Everything was fine until.....

Until I recently (2 weeks ago) uploaded a new album to the player and began listening to it in the car. It worked fine until it reached this song "Sioh Sayang" and then it just FROZE. I thought that all I have to do is just pull out/in and everything would go back to normal, but it didn't. The player returned to the same song and froze again. I tried playing the same MP3 from the desktop and it would not even play with WinAmp. Also, for some reason the mp3 tags do not show up in XP Explorer even though this mp3 is tagged. So, now I am convinced that it must be the mp3 that caused all this trouble.

However, I don't know how to remedy this problem. The remote control or the buttons on rio car do not respond. I can't even connect to the player with emplode, so I cannot delete that mp3 this way. I tired using the 'N' command in Hyper Terminal to advance to the next song, but I did not work, and I am not even sure if I did it correctly. What other things can I try???

Thanks


Rio Car 60Gb Blue and Frozen

If you are running the 1.03 software, try installing the 2.0 beta 11 software (keep the power unplugged from the player until it prompts you).

If that doesn't work, there's a procedure to reset the current playlist, someone here will be able to give it to you.

Yes, I do have 1.03 and I already tried reinstalling 1.03 software, but it still would boot at the same location. Would installing 2.0 prevent it from doing the same?

2.0 deals with files with errors better than 1.03

Is there something else I can try instead of upgrading software which may not even help. Can I manually delete this song from the playlist and the hd? Or what about reseting the last saved track position?

Yes, you can manually start the player software without a playlist loaded. But that requires the developer image and a shell prompt anyway, and I think a fast finger on ctrl-C if I'm not mistaken. It's easier just to do the upgrade if that works. And if you don't have 1.03 developer you'd need to do an upgrade to install developer anyway.

So, when you upgrade to 2.0beta11 make sure it's the developer flavor just in case it doesn't work and you still need to get to the shell prompt.

Sorry, I forgot to mention that I already have 1.03 developer installed. I tried looking for the right files myself, but it didn't turn out to be as simple as I thought. I would appreciate if someone would at least point me in the right directions. Thanks.

PS I did read something about deleting the dababase files on /drive0(1)/var/ but I am not sure what exactly whould this accomplish.

PS I did read something about deleting the dababase files on /drive0(1)/var/ but I am not sure what exactly whould this accomplish.

This is not the problem you're having (your database is not corrupted), but doing it might force the player to forget the current song, not sure.

Click here to see the player command-line arguments. If you are able to ctrl-C from the shell prompt before the player locks up, then you will be able to start the player software without that song loaded.

However, I still stand by my original suggestion: Install 2.0 beta 11 and see if that solves the problem. This is actually kind of important because 2.0b11 is supposed to handle bad files better than 1.03 did. If 2.0 cannot handle the bad file, we should send a copy of the file to the Empeg guys so that they can figure out why their decoder engine chokes on it. It shouldn't lock up the whole player, it should just complain about the file and move on to the next one.

If this is the case, then I think I will try installing 2.0 first and see how it will handle it. I will post the result here later today or tomorrow. Thanks.

I upgraded to the beta today and it does work like you thought it would. Instead of hanging on the file it now shows pop up "Invalid File Format" and I can just move on to the next song. I think I am going to keep this version running...

Thanks for your help Tony.

First, download the track, and put it to one side.
Next, use the "Reset Metadata" function in emplode to reset the offset, codec, bitrate and duration tags. See below for more information.
Then try to play the track again. If it plays, then "Reset Metadata" did the trick. If it doesn't, then see if it'll play in Winamp. If it will, then send it to us -- we like to examine MP3 tracks that won't play.

Reset Metadata:

First, some background: the player requires that the bitrate, duration, codec and offset tags be filled in correctly. Earlier builds of the player/emplode software didn't necessarily get these correct. This can lead to tracks being unplayable.

The v2.0 version of emplode gets these tags correct when importing new music, but also allows you to correct the tags for tracks already on the player. However, it's a little confusing in operation. Selecting "Reset Metadata" doesn't actually recalculate the new values, it just blanks them so that they're recalculated next time.

1. You select "Reset Metadata", which zeroes these fields.
2. You press sync. The zeroed fields are written back to the player.
3. During database download, emplode notices that the values are bogus, and prompts you to fix them. It then sits there chuntering away working out the correct values.
4. You press sync, and these new values are written back to the player.

Just a quick note:

He did say, earlier in the thread, that the file won't play even in WinAmp.

Ah, I missed that. In which case, there's not much point sending it to us.

I'd just like to point out that Warm Fuzzy Feeling (c)TFabris I get when I hear of people using Winamp rather than Windows Media Player as THE benchmark .mp3 player <g>