists
Disconnect the phone from your PC
After the SD-card has been scanned by the media-service, your created playlist(s) should appear in the media-library of the HTC-musicplayer
Motivation: I am creating a more organized folder structure on my phone (LG Quantum) and am using the hack that allows the phone to be seen as a USB storage device.
1. I copy all the JPG and MP4 files from the phone to my computer.
2. I use exiftool to organize the files into folders by date and rename the files with more informative date-related names.
3. I then recopy the directory structure on the computer onto the phone.
It works very nicely for the JPG files. However, the MP4 files, that were originally created on the phone, only show up as video files with black thumbnails, and these files do not play.
If I use Zune to sync them, they go into the Video folder and DO PLAY on the phone. However, I do not want them in the Video folder. I want them in the structured directories in the "Pictures" folder that I made (I want pictures and videos in the same folders by date).
I can copy the files in the phones Video folder to the Pictures directory structure I created on the phone, but a bunch of black thumbnails are left in the Video folder that don't play, making it very inconvenient (since I only want music videos or movies in the Videos folder).
Does anyone know why MP4 files created by the phone will not play when copied to the computer and then back to the phone via USB?
Is this a bug? Any hacks to fix?
Thank you.