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Well that does it for me. I love my A808 it's a wonderful player in many ways but the idea that sony just abandons customers that bought their players less than a year ago is very disturbing to me. (not to speak of the huge sonicstage dependent userbase) I mean they have the program finished and functioning it's just a question of translating it. Would that be too much to ask for? I've installed it and it seems to be very nice. Very quick and responsive. Because I don't understand japanese I have to try myself around the program but it feels as a fresh take (if you understand what I mean...) If you look at apple on the other hand they support all their old players thereby breathing life in 'old' players. That definately extends the value in my opinion anyway. Anyho if this program doesn't hit the european market it's bye bye sony for me. Never again a sony product mp3 player, dvd, tv whatever. If it is something I hate it is manufacturers that doesn't support their customers.

Hi, great initiative I think. I've tested it and have some feedback for you. I started out with an empty library. I can add songs one by one and it works fine. It's ok to delete the songs too. I can not upload an album nor create one. SAM crashes then. My system is vista ultimate 32bit - sony nw-a808 I have a suggestion if you don't mind. (mind you just a suggestion). Is it possible to make a "light" version with a dropzone for adding files and the possibility to delete and downlod files. For me that would be the ultimate program. As of now if you want something lighter than SS it is just VAIO musictransfer that works with the newer nw-Axx series and with that program you can just add files. To be able to delete them you have to start SS thereby nullifying its usefulness. Your program is the first program except for SS that I've tested that does not corrupt the players database! GREAT work. Anyway keep working on this. really great work cheers

I can confirm that SS works fine with Vista ultimate and sp1. So it must be something else on your computer that's not compatible. cheers

What does the option "Do not keep current album structure if tracks were collected from different albums" do? Does it rearrange the folders ?? /michael

well that is obviously a fault in your system not in SS. you have to do a little housekeeping and then do a clean SS install.

Yes, I've encountered the same problem as you. I have two solutions. 1. You can just open the file in avidemux and save it again. That'll do the trick and you can then convert the movie in imageconverter. 2. Download mencoder and put the following in a batch file you put in the same directory as mencoder. "mencoder %1 -oac lavc -ovc lavc -of lavf -lavcopts aglobal=1:vglobal=1:vcodec=mpeg4:vbitrate=800:autoaspect:acodec=libfaac:abitrate=128 -lavfopts format=mp4 -ofps 29.97 -af lavcresample=24000 -autosub -subfont-text-scale 3 -font C:\WINDOWS\Fonts\arial.ttf -vf scale=320:240,harddup -o %1.mp4" If you now make a shortcut to the desktop you just drag and drop the file you want to convert on the shortcut. The converted file will end up in the same directory as the original file. Put the converted file in a folder called "video" on the player and you are ready to go. This will automatically burn in subtitles if they are in the same folder as the film to be converted and have the same name (except for the filetype of course) I've settled for solution 2 and use that exclusively but ymmv. good luck

I have imported directly from japan. You just install both sonicstage and imageconverter from the supplied disks. No problem at all. As the fanboy said you have to change language on the player. I had downloaded the manual and memorised the way in the menu's to the language settings. When I got the player I got a message in japanese and I could not go to the menu. It turned out that the hold button was on... I think you will be very pleased with the player and after getting used to sonicstage I think you'll start to appreciate it. It's definately better than it's reputation. I rip in ATRAC advanced lossless/atrac3+ 256kb which I think sound grate. However, although Imageconverter is a good program it is a little bit too picky for my taste. Quite often it will report a problem with the filestream and abort so nowdays I'm using mencoder with a small drag and drop frontend which I think is much more convenient. good luck with your new player

have you tried reinstall (or install for that matter) xvid? When I first installed IC3 I had a weird problem, the movie played extremely fast and mirrored. Reinstalling xvid solved my problem. Just a thought...

What setting's have you set in IC3? Fx I have set AVC baseline profile, 768 kbps/30 fps and aspect 16:9

First I must say that I haven't been able to match the good picture quality I get from the supplied imageconverter program. However it is quite picky about the files it accept's. That's why I'm trying a viable solution with mencoder/ffmpeg. So if you pu this bat file into mencoders folder. ( it should be one row) mencoder.exe %1 -oac lavc -ovc lavc -of lavf -lavcopts aglobal=1:vglobal=1:vcodec=mpeg4:vbitrate=800:autoaspect:acodec=libfaac:abitrate=128 -lavfopts format=mp4 -ofps 29.97 -af lavcresample=24000 -vf scale=320:240,harddup -o %1.mp4 now you can drop a film on the bat file (or link to the bat file) and you will get a converted file in the source directory that you can drop into the video folder on the player. I have tried it with several files including two movies with no problems.

I use this: http://members.home.nl/w.speek/flac.htm , flac frontend to convert my flac files to wav for later importing to SS. It's a nice tool that can convert batches. Don't know if it will be to any help but for me it's been a great.

1. > It seems to take an age to transfer songs to the player Well SS does a lot of work in the background. Rating's, info and such... You may like it or not by I've come to like SS alot. That said I would encourage you to turn off everything that's automatic. Fx turn off all "get track info automatic..." Then you can selectively turn on and try different options until you are (hopefully) satisfied. 4. > Atrac Lossless files are HUGE. I think ATRAC advanced Lossless is a great idea. I rip my cd's in ATRAC Advanced lossless/256kb. That way I have a lossless source on my computer and I can choose whether I want to transfer the lossless or the lossy file to my player. Well this is just my two cent... I hope you will be as satisfied with your player as I am with mine. cheers

I'm trying to figure out what video options these players accept. The background is that I get very good results with sony's imageconverter program *but* nowdays I always get an error message that there is a problem with the filestream. Then I have to run avidemux, rebuild index and then run imageconverter again. This has started to annoy me so I am trying to find out which settings to use with mencoder or ffmpeg. Sofar I can get a decent quality mp4 file to be accepted by the player by this commandline: mencoder "in.avi" -vf scale=320:-2,harddup -oac faac -faacopts mpeg=4:raw:br=128 -ovc lavc -lavcopts vcodec=mpeg4:vbitrate=768 -ffourcc mp4v -of lavf -lavfopts format=mp4 -o "out.mp4" but it is not close to the quality of imageconverter. I can not however find the commands for h264 that the player accepts. Sofar they all turnout unplayable on the player. I tried quicktime too and I got good results but then I had problems with the soundstream. IE there were no sound... So if you have any setting's you are pleased with please post them here. Maybe we can find the optimal setting's ! cheers /michael

You have to start from scratch. Converting a lossy format one more time is generally a bad idea (soundwise) but if you are looking for more space you may consider it (accepting a worse soundquality)

there is no volume limit on the A800 and A810 series players.

Sony NW-A808...

I have 37.8 GB and it imports files quite swiftly. I think it must be something else, ie not a SS issue. Are you running other programs at the same time. Something that's using all the power? For example when my virus program updates it slows down everything else.

how big is your library?

what did you reinstall? sonicstage?

I disagree... Besides the music I always have a full length movie and a bunch of sitcoms on my 808. Great for commuting. Even subtitles are very legible.

great!! thank's for the link

I have got the impression that the mediamanager is for the other media. Pictures, movies, podcasts and in the event of the drag and drop players also the music. On the atrac players I think you will still need SonicStage to manage/transfer music.

I'll second that! iPods EQ is horrible. *really* Some settings make it sound like you broke the headphones. If you can listen with no EQ settings I think they sound quite good actually.

Using home premium here. Absolutely no problem at all.

I think they are simply adjusting the price. The price was initially quite high (when I bought mine) because there was not so much competition. Then when apple introduced their new nano everybody is adjusting their prices accordingly. Sony is not alone. For example cowon and iriver are doing the same...