As mentioned before options that do not belong to a specific sync are saved in Profiles. This chapter explains the profile concept and the different possibilities to tweak them to get a sync fitting your needs perfectly.
Why Profiles?
Folder Synchronisation is a quite individual thing. Everybody has his/her own structures he/she would like to use on external backup media, MP3 players, phones, etc. In contrast to the official device AddOns for Songbird FolderSync / the folder synchronisation feature are designed to be highly customizeable, so there are many different options to tweak.
The average user won't need to always specify every option with each sync, profiles make it possible to customize the sync progress for each usage: You can for example create a profile for backup, one for your MP3 player, having a different sync for both devices. You can use many backup devices with the one backup profile, and will get a consistent backup on all devices without having to remember all preferences again. To sync the MP3 player, just change the profile.
Favorite Integration
You can integrate Profiles in Favorites, so all dependent favorites will get changed automatically when changing general sync options. This gives you the possibility to change for example your backup concept within the profile, and it will get applied to all devices as you sync them; there is no need of changing them one-by-one.
Migration
In new versions new features might be added, they will be disabled in all saved profiles per default. If you want to enable a new feature in an old profile, you can load, change and overwrite the old profile.
Manage your Profiles
You can do all profile-related tasks from within the synchronisation tab, in the area you can choose a profile for the sync:


After selecting a profile, you can use the "Delete..." button on the right hand side to delete a profile. You can't delete the default profile, because it will be used as fallback for favorites if you delete the profile the favorite is related to. With the button with the down arrow you display the profile's options; here you can change all the profile-related things. If favorites used a deleted profile, they will fallback to the default profile. The options will be explained later.


You can hide the options again with the up arrow button. If you make changes to the profile, you can save your changes with the "Save..." button, which now replaced the "Delete..." button.


You will be asked whether you want to overwrite an existing profile or create a new one after hitting save. Enter a name for the new profile or check the bottom option and select a profile to update, then hit ok. Caution: You won't be asked for confirmation again, updating a profile deletes the old options.
The Options
The Profile's options are divided into categories:


Sync features
This category contains general options about the features to be used:
Copy song files to target folder
When enabled, the sync will copy music files of the playlists selected to the target folder. As this is the basic sync feature, you cannot disable it.
Update changed song files in target folder
When enabled, the sync will look through existing song files and recopy them if there are changed since the last sync. If you disable this option, songs won't get updated if they already exist and you keep the old version on the target folder.
Delete all other files and folders from target folder
Caution: This option will delete files and sub-folders in target folder. You won't be asked for confirmation after starting a sync with a profile having this option enabled.
When enabled, all files and folders that are not part of the sync will get deleted. Without enabling this option, there is no real sync happening. The option is disabled per default, because quite many people didn't expect the AddOn to delete files in the past.
A sync with this option enabled will clean up the target folder to only contain song files and additional content selected (like playlists or cover images).
Re-organize song files in target folder
This option causes filenames and foldernames in target folder to get generated by the options in the Structure category, which makes it possible to have a generated filename / folder structure in the target folder. Without this option enabled, the song files will keep their filenames.
Write Playlists to target folder
If enabled, playlist files will get generated using the options in the Playlist writing category.
Perform a Rockbox-Back-Sync on target device
Enable this option, to add playcounts of each song in Rockbox to your library and import ratings from Rockbox. The playcounts in Rockbox get resetted after adding them.
Rockbox-Back-Sync will only work when Rockbox is installed on the device the target folder resides on; it will get detected automatically. For more information about Rockbox, visit their official homepage.
Structure
You can define a folder and filename structure in that song files are synced to the target folder. The following chapter deals with the options related to that structure.
This category is only available, if Re-organize song files in target folder is enabled.
Schema
You can specify a Schema that describes the structure you want the song files in. A Schema consists of tags, that will get replaced with the metadata of the song to be synced, characters and slashes ('/'), which mark folders.
The relative file path of each song file will get determined by replacing the tags in the schema (and taking the slash as split character for folders), here some examples for the song "Time Go To" by "Chill Carrier" from his album "Urban Dreams":
%artist%/%album%/%title% -> Chill Carrier/Urban Dreams/Time Go To.mp3
%title%(%artist%) -> Time Go To(Chill Carrier).mp3
%album%/%tracknumber% - %title% -> Urban Dreams/1 - Time Go To.mp3
The %tracknumber% Tag
The %tracknumber% Tag can get configured in how many digits it should have by changing the number at "Number of digits for track number tag". Leading Zeros are applied at the beginning of the number if there are not enough digits, so for a preference of 2 the last of the examples above would result in:
%album%/%tracknumber% - %title% -> Urban Dreams/01 - Time Go To.mp3
The %playlist% Tag
With the playlist tag you can include the name of the playlist containing the song into its filename. This will cause a song to need storage for each playlist it is part of.
As an example, there is the library and one playlist "Playlist" to get synced. The library contains two songs, "Time Go To" and "Apart Together", the playlist only contains "Time Go To". We're using the schema:
%playlist%/%title%
When syncing library and playlist to a folder, we get the following files:
Library/Time Go To.mp3
Library/Apart Together.mp3
Playlist/Time Go To.mp3
As you can see, Time Go To.mp3 exists two times. Using the playlist's name in the schema caused more disk space to be needed for the sync, but also divided the songs into playlist-folders. Some MP3 players can't use playlist files, but play folders. Via using %playlist% you can use your playlists with such devices.
Cover Images
If you enable the "Save cover images" option, cover images will get saved in the target folder's structure.
To save cover images, the schema must contain at least one folder with the %album% tag. Enter the folder's schema into the textbox "Schema for album-folders", like:
%album% for %artist%/%album%/%title%
%artist%-%album% for %playlist%/%artist%-%album%/%title%
You can specify a filename for cover images; the file extension will get applied automatically. If there is a cover available, it will get written into the album folder specified with this filename and the corrent extension. You can specify a file extension in the Filename, which will then be forced WITHOUT changing the file format.
Playlist writing
Playlist writing generates playlist files in the target folder, which can be read by most media player software. This chapter deals with the options you can use to configure playlist writing.
This category is only available, if Write Playlists to target folder is enabled.
Playlist Format
You can specify the file format for the playlist files using the two combo boxes at the top of the playlist writing category:
"Playlist format" specifies the file format to use, the value suitable to you depends on the media player software you want to use, refer to its manual.
The field "Playlist encoding" gives you the opportunity to choose an encoding for the playlist file, this also depends on the media player software you want to use; most software does support UTF-8.
Relative target folder
This option gives you the opportunity to specify into which folder the playlist file should get generated; use a slash to divide folders and filename. If you have for example the playlist "Playlist" using an M3U playlist format while syncing to "E:\Music", the value is interpreted as:
. -> E:\Music\Playlist.m3u
../Playlists -> E:\Playlists\Playlist.m3u
./Playlists -> E:\Music\Playlist.m3u
File Paths in Playlist Files
Relative file paths will be used to refer to the song files from within the playlist, so you can move the whole target folder for example to another computer easily.
For the path generation there are two options; You can specify the split character for file paths, which will get used to separate folders and filename. Most players accept a slash ("/"), but some might need another character as the backslash ("\"), which is the regular split character on Windows.
You can also specify whether you want the file paths to get generated using a dot to mark it as relative or not. Most likely you want to keep this option active, but some media players (mostly those on MP3 players) cannot cope with it, disable it for this device then.
Playlist sorting
You can specify that the playlist file generator should sort the playlist before generating the file. If you want to do so, enable the "Sort items in Playlists" option and enter a sorting schema below.
A sorting schema consists of a set of rules, which are divided by comma (","). Each rule uses one tag (see filename schema), which will be used to sort. You can add ":a" or ":d" to the tag, to specify ascending or descending sort order. Here's an example for a sorting schema:
%albumartist:a%,%title:d%
This will cause all playlists to get sorted in ascending order by album artist, and songs from the same album artist will get sorted in descending order by title.
Advanced preferences
You can tweak some of the internal values here, it is not recommended to change the default values! Changing the default values might cause the sync not to work properly.