Issues with Sync 3 and playlists

Coiled03

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We all love Sync 3, right? For the most part, I do. But one thing I really don't like is the fact that it won't recognize playlists I've created on my phone. I use VLC player as my audio player on my phone, and I've created a few playlists with it. But, when I connect my phone (doesn't matter if it's via USB or bluetooth) and go into Sync 3, it doesn't find them. In fact, the button was only available one time. I pushed it, it said "this playlist is empty", and the button disappeared; haven't seen it again since, I assume because it doesn't find any playlists to display.

I've read about people putting all their music on a stand alone USB stick, and reformatting a bunch of crap to get playlists to work. That seems like a lot of effort for something that should just work automatically in this day and age.

Playlists worked when I had Google Play Music. But I hated that app, so I uninstalled it. I don't want to have two different players just to get the functionality I want, either.

Anyone else had this problem? Any guidance on how to resolve it?
 

RDJ

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I had it with Sync 2 and I am guessing it is probably the same issue that Ford has yet to fix. there was a program out that puts everything in the right format for Sync to be able to recognize everything that I used. IIRC it was pretty easy and painless to use and once the songs were ran through it the problem pretty much went away. don't remember the name of it tho. will try and find it and post it up if I do
 

BigPoppa

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I've never had an issue with it reading .wpl playlists from a USB stick. You just have to make sure the .wpl files are formatted in xml correctly and placed in a folder named "Playlists". You can try that or you can go through the bloated method of creating a .m3u playlist. Just remember that .m3u files have to be in the same folder as the music.

Per the Sync website, the following are supported playlist file types:
ASX, M3U, WPL, or MTP

http://www.fordservicecontent.com/F...picHRef=G1730059&div=f&vFilteringEnabled=True
 

Coiled03

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I've never had an issue with it reading .wpl playlists from a USB stick. You just have to make sure the .wpl files are formatted in xml correctly and placed in a folder named "Playlists". You can try that or you can go through the bloated method of creating a .m3u playlist. Just remember that .m3u files have to be in the same folder as the music.

Per the Sync website, the following are supported playlist file types:
ASX, M3U, WPL, or MTP

http://www.fordservicecontent.com/F...picHRef=G1730059&div=f&vFilteringEnabled=True

I don't want a separate USB stick. I want to plug in my phone, or connect via bluetooth, and have it find them in the "music" folder where all the mp3s are.
 

BigPoppa

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I don't want a separate USB stick. I want to plug in my phone, or connect via bluetooth, and have it find them in the "music" folder where all the mp3s are.
Understood. I'll play with it when I get home this evening, but I suspect it might be a limitation given the fact that the Sync system isn't playing the song directly, but using the peer-to-peer interface of the app which probably doesn't provide the Sync system access to playlists.

Give me a couple hours.
 

Coiled03

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Understood. I'll play with it when I get home this evening, but I suspect it might be a limitation given the fact that the Sync system isn't playing the song directly, but using the peer-to-peer interface of the app which probably doesn't provide the Sync system access to playlists.

Give me a couple hours.

Cool....appreciate any assistance you can provide.
 

Coiled03

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I made some progress tonight. I downloaded MP3tag, and with it, exported some playlist files which I then saved to the root Music directory on my phone. When I connected that to Sync 3, it displayed the playlists. Now, if I could just figure out why it's mis-identifying some album artists even though the tags are correct, I might be able to live with it.
 

CobraBob

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Keep us posted because guaranteed someone else is going to read this thread down the road who has the very same issue. Hopefully you'll get the final issue figured out.
 

BigPoppa

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Ok, so as you already figured out, the only way is to put the playlist files in the music root or a folder labelled playlists in the music root. Now, you have to format the playlist.

The easiest way is to open windows media player, create the .wpl playlist and just copy it over. If it doesn't work in the root folder, create a folder called playlists and put it in there.

The hard way, using .m3u format:
Ford Sync 3 USB Drive Music Playlists
 
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Coiled03

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Ok, so as you already figured out, the only way is to put the playlist files in the music root or a folder labelled playlists in the music root. Now, you have to format the playlist.

The easiest way is to open windows media player, create the .wpl playlist and just copy it over. If it doesn't work in the root folder, create a folder called playlists and put it in there.

The hard way, using .m3u format:
Ford Sync 3 USB Drive Music Playlists

The files I created were .m3u and took all of about 30 seconds. I just exported them to the folder they came from, then cut/pasted to my phone. I suppose I can check to see if MP3tag creates .wpl files, but I kinda doubt it.

I'll check this morning to see if what I did works after Sync 3 re-indexes everything. I cleared all the tags off the songs with the mis-identified artist, then re-created them. Hopefully that will fix things. Does Sync 3 look up metadata on its own, or just use what's already present? Anybody know?

EDIT: Nope, no luck on artist name. WTF? It's a custom name I put in, and Sync 3 refuses to use it. Instead, it displays the artist as Frank Sinatra. Double-WTF? Even stranger, if I export those same songs to a playlist, or browse the phone storage to the folder and play the songs, it IDs the artist as what I entered. It's just when I do a search, then search by artist that it doesn't find the right name, and when I play the files, the artist is listed wrong.
 
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Coiled03

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I think I've got the playlist issue solved. I disabled Gracenote, and now it just uses the embedded tags. Now, I just have to fix the abum art issue. From what I've read, it sounds like album art has to be embedded in the mp3 tags. For whatever reason, Sync can't use album art files (e.g. folder.jpg or cover.jpg). Does anyone know if this is true, or not?
 

BigPoppa

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After you've disabled Gracenote, try updating the media index. The album art thing used to be bugged in Sync 2, but it is supposedly fixed in Sync 3
 

Coiled03

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Album art is fixed, now. Embedded art works much better than files. Now, of course, I have another issue. Apparently Sync 3 doesn't work with VLC Android over bluetooth. I can't fn win, lol.
 

BigPoppa

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Figures doesn't it.

Yeah, I'm sitting in the '16 right now and noticed that everything works fine with Play. Somehow I bet Google helped them when they developed the Android integration and made sure that Play worked, but didn't help integrate anything else.
 

Coiled03

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Figures doesn't it.

Yeah, I'm sitting in the '16 right now and noticed that everything works fine with Play. Somehow I bet Google helped them when they developed the Android integration and made sure that Play worked, but didn't help integrate anything else.

I'm sure it's something like that. Oh well. It's not that big of a deal to plug in the phone.
 

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