HTC - Desire. Playing MP3 files. Question.

[flying dog]

Ok, more a question than a "problem".

 

I stuck an 8 Gig sd card in the phone and coppied a lot of music onto it.

 

I also have custom ring tones and SMS tones.

 

I was out the other day with the headp-phones plugged in, listening to the music. It was a bit tricky getting it to play ALL the songs. As it was, it would only play that directory/CD and loop.

 

Anyway, so I was listening to the music. Suddenly I hear the message for reminders being played.

 

I quickly grab the phone and proceed to look for the alert. Funny, there isn't one. Then I realise that it is playing ALL the music.

 

Now, granted: All is All, but if I want to listen to the songs/music and not hear the ring tones (etc), is there a way to do this?

 

Ofcourse the extra ring tones ARE stored on the SD card. This may be part of the "problem" but anyway......

 

Anyone?

 

P.S.

 

I'm still stuck on 2.1 too. :(

 

 

[Brett]

Perhaps try a different App for playing the music files,, I found the real player App to work ok ,,, generally. I use the default one in the phone to listen to audio books and the other app for music ,,, I'm sure there are probably better app's out there for music that may be easier for you to program.

 

 

[Guest davidh10]

FD. The answer is in the directories in which the audio files are stored. As the phone comes to you, there is information in the Android development documentation (you have to dig around for it) about some of these things, but not in the user documentation. Also some of the directories needed are not in existence.

 

For adding ringtones, you need to create a new directory to put them in. The phone will search this directory automagically when you want to pick a new ringtone:-

 

• /sdcard/Ringtones (I've used this directory and have working mp3 and wav files in it).
   
   
  
• /sdcard/Alarms
   
   
  
• /sdcard/notifications
   
   
  
• /sdcard/ui
   
   
  

 

 

 

There's an alternate structure for ringtones, alarm sounds and notification sounds:-

 

• /sdcard/media/ringtones
   
   
  
• /sdcard/media/notifications (in my phone there's a Facebook sound file in this directory, but I don't use Farcebook).
   
   
  
• /sdcard/media/Alarms
   
   
  
• /sdcard/media/ui
   
   
  

 

 

 

For Music you should have a "/sdcard/MP3" directory and then you don't put audio files in this directory, but create directories for each "album" and place the audio files in the album directories.

 

There's also a way you can stop Android from searching for media files in a directory. Just create an empty file called ".nomedia" in any directory you don't want it to search. It won't search subdirectories under one with a ".nomedia" file either.

 

*Note that Android runs atop a Linux operating system, so filenames case matters. "notes.text" and "Notes.txt" are examples different files that under Windows would clash in the same directory. Due to the underling Linux, every location including memory and SDCard are part of the Filesystem, so paths on the SDCard are at "/sdcard" in the Filesystem. If you just mount the SDcard on your PC, drop the leading"/sdcard/" from the paths given above, and of course Windows uses a "\" instead of the Linux / Unix "/" in directory-file paths.

 

In Linux, a filename starting with a period (".") is a hidden file.

 

 

[flying dog]

Thanks David.

 

Alas I didn't do exactly that.

 

When I got these extra sounds, they just got put in the "MP3" directory of the SD card.

 

So when I play all the files......

 

I shall move them, but gee it is going to be painful, as all my phonebook enteries have a ring tone defined which is not the "default" - which I have also modified. Seem I must like making life difficult for myself. ;)

 

Thanks though. I shall more the files when I get time and start editing the phonebook enteries.

 

 

[flying dog]

David,

 

Just an update:

 

I'm not as stupid as I thought.

 

On the SD card, I have:

 

/media/audio/ringtones and notifications directories.

 

Somehow "PLAY" (the default player) got these directories in its play list - I'm guessing.

 

So maybe I only need to delete the sounds from the "playlist" or something.

 

 

[Guest davidh10]

David,Just an update:

 

I'm not as stupid as I thought.

 

On the SD card, I have:

 

/media/audio/ringtones and notifications directories.

 

Somehow "PLAY" (the default player) got these directories in its play list - I'm guessing.

 

So maybe I only need to delete the sounds from the "playlist" or something.

That may well be the only problem. If you can check your PlayLists and delete any unwanted items, that may be the only issue.

I note that a playing track can be set as a ringtone from the player (Mine is called "Music" by HTC Corporation*). I have no idea what that may do under the covers.

 

The only use I make of the Player is to listen to Podcasts, which I put in Album directories under /sdcard/MP3 I haven't used PlayLists.

 

* I don't recall the application changing name at the upgrade to Android 2.2. Are you sure that "PLAY" is your factory delivered player? Check the phone manual (PDF in the /sdcard/User Manual directory.

 

 

[flying dog]

Yeah, I say "Playlist" but I'm not sure if that is the right term for what is causing the problem.

 

I'll look at it when I get time.

 

 

[fly_tornado]

plug your phone into a pc, open a cmd window, change to your mp3 dir, type

 

dir *.mp3 /b > random_name.mpu

 

and you can create your own play lists