Rhythmbox meets MP3 players

As stated in my previous post, FireFly is now serving my personal music collection from the CH3WNAS. This is nice for live streaming songs to Rhythmbox, but I also want to put some mp3s on my mp3 player.

I have 2 USB mass storage mp3 player: the Creative Muvo 100 and the Samsung YP-S5 with Asiatic v1.50 firmware. Rhythmbox has very simple support for those USB devices: simply add a ".is_audio_player" file in the root of the mp3 player (see: http://live.gnome.org/Rhythmbox/FAQ). The mp3 player is now automatically detected by Rhythmbox, and filling the player with songs from the FireFly server is as simple as drag'n'drop. The transfer is terribly slow, but that's probably because I'm connecting through wifi.

For both the Muvo 100 and the YP-S5 I put the following file in the root: .is_audio_player

audio_folders=Music/
folder_depth=2
output_formats=audio/mpeg

As the FAQ above mentions, this overrides the HAL. I didn't check (yet) if the default HAL settings are OK for the 2 devices. Anyway, this works fine for me.

Tip: with ctrl+H you can display the hidden files (=files that start with a dot '.') in Nautilus.

YP-S5 and scratches

The Samsung YP-S5 is particularly prone to scratches. I bought it a month ago, and I have only used it for about 3-4 hours, but there are already a few scratches on the shiny plastic. I think I put the YP-S5 in my pocket next to my keys...

I found there is a commercial shield to protect the YP-S5: http://mp3playersandheadphones.co.uk/the-invisible-shield-samsung-yp-k5yp-s5-full-body-shield/ and http://www.advancedmp3players.co.uk/shop/product_info.php?products_id=2339&aff=window. It's not clear to me if these products really help, without altering the the look & feel of the player. Time will tell...

Concerning the V1.50 firmware, I don't see much improvement compared to the previous V1.07 firmware. It still takes about 10 seconds to startup the device.

I like to listen to podcasts, but simply playing a few podcasts that are in different folders without manual intervention is almost impossible. I have also a simple Creative Muvo; the Muvo, with its smaller screen, is much better than the YP-S5 for playing podcasts. I like to play the podcasts in a sequential order, respecting the order of the podcasts that are under a directory-structure. On the YP-S5, I first tried to select all songs of style "podcast". But since not all podcasts set their style to 'podcast', it's not possible to use this attribute. I also tried the file-browser, but when the last song in a folder is reached it stops playing. It would have been better that the YP-S5 jumps to the next folder, and plays the first song in that folder. The only workable solution I found is to go to 'Albums', 'all' and than search for the podcasts. Unfortunatly, music and podcast are not separated.

Switch the YP-S5 from MTP to UMS

I managed to switch the YP-S5 from MTP to UMS by installing the Korean firmware v1.50. I don't understand why North America and Europe are stuck with the MTP version while Asia and south America get the UMS version. Perhaps Samsung wants to experiment with DRM on a limited scale?

MTP (Media Transport Protocol specific for Windows Mediaplayer) is really not user-friendly:

• Doesn't work under macos or linux (support through libmtp is still limited). Ubuntu is my main OS .
• I couldn't get it work under XP ("error mtp device")
• Does work under Vista, but only after installing the latest patches.

Use at your own risk -- not sure if this voids your warrranty. But the YP-S5 did survive my unsuccesful attempts with the previous firmware v1.07.

Download the asiatic V1.50 version from Samsung Singapore (it's an English site):

http://www.samsung.com/sg/support/download...disp_nm=YP-S5QW

Unzip the file and under Vista, put the S5.rom and Config.dat in the root of the S5. I also put he Config.dat file in the subdirectory SYSTEM/ -- not sure if this is needed, but it doesn't harm... I had some trouble with copy/pasting the files. Drag and drop did however work under Vista.

After unconnecting and starting up the YP-S5, the new firmware is installed. The display shows up in Korean. This is quickly fixed in the Settings/Language menu. The first submenu item allows you to switch the language.

The S5 is now automatically supported under Ubuntu, but with a small issue: two S5 devices are mounted. No big deal...

See also http://www.anythingbutipod.com/forum/showthread.php?t=30155

UPDATE: Maybe it's not necessary to start from the Asiatic version; the 'original' V1.50 MTP version can also be switched by altering the Config.dat - this info seems unverified, however: http://mp3.generationmp3.com/2008/05...le-samsung-s5/

UPDATE 29/6/2008: apparently, you need a USB 2.0 connection to your YP-S5. See the comment below