x20 playlists - howto

[rancidmoth]

hello all,

the documentation for creating playlists on the iriver x20, that is on the web, is disjoint and confusing to say the least. I have noticed that many people have problems creating playlists on the device (and I too had difficulty). I have, however, found a way to do it correctly. If this is simply a repeat of someone else’s well documented post, I apologise for not finding it and quoting: but what can you do -

howto create playlists in iriver x20 -

1. set the device to MTP (settings, advanced)
2. open windows explorer and browse to the iriver x20 device
3. expand its contents (i.e. go into "internal storage")
4. within the "internal storage" folder create a PLAYLISTS folder (caps may be necessary here as the device may be case sensitive - I haven’t tried it in lower case)
5. open WMP 11 and create a playlist under the Library section (not the sync section)
6. save the playlist
7. configure the sync partnership in WMP 11 to include the playlist and then sync the to the device. to do this, in the library section right click on the iriver x20 device and select "setup sync" then select your newly created playlist to add it to the playlists you wish to sync.
8. sync the device.
9. go into the sync tab in WMP 11 and check that the playlist is on the device.

this method does NOT create duplicate mp3 files on the device. it is a true playlist.

that all seems to have worked for me. Hope this helps anyone that didn’t get very far with the crappy documentation from iriver.

[rancidmoth]

i have noticed that in the howto i assume that the iriver device displays in explorer as "internal storage" which, having now experimented on different machines/versions of WMP, may not always be the case.

You should note that if in MTP mode you need to browse the device until you see all the "MUSIC", "CONFIG" etc folders. When you get there, and there is _no_ PLAYLISTS folder, you need to create one.

I have also noticed a few other odd things that need answers when it comes to playlists so i am compiling them for another thread.

[rancidmoth]

hello again,

OK i think i have it figured out. i don’t understand it fully, but i think i have it to a point where i can replicate it so that no matter what playlists will end up working.

There appears to be a bug (or perhaps someone can offer a better explanation), that disables playlists from synching. The steps in my original howto are correct, you must be in MTP mode and you seem to have to manually create a playlist folder (i don’t believe the case matters because WMP reformats it to "Playlists" anyway.

Once that is created playlists sync without an issue. If, however, you switch back to MSC mode (as i did today), and connect it to a pc, then switch back to MTP, playlists seem to stop working. I'm not sure why, but i tried everything (except waiting for an extended period of time to see if it was a Cinderella type lock), to get them to work again, but nothing did.

So using iriver plus 3 i re-initialized the disk on the device, set it to MTP, hooked it to the pc, created the playlists folder, setup my sync parameters in wmp 11, and bingo, it all just worked. has been ever since. So that process would seem to be a definate way to get playlists working.

[BMboomer]

Hi
I think a lot of people like myself prefer to use MSC ( drag n' drop mode) and they probably are finding that using playlists is a bit buggy.
I have found that it doesn't matter where on the X20 you put a playlist, although making a folder called playlists is conveinient and keeps them all together.
The playlists have to be M3u playlists (Winamp), and opened in Wordpad they should look like this.

#EXTM3U
#EXTINF:297,Led Zeppelin - Black Dog
L:\Music\Oz Top 10 Albums\07 - Led Zeppelin - Led Zeppelin IV\01 - Black Dog.mp3
#EXTINF:221,Led Zeppelin - Rock And Roll
L:\Music\Oz Top 10 Albums\07 - Led Zeppelin - Led Zeppelin IV\02 - Rock And Roll.mp3

I have used Winamp to make them, by playing a folder from the USB connected X20, in winamp and then saving winamps playlist back to the X20.

I like Advanced Playlist builder best though, available freely from :-
http://www.programurl.com/software-a...wnloadnow.html
In the options under M3u/PLS make sure the "disable Id3 usage" box is not ticked. Then just add files from your X20 to a playlist and save it back to the X20 as an m3u playlist.

The bug that the X20 has, is that when you add new playlists to an X20 that allready has playlists on it, The new ones don't work.
Only playlists that were all added in one USB session, to an X20 that was empty of playlists, will all work.
The work around to make later added playlists work, is to USB connect to a PC, move all playlists off the X20 into a temporary folder on the PC, and then move them all back onto the X20 again, then disconnect properly.
This seems to always work for me, and gets all my playlists working fine.
Hope this helps someone

[KingOfTheJunglee]

I was having a similar problem: I would use Winamp to drag and drop files into a new playlist and then save it on my X20, but then the device would tell me my newly created playlists were empty.

SO to get it to work properly, all I did was use Winamp playlist editor as before, but instead of dragging and dropping, I used the small "Add" button in the bottom left corner and selected songs that way. Works perfectly. Best of luck to those of you encountering the same issue.

[Ho0dwinked]

hey all...

first post...

i dont understand any of this.
sorry....

could you please explain in english?

thanks.

[justinware]

Hi All,

I've got some brief details about getting playlists to work on X20 from linux. This is what I've figured out:

1) the file paths need to be windows style e.g.

\music\01 - Arctic Monkeys - Brianstorm.ogg

2) the .m3u file itself needs to be windows text file (i.e. CR-LF).
3) I think the playlist can be anywhere on device.
4) The device will ignore any playlists that have old timestamps when it rebuilds the library (after disconnecting from PC). Touch all the .m3u to avoid this happening.

What I'm doing is creating my playlists using Amarok (both audio files and play lists on PC). I then use the attached perl script (renamed 'UpdateX20.pl' and made executable) to copy audio tracks on to the device and create equivalent playlist on the device.

./UpdateX20.pl *.m3u

for example. It also makes sure the timestamps of the other playlists are updated and sync's the file system. I hope someone else finds it useful.

Please note:

1) IMPORTANT: Perl scripts can easily be as malicious and dangerous as full-blown applications. Especially when your Perl coding is as bad as mine . Only use it if you're happy it's safe.
2) I'm dumping all my audio tracks in '\music' on the device even though I have a hierarchy on my PC.
3) This works on my SUSE 10.0 distro. You may need to change the script if the device mounts elsewhere on your machine.
3) It never overwrites or remove audio tracks from the device. You will need to do that manually.
4) Firmware version on my X20: 1.04

[streetsbills]

Hello everybody,

im new to the forum and have had an x20 for about 6 weeks now. Its a great player because its not apple. However i am having the same problems as some of you with regards to the PLAYLIST issue. Its exactly the same as Rancidmoths, i do all that and have had it work a couple of times but have had no luck recently i delete the old playlists and still cant get the player to read new ones.

its firmware V1.04
connection type: MSC


all and any help is appreciated


many thanks

[jimbo1]

I've only just bought an iriver X20. As soon as I hit problems trying to port playlists over to it, a quick google search led me to this forum. Rancidmoth, you are a genius.

Thanks a lot; I can port playlists over from Yahoo Music Dukebox now.

[xquisit]

All of you guys were absolute fantastic help, especially you, BMboomer!

truly, thankyou all... my xp used have some wierd bug where i could make playlists without needing anything but it seems all different now...

THANKS
>xquisit

[looseCannon]

I tried out RancidMoths approach for using WMP11 to create playlists, and it does work. No problems with that approach, but there is a caveat to it. If you are like me, primarily a linux user, and rip your CD's to *.ogg format this will not work. WMP11 does not support OGG files, so creating playlists this way won't work. I have not done the homework to find out if there is a way to make WMP11 support OGG yet or not.

Also, WMP11 creates the playlists in some sort of binary format in a directory called 'Playlists', in case you were wondering or cared.

[wagsport]

Hi there,

A straightforward solution that works for my X20 (MTP) is simply to copy the chosen tracks from Music to a suitably named folder in Playlists using Explorer. Like others, I get stuck with a No Playlists message if I select Music/Playlists. However, if instead I select Browse Device/Internal/Playlists/folder (whatever I've called it), the X20 will then play all tracks in correct sequence.

Works for me anyway. Like others, I found the X20 Manual no help on this.

[wagsport]

Hi there,

Sorry about my earlier "advice", beginner's luck obviously.

When I tried my procedure again, I can no longer get the tracks to play in correct sequence, though the playlist behaves otherwise.

BTW, clearly I should have dragged and dropped (rather than copied) tracks in Explorer to avoid doubling up when I play an album.

I'll be more careful next time.

[jackerbes]

Hello,

I'm using:

- iRiver X20 firmware V1.04, in MSC mode

- Windows Explorer for file transfers and file management

- WinAmp 5.52 for making playlists

Thanks to BMboomer's "X20 playlists in MSC mode" I've finally gotten playlists that work.

I did as he said, erased all playlists, created new ones in WinAmp and put them back in the Playlists folder, one at a time but all in one session, and got two test playlists that work fine.

That was a major breakthrough for me. Now I can listen to audiobooks using playlists, that will be a great help.

Now I'm confused about the Play, Add Now Playing, Play All, Add All Now Playing choices. The manual says:

Play - Plays the selected music.
Add Now Playing - Add music files in the selected folder to the Now Playing playlist.
Play All - Plays all music files in the playlist.
Add All Now Playing: Add all music files in the selected folder to the Now Playing playlist.

Play - Simple enough and works fine.

Add Now Playing - I don't understand what the "selected folder" is.

Play All - Seems to add the playlist to the playlist you are currently playing?

Add All Now Playing - Again, I don't understand what the selected folder is. I've tried it and it seems to not do anything.

I'm missing something here, what is it?

Jack