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Good day,
Can anyone with a real live Galaxy Nexus (or even another handset hacked and running Android 4.0) confirm if the music-playing-alphabetically bug STILL exists? If you aren't familiar, let me explain. This problem is well documented and has existed for years in various versions of Android. (Do a Google search for "android music alphabetical order" and you'll see years of posts from all over the Internet, about tons of devices, regarding this issue.)
As briefly as possible, the bug is that media in non-MP3 format (notably M4A and WMA) ignores track numbers in metadata tags and instead gets sorted and displayed alphabetically. I had great hope that this would be fixed in Google Music, but can confirm that this application on my Galaxy S II running 2.3.4 still does this wrong.
To duplicate, just do the following: place a full, correctly-tagged, album in M4A or WMA format on the phone using any method you like (USB Storage or MHL via Windows Media, makes no difference) then attempt to play the album in real life track order. It doesn't work. Android refuses to read the tags on anything except MP3's and thus defaults to alphabetical order. (It ignores embedded album art too, for the record. And just to confirm: YES. All my music is meticulously tagged, and even a tagging app on the Android phone confirms that it sees the track numbers.) It's an M4A- or WMA-and-Android problem.
I won't go on a rant about how utterly inexcusable this is (although it absolutely is) and how my WP7 and iOS devices handle this very simple task just fine. Except: it is inexcusable, and those OS's DO handle this just fine. As someone who frequently listens to albums in real-life track order, and who doesn't have the time to transcode all my music just to satisfy a buggy OS, it honestly renders an Android device nearly useless to me. I'm interested in the Galaxy Nexus, but after purchasing a Galaxy S II and being disappointed with this bug, I'm not inclined to get a Nexus if it can't do this properly either. Can anyone confirm if this works properly on a Galaxy Nexus and/or in Android 4.0?
Thanks much,
Adam
it honestly renders an Android device nearly useless to me.*
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I leave it to someone with an ICS phone or rom to answer your question, but until then you can help yourself with a little app.
Use MediaFix from the market to update your MediaStore database with the correct informations: https://market.android.com/details?id=eu.gorgonloop.MediaFix
gokpog --
Thanks for the reply. I had forgotten completely about the existence of MediaFix. It's even installed on my GS2, but I use the device so sporadically I forgot all about it. (As you may have detected from my post, I just picked it up again for the purpose of checking out Google Music.) I suspect you'd agree with me that such a utility shouldn't even need to exist, but hey, a fix is a fix.
Still, I'm quite interested to see if Google has addressed this properly in 4.0.
Again, thanks,
Adam
Hi
gokpog said:
I leave it to someone with an ICS phone or rom to answer your question, but until then you can help yourself with a little app.
Use MediaFix from the market to update your MediaStore database with the correct informations: https://market.android.com/details?id=eu.gorgonloop.MediaFix
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I'm going to check this out and see if it fixes the album art bug. I am anal about properly tagging my collection and it burns me that the media services screw up the album art all the time. I mean come on all the mp3 in each album all have the same art, album, and artist and it still assigns random wrong art to albums and tracks. I just don't get it.
EDIT: looks like it only works for mp4. Oh well.
Sent from my Nexus S using Tapatalk
leew1979 said:
I won't go on a rant about how utterly inexcusable this is (although it absolutely is) and how my WP7 and iOS devices handle this very simple task just fine. Except: it is inexcusable, and those OS's DO handle this just fine. As someone who frequently listens to albums in real-life track order, and who doesn't have the time to transcode all my music just to satisfy a buggy OS, it honestly renders an Android device nearly useless to me. I'm interested in the Galaxy Nexus, but after purchasing a Galaxy S II and being disappointed with this bug, I'm not inclined to get a Nexus if it can't do this properly either. Can anyone confirm if this works properly on a Galaxy Nexus and/or in Android 4.0?
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Since when does iOS or Android support WMA?
Solved... ish...
It was really an accident that I learned about the WMA bit. Windows Media Player understands and syncs to the phone but insists on conversion of MP4 to WMA, with no way to turn this off -- as verified flatly by an official Microsoft answer. The Galaxy sees and will play the tracks but refuses to read the tags or album art in the WMA file. I would have been willing to (grudgingly) accept using WMA files on the phone, but not at the expense of making the original problem worse. Natch.
After some more research and testing I have ascertained that -- bafflingly -- the problem is directly related to the method of file transfer. MP4 files (but still not WMA as discussed above) which are put onto the phone using the MTP sync protocol get recognized fine, tags, art, and track numbers... All correct. The problem is therefore that files written using USB Mass Storage are the screwed up ones. (Sorry, DoubleTwist, you lose too.) So, in a roundabout way this seems it will be fixed with the Galaxy Nexus in that it only supports MTP. Someone geekier than me, please feel free to speculate or flat-out school me on why this difference exists. I do understand that MTP works at the logical file level rather than the lower block level of Mass Storage, and thus I can understand why the Galaxy Nexus can't support Mass Storage (no way to dismount the single partition)... but back to the Galaxy S II, I am still perplexed at how the phone fully understands files laid down one way but doesn't for the exact same files laid down another way.
So now, for me it's either manual copies in Windows Explorer (sucks, no way to easily and automatically add new albums using smart playlists, as I do with iTunes for my iOS devices and Zune for my WP7 phone) or use a media manager which supports MTP but which also doesn't force WMA conversion. This therefore knocks out WMP and Songbird. So far, then, this means it's either Kies (and hell will freeze solid before I use that garbage routinely) or MusicBee which seems to work fine, but damn, this has been a long way round a problem which shouldn't exist at all... And which would also seem to leave Mac and Linux users still out in the cold, as MTP is basically a Windows-only technology. Bah.
Any other suggestions, anyone?
Regards
Adam
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Hi everyone,
i just switched from an Iphone to the One X and i'm super happy with the hone, much better than the Iphone in most departments. There are only two things that bother me right now and i was wondering if there are solutions for them or at least upcoming software mods:
1. i have a great headset, the Sony XBA2-ip, with integrated Iphone controls, which I really want to keep. Right now I've gotten the play/pause button to work by downloading the headset button app. However the volume up/down buttons dont work and I cant seem to find a n app that will enable them. Is it impossible to make these buttons work?
2. The One X is a great phone for watching HD videos, esp. with Dice player. However I'm limited to 4GB file sizes when i transfer. I realize this is a limitation of the FAT32 formatting of the internal memory. What i wanted to ask was if there are ROM mods that allow to bypass that limit?
Thanks in advance.
I don't know the head set your referring to, however try some different players like power amp, winamp and n7 player and see what results you get, failing that a mod could be created but specifically for your headset i'm guessing that it won't happen so I would guess that there isn't a way around it, unless theres an app to map buttons to controls from within the device, u might get lucky, google it.
Not too sure about the 4GB limit, personally i've never had to transfer something so big onto a phone, if it's one file then i can only assume it's HD content, what i would do is split the file into smaller chunks using video editing software at least until a work around is in place.
Welcome to android by the way, it is better by the way More freedom, something apple knows very little about.
Also depends on the file systems that are natively supported by your PC's OS. Some custom ROMs will probably try try to format the internal storage into ext4 but it's not natively supported in Windows XP I think. By that I mean if you plug it into your pc, it won't recognize it as a USB Storage. I think Windows 7 supports ext4, but I think you need some driver updates or something. Ext4 has a much larger file size limit
I think PowerAMP is the most powerful one with lots of options and wouldn't be surprised to see it supporting those volume keys.
I'm wondering about 4GB limit too, hoping there is a workaround or maybe custom ROMs will solve it. Most of my files are 4-9GB in size.
But as long as I'm in range of my network, DicePlayer plays them brilliantly over the network, I use ES File Explorer to map my LAN drives.
For players that are not able to play from networked drives, the solution is to use CIFSManager which mounts networked drives as a local subfolder, fooling player apps into thinking they are playing local files. DicePlayer doesn't need that workaround.
Thanks for all the info guys. I will try these solutions and will report what happens. Hopefully once custom ROMs start popping up many of these problems will be resolved, esp. the 4GB limit, it must something many users are struggling with...
just testing this theory but it should be possible to take the file that is bigger than 4GB, use a program such as winrar to split it into 2 or more files so that they are small enough for transfer, then use unrar from the play store to unpack them.
A long method, but a decent one when given the limitation of a fat filesystem.
Hopefully i'll confirm whether this works as soon as i've had chance to test it.
EDIT: I realise this won't work unless there is a media player that can play files straight from part-rars... don't know of any with this feature.
An alternative would be to split your video file into so many parts and just put them in a queue when watching.
Thanks for the extra info.
FYI, I tried different music players (DBpwoeramp, Winamp) and headphone apps and none of them even see my volume buttons. I did some more reading on the forums and it seems no one has ever found a solution for this. it sucks cause my headphones are great...
On the 4GB file size front no dice yet but I remain more hopeful that it will be fixed once people start tinkering with the file system.
i dont know if it will work but archos fans forum has a program that seems to split hd movies that will play
heres the thread
http://forum.archosfans.com/viewtopic.php?f=63&t=42082
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im gona give it a shot when i have a few moments spare.
Hi everyone,
just wanted to update this tread to say i found a partial solution to the headset problem. I downloaded the free Jays app that controls headsets and mapped volume up/down to long keypresses of the main button. It's not perfect but at least i regain most of the missing functionality, and i dont have to change my headset (as i mentioned I really like the Sony headset).
Now if the ROM developers could find a solution to the 4GB limit (fingers crossed), I'd be all set.
great find on that headset app, i was about to buy headset control but jays is free!
with my other androids, (MyTouch 4g, One S, One X)
I open iTunes and my Phone/Internal/SDcard
and would just highlight the songs in iTunes and drag over to Phone Storage.
Here with the GS3 I get a (\) Not Available sign and it wont go through.
What am I missing here?
I don't know about iTunes (I stopped using it), but I was able to just open the SD card folder and the folder with the music and was able to copy and paste that way.
Sent from my Transformer TF101 using xda app-developers app
I'm assuming you have a google account, if you do you can upload your entire itunes library to google music using your desktop computer and then you have access to your library with your phone. If you don't want to use cloud-based, just find your itunes folder on your computer and transfer those songs to your sd card. IMO the google music is the easiest way to do it and it doesn't take up storage space on your phone.
kingston73 said:
I'm assuming you have a google account, if you do you can upload your entire itunes library to google music using your desktop computer and then you have access to your library with your phone. If you don't want to use cloud-based, just find your itunes folder on your computer and transfer those songs to your sd card. IMO the google music is the easiest way to do it and it doesn't take up storage space on your phone.
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You can also flag artists, playlists, tracks, etc etc to be downloaded and kept local through google music as well
kingston73 said:
I'm assuming you have a google account, if you do you can upload your entire itunes library to google music using your desktop computer and then you have access to your library with your phone. If you don't want to use cloud-based, just find your itunes folder on your computer and transfer those songs to your sd card. IMO the google music is the easiest way to do it and it doesn't take up storage space on your phone.
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Agree.
Sent from my Xoom using XDA Premium HD app
thanks I forgot i can save the songs from there, but ya my library is just chaos.
I have 6K songs, can I delete them all then reupload? would the 6K count towards the 20K?
Media monkey
Sent from my SGH-I747 using xda premium
You don't iTunes to do the job of transfering your music to your phone. The galaxy s3 storage type is a different kind of type than previous devices, its mpti or something similar to that i believe so it doesn't mount like an sd card it mounts like some device which windows recognizes.
Why don't you just browse to your music directory and just open up your my computer Sg3 device then select either internal or external storage and drag your music files from your local music folder to your galaxy s3 sd card or internal storage.
To get your music into itunes in the first place you must have dragged your music into itunes or imported your music from your local pc music folder so therefore you can do the same thing for the gs3, drag your music from your local folder to your gs3 device. itunes is for iphones its crappy.
Make a new folder on your desktop, drag the files from iTunes to that folder, then from that folder to your gs3. Just gotta add that extra step.
Osman, iTunes organizes the music into folders by artist then by album so doing it that way would take A LOT of time.
Good question, I've always sort of wanted to grab some of my older music from iTunes. You're right though, Apple does suck a hard one!
Sent from my SGH-T999 using xda premium
Get doubletwist. And download one for PC too. Whatever is in your itunes will show up in doubletwist. Then you can air sync your music (paid addon) or usb
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You could always use the official software Samsung Kies which fully supports importing music from iTunes and transfering music to the device as well as backing the device up.
You could use a script.
I found one that syncs a playlist to a folder. I just have all the songs i want on my phone in a playlist and it syncs right to my music folder when connected.
Although i store my music on my external SD card..
I first purchased the GN/2014 Edition in the 16GB version. After finding out about the external SD limitations, I upgraded to the 32GB version. However, I would still much rather save my hdd drive space by putting movies on the SD card (preferably in a format my BluRay player can play read them but it not, I don't care what format it is as long as I can find, convert and move movies to the external SD card. I've been around long enough to know practically everything can be found (no matter how deep it's buried) and converted to a more user friend format.
So can anyone here direct me to where I can find the movie files and a converter that can make them playable outside the tablet
Thank you!
Monica
Open My Files - Settings - Check Show Hidden Files - browse to .samsungmediahub (or videohub something) - contents and move downloaded movies to extsdcard..
The movies can only play with the device, since its DRM protected and can use MHL 2.0 adapter/allsharecast hub to play up to TV.
How to convert and remove DRM, that I dont have a clue. Have never heard about .pvy format until today. Maybe someone else can answer that.
dt33 said:
Open My Files - Settings - Check Show Hidden Files - browse to .samsungmediahub (or videohub something) - contents and move downloaded movies to extsdcard..
The movies can only play with the device, since its DRM protected and can use MHL 2.0 adapter/allsharecast hub to play up to TV.
How to convert and remove DRM, that I dont have a clue. Have never heard about .pvy format until today. Maybe someone else can answer that.
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Thank YOU! I just knew it could be done. If nothing else I've got them off the internal storage and onto the external SD card AND I can store them on my backed up desktop computer.
Does anyone know of a DRM ripper and converter for pvy format. I've been looking but all my hits are misses
I'm used to connect SD cards or hard drives to my phone with OTG to quickly edit videos or work on pictures. But unfortunately the stock Gallery app and also others such as KineMaster, Power Director, Google Photos etc don't see the drive connected with media in it. Is there a way to force these apps to show it?
What's your experience?
Thanks
I have never seen in gallery files stored outside the device, tbh, I had always copied them into the device to work on them
I got it to work with Samsung's "My Files" app.
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winol said:
I have never seen in gallery files stored outside the device, tbh, I had always copied them into the device to work on them
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That is such a disappointment. I use it to quickly connect and edit videos from my action camera, or to edit videos stored in a HD with terabytes of files! I can't believe all the people using galaxy devices to actually work have all the necessary files in the internal storage!
gernerttl said:
I got it to work with Samsung's "My Files" app.
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True, file managers can see the external storage, but you can't access that same storage from gallery or media apps to work with video edit or photos.
Yes and no.
The Gallery app doesn't see external USB devices. But when you use My Files to open a photo, it will ask which app to use; Gallery is one of those choices.
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gernerttl said:
Yes and no.
The Gallery app doesn't see external USB devices. But when you use My Files to open a photo, it will ask which app to use; Gallery is one of those choices.
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Yes, but you can't do much. There's no edit button. Same thing if you open a video from "my files" with the video player app. The editor feature is gone.
I basically bought the note 10+ to do these things. Can someone check if using DEX is the same? Can you edit a video with Adobe Rush working on files stored in an external hard drive?
It is easier to transfer the files you need into the device
5ne1ke said:
Yes, but you can't do much. There's no edit button. Same thing if you open a video from "my files" with the video player app. The editor feature is gone.
I basically bought the note 10+ to do these things. Can someone check if using DEX is the same? Can you edit a video with Adobe Rush working on files stored in an external hard drive?
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I'm not sure you can "manually" trigger DeX on the Note 10+. The only way I know is to either plug it into a DeX supported USB-C hub, DeX dock, USB-C to HDMI adaptor, or plug it into a Windows or Mac running Samsung DeX.
winol said:
It is easier to transfer the files you need into the device
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I usually work with terabytes of video files, transferring everything in the internal memory is obviously not an option.
gernerttl said:
I'm not sure you can "manually" trigger DeX on the Note 10+. The only way I know is to either plug it into a DeX supported USB-C hub, DeX dock, USB-C to HDMI adaptor, or plug it into a Windows or Mac running Samsung DeX.
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Of course I mean connecting the phone to a monitor or a computer. I currently have no chance to try, can someone check if it's the same thing in DEX mode, eg. video editing apps can't access media stored on an external drive?
I can't believe this is how it works. There's an incredible amount of videos on YouTube showing off the video editing capabilities of this phone (and that's why I got it in the first place) and I can't believe nobody has pointed this out.
It's one of two things: either I'm missing something to make it work, or all those people are just showing off and they actually don't do any serious work on the phone. (Just marketing?)
5ne1ke said:
I usually work with terabytes of video files, transferring everything in the internal memory is obviously not an option.
Of course I mean connecting the phone to a monitor or a computer. I currently have no chance to try, can someone check if it's the same thing in DEX mode, eg. video editing apps can't access media stored on an external drive?
I can't believe this is how it works. There's an incredible amount of videos on YouTube showing off the video editing capabilities of this phone (and that's why I got it in the first place) and I can't believe nobody has pointed this out.
It's one of two things: either I'm missing something to make it work, or all those people are just showing off and they actually don't do any serious work on the phone. (Just marketing?)
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It seems to be a problem with apps not the phone or the OS. Many if not most apps are optimized to use internal or microSD storage. The whole point of OTG isn't to do the editing on the files stored on the external device, but to share files between devices.
I am a photographer and I don't edit files on an external device like a USB drive or thumbdrive. I copy them to a NAS for both storage and editing. If I am away from my main system for an extended period, I copy them to my Surface Pro and do basic editing on that and then move them to my NAS when I get back.
The Note 10+ is a beast of a phone, but it still isn't quite as good as video editing on a Windows or Mac (or even Linux) PC.
My only reccomendation for now is to copy the files to the microSD card then edit from it. The connection between the phone and the microSD card is faster than an external USB device.
gernerttl said:
It seems to be a problem with apps not the phone or the OS. Many if not most apps are optimized to use internal or microSD storage.
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I don't agree on this. Also, they are the same apps that worked flawlessly on previous devices I had. On the LG phone I had before, I could see ask the folders containing pictures or videos in Google photos, perform a backup, or edit video in those apps I mentioned. So my guess is that it's a Samsung restriction.
I wonder if rooting might allow a workaround. Anyone with root with this experience?
5ne1ke said:
I don't agree on this. Also, they are the same apps that worked flawlessly on previous devices I had. On the LG phone I had before, I could see ask the folders containing pictures or videos in Google photos, perform a backup, or edit video in those apps I mentioned. So my guess is that it's a Samsung restriction.
I wonder if rooting might allow a workaround. Anyone with root with this experience?
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I used a USB-C hub to trigger DeX and plugged in a thumb drive with a small video file. All I could do was play the video from My Files. Samsung Gallery did not see the video until I copied it to internal storage. The same goes for the SD Card. At that point I could open it and edit it.
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