Creative Zen MP3 player working in Dapper using Gnomad

[pingpongboss]

freakin god, i finally figured out how to organize my videos under folders in the Creative Zen Vision:M. I've searched everywhere, and couldnt find anywhere that really explained how to do it. Maybe I just was looking in the wrong places. So if what I did was really obvious, please ignore ;_;

Through accident, really, I figured out that I could use the command line mtp-* commands. Here's what I did under Feisty. You need the latest libmtp package (think hte name's actualy libmtp5 or soemthing) and you might need to run the following commands with sudo:

make sure you can already transfer music/photos/videos to your vision m first (I will only show how to make folders and stuff)

connect the zen vision m to your computer, and turn it on.

1. Run:

mtp-folders

to list all the folders. Make note of the number in front of the folder labeled Video. My number was 108.

2. Make a new folder by running:

mtp-connect --newfolder 108/NewName/a

where "108" is the number you got from step 1, "NewName" is the name of the subfolder that you're making, and "a" is just something random (lol). I couldn't create folders by just putting "108/NewName/", there had to be something on the end.

3. Check that your new folder is there by running this again:

mtp-folders

Your newly made folder should be slightly indented under the Video folder. Take note of the number of this new subfolder. Mine was 345469.

4. Transfer a video file into your new subfolder by running:

mtp-sendfile /path/to/video/file/source.avi 345469

Where "/path/to/video/file/source.avi" is the relative or absolute path to your local video file, and "345469" is the number of the subfolder that you got in step 3. This step will take a while since it is copying the file into your zen vision m. There will be a progress indicator-ish thing that tells you the status of the transfer.

5. After the transfer is complete, check on your zen vision m (it should be "undocked" by now) to see that the video file is indeed in the new subfolder.

6. To password protect the new folder, make sure that you have assigned a 4-digit password and that "Protected Content" is set to "Show" under System-->Player Settings. Go to the Video folder, and click the Menu button while the subfolder you would like to protect is selected. Choose Protect, and the folder icon will now have an eye creeping out at you. Go back to settings and set "Protected Content" to "Hide". Now no one will be the wiser as to what you keep on ur zen vision m

I hope this guide helped the many people who were stuck like me. Hope I saved some of you guys some time. To make a folder under Photos, you could do the same, and just use the Photos directory instead of hte Videos directory.

OR, you could try to compile gnomad2 and use that (haven't tried that to see if it works yet). I had the repos version, and that's why I had to figure all this out.

EDIT: I tried compiling gnomad2 2.8.11 and it still does not work. Some said that they got it to work, but I think that they have only succesfully transfered Music and their associated folders, not photos or videos. For photos and videos, you need to use the Data Transfer tab, and in that mode, gnomad2 would not allow me to move/create/copy any folders. As far as I know, using mtp-* is the fastest way to manage folders. MTPfs hasnt worked well for me, since nautilus displays the amount of free space as 0 B and navigating the folders usually have a 10 second to a few minutes of lag. Even the cp command doesnt work when it's mounted under mtpfs.

[msak007]

Originally Posted by pingpongboss freakin god, i finally figured out how to organize my videos under folders in the Creative Zen Vision:M. I've searched everywhere, and couldnt find anywhere that really explained how to do it. Maybe I just was looking in the wrong places. So if what I did was really obvious, please ignore ... I tried compiling gnomad2 2.8.11 and it still does not work. Some said that they got it to work, but I think that they have only succesfully transfered Music and their associated folders, not photos or videos. For photos and videos, you need to use the Data Transfer tab, and in that mode, gnomad2 would not allow me to move/create/copy any folders. As far as I know, using mtp-* is the fastest way to manage folders. MTPfs hasnt worked well for me, since nautilus displays the amount of free space as 0 B and navigating the folders usually have a 10 second to a few minutes of lag. Even the cp command doesnt work when it's mounted under mtpfs.

Awesome work! The MicroPhoto I'm using doesn't support video, so I've never had to transfer it or attempted to. The mtp command line tools are cool, but yea like you said unfortunately there's no real documentation for them. Regarding 2.8.11, I have used it to successfully transfer music and photos (in data transfer mode), but the photos just end up in the root picture folder. You can't transfer them to subfolders using Gnomad (it doesn't even see the folders, just lists all the photos in a list), so I'll try using your method and see if I can create photo subfolders and transfers pictures there. I could add your steps to my original post, or if you want you can create a separate how-to and I'll link to it (the latter is probably better for you so you can edit it anytime).

[pingpongboss]

sweet, i'll make another thread if you or others report that my way works

it'd be glad to know that a whole day's worth of searching and cursing wasnt all for naught ^^

[ntetreau]

Hi all,

since Feisty Fawn will be coming out soon enough and msak007 has already mentionned writing a new howto for Feisty Fawn, I thought perhaps we should test it a little beforehand,

Since I am already running Feisty at the moment, I tried removing completely libmtp, and then reinstalling libmtp5 (0.1.3), libmtp5-dev (0.1.3), gnomad2 (2.8., and amarok (1.4.5) from the repositories.

As of this writing, my creative Zen microphoto is recognized by libmtp, recognized and seems to function normally in both gnomad2 and amarok! I guess others could give it a try but so far, on two different computers, it works.

In that case, I guess the how to could be quite simple, explaining in details what can be done with what software and perhaps how to install the latest versions (gnomad2-2.8.11 and libmtp-0.1.4) and the reasons why someone would want to do this.

Also, we might want to put a description of the capabilities of every option: rhythmbox vs amarok vs mtpfs vs gnomad2?

Anyway, I think this is great news that we have basic support in Feisty without the need for compilation, we should give the users the simplest instructions on how to enable it and use it, then the more experienced users, or those with newer devices, can always compile newer packages.

Ideas?

Nic

[ntetreau]

pingpongboss: I think it is great you found a way to do this. May I suggest giving mtpfs a try? With mtpfs, you can mount the device and use it transparently in nautilus, making folders, copy and pasting files including video as far as I'm concerned.

mtpfs can be installed this way:

 
sudo aptitude install libfuse-dev libmad0-dev

wget http://www.adebenham.com/mtpfs/mtpfs-0.3.tar.gz

tar -xvzf mtpfs-0.3.tar.gz

cd mtpfs-0.3

./configure --prefix=/usr && make && sudo checkinstall

then create a directory in your home folder (MTPdevice for example), this is where you will mount the mtp device. Add yourself to the "fuse" group: System > Administration > Users and Groups > Manage Groups > fuse > properties and then your username. Logout and login.

From now on, you only need to issue this command in a terminal (you can add a button to the panel as well I guess):

mtpfs ~/MTPdevice

You should then be able to browse the device in nautilus as if it was a normal folder. Let us know if that works for what you want ot do!

Nic

[pingpongboss]

Originally Posted by ntetreau pingpongboss: I think it is great you found a way to do this. May I suggest giving mtpfs a try? With mtpfs, you can mount the device and use it transparently in nautilus, making folders, copy and pasting files including video as far as I'm concerned. Nic

I think I mentioned mtpfs in one of my first posts, and no, it does not work for me. There must be some bug in how mtpfs is implemented. I can browse my folders and see my files (it just has a long lag), and I can also make folders (again, taking up to a few minutes to do). However, nautilus thinks that the device has no more space left and so I cannot move any files into the folders. Copying through nautilus also does not work. The "cp" command seems to work at first - it stays busy for a while and makes the new file inside the folder - but the file is not accessible on the device. Also, none of the files including Music and Photos are readable in nautilus.

I made sure i was part of the FUSE group and that i have read/write permissions on the mount folder. The MTPfs sourceforge page has a single bug report where someone also said that he cannot add files through nautilus. Like the mtp-* commands, i havent found much resources for mtpfs where people actually explained if and how they got it to work. Hopefully mtpfs will get fixed and using that will be so much easier than the mtp-* commands.

[ntetreau]

I am contacting the developing to see if he can offer some help!

Nic

[Mrlush123]

I get to step 12 and it is not able to install. It fails. This is my log. What can I do?

(Reading database ... 90170 files and directories currently installed.)
Unpacking libnjb (from .../libnjb_2.2.5-1_i386.deb) ...
dpkg: error processing /home/john/gnomad_install/libnjb-2.2.5/libnjb_2.2.5-1_i386.deb (--install):
 trying to overwrite `/usr/include/libnjb.h', which is also in package libnjb-dev
dpkg-deb: subprocess paste killed by signal (Broken pipe)
Errors were encountered while processing:
 /home/john/gnomad_install/libnjb-2.2.5/libnjb_2.2.5-1_i386.deb
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(END)

[macogw]

Originally Posted by Mrlush123 I get to step 12 and it is not able to install. It fails. This is my log. What can I do? (Reading database ... 90170 files and directories currently installed.) Unpacking libnjb (from .../libnjb_2.2.5-1_i386.deb) ... dpkg: error processing /home/john/gnomad_install/libnjb-2.2.5/libnjb_2.2.5-1_i386.deb (--install): trying to overwrite `/usr/include/libnjb.h', which is also in package libnjb-dev dpkg-deb: subprocess paste killed by signal (Broken pipe) Errors were encountered while processing: /home/john/gnomad_install/libnjb-2.2.5/libnjb_2.2.5-1_i386.deb ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ (END)

Don't use checkinstall.

Can someone please fix the first page? Checkinstall on libnjb DOES NOT WORK!

[msak007]

Originally Posted by macogw Don't use checkinstall. Can someone please fix the first page? Checkinstall on libnjb DOES NOT WORK!

Sorry, I haven't had to compile libnjb from source in a long time, but checkinstall has worked for me every single time for everything else. If it fails due to an issue overwriting a file (which is clearly the problem here based on the output), you can always pass it the "--dpkgflags=--force-overwrite" flag (same as dpkg -f) to force an overwrite. I'll put that in there and a recommendation to try make install if it fails. If you have any other recommendations, please let me know.