Playlist and Channel Duplication Solutions

 BiologyMan wrote:

How do I get rid of these songs, start my collection from zero again and add then re-add my stuff again...

 

you'll find a couple of threads with your answer.  i prefer to delete the zunestore.sdf file, but they say rename it (restoring the file failed 3/3 here--recognizing only what was on the device).  if that doesn't do it then format your device and delete your zunestore file.  that has always worked for me and seems to get everyone else out of the mess too.

 AaronDee1970 wrote:

I want LIKE with MOST PLAYED. So can you fix this or forward this message to someone who can.

 

you probably won't get a reply, but whoever marked this post as unhelpful was wrong.   wish i could help, but i've found issues at a more basic level and can't even get to making playlists yet.  good luck.

I have no idea what a "channel" is.

   I just installed the Zune software update, and it created LOTS of extra playlists - all duplicates, in different folders, and with "My Playlist - " appended to the front of the DOS extended filename, AND the display name in both Windows Media Player and Zune software.

   The ONLY thing I use the Zune software for is to transfer files to my Zune player (Microsoft won't let you treat the player as a USB hard drive).  I'd rather not have to mess with Zune because it's never been as useful as WMP.

   Apparently, there was a decision made that both programs will  now read each other's playlist files, *.wpl and *.zpl.  OK good; so logically, whenever I create or modify a playlist in one program, it should be updated in the other.  NOPE.  Instead, probably because the Zune guys don't talk to the WMP guys, there are now TWO playlist folders in my Music folder.

   Windows Media Player uses the "My Playlists" folder.

   Zune uses the "Playlists" folder.

   I could live with that; I'd just continue to manually copy the WMP playlists to the Zune folder.  No, some smart-aleck programmer decided to let the Zune software unilaterally copy everything in the WMP folder to the Zune folder.  Again, OK in theory, except that the same guy decided that it wasn't good enough to just copy, he had the software RENAME the playlists.  And now both the originals and the newly-created duplicates are visible in WMP and Zune - the quantity just doubled.

   Now I ask you, in either program, WMP or Zune, is it THAT hard to tell you're looking at a playlist, that you have to rename every one to "My Playlist - xxx"?  I mean, after all, the only way you can even SEE playlists is to be in the Playlist view.  It says it right up there, in the top of the window, "Playlists."

   And now, my original playlists are sorted alphabetically, but there's this huge glut in the middle of the list with 65 files named "My Playlist - xxx"

   WHY DID YOU DO THAT???????????

   More important, how do I override that, so that ALL of my playlists are in a single folder?  If indeed WMP can read *.zpls, and Zune can read *.wpls, why not update the software so both use only one file extension, to eliminate duplicates altogether?

   And what's going to happen next month when Windows 7 destroys WMP? (I hear I'm going to lose the Advanced Tag Editor.)

   FYI - this was such a goat rope, that I just gave up and deleted both folders.  I simply won't use playlists until you guys get your act together.  Heck, I may just toss the Zune player and get an mp3 player that works with WMP.  I would have done it sooner, except that I have a really nice Altec-Lansing speaker system that has a Zune cradle.  No, I won't get an iPod; Apple's software is 1,000 times worse than anything Microsoft ever released.

This duplicating files and the forever updating sync processes with this product really sucks big time...

Hi there,

Like some others here, I have had serious playlist spawning issues since installing the 4.0 Zune software.

I applaud any steps you can take to integrate playlists between Zune and WMP. My typical solution of copying my .wpl list and renaming it with .zpl to be quite time-consuming (I have 100+ playlists, which I access from WMP and a MCE PC connected to my home stereo.) However, it seems that whatever strategy you deployed could have been better tested (or at least documented.)

Having all my .wpl playlists renamed in my Zune playlists lists with "PLAYLIST -- XXXname" is completely annoying. I can't imagine the response if Excel went in and renamed all the customers' spreadsheets "SPREADSHEET --XXXname.xls" Further, I don't like how all my .WPL now have modified dates of today. I was actually systematically going through some of those playlists based on that field (i.e. fixing some of the oldest ones in order), but now I don't have that opportunity.

I cannot find any documentation anywhere about what exactly has happened and how customers should approach their playlist management under Zune 4.0.

It seems to me that the 4.0 release was quite a bit about eye candy. But first, I think the priority should be to have a great music playing and syncing program that offers the most ease of use for the most customers. And the simple solution that has been requested here many times by many customers is to have Zune recognize .WPL as well as .ZPL and .m3u.

To add to this playlists in Windows Media Player can only have 10,000 files. If my master playlist for Zune has 18,000 files in it then any attempt at editing in WMP will eliminate the 8,000 file difference. WMP programmers need to fix this so that the Zune files won't be destroyed. Did you guys test these aspects before you did this?

 Kuya206 wrote:

But you can add or open Zune playlist (.zpl) in Windows Media Player.

Is there any way of getting Windows media player to handle more than 10,000 tunes? Sure would be helpful to not have WMP cut all the playlists that are over this amount since I've tried to have master lists to work from. Zune is still clumsy to work with (better than it was before 4.0 update)

 mrwooley1 wrote:

 Kuya206 wrote:

But you can add or open Zune playlist (.zpl) in Windows Media Player.

Is there any way of getting Windows media player to handle more than 10,000 tunes? Sure would be helpful to not have WMP cut all the playlists that are over this amount since I've tried to have master lists to work from. Zune is still clumsy to work with (better than it was before 4.0 update)

I searched hard and couldn't find any way...so I suspect not.  It could easily be something like that field is limited to 4 digits (tracks 0 thru 9999) which would be pretty easy to fix in software but very hard or impossible to work-around.   But, I am dying to know why you need even bigger playlists! 10,000 tracks at an average 3 minutes each would be 500 hours of content.  Clearly you aren't listening to them from start to finish...

Obviously not!! But I do have a master list to work out other lists. Some lists are over 10,000 so that I can listen to lists for months in a random order so that very little repeats... As I listen for 9-10 hours a day in a mobile environment, repetition isn't what I'm looking for. It's a listening preference for me.... 10,000 tunes in a playlist can be redundant after several months of listening. But it's the master list that I use to keep track of so many tunes to create a listening experience that I'm looking for...........

 mrwooley1 wrote:

Obviously not!! But I do have a master list to work out other lists. Some lists are over 10,000 so that I can listen to lists for months in a random order so that very little repeats... As I listen for 9-10 hours a day in a mobile environment, repetition isn't what I'm looking for. It's a listening preference for me.... 10,000 tunes in a playlist can be redundant after several months of listening. But it's the master list that I use to keep track of so many tunes to create a listening experience that I'm looking for...........

Interesting.  So, I wonder if there is a system of one or several auto-playlists that might get you what you want and not bump into that size limit....  I will have to think about that...

One other minor point here. The WMP 10,000 size limit is 5 digits. You can't go to 10,001.... 10,000, that's it.

 mrwooley1 wrote:

One other minor point here. The WMP 10,000 size limit is 5 digits. You can't go to 10,001.... 10,000, that's it.

that's how people count.  computers count starting at zero... 0 thru 9999 is actually 10K 'units' and does it with 4 digits (that's why it's done that way...)  5 digits would be enough for 100K tracks, or 99,999 if you start counting at 1...either way that's a lot more than 10K.