FAQ
From M:Robe 500i Development Wiki
I felt free to copy that FAQ from the m:robe-forum. Hope that's okay! (gforums)
- updated 12/04/2005 - to included escaped tag characters
- updated 12/12/2005 - includes index.mum
Here's a 500i development faq I'd like other to contribute to.
Q. What audio format does it play?
A. WMA and mp3 are the only ones I've tried.
Q. What audio formats are not supported?
A. OGG, FLAC, WAV. I havn't tested any others.
Q. What type of tags does the player read?
A. None. All tag reading is done on the software end.
Q. Where can audio files reside on the player?
A. Anywhere. The path tree must be less than 255 characters.
Q. Do the audio files need to be renamed to 8 characters?
A. No. But it cannot contain illegal characters, unicode, or special characters
Q. What is the maximum path length?
A. 255 characters. This path limit is impose by FAT32.
Q. What are the known illegal filename characters?
A. & - doesnt work on my 500 but i believe works on the 100.
Q. are 2-byte filenames supported?
A. Yes, as long are they are encoded properly within the database.
Q. What characters encoding must the tags be in?
A. UTF-8. Anything else will give you a database error
Q. What characters must be escaped in the tags?
A. & ' < > " -- Only escape these characters in the XML db files and not physically in the id3 tag space of the audio file.
Q. How do I escape them?
A. When writing the tags to the XML db:
& = &
' = '
" = "'
< = <
> = >
Q. What is "System Error 900" and how do I fix it?
A. I don't know. It usually means that a filename has an illegal character. I often receive this error when I pull the player off the dock. A reboot will usually fix it.
Q. Where is the database located?
A. It's a hidden folder under \System\List There is one folder for each database: Music, Remix, Photo, Template
Q. Can I change the location of the database files?
A. No. The player will error out with a "Database Error"
Q. What language are the database files in?
A. Plain text XML
Q, How is the database structured?
A. Here are the database files and functions:
/index.mum - points to the location of the database for each function (music, remix, photo). This file can be omitted from the 500i and still work for music, I havn't tested any other function. But this file is required by the 100 and must be updated (access time/modification time) whenever the database has changed.
/System/List/Music/albmxxxx.mum - index listing of all the audio files associated to an album as read by the id3 tags. 1 file per album
/System/List/Music/album.mum - a listing of all the albums as read by id3 tag and a pointer to the location of the albmxxxx.mum file
/System/List/Music/msic0001.mum - index listing of all the audio files and their related id3 tags
/System/List/Music/srchkey.xml - index listing of Artist, Genre, Composer, and Year
/System/List/Music/music.mum -
/System/List/Music/playlist.mum -
/System/List/Music/recent.mum -
/System/List/Music/toprate.mum -
Q. What is "Database Error"?
A. Something in the database cannot be read. Or the something in the database structure is incorrect. Check your indexing.
Q. What is "Search Failed"?
A. The database is correct, but the path to a file is wrong.
Q. What is the CntrlFlag taag in the msic0001.mum?
A. It's used by the Mtrip and the player to tag for lyrics, cover art, and favorites. Each value is incremented according to tag.
Last edited by robeslicker on Sat Aug 26, 2006 5:59 pm; edited 10 times in total