Modern Linux distributions and more and more music library applications (such as Rythmbox and Banshee for example) are using informations stored in freedesktop.org‘s media-player-info project in order to handle correctly most USB Mass Storage media players (i.e. those which appear as an external USB disk). This allows the operating system and those applications to :
- ask you if you want your device to be managed by your music library management software;
- display the name and icon of your device;
- retrieve the necessary informations to copy music on the media player (format, location);
- handle playlists.
In the future those informations might allow your software to manage correctly:
- your album covers;
- your videos.
How can you contribute to this project?
The media player database is growing fast but with the even faster growth of new devices arriving on the market it still often happens that your specific device is not perfectly handled. Having contributed a number of patchs to add support for unknown devices, I’m offering to do it for your device(s) (and those of your friends too) if you don’t want to spend time to actually write and send the patch yourself.
So if your device is not in this list or if it is there but the information stored in the corresponding file seems wrong or incomplete (you can notice such an issue by reading the file or simply by plugging your device in your computer with a recent Linux distribution), please do comment this post and give me some informations about your specific media player or phone (please try to use the following proposed format) :
Minimal informations
- Device name: e.g. W995
- Manufacturer: e.g. Sony
- USB ID: e.g. 0fce:e112 ; to find this information you can type lsusb in a terminal window (Terminal can usually be accessed under GNOME in Applications/Accessories/Terminal) and find the line corresponding to your device after plugging it. If you’re unsure of the correct line, juste paste the whole command output.
- Music folder(s): e.g. /Music (case sensitive)
- Music formats: e.g. audio/mpeg;audio/mp4;audio/aac (or, if unsure, media file extensions (.mp3, .aac…)
Additional informations (optional)
- Playlists folder: e.g. /Playlists (case sensitive)
- Playlists formats: e.g. audio/x-mpegurl;audio/x-scpls (or, if unsure, playlist extensions (.m3u, .pls, etc.)
- Cover folder: e.g. /Covers (case sensitive)
- Cover formats: e.g. jpeg, integrated
- Video folder: e.g. /Videos
- Video formats: e.g. mp4&width=320&height=240 (or, if unsure, file extensions and resolutions)
What devices should not be reported here?
- devices that are only managed using MTP protocol (those are handled by libmtp);
- devices that are not using mass storage transfer (i.e. those which are not handled as a normal USB disk).
Whether you’ve got the last hot phone on the market or you found an obscure no-name MP3 player free in your cereals, please don’t hesitate to send those informations. Your contribution will benefit a lot of other fellow Linux users and your device will be better handled next time you update your system!