Sansa Fuze - SanDisk supports Linux

[grossaffe]

as the owner of a sansa e200 series mp3 player, i can tell you that they make a very good product. I loaded a third-party firmware onto the machine that allows it to play OGG files, fully customizeable While Playing Screen, games (including Doom and a gameboy emulator). being linux people, I think this kind of thing suits you guys. if your interested, go to their homepage http://www.rockbox.org and see what all they do and what mp3 players are supported.

[ChameleonDave]

What I want is a digital audio player that runs Linux.

Et viola.
!

Not sure what actual musical instruments have to do with this, though.

[geoken]

Video: Hey, if anyone can figure this one out, that'd be great; let the rest of us know! I've created 20fps DIVX AVIs with 128kbps MP3 audio track, to no avail. I'd do a hexdump of the file that shipped with the player...but one of the first thigns I did was format the player. D'oh!

Unless you can find extremely detailed specs or you have some windows based app that shipped with the player which is capable of transcoding videos for the player you're going to have to deal with a lot of trial and error.

These players are extremely picky about their video codecs. Using (or not using) a single, seemingly trivial encoding option/flag could result in an unreadable file. I went through multiple encodes with aviDemux trying every combination trying to get playable video on my Zen. I got lucky and found a thread on these forums where someone wrote a script which used mencoder to produce playable files. Maybe if you look you'll be able to find one as well.

[zelldinchtof8]

i just got the sansa fuze (it's in the same line of the E2xx series, i guess) and i find that the interface is not that difficult to understand. sure, i might think of installing rockbox or some python firmware run this thing, but it's too pretty (and not to mention - new!) to mess around with. so far, it has not been a hassle and it fits my shirt pocket easily. i have a 2gb microsd memory card that i have from my motorola and it works here - planning to get the 8gb microsdhc, or wait for sandisk's 16gb (which should be any time soon ^_^). i can vouch for 21+ hours of non-stop audio playing time on this, but then again, i was using a sennheiser px200, and almost at full volume mostly....

as for playlists and mp3 managing, i have always made it a point to put my music in artist>album>song<. every time i rip a cd, i always make sure that i get the appropriate album artwork and id3 tags, to make sync and copy easier. i have not tried it in a while but there was a music player for xp (sorry, not sure if there is an ubuntu version) that allows you to easily edit id3 tags. it was musicmatch, or something like that. hope that helps.

[MONODA]

the iaudio 7 support linux and ogg. The battey lasts 60 hours too!

[Changturkey]

I wish they would being these up to Canada.

[grossaffe]

i just got the sansa fuze (it's in the same line of the E2xx series, i guess) and i find that the interface is not that difficult to understand. sure, i might think of installing rockbox or some python firmware run this thing, but it's too pretty (and not to mention - new!) to mess around with. so far, it has not been a hassle and it fits my shirt pocket easily. i have a 2gb microsd memory card that i have from my motorola and it works here - planning to get the 8gb microsdhc, or wait for sandisk's 16gb (which should be any time soon ^_^). i can vouch for 21+ hours of non-stop audio playing time on this, but then again, i was using a sennheiser px200, and almost at full volume mostly....

Rockbox isn't exactly available on the fuze...

[Commander_Bob]

Maybe this could help someone find a way to convert videos for the Fuze.

General #0
Complete name : C:\Users\EnzoTen\Desktop\WAZ.MineToRemember.SansaP layer.avi
Format : AVI
Format/Info : Audio Video Interleave
Format/Family : RIFF
File size : 20.0 MiB
PlayTime : 3mn 26s
Bit rate : 812 Kbps
Writing application : InterVideo

Video #0
Codec : DivX 5
Codec/Family : MPEG-4
Codec profile : Unknown
Codec settings/Packe : No
Codec settings/BVOP : Yes
Codec settings/QPel : No
Codec settings/GMC : 0
Codec settings/Matri : Default
PlayTime : 3mn 26s
Bit rate : 667 Kbps
Width : 224 pixels
Height : 176 pixels
Display Aspect ratio : 1.273
Frame rate : 20.000 fps
Resolution : 8 bits
Interlacement : Progressive

Audio #0
Codec : MPEG-1 Audio layer 3
PlayTime : 3mn 26s
Bit rate : 128 Kbps
Bit rate mode : CBR
Channel(s) : 2 channels
Sampling rate : 44.1 KHz
Resolution : 16 bits
Writing library : Xing (new)

Justin

[OutOfReach]

The Sansa Fuze looks like a good deal. I might consider replacing my iPod Nano with it.

[days_of_ruin]

If you want to update the firmware, you don't need the Windows software. Just put the Fuze in MSC mode (or leave it in Auto) and copy the .bin to the root of the Fuze's filesystem. Et viola.

Photos: All I've tried so far is scaling it to 320px wide and save it with a thumbnail; seems to work. If anyone knows how to automate that, that'd be great. I'm assuming it can be done with ImageMagick or similar.

Playlists: I'm told that the XMMS .m3u files work fine, if you convert them to use relative paths (like filtering 'em through sed, perl, or a regexp in vim.) I've not tried it; just having the filenames in a .m3u file apparently isn't enough. I'm going to give EasyTAG a try later.

Video: Hey, if anyone can figure this one out, that'd be great; let the rest of us know! I've created 20fps DIVX AVIs with 128kbps MP3 audio track, to no avail. I'd do a hexdump of the file that shipped with the player...but one of the first thigns I did was format the player. D'oh!

Easytag works for playlists.You just have to set the filepath separators
to DOS '\' otherwise it wont work.You can make playlists manually of course(Just a text file with a '.m3u' extension, each line being a relative path to each song you want in the playlist).
btw the fuze doesn't recognize embedded album art.You have to put a file
called "Folder.jpg" in the same folder as all the songs in the album.
If the album art is black and messed up try opening it up in gimp and
just saving it again, that always works for me.

btw I love the wheel!Very often when I am listening to something I will
hit the home button so it won't mess anything up and just spin through
all the icons again and again and again.

Sandisk is releasing a new firmware that will have support for ogg (vorbis) and flac
http://forums.sandisk.com/sansa/boar...thread.id=1564