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| Written by Jono Cono LG JM53:
Okay, so it’s not the catchiest name but it’s not so much the name that matters as it is the actual device. The LG JM53 is an awesome iPod killer, 8 GB hard drive with a 1.77 260k Colour OLED Display. It can store up to 2000 songs and also supports video, photos and text. The LG JM53 supports all of the following file formats: MP3, MP3 VBR, WMA, OGG, ASF, JPEG, BMP, TXT, MPEG4. LG’s JM53 also has an amazing playback time of up to 30 hours on one charge using a Built-in Lithium Polymer battery. And contrary to popular belief due to an image in an advertisement videos are actually displayed non-vertically on the screen meaning that you would actually turn the player sideways to view a video.
The Goal: Attempting to sync music and playlists
It sounds like an easy task doesn’t it, and really why shouldn’t it be? You already have all of your music in a library complete with various playlists of your favourite music. Why not sync it all to your LG JM53 so you can fully experience your music just as you would on your PC. The LG JM53 has the capability for it so it makes sense to take advantage.
The Problem: Syncing didn’t turn out to be as easy as it should be
As easy as it would seem syncing playlists to the LG JM53 wasn’t as easy as I thought. Syncing music is not a problem if you’re not concerned with playlists. Chances are if you have hundreds of songs you’re going to have some playlists to go along with them. The LG JM53 has two modes, MSC (Mass Storage Class) and MTP (Media Transfer Protocol), these can be accessed by choosing ‘Setup’ at the main menu and then selecting ‘USB’ in the following list.
I will explain the difference between the two and how they affect what you sync to your LG JM53. If you have the JM53 player set to MSC mode which is not the default by the way, only songs will get synced to the player. If that’s all you’re looking to do then this mode is the fastest way to do it. You are able to sync music using MSC mode both in Windows Media Player 10 and 11 and also using the supplied LG media center software. Just to note that this applies using both Windows XP, Windows XP MCE and also Windows Vista Ultimate. If you choose to use either version of Windows Media player you can also up-convert your songs to a higher quality (kbps) automatically while it’s syncing. You have to go in and set this option from within Windows Media Player.
Now let’s talk about MTP mode which the LG JM53 is set to by default. I won’t go into the whole explanation of what MTP actually is but if you’d like to read more about it there is a good article here. Using MTP mode you are able to sync not just music but playlists, photos and videos. It will all be categorized on your JM53 by most played, most recent, user rating, artist, album, genre etc. It definitely sounds good and should be easy, it also allows you to auto-sync and sync files back onto your PC. The trouble I ran into is the amount of time this takes. It takes an extraordinary amount of time especially if you have a lot of media to sync. Take this for example, I attempted to sync 448 files (all songs) one night and left it going overnight and through the next day. It was running for 12 hours straight and had only completed syncing 42%. This held true in both Windows Media Player 10 and 11 in both Windows XP and Windows Vista Ultimate. Thinking that this was completely redonkulous I played around with every setting possible in Windows Media Player to no avail. Nothing could speed up the process. It would hang on each and every song for an inordinate amount of time. It’s quite obvious that syncing your LG JM53 should not take 24 to 48 hours. So I pursued another option determined to sync playlists and with ease.
The solution: Use Winamp, you’ll love it
Winamp is a free program of course and an awesome one at that, the only version you’d have to pay for is the Pro version. Over the years I have strayed from Winamp although I cannot think of a logical reason why. Winamp has come to my aide and proved to be the perfect solution to my syncing ordeal. Finally MTP mode works the way it should and in the time it should without hanging at all. I believe I was able to sync all 448 songs along with playlists in less than 15 minutes.
Once you’ve imported your music library into Winamp you can create whatever and how many playlists you’d like to. To sync a playlist it’s as easy as right clicking on it and select ‘send to JM53’, that’s it and you’ll be happy to have it complete so quickly! If you’ve never used Winamp before but think you may for the benefit of syncing your playlists to your LG JM53 don’t worry. Winamp is very intuitive and easy to use, you’ll get the hang of it in no time. I should also note Winamp works perfectly fine in Windows Vista.
The thoughts of Jono regarding this whole conundrum:
It baffles me that Winamp would perform this simple task so effortlessly while the LG JM53 is in MTP mode whereas Windows Media Player chugs along like something is not quite right. Come on, MTP was developed by Microsoft, oh wait…oh I understand now, ha,ha. It’s also quite funny that the LG software that comes along with the JM53 is incapable of simply syncing a playlist to the player but hey I found something that works so I’m happy. Kudos to Winamp for being a cut above, absolutely brilliant!
