Kinoma Notes

Today I heard from a cus­tomer who asked “How do I put the stuff I want to use with Kinoma Player on an SD card?”

If you’re an expe­ri­enced user, this prob­a­bly sounds like a sim­ple ques­tion with a sim­ple answer. But the more I thought about it, the more I remem­bered inter­est­ing details that I thought would be use­ful to com­pile. Here’s a sum­mary that I hope is use­ful for almost everybody.

There are three way to get your media files onto your SD card:

• Use the Palm Install Tool
• Use an SD card reader/writer
• Use Soft­ick Card Export II

Use the Palm Install Tool

To use the Palm Install Tool, right-click on the Hot­Sync icon in my Win­dows Noti­fi­ca­tion Area and choose Install. You can also launch it from your Win­dows Start menu.

To choose the con­tent you want to “install”, you can either click the Add but­ton to add items from a stan­dard Open dia­log, or you can just drag-and-drop them directly from Win­dows Explorer or appli­ca­tions like iTunes into the list area.

Once you’re done, you’ll need to do a Hot­Sync before the media actu­ally trans­ferred to your SD card.

The Palm Install Tool is okay for adding a few items at a time. Also, you have to remem­ber to do a Hot­Sync. If you want to add a whole bunch of items, I’d rec­om­mend one of the other two methods.

Use an SD card reader/writer

With an SD card reader/writer, you can drag-and-drop files directly to your SD card. Most of them sup­port mul­ti­ple mem­ory card for­mats, and con­nect to your com­puter via USB.

This method may seem a bit inti­mat­ing at first since you see the normally-hidden files and fold­ers on your SD card, but it’s easy since Kinoma Player scans the fold­ers on your SD card automatically.

I put music and pod­casts in the AUDIO folder, my pic­tures in the DCIM (“Digi­tal Camera Images”) folder, and my video and movies in the PALM > PROGRAMS > KINOMA folder.

Note: When you buy an SD card reader/writer, be sure that it sup­ports SDHC (also called SD Card 2.0). If it doesn’t sup­port SDHC, you won’t be able to use it with SD cards over 2 GB.

Use Soft­ick Card Export II

This method is almost exactly the same as the pre­vi­ous method, only your Treo is your SD card reader. You con­nect your Palm via USB as if you were going to Hot­Sync it, and then Soft­ick Card Export II makes Win­dows believe that your Treo’s SD card is a flash drive.

Soft­ick Card Export II is $14.95.

Sum­mary

The Palm Install Tool is a good way to start, since it doesn’t require that you buy an SD card reader or addi­tional software.

How­ever, I rec­om­mend either an SD card reader/writer or Soft­ick Card Export II as a longer-term solu­tion. Both are ulti­mately faster and eas­ier, and you can use them with media syn­chro­niza­tion solu­tions that I’ll be describ­ing in future posts.

This entry was posted on Monday, September 17th, 2007 at 12:00 am and is filed under Kinoma Player. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.