BB1 Uploading additional albums ...

[marshlande...@gmail.com]

Thanks for your help in the past. I have at least been able to play music on my BB1. I filled the 32gb internal memory on the BB1 pretty quickly. I have a Sans Disk memory stick which I loaded with all the albums on my computer. However once I'd done that I could not find anything from the BB1 display using the Artist menu. Every album was in the wrong folder!  I could use the web app and it all looked as I expected where I could find and play what I wanted. There is nothing obviously amiss in the file Finder when I insert the memory stick in the MacBook Pro. So, in order to find an album via the "Artists" menu on the BB1 I ended up deleting everything in the BB1 internal memory because albums were not displaying in the correct artist folder. Once there were no albums in the BB1 internal memory, all the albums on the memory stick shifted back to the correct Artist folder! Not very elegant, but it's a workaround.

Having plenty of space left on the memory stick. I bought some more CDs and ripped them to my MBP. I followed the same copying procedure to add the new albums to the memory stick from the computer. They show up as expected in the Finder. However the BB1 doesn't display the new album or song files at all.

Since they are on the memory stick, and read from the memory stick on the computer, but not the BB1, I used the web app to upload the new albums to the BB1 internal memory. However, now they are there in the internal memory every album on the memory stick has shifted to the wrong artist folder again! Looking for albums via the album menu on the BB1 display works properly, but it's a bit long-winded if I'm searching for something specific. It looks like a case of misallocated slots, but I haven't got my head round what's going on.

I'm finding this all quite frustrating. Am I the only person struggling with this? Can anyone suggest how I fix this, please? If files look to be correct on the memory stick using the computer filing system and when using the app, and play on the computer from the memory stick, why is nothing where expected on the BB1 display?

Thanks for any suggestions.

[JFBUK]

Hi,

I'm not a BB1 user but I find that a Scan disk on my B2 often cures similar problems.

The BB1 like the B2 maintains a separate index database of the media you have loaded and a scan disk will re-build this.

Main Menu > Settings > Maintenance > Scan Disk

John

[marshlande...@gmail.com]

Thank you, John, that is helpful. It has nearly done the job. It has worked with sorting nearly all the albums into the correct folders, but there are still five new albums by two artists on the stick, but not showing up on the BB1 list or in the app now.

[marshlande...@gmail.com]

Okay, now I'm finding more albums that haven't transferred and aren't showing up in the web app or on the BB1, yet they are on the memory stick. I've Scan Disked several times now. I don't know why one 75-track album transferred eventually, but none of the others have ...

[Peter Lowham]

Hi Marshlander,

I have done some testing on a BB1 using a USB memory stick for additional storage.   In these tests, I initially was using software version 'BB1 Mar 1 2021' and I found that the BB1 did not work very well when accessing the USB stick to list the artists and albums.

I ran a 'Web Upgrade' to software 'BB1 Mar 22 2021' and immediately the situation improved to the point where the artist and album listings is now working correctly.

Can you post here which version of software your BB1 is running on?  Go to 'Main Menu' --> 'Settings & Tools' --> 'Stats' and post the field showing 'Version .................' .

Regards,

Peter.

[marshlande...@gmail.com]

Thank you, Peter, for taking the trouble. Yes, I have Version BB1 Mar 22 2021 08:43:09. I checked for upgrades, before I wrote again because I had an upgrade issue before. That must be why albums now appear to be in correct Artist folders.

The remaining puzzle is that, when I count the folders with the memory stick in my computer, there are 381 artist folders, but on the BB1 the total on the memory stick comes to only 342, so I'm missing many more albums than I thought. 

Wish I knew what was going on!

Thanks again. I think this is the most helpful forum I have experienced!

marsh

[Peter Lowham]

Hi Marsh,

No problem!  WRT the artist count discrepancy, during last year when I was cleaning up my collection, I found that I had similar problems.  Nearly all of those were caused by having an artist folder with tracks in it, instead of having a sub-folder (i.e. the albumname folder was not there).

Another problem I found was that I had some albumname folders containing a sub folder which the Brennans do not like.

If all the music data on the stick is in the structure of '/music/<Artistname>/<Albumnane>/<Musictracks>' then the BB1 SHOULD get the correct count.

Regards,

Peter.

[marshlande...@gmail.com]

Genius, thank you! I'm getting there now I think, but nowhere near out of the woods. I couldn't see any problems with the file menus. It was all organised under Artist/Albums/Songs. However I created a new top level folder called Music and moved all the Artist folders into that. Now twelve more artists are showing up. I didn't think it would be necessary, but one album only showed up when I converted aiff files to MP3 ...

However, the twenty-five artists at the end of the alphabet (Tommy Igoe to Zoot Horn Rollo, for what it's worth!) are on the memory stick, but do not show up on the BB1 or in the web app! Any ideas to cover that one would be appreciated too.

TIA

m

[Peter Lowham]

Hi Marsh,

At the moment I can only suggest that you run 'Scan Disk' with the USB plugged into the BB1.  If I think of anything else, I'll update this post.

Regards,

Peter.

[marshlande...@gmail.com]

Thanks, Peter. 

I’ve already done that several times. I don’t know how long it’s supposed to take to scan eight thousand and something files, but whatever Scan Disk does takes less than a second before it drops out of scanning mode. 

How can I be the only person who can’t work this out!

(Sorry, I thought I'd responded to this earlier, but the forum rejects messages sent via e-mail apparently.)

Best,

m

[Peter Lowham]

Hi Marsh,

The 'Scan Disk' process is deceptive on the BB1.  Although it appears to take less than one second, what is actually happening is that the 'Scan Disk' process actually continues to run in the background even though the BB1 returns you to the menus.

You can see this by doing the following.

1.  Start off the 'Scan Disk' process.

2.  Go to 'Settings & Stats' function

3.  Flick between pages 1 and 2 in this function.

4.  You will see the # artists, albums and tracks changing over time until the 'Scan Disk' completes.

Regards,

Peter.

[marshlande...@gmail.com]

Thanks again, Peter, that information is useful. At least I know why it appears to flick off so quickly. However, the Scan Disk function seems not the affect the Stats, so I assume BB1 thinks the operation is up to date.

Still looking for my Ts-Zs ...

m

[PMB]

Hi Marsh,

The BB1 will not play AIFF - that is an Apple format - so you will need to convert any of these files to MP3 before importing  to the BB1.

How many files do you have on the memory stick - it may be exceeding a limit (I'll have to check on that)?

Paul

Brennan Support.

[marshlande...@gmail.com]

Hello Paul,

Thank you for your response. I gathered the AIFF format was an issue, which was why I converted the files from that album to MP3. They then worked and showed up in the menu on the BB1.

In total the 128 gB memory stick contains 85.475gB of data in 10,601 items according to my computer. The stats on the BB1 read 8725 tracks, 677 albums by 355 artists. The missing albums from twenty-five artists are the final twenty-five artists named in the alphabetical list from Tomm-Z

Regards,

marsh

[PMB]

Hi Marsh,

As a work around try having just the final 25 or so albums on the USB stick and see if the BB1 will list them and allow you to import them.

Paul

Brennan Support.

[marshlande...@gmail.com]

Thank you, thank you, thank you! 

As with the last time I struggled, the responses to my questions gave me clues as to what to try. I didn't specially want to erase 8,000+ files and lose them until I spent all night reloading them! I found another memory stick and loaded the last twenty-five or so missing folders on that. On a hunch I had a closer look and found some file name oddities that my MBP could deal with, but that confused the BB1. These were in the first folder that would not load, so may have been a stumbling block for anything that followed that folder? I renamed those. I also found a couple of folders containing pdf album booklets and one or two stray AIFF files among mp3s in other folders. It has taken me the most of the day to sort out but, to the best of my knowledge, I can now see and play everything I have tried to load. I guess the test comes when I try to add still more albums ... one of the challenges of living on a boat with limited storage is that I can only bring back a batch of cds at a time. This brings me back to why I bought the BB1 in the first place. I have lost count of the number of days over the past couple of years I have spent on this, but my fingers are firmly crossed that I have more of a clue about how to load my BB1 now.

Phew!

Cheers everyone,

marsh

[PMB]

Hi Marsh,

That's great news, thanks for letting us know.

Paul

Brennan Support.