Playlists not updating after syncing to Android

[deanw]

I have playlists on my Galaxy S9 that are missing albums after syncing. If I update a playlist in MusicBee by adding new albums and then sync the playlist is not updated on the device. The files however are successfully copied.

Settings in MusicBee are using MTP, path to playlists BlackPlayer\Playlists\, playlist type is PLA.

I'm using BlackPlayer on Android.

Has anyone experienced this issue and know the solution?

[phred]

Try transferring your playlists as M3U or M3U8 format.

[Cliff_G]

I think i'm getting this too, though I suspect it is not the playlist but the way MusicBee reads the files on the device.  

e.g. I have 859 tracks on the device but if I set the left panel to "Album" I get 699 tracks that are "Empty" i.e. MB thinks there is no Album name.  If I inspect the file details under "Edit" in the MB centre window (either with left sidebar selecting "Music" on the device, *or* with the explorer tree set to the file folder itself) the only detail there is the track name. All other fields are blank in MB's Edit dialogue.   But if I inspect the track on the device itself (direct on the device) it does have all the track metadata present.

On the tracks that are shown correctly in MB's tree/display panels, these all have the data avalable under MB's "Edit" dialogue.

So it looks to me like MB is not back-reading the track metadata for some files (only), hence it can't organise these tracks, hence it looks like a bunch of albums, artists etc are missing. They aren't actually missing, but MB can't sort them correctly.

Re the idea of transferring playlists as M3U or M3U8, I am already using M3U

Win7 / Android 4.4.2 / MB 3.2.6902

I do find when syncing the last file copy, the playlist itself, does take absolutely ages.

[Cliff_G]

Also exactly the same on a Galaxy Tab S2 on Android 7.0

1658 tracks of which MB thinks 1452 are "Empty" of album name and other metadata.

Not so easy to inspect metadata of the files on the Tab as on my phone, but as the tracks are all there and sorting according to Album or Artist, or Track, or Genre, etc, works correctly, it must actually have the metadata present on the Tab.

So, afaict, MB is definitely not reading metadata correctly back off a synced device durign its scan of that device

[Steven]

does it still happen using the latest v3.3 version?

https://getmusicbee.com/patches/MusicBee33_Patched.zip
unzip and replace the existing musicbee files

[Cliff_G]

Steven, I tried that but unfortunately Avast wouldn't let me use MusicBee.exe at runtime.  Said is was a "very strange file" and has uploaded it to analyse.  Probably a false positive, so you might like to check with Avast.  When I scan the file from Explorer Context Menu scan, it says it's safe.

Would it be worth my trying just to download the latest released 3.3?

[phred]

Avast has known issues with MB. You need to white list musicbee.exe and the entire folder in which MB lives. I believe there are two places in Avast where you need to white list. Search the forum.

[Cliff_G]

Thanks, phred, but I haven't had any problems at all between MB and Avast so far.  This was a patch test to help Steven and I'm quite happy to wait for the two parties to sort it out unless I get a problem I can't wait for. Why create an attack vector, especially whitelisting a whole folder?  Paranoid? Yup.

[Steven]

I wont be doing anything to "sort it out". If Avast customers started complaining to Avast then that might sort it out.

[phred]

Thanks, phred, but I haven't had any problems at all between MB and Avast so far.  This was a patch test to help Steven and I'm quite happy to wait for the two parties to sort it out unless I get a problem I can't wait for. Why create an attack vector, especially whitelisting a whole folder?  Paranoid? Yup.

As Steven said, he's not going to sort it out. The simple solution is to whitelist. Especially since, if you'd search the forum, you'd see that others ran into Avast issues and resolved it by whitelisting. And Avast is the only security software that continually blocks MB. If you're that paranoid you shouldn't be using the Internet.

[Cliff_G]

I have already reported it to Avast as a false positive, but as it's not the production version and as I have not had any other problems with Avast + MB, I doubt it wil get very far, unless Avast's auto-upload of the suspect file helps them.

[Cliff_G]

Steven, Avast have come back to say the file is clean, so the auto-upload worked and they acted on it.  I will wait a few days for them to update the latest definitions and try again