foo_pod - Foobar2000 meets the iPod, iPod -> Foobar2000 0.8 Options

[Aero]

*** October 3, 2006: The latest version is 0.9.9o - read about it in this post***

If you are new to foo_pod, skip to the end of the forum for the latest development and discussion, as foo_pod has advanced quite a bit from this initial post...

http://www.tinkafoo.com/log/foo_pod.html is an excellent source of information about foo_pod, and might save you 8+ hours reading this forum trying to find the answer to a commonly asked foo_pod question.








foo_pod.zip

Here is my initial release of a Foobar 0.8 component to interface with an Apple iPod. The current version (0.1) only supports read access to an iPod - namely, reading the iPod database file and building a Foobar playlist containing all of the songs contained on the iPod.

Is this useful? Maybe...

By building a playlist of all of the songs, you could take your iPod to a friend's computer and play the music and copy songs off of the iPod (by dragging the song from the playlist to a directory or the Desktop), without any additional software. This component might also be useful for people with home theater PCs - leave the iPod dock on the HTPC, sync up on your main computer, and playback directly from the iPod on the HTPC.

To use foo_pod, make sure your iPod is connected to your computer and is visible as a drive in My Computer (very important), and select Components/foo_pod/Load iPod to foo_pod Playlist. There are a few preference settings, but unless the automatic detection doesn't work, you probably won't need to change anything.

Anyway, let me know how this works out on different computers/iPods, and what features people would like to see. I would like to get Foobar->iPod writing working, but I'm pretty happy with EphPod, so we'll see what happens with that. Eventually, I would like to do something like Anapod. I actually have written a component that handles HTTP access/streaming and is more functional than Anapod, but I never updated it from Foobar 0.6...


Special thanks go to Otto42 and his excellent iPod classes. foo_pod relies heavily on Otto42's code, with some minor modifications (Otto42 - remind me to send some diffs). Also, on another thread, Scream mentioned that there is source code available for the Winamp5 plugin. I haven't tried that plugin yet, but I wouldn't mind taking a look at the source, especially for supporting write access (the posted link appears to be dead).

This post has been edited by Aero: Oct 4 2006, 04:56

[Otto42]

Although if I understand iTunes correctly, it forces a sync from the tunes library to the iPod, so any songs not in the iTunes library will be deleted from the iPod.  So if you add songs from foo_pod, then sync with iTunes, iTunes will see the foo_pod songs as out of sync files and delete them.

Someone correct me if I'm not understanding iTunes correctly, but I think this is probably the problem you are experiencing.

Yes, anything off in the f## directories that isn't what iTunes thinks is supposed to be there, assuming you're doing automatic syncing, gets zapped during the sync.

And there's nothing funky about how any program accesses the iPod. When the iPod is in drive mode (which it has to be to be able to talk to it at all), it's basically just an external drive. There's nothing special you do to talk to it. You create files on a drive letter in a certain directory. That's it. The "Do No Disconnect" shows up whenever the iPod is "mounted" as a drive, and the "Ok to Disconnect" shows up whenever it's connected to a computer but not currently "mounted". Simple as that. There's nothing special to it, and no way that iTunes can do anything special to it other than simple mounting and unmounting and writing files.

Thought for the future Aero: Add mount and unmount capabilities to foo_pod so that it mounts when you need it to do so and unmounts when you don't need it to be mounted. Just an idea. I'm not sure exactly how to do it under windows, but it'd be cool though. Would also eliminate the need for iTunes or Apple software to be installed to enable drive mode.

This post has been edited by Otto42: Mar 11 2004, 03:44