Great machine

[Globe]

Originally Posted by neoxerxes

Just to clarify, say you are playing an MP3 file, and turn off the player, when you turn it back on will it be paused at the point in which you left from?

Yes, but when you switch it off and then back on it returns to the main menu, when you select music it is paused where you left off.

[neoxerxes]

Originally Posted by Globe

Yes, but when you switch it off and then back on it returns to the main menu, when you select music it is paused where you left off.

Thanks for the response. I just thought of something extra. Just say I listen to a song for a bit, then maybe pause it, then switch to a video and also watch that for a while, then pause that, and then turn off the player. Will that mean when I turn the unit on again, either song or video will be paused at where I left it when going back into either the music or video mode?

This would be ideal as I may be on a bus or train for a while, and want to play some videos, but when I get off and have to start walking, I may want to pick up from where I left off when last playing a tune.

One more. I was wondering how the unit's internal playlist function works (i.e. not through the creation of a file you import). Just say I have an album in a folder, can I easily add the whole contents of the folder to the playlist in one go? How flexible is the unit's playlist? Can you easily delete, move up and down entries, and so forth? Cheers.

Heh, sorry for the convoluted questions.

[rich1million]

I live in Korea and I bought a D2 two days ago. So far I’ve been impressed.

I paid 200,000 Korean won for the 2G model (without DMB features). The 4G model isn't available yet.

Sound and video quality is fantastic. It's light, looks awesome and feels sturdy.

Just to answer a few queries I've read here:

- you CAN customize the 'm' or menu button (it lies between the - and + volume buttons). There are 3 options: to skip to the next track, skip to the previous track, or to play/pause. This is done by pushing and holding the 'm' button. It's an option in the settings and makes a huge difference to those of us who like to fiddle around with our hands in our pockets…

- you can set it up so that it resumes both audio and video files. They'll resume from the last point you paused them or turned the player off, regardless of how many times you switch between audio and video. Text files cannot be resumed in the same way but text and video files can hold 'bookmarks', enabling you to save positions a bit more safely.

- it comes with software (jetAudio) which can convert pretty much any video to MPEG4 of various different sizes. The videos that I first put on my D2 (downloaded using Bittorrent) didn’t play and I had to convert them to MPEG4. The conversion process IS very easy and, considering this isn’t a large capacity player, I expect we’ll be converting our videos anyway, just to bring the file sizes down.

As for HD cards, I'll be buying a 4GB SD card very soon. Unfortunately I don't have access to (nor can I afford to buy!) an 8GB SDHC card. If anyone can supply a definitive answer to this, The Most Significant Question discussed here, I'd be greatly appreciative. I'm hoping, like most of you, that a simple firmware update in the future will allow SDHC support, but I'm not really familiar with flash memory tech (I've just retired my 3rg gen 40GB iPod. Ha …).

Hope that helps :o)

[Globe]

Hi rich, how do you set the "m" button for skip tracks etc, I couldnt do it!

[J.Matthew]

This is going to one of the best media players released in a long while IMHO. My iriver has just recently died so i am looking for a replacement - I am definatly getting this very soon. Im just wondering what the likelihood of the internal memory being upgraded to 6GB, 8GB or maybe even more is? because if there is a chance in the near future for it to be upgraded i may well wait until then.

[rich1million]

Originally Posted by Globe

Hi rich, how do you set the "m" button for skip tracks etc, I couldnt do it!

1. go to Settings > General > User defined button (last in list);
2. select one of the three options;
3. press Save.

I'm assuming our firmware's the same version. Goodluck :o)

[Globe]

Great, thanks...got it now

[Globe]

Originally Posted by neoxerxes

Thanks for the response. I just thought of something extra. Just say I listen to a song for a bit, then maybe pause it, then switch to a video and also watch that for a while, then pause that, and then turn off the player. Will that mean when I turn the unit on again, either song or video will be paused at where I left it when going back into either the music or video mode?

This would be ideal as I may be on a bus or train for a while, and want to play some videos, but when I get off and have to start walking, I may want to pick up from where I left off when last playing a tune.

One more. I was wondering how the unit's internal playlist function works (i.e. not through the creation of a file you import). Just say I have an album in a folder, can I easily add the whole contents of the folder to the playlist in one go? How flexible is the unit's playlist? Can you easily delete, move up and down entries, and so forth? Cheers.

Heh, sorry for the convoluted questions.

Re the first question, both music and video will resume from where you left off after switching between or turning the player off so will suit your needs down to the ground

The playlist function is very good but from what I can see you cant add a full album in one go, seems to be only by individual track. During a file being played you can hit the browser button that brings up a menu to the left giving the following options...

1. Add to bookmark
2. Add to DPL (Dynamic Play List)
3. Bookmark List
4. DPL
5. Music List

Hope this helps.

[MaxSt]

How about .m3u playlists?

[neoxerxes]

Originally Posted by Globe

The playlist function is very good but from what I can see you cant add a full album in one go, seems to be only by individual track.

Bummer. Hmm, that's a bit odd as I would have thought that Cowon would have implemented this by default as this is a very common action. I think the A2 also did not initially have this feature until a firmware update rectified this (i.e. adding an "add folder" option, I believe, as an action). I just hope Cowon does implement this quickly after release. Cheers.

[rich1million]

Re. Dynamic Play Lists (DPL):

You can't add albums, per say, but you CAN add whole folders, which is almost the same thing if your upload you music files in an Artist > Album > Track folder structure (I'm using Winamp to manage my D2 files, btw, not the iAudio s/w).

- go to Music List (from track playing screen, press Browser > Music List).
- browse to a folder of your choice (album or artist) and press Settings > Add to DPL.

There you have it, all tracks in that folder have been added to the DPL :o)

Hope that answers some of your questions.

[neoxerxes]

Originally Posted by rich1million

Re. Dynamic Play Lists (DPL):

You can't add albums, per say, but you CAN add whole folders, which is almost the same thing if your upload you music files in an Artist > Album > Track folder structure (I'm using Winamp to manage my D2 files, btw, not the iAudio s/w).

- go to Music List (from track playing screen, press Browser > Music List).
- browse to a folder of your choice (album or artist) and press Settings > Add to DPL.

There you have it, all tracks in that folder have been added to the DPL :o)

Hope that answers some of your questions.

Yes, that's exactly what I meant! Heh, I was beginning to think why Cowon was going backwards in functionality...

I'm guessing the unit will just read an image file (i.e. .jpg) within each folder you have added to the DPL, and display that as the current album cover art, yes?

Also, would you happen to have any videos with subtitles in them to test? The reason why I ask is because users of the X5 who tried to watch subtitled anime had trouble viewing them (I guess not surprising considering the size of the screen). I was curious as the size of the screen is between that of the X5 and A2. Thanks.

[Keng]

How does Album art works?

[rich1million]

Album Art:
I used this software to download and manage album art:
http://louhi.kempele.fi/~skyostil/projects/albumart/
It's a bit fiddly to use (trial and error) but it's done a pretty good job. It's free. I'm not familiar with the ins and outs of this tech, so I just went for the first solution I could find.

Subtitled video
If you use the supplied jetAudio conversion tool, there are options for including subs in your converted file. These options include changing font sizes. I test converted an OGM video with SRT sub file and it worked fine on my D2.

[neoxerxes]

Originally Posted by Keng

How does Album art works?

If it's anything like their other players, the unit just simply displays an image file you have in a folder that has a currently playing audio file in it. Another method which album art could be possibly displayed (I'm not sure if it's supported or whether it will be supported in the future) is from a saved image within the MP3 tag.