LG Chocolate VX8500 MP3 music

I have been posting in an article discussion on another site, but I don't think very many people read it. Plus it isn't the best place for discussions period it seems.

Anyway, new to this site. I bought an LG VX8500 (US, Verizon) a couple months ago. Thought it would be a good over-all solution for phone and iPod-esque needs. Didn't realize that being a Mac-only user, I would be left to purchase countless other accessories to get the music portion to work.

I just purchased a microSD reader and card this weekend to get songs on the phone. Turns out this is probably the best option as the phone has pretty much no storage space for music anyway.

When going through the ALL SONGS playlist, I notice that there are two versions of each song. One version seems fine. Normal size and playback works. The other version has a size of 1KB (or actually 0KB if you go into the song info on one of these). The ones with no size also show an "X" on the memory card icon next to each, while the "good" version shows a music note (indicating that it is a song file, I guess).

Anyway, when going to play any of the ones with the "X" icon, I get the error. Also, if you add any of these to a playlist, they fail upon play. Adversely, if you add one of the "good" songs with the music note icon next to them, they seem to play fine. So I have set up a playlist containing all of the "good / valid" song files and it seems to work.

It's cool that I got it to work, but it's rather a pain to have to go and add all of these songs to a playlist in order to get them to work. Anyone know what the purpose of the "X" icon duplicates is??

Thanks,
Matt

I'm having similar problems. I'm also a Mac user, but since I had a Samsung a960 w/mp3 player and had a card already, I did know about playing off a memory card.

I am also getting two copies of songs, although I didn't realize it until I read your post! I tried playing from the beginning of "All Songs" and every time I tried to play my phone would freeze completely - wouldn't play, wouldn't receive calls, couldn't turn off w/end button, nothing, totally frozen. The only thing that worked was to remove the battery and reset.

After I read your posting I reviewed my playlist and saw that the first set is marked w/a music note._(number). The second version of the list just has the music note also but no period, no underscore, and then the number - the second version is the one that actually plays.

This is truly weird. I never ran into this on my Samsung.

So I tried an experiment. I deleted the first, non-playable version and then tried to play the second, playable version - and it played. So it appears there is a glitch in the way mp3's are copied onto the card??? somehow creating a duplicate in a non-playable format that has no purpose. The duplicate, non-playable version does not show up on my Mac desktop when the card is plugged into the computer; in fact, the playable version looks the same as my desktop (music note, number).

I will be doing some further research into this w/tech support and will post anything I find out.

Yup! I agree; the "duplicate" files are not visible when the card is loaded on my Mac(s) either. Not surprised that deleting them doesn't effect anything, but also good knowledge. I suppose that might be easier than adding the good ones to a playlist, or maybe about the same amount of work.

So long as the dups are ~0kb, I'm not really too worried about it.

Probably just has something to do with Mac in general (as everything else in the technology world does). I'm not sure if the USB connectivity kit problem is a licensing block from Apple or if the LG folks just didn't want to mess with it. Either way it would be nice if they could just work that out. But as I mentioned, I don't see any real way to store a significant amount of songs on the phone w/ out the microSD card anyway. The 64MB (or whatever) the phone has allocated for songs is not really enough, especially when you encode mp3's at 192kbps as I do. :/

My only other concern is what to do when the little microSD slot cover fails and the card won't stay in the phone. I guess that's one good reason to buy a black Chocolate: electrical tape to the rescue! We'll see...

Yeah, I agree, that card door is poorly designed.

I've read some posts about transferring via Bluetooth, so you wouldn't need to take out the card to add songs. I'm looking into that next.

I don't blame the Mac here, the transfer process problems are just lousy programming on the part of the manufacturer, or a lack of desire to serve Mac users. Nothing new about that!

Actually, I have BitPim and have tried xferring mp3's via Bluetooth that way. But it won't for some reason. Only addresses, calendar, and ringtones. No video, mp3. pics, etc. If you figure it out lemme know, altho the available storage is still a vote for the card...

I don't blame Apple either. Historically it has been the manufacturers of technology that have chosen to shun us. But, since I don't actually know the whole story, I figured I'd give LG the benefit of the doubt.

Lemme know if you work out the Bluetooth mp3 xchange!

I realized ater my post about deleting the non-playing duplicate file that it did not actually delete! In fact, it cannot be deleted. Tried several times.

So I have a new theory. I've been trying to find a way to convert mp3's to WMA format for my son's new RAZR V3 as it will only play WMA (something not stated in all the literature). I have researched on several forums and it appears to be cirtually impossible or so comlicated I can't understand how to do it.

Is it possible these unplayable duplicate files on the "all songs" list are actuallly WMA's? If so, too bad I can't cross-transfer back to my Mac desktop so that I oculd transfer to my son's phone.

What is up with Verizon and Microsoft? This all seems like a deliberate attempt to shut Mac users out, as evidently other new Verizon phones are having similar problems.

Oops, sorry about all the typos. That's what I get for not proofreading.

EVERYONE is trying to shut Mac out. No surprise there.

Oh well. So long as the non-playable tracks are pretty much sizeless, I don't mind them being there. I'll just add the real ones to playlists.

I just wish we could let everyone else that has this issue know. When it locks up trying to play those non-tracks, it does make it seem like the phone is pretty much worthless.

New developments. Today I replaced my son's RAZR w/ the LG8600, which is like a flip chocolate, basically (and a very cool phone altogether). And the same thing happened w/the mp3 files - two sets showed up on the phone!

So I tried something w/my "apple" (not, definately not, "mint") green chocolate: moved a file onto the phone memory, and voila, the duplicate file disappeared.

I still haven't called the tech support guys, but this will give them more info to work with. [/u]

Here's what I got in reply after I posted on the HowardForum:

Are the duplicate files you're seeing "AppleDouble" files? These are files that have as their prefix the "dot-underscore" (._) pair? Apple uses this format to separate data (the mp3 file structure) and "resources" (in essence, metadata about the file). When I've had difficulty with these AppleDouble files I find that I can remove them using Apple's Terminal.app and the 'rm' command (e.g., 'rm -rf .-*').

I did get a data cable but can't get BitPim to recognize my phone, and I don't know how to use Terminal.

Any ideas?

LG Chocolate VX8500 MP3 music

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