Database Users

How to organise media on the SD card?

Can someone please explain to me how Android uses the various types of media the SD card? From what I can see it just grabs every single picture on the card and displays it in the pictures app. Same for music, it will just grab any mp3 regardless of it's location.
How do I set it up so that pictures only shows the pics from one dir and it's sub-dir's and same for the music app with mp3s?
Edit: The reason I ask is that I have all my MP3s in sub-dir under a music parent dir on the SD card. These sub-dirs have album art pics and stuff in them. When I open up the pictures app it says I have dozens of folders with pics in them because it is saying that all the cover artwork in the music folder are pics. I just want the pics app to show pics from a certain directory and not show every single jpg on the SD card.

I totally agree with you. Showing every damn photo on the SD card makes the Baby Jesus cry.
I have to wait for hundreds of thumbnails to generate because it feels the need to include every image in every directory on the card --- including the caches for several apps... it's totally retarded.

Expect 3rd party apps to handle this (I think there might already be a few). Google stuck with the policy of keeping the base OS simple, yet expandable. Odds are the 3rd party apps won't be free, but that's the price of having a simple OS to start with. Perhaps an update someday may address this but I highly doubt it.

I understand this, and I don't mind paying for a few core apps that IMHO are sorely needed for the G1... better photo management, better media player and a better contact manager. Of those three, the contact manager is definitely the best of the bunch, but it's still missing a few features that I'd like to see, such as photos on the scrool list and better group management --- but the media player and photo browser blow. It's so hard to navigate either of them. For instance, if I want to change pause the song I'm listening to while in another program - I have to go to the home page, wait for page to display, find and open the music app, figure out where I am, find the "playback" menu option (which is in a different place in different areas of the app) and then hit pause. It really shuould just be "open music player, press pause."
I almost like tunewiki, but they really push the lyrics and the streaming menu options..
I recently found ambient player on sourceforge - it's a port of amarok. It's OK, but the buttons are WAY too small for the phone... I cant even tell what I'm pressing. It's only on version 0.3.1 but hopefully it's still progressing.

nolageek said:
I understand this, and I don't mind paying for a few core apps that IMHO are sorely needed for the G1... better photo management, better media player and a better contact manager. Of those three, the contact manager is definitely the best of the bunch, but it's still missing a few features that I'd like to see, such as photos on the scrool list and better group management --- but the media player and photo browser blow. It's so hard to navigate either of them. For instance, if I want to change pause the song I'm listening to while in another program - I have to go to the home page, wait for page to display, find and open the music app, figure out where I am, find the "playback" menu option (which is in a different place in different areas of the app) and then hit pause. It really shuould just be "open music player, press pause."
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
For me it's the dialer the worst thing, im used to use de numeric keypad for contact search, and it just doesn't work in the g1.
howewer, about your audio question, i use the standart player and when i'm listening music there's an entry in the notification bar that goes directly to the player, also with the standar speakers you could use the button to stop the music, and to go to the next song with a double clik.

jcuadrado, you're looking for SpellDial, it should do what you want and it's free. Start entering the the contacts name and it searches by each letter you enter. Biggest downside is the lack of wildcard search.
PhotoSlide may be good for image browsing it's $.99 but it's predecessor was nice, android gallery. I haven't tried the paid version but 'folder select' is one of it's options.
aPlayer, another free app. May suit you in the music player department. It allows you to choose which folder on the SD to play music from.
Anyway these are the cheap/free ones. there'll probably be more advanced apps in the weeks to come but hey, it's a start

is there any other Photo view and media player for the X10???(hate mediascap!!)

hi
i realy disappointed of the Mediascape on the X10 its realy slow and not responding to finger touch good enught + the photo viewer is pretty slow!
is there any other APPS i can download to use as viewer and they good and fast enguth??

amir84 said:
hi
i realy disappointed of the Mediascape on the X10 its realy slow and not responding to finger touch good enught + the photo viewer is pretty slow!
is there any other APPS i can download to use as viewer and they good and fast enguth??
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Search the Market, there's a lot of free apps there that you can choose from.

i allready did sch there
didn't find anything useful thats why i'm asking here maybe for some recomndetion

I'm using MixZing for playing music ...

funny these threads. listed as one of the main selling points of this device was mediascape. you must have read that but bought it anyway! did you not try the phone 1st? this is a prime example of why we all should! not having a go so dont start flaming! expressing my opinion. there is no app within the app store that will deliver anything near what mediascape does right now so for this phone its the best you gonna get! in time when custom roms are being made then we may see the likes of what htc have to offer. we are also currently lacking in apps that do offer more but hopefully corecodec will develop an app for android! until then and until custom roms are available i would just stick with mediascape. no matter how much you hate it, the alternatives are even worse!
edit:
some coredec images for the cp2.0 for android.
http://tweetphoto.com/10841643

cybapaddy said:
I'm using MixZing for playing music ...
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
i like MixZing! thanks!!
is there any good app also for Photo Viewer ??

playlists
Sorry for hijacking this thread but my question is to do with mediascape.
Anyone figure out how to create playlists in mediascape yet?
The only thing I have found that comes close is starring tracks as favourites, but that only generates one list.
Am I missing something or is it not possible? Cheers.

Baggyb said:
Sorry for hijacking this thread but my question is to do with mediascape.
Anyone figure out how to create playlists in mediascape yet?
The only thing I have found that comes close is starring tracks as favourites, but that only generates one list.
Am I missing something or is it not possible? Cheers.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah... I don't think that's possible. Which kind of sucks but something I can live with. I mostly just use Spotify anyway.
And I also want to know about any good picture gallery. I had one but it wasn't really good at all.

Ah, fair enough. At least it's not me going daft. I was searching Google and the results were implying that you could generate lists but they must have meant that it could be done via media go software.
As far as media players go i would consider that to be a basic feature that is required (especially if you have a large library).
As for the gallery I can't say I'm too impressed with that either. However I did like the one previewed on the mini. Hopefully that will be included in future updates, if there are to be any.
Just typing this on the phone itself using the HTC keyboard. The only thing missing are the directional arrow keys, tapping the screen in the correct place is hit and miss for me.

You can generate Playlists with the Astro Filemanager, which you should have installed anyway...

Yeah I do have that instaled. I'll try that out. Cheers mate.

PiQture is pretty good photo viewer.

I found se's other music player in the phone but cant shortcut to it to use it easily.
Im using the file manager by nalic (green and blue pie chart icon). Navigate to system/media/audio/ringtones (ogg) and play one, a different player called music opens to play it, now leave the file playing and pull down the notification tray and touch the play icon then press the left menu key then library button and you are in.
Now this player will be listed in the recently used app list (hold middle button) unless it gets moved off the list by opening more than 6 more apps without opening it again to bring it to the front of the list.
I like this one better than mediascape as its less cluttered and straightforward and you can create playlists which are drag and drop editable and show up in mediascape.
It would be nice to get to it easier though.
There is also a video player and picture viewer but they are very simple with few options.

loggy said:
I found se's other music player in the phone but cant shortcut to it to use it easily.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hi
I found it too. I managed to create a shortcut on home with Tasker :
hxxp://tasker.dinglisch.net
www
.dinglisch
.net/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1260702665
Hope this helps.

One of my main reasons for wanting the X10 is mediascape. Since I've only seen videos, and you guys actually have the X10... I'm looking forward to hearing why Mediascape is a poor media player and gallery. It certainly looks more robust and feature filled than any of the current media players I've seen.

Baggyb said:
Sorry for hijacking this thread but my question is to do with mediascape.
Anyone figure out how to create playlists in mediascape yet?
The only thing I have found that comes close is starring tracks as favourites, but that only generates one list.
Am I missing something or is it not possible? Cheers.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
it is possible but via media go I think, I spent ages trying to work out how to get a playlist set up but I think you have to literally set up a play list on your pc, then transfer that playlist on to the phone (?) only reason I say this is because there is a playlist option in the library in media go. Unfortunately I'd already moved my music across before noticing this so didn't want to double it up or remove it and start again.
I found an app called mortplayer which is free and works a charm for music

brightonsblueeyedboy said:
it is possible but via media go I think, I spent ages trying to work out how to get a playlist set up but I think you have to literally set up a play list on your pc, then transfer that playlist on to the phone (?) only reason I say this is because there is a playlist option in the library in media go. Unfortunately I'd already moved my music across before noticing this so didn't want to double it up or remove it and start again.
I found an app called mortplayer which is free and works a charm for music
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Or get a file manager from the market and follow my instructions above, any playlists created will be automatically integrated into mediascape.
Its easy once you suss it. !

Hi,
Anyone know how to disable the mediascape from caching thumbnail for music file ? I think this would vastly improve the speed, as mediascape would only have to read the tagging info and not the image/albumart.
I tried to set the folder as read only, but it doesn't work, the phone still write to it

Hi all - I've sussed this out (alternate Music player and playlists)... download an app called "AnyCut" from the market... in here you can add all sorts of different things.. one of which is under the "activity" option.. called "Music" this is the stock android music app (mentioned by baggyb above).. this way you'll have a link to the music app on your home page which you can then use to create your playlists...

All these work arounds to create playlist are fine but the main PIA is when I want to add tracks to Current Play list while listening to music. Can't be done. I hope SE will soon release a upgrade to address some of these basic issues.
Also, when you try to add contact as Shortcut on Home Screen it brings up list of all contacts and there is no search or 'letter' list on side to select the names. You can to scroll all the way down to select names. I guess SE QA and design team tested the phone only with one track of music and one contact in address book.

Only stock ringtones and movies a no show

Hello all. So far so good with my Evo, but I have been reading and reading and I did not see the answers to the following.
-If I create a ringtone with ringdroid it saves it sd/media/audio/ringtones and the file will show up in stock list when setting ringtone. I had a hero and have about 20 others that I placed into the same folder but they will NOT show up and the only way I can apply is to use Handcent. What is going on?
The next issue is with video. I have some movies and a few received video messages that played fine on the hero. I can play them on the Evo, but only using astro and clicking on them. They will NOT show up in gallery at all. On the hero Gallery was called photos so not sure if that is issue. 1 video out of 15 show in gallery and I placed them all in the same folder. Again, what is going on?
Thanks in advance,
Lisnup65

lisnup65 said:
Hello all. So far so good with my Evo, but I have been reading and reading and I did not see the answers to the following.
-If I create a ringtone with ringdroid it saves it sd/media/audio/ringtones and the file will show up in stock list when setting ringtone. I had a hero and have about 20 others that I placed into the same folder but they will NOT show up and the only way I can apply is to use Handcent. What is going on?
The next issue is with video. I have some movies and a few received video messages that played fine on the hero. I can play them on the Evo, but only using astro and clicking on them. They will NOT show up in gallery at all. On the hero Gallery was called photos so not sure if that is issue. 1 video out of 15 show in gallery and I placed them all in the same folder. Again, what is going on?
Thanks in advance,
Lisnup65
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
to solve your ringtones issue, make a ringtones folder on the sdcard. put whatever you want in there. don't go sticking them inside the folder made by ringdroid. you can do the same thing with a notifications folder and an alarms folder.
not sure about the gallery thing. i made a folder on my sdcard called movies, and i just navigate there with andexplorer. i never use the gallery for anything except photos, or videos i've actually captured with the phone itself.

I have done that and the rings nor notifications will show from phones menus. I can only see them when using astro. Now all my pictures are a no show in gallery. I guess its time for a hard reset unless others have input. I have unmounted sd card, removed, reinstalled, etc and the phone refuses to see pictures, or videos from gallery and it will not see ringtones in the SDcard/media/audio/ringtones folder except ones I create with ringdroid.
If I pull the card from the Evo and place in my hero, it works as expected.

Gallery view showing music album thumbnails!

I go into Gallery to view my albums of pics and unfortunately it not only puts a folder in the gallery for each folder of pictures I have but also for every single album or single in my phone/memory card (album art). uggggh I don't see any settings to disable that or omit certain folders. any hacks?

Yeah, I've got the same issue. Furthermore, the music app shows all of my additional ringtones and notification sounds. Haven't found a fix yet.
Sent from my SGH-T959 using XDA App

Same issue here, but to be fair I don't think it is a Vibrant issue, it's a general Android thing. My G1 always did this too pre and post froyo... I never bothered to figure out a fix though.

yeah I had this issue on my G1 also. Nothing new. I wish there was a filter setting or a watch-folder setting

mine does NOT put the album art in the gallery. i have my music on the sdcard in a folder called MUSIC
but my music app does give me every sound under the sun. it's annoying because i am now FORCED to make playlists without the erroneous phone sounds. never had to do that before. ;/

android's going on 2 years old and El Goog has still completely ignored these little bugs

southpaw773 said:
android's going on 2 years old and El Goog has still completely ignored these little bugs
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It's not a bug. A bug would be if the gallery app was *designed* to NOT show certain images. It's not. it's designed to show every image on the storage drives. It's a poor design, not a bug.

the Gallery just needs to have the ability to hide certain folders and files so you do not see them... Has been an issue for me since my G1 and 1.0!!

Hopefully your album art is in a different folder than your music. If so, stick a .nomeda file in the folder. (Just use notepad and save as type "all files" so it doesn't add a .txt to the end.) Works for hiding sound files too.

I don't have any album art showing in my gallery because I embed the album art in to each MP3 file's meta data. Use something like MP3 tag to do it (Winamp I think does it too). If you use WMP to Sync music like I do, the music player doesn't see most album art anyway. It's best to just embed the image in to the meta data.

Here's the solution:
rename all the .jpg in the music folders "Folder.jpg". This works for me. I'm assuming of course you have one folder for each album and each folder has 1 pic file for the cover art.

jkcheng122 said:
Here's the solution:
rename all the .jpg in the music folders "Folder.jpg". This works for me. I'm assuming of course you have one folder for each album and each folder has 1 pic file for the cover art.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
The best way to do it is to use something like MP3Tag to embed the album art in each MP3 file. This makes sure each song has the album part showing up. That way the gallery doesn't index your album art as well.

coolguy949 said:
The best way to do it is to use something like MP3Tag to embed the album art in each MP3 file. This makes sure each song has the album part showing up. That way the gallery doesn't index your album art as well.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Hmm I might do this for the misc singles that are placed in a single folder. Yay for more things to kill time at work with. Thanks.

coolguy949 said:
The best way to do it is to use something like MP3Tag to embed the album art in each MP3 file. This makes sure each song has the album part showing up. That way the gallery doesn't index your album art as well.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
OMG I discovered MP3Tag yesterday. AMAZING. Thank you for this tip!

here try this: gallery excluder app
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1063358
it excludes wht u want to and not!

I've stopped using the gallery and uninstalled it. Moved onto an app called Just Pictures, you can hide and exclude folders and pictures and such.
And Music i've gotten rid of the stock music player and just run MIUI player. Has the option to exclude files under a certain size (good for avoiding ringtones).

on CM7 the following works:
using the stock file manager, go to the folder which contains the files you don't want to appear in the gallery / music player. Then go to settings and there you have "exclude from media scan".

.nomedia file in the folder...simple

movieaddict said:
here try this: gallery excluder app
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1063358
it excludes wht u want to and not!
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This is the quickest and best app ever.

Sdobron said:
.nomedia file in the folder...simple
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Which will keep it from seeing ANY media in the folder, like your MP3s...
Definitely best to embed the album art in the MP3.

Photo Albums in Mediascape

Hello,
I'm wondering if there are any customisation options in Mediascape that I'm missing. Now that I've started putting photos into folders, I've noticed some annoyances. The Albums categories show photos that I do not want there, such as Album Art from my Music. I know I can fix this by tagging/embedding the artwork properly, but it's still a pain. But the same problem applies elsewhere. For example, I use the Sync2Pix app for bringing Facebook photos into my Contact List. These photos now appear in Mediascape under a 'cache' folder.
Is there no option to specify where Mediascape looks for photos? Or does anyone know where it looks, the memory card only?
Any advice appreciated...

Hi
I use Mixzing for music - i deleted those folders in mediascape which held "album art" and it didn't affect the album art in mixzing.
I think if you went into your photos folders using pc companion you can move your photos around to different folders and change folder names, for the sort of thing you are downloading from facebook, i just made a folder called contact pics and stuck them in there.
Angie

I don't think I can change the Facebook contacts folder as it's the app that is setting it's cache folder. Surely SE can have a simple option to select or monitor certain folders only? Will check out Mixzing though, thanks.

hey how can i dump my own wallpapers in the default wallpapers??

Do this:
On PC, open notepad, then save as .nomedia and save as type: all files
Place that .nomedia file to the folder on x10 that you don't want mediascape to read and that's it.

Dejo, thanks a lot, I thought there might be something like that I could stick in the code, so glad you told me. Will try it out tomorrow. Thanks again.