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

[Aero]

Users will always be the ones who have to pay for ambigious and unclear standards, no matter in which topic. You call it userfriendly, but it's the opposite in the long run because it results in incompatibility.

Fine. I hereby permanently and irrevokably declare that:

The COPY_TO_PORTABLE metadata item shall have only one of the following values - 0 (zero) indicating that a file must not be copied to portable music device, or 1 (one) to indicate that is allowed to be transferred. No other value is permitted, and the absence of COPY_TO_PORTABLE must be interpreted as a 1 value.

foo_pod is not in strict compliance with this standard, but it may be updated in the future, as time permits.

[Log]

aero, I still love foo_pod, ignore this man who can't decide to make 2 playlists, one for his ipod songs and one for everything else. You're awesome, no matter how much he insults the awesomeness, it can't really make it less awesome. Yes it may sound like I'm sucking up, but really, I'm not. people who use completely proprietary things but aren't willing to do anything for themselves are foolish and selfish. I deal with the selfish all too often and the foolish, I can't say much more about :X

[Lyx]

aero, I still love foo_pod, ignore this man who can't decide to make 2 playlists, one for his ipod songs and one for everything else.

I don't own an iPod. I just want to support this plugin in a public FCS to make foobar more useful for everyone.

people who use completely proprietary things but aren't willing to do anything for themselves are foolish and selfish.

Which "completely proprietary" thing? Foobar is mostly open-source except the core. I guess spending over 3000 hours on a public FCS which contains mostly features for others means that "i'm not willing to do anything myself and am selfish", right?

You're awesome, no matter how much he insults the awesomeness, it can't really make it less awesome. Yes it may sound like I'm sucking up, but really, I'm not.

I deal with the selfish all too often and the foolish, I can't say much more about :X

Yeah, same here...

This post has been edited by Lyx: Feb 17 2005, 16:36

[joelpt]

Just thought I may as well voice my desire for ratings support here (yeah I know it's been asked to death, but humor me), specifically ratings I set on the ipod being uploadable to Foobar (in my case I'd like it to write to the foobar db as well as update mp3 metadata at 'sync' time, but either would do).

You mentioned this being rather complex because of the file-matching issues ... might there be a way for you to generate and store some unique ID in the metadata of each track you send to the 'pod, and simultaneously record that ID in the Foobar db for the track in question? Then you could easily and reliably match things up on resync.

Recording the ID in the actual mp3's metadata might be even more useful, as you could then sync multiple iPods with multiple machines, and always have a means to know "which track is which" regardless of where you sync to/from. Come to think of it, having a mandatory GUID as part of the original ID3 specification sure would have made a lot of sense...

I use on-ipod rating primarily for one thing - marking songs I don't want on there anymore (I set them to 1 star). I get sick of having the same crappy/corrupted tracks turn up repeatedly in shuffle mode, and 1-starring them is the perfect solution. The way I do it now is that I try and remember which tracks are screwed up and manually remove them before the next sync. Obviously an error-prone method

</beg>

Thanks for foo_pod, don't mean to be annoying! This is the only thing I want in foo_pod, then I can kiss iTunes goodbye forever

Joel

This post has been edited by joelpt: Feb 18 2005, 07:06

[.zolder]

Hi Aero, I have another request,

I know i can manually copy tracks to the ipod in an ordered folder style using windows explorer, and that you made an option to "Rebuild iTunesDB Database on iPod", but as you know by now, i use foo_pod's sync feature.
Can't you make an option to let foo_pod upload files into user-defined folders? In other words, let the user write a string in the foo_pod config panel, which foo_pod will use to create a folder style

some examples:

$if2(%album artist%,%artist%)\%album%\%tracknumber% - %title% would give K:\iPod_Control\Music\Artist\Album\Track - Title.ext

%genre%\$if2(%album artist%,%artist%) - %album%\%tracknumber% - %title% would give K:\iPod_Control\Music\Genre\Artist - Album\Track - Title.ext

I would really appreciate it if you managed to get this to work, cause the majority of my friends don't have foobar so atm i can't bring my ipod to play some files at their place. F00 to F99 doesn't work that easily

ps: your previous addition, which lets foo_pod skip unwanted tracks works like a charm, thanks

This post has been edited by .zolder: Feb 18 2005, 16:29

[Aero]

Hi Aero, I have another request,

Sorry - no more feature requests from you, seeing as how your last one turned out...

I know i can manually copy tracks to the ipod in an ordered folder style using windows explorer, and that you made an option to "Rebuild iTunesDB Database on iPod", but as you know by now, i use foo_pod's sync feature.
Can't you make an option to let foo_pod upload files into user-defined folders? In other words, let the user write a string in the foo_pod config panel, which foo_pod will use to create a folder style

some examples:

$if2(%album artist%,%artist%)\%album%\%tracknumber% - %title% would give K:\iPod_Control\Music\Artist\Album\Track - Title.ext

%genre%\$if2(%album artist%,%artist%) - %album%\%tracknumber% - %title% would give K:\iPod_Control\Music\Genre\Artist - Album\Track - Title.ext

I would really appreciate it if you managed to get this to work, cause the majority of my friends don't have foobar so atm i can't bring my ipod to play some files at their place. F00 to F99 doesn't work that easily

You should just copy your Foobar2000 directory from your computer onto your iPod. Then you can run it directly off of the iPod (no installation necessary), and use all of the various Foobar & Foobar component features to play back the songs. It seems like that would be at least as useful as having the user-defined folders.

As for supporting non-Fnn directories - yeah, I could add this, although there are a couple reasons not to. First of all, newer iPods (iPod Photo, and maybe the Shuffle) have strict filename length restrictions, which might include the directory portion as well. So if you have iPod_Control\Music\Genre\Big Long Artist Name - Big Long Album Name, it might not be able to be played on the iPod.

Another problem is, despite my best intentions, foo_pod has to mange some filenames in order to have them fit within the aforementioned length restrictions. Especially if your songs are named "Artist - Album - Song Name", you might end up with directories of files that look like Artist - Album - Song NamA.mp3, Artist - Album - Song NamB.mp3, etc. Also, transcoded filenames are stored as a series of non-human friendly letters and numbers.

So I think you would be better off putting Foobar + foo_pod on your iPod, and use that to playback/copy songs from your iPod.

[Aero]

Just thought I may as well voice my desire for ratings support here (yeah I know it's been asked to death, but humor me), specifically ratings I set on the ipod being uploadable to Foobar (in my case I'd like it to write to the foobar db as well as update mp3 metadata at 'sync' time, but either would do).

You mentioned this being rather complex because of the file-matching issues ... might there be a way for you to generate and store some unique ID in the metadata of each track you send to the 'pod, and simultaneously record that ID in the Foobar db for the track in question? Then you could easily and reliably match things up on resync. 

Recording the ID in the actual mp3's metadata might be even more useful, as you could then sync multiple iPods with multiple machines, and always have a means to know "which track is which" regardless of where you sync to/from.  Come to think of it, having a mandatory GUID as part of the original ID3 specification sure would have made a lot of sense...

The GUID idea is very good, and would help with part of the problem. But the other piece just as difficult - so say we have a common identifier that links a file on your computer to a file on your iPod (BTW, this is essentially how foo_pod handles transcoded songs now). You then connect your iPod and 'sync'. The problem is that Foobar doesn't really have a media library like iTunes, so if a song isn't in an active playlist, there is no way for foo_pod to find it to update its rating/play count.

Maybe the Foobar database can help a little here...I really don't know enough about it to say for sure. I also would like to get ratings synchronized, so sooner or later, I'll really sit down and try to tackle this problem.

[Otto42]

.zolder,

I wrote this little program about a year ago for the specific purpose of making it easy for me to copy files back off the iPod and into nice named directory structures. Might help, if you don't want to put a whole copy of foobar on the iPod: http://otto.homedns.org:8888/iTunes/iPodCopy.zip

It's a little standalone exe, should work on any 2000 or XP box. So I keep a copy on the iPod itself. Should work with any program that puts files on the iPod, I think.

Read the readme. It's fairly easy to use, but not wholly intuitive. However, here's a quick example string to try. "C:\my copied music directory\%3\%2\%5 - %1.%e". That'll copy files from the iPod on the c:\ drive using the artist\album\track - title.ext format you mentioned.

Foobar w/foo_pod can of course do the same thing, but this is a very small and fast single purpose program that might be more convienent sometimes.

This post has been edited by Otto42: Feb 18 2005, 18:15

[.zolder]

Okay Aero, I understand the problem, too bad.
Otto, i've tried your program, but everytime i type my iPod drive letter and start scanning, i get kicked out of the program at 1493 files. I assume it is a broken mp3, but i have no way of knowing which one it is :/ thanks anyway

I'll install foobar on my iPod, didnt think of that before dead-easy

[pnjman]

I have a problem with 0.99b version.

When I transcode a file the tags on the new file can't be written

Here is the log

INFO (foo_pod) : WriteITunesDBFile: backup of g:\iPod_Control\iTunes\iTunesDB to C:\Program Files\foobar2000\iTunesDB.bak succeeded
INFO (foo_pod) : WriteITunesDBFile: DeleteFile(g:\iPod_Control\iTunes\iTunesDB) succeeded
INFO (foo_pod) : iTunesDB successfully written
INFO (foo_pod) : Transcoding D:\My Music\Biffy Clyro\57\02 - Hope For An Angel.flac
INFO (foo_podclienc) : Transcoded in 55.51 seconds (4.39x)
INFO (CORE) : attempting to edit file info : file://C:\DOCUME~1\PHILIP~1\LOCALS~1\Temp\foo_pod11457
WARNING (CORE) : file info update failure on : file://C:\DOCUME~1\PHILIP~1\LOCALS~1\Temp\foo_pod11457
INFO (foo_pod) : WriteITunesDBFile: backup of g:\iPod_Control\iTunes\iTunesDB to C:\Program Files\foobar2000\iTunesDB.bak succeeded
INFO (foo_pod) : WriteITunesDBFile: DeleteFile(g:\iPod_Control\iTunes\iTunesDB) succeeded
INFO (foo_pod) : iTunesDB successfully written
INFO (foo_pod) : 1 file copied (3.50 MB) to the iPod in 66.74 seconds (0.05 MB/s)
INFO (foo_pod) : Original size = 23.68 MB, Transcoded size = 3.50 MB (85.24%)

Thanks for the great plugin, hope you can fix the problem.

[Biscuits]

Hey Aero,

I am using the latest version of foo_pod with a 2 Gen. iPod and for some reason, when I add a certain album (Beach Boys - Pet Sounds ) and I try to play it on the iPod, it just skips over all the songs and doesn't play them. I've added other songs and they work and I've tried removing then re-adding Pet Sounds, but it still doesn't work.

Any advice?

Thanks,
-Tristan

[Otto42]

I am using the latest version of foo_pod with a 2 Gen. iPod and for some reason, when I add a certain album (Beach Boys - Pet Sounds ) and I try to play it on the iPod, it just skips over all the songs and doesn't play them. I've added other songs and they work and I've tried removing then re-adding Pet Sounds, but it still doesn't work.

The iPod can be picky about tags sometimes. If it can't understand the tag, it'll skip the file. Try removing the tags and adding them back to the file. Kind of a PITA, but it often works.

[Aero]

I have a problem with 0.99b version.

When I transcode a file the tags on the new file can't be written

Here is the log

(snip)
INFO (CORE) : attempting to edit file info : file://C:\DOCUME~1\PHILIP~1\LOCALS~1\Temp\foo_pod11457
WARNING (CORE) : file info update failure on : file://C:\DOCUME~1\PHILIP~1\LOCALS~1\Temp\foo_pod11457

This is a bug I introduced in 0.9.9b, caused by foo_pod writing a temporary file without a file extension. This confused Foobar and prevented it from writing the metadata. The effect is that while the song would be transcoded properly, it will not have any metadata.

I fixed this bug and will be posting 0.9.9c shortly. Thanks for your bug report!

[Aero]

I am using the latest version of foo_pod with a 2 Gen. iPod and for some reason, when I add a certain album (Beach Boys - Pet Sounds ) and I try to play it on the iPod, it just skips over all the songs and doesn't play them. I've added other songs and they work and I've tried removing then re-adding Pet Sounds, but it still doesn't work.

The iPod can be picky about tags sometimes. If it can't understand the tag, it'll skip the file. Try removing the tags and adding them back to the file. Kind of a PITA, but it often works.

Is this right? I have never known the iPod itself to be sensitive to tags, although I can see this happening if there are some weird ID3v2 tags (located at the beginning of the file) that cause the iPod's MP3 decoder to error out.

If removing the tags doesn't work, try transcoding the song and see if that helps. Maybe the original encoder is weird and the iPod refuses to play song created by it?

[Aero]

Version 0.9.9c is now available

This version simply fixes the transcoder/missing metadata problem reported by pnjman...

[pnjman]

Thanks for the quick update, it works great now.

[woodyuk]

Hi

Been using foo_ipod and its great! ... however a quick question with playlists.

I have one foobar playlist with a number of albums in this playlist.

What I would like to do is select all the songs from one album (inside this foobar playlist) and copy to ipod (which i can do now), however when finish copying it asks me if I want to cerate a playlists based on those songs I have copied. The options would be

a) create playlists based on album / artist. Which means if i copied 5 albums of music from 3 artists - it would create either 1 playlist for each artist containing all songs from the ablums - it asks you

B) playlists from each album for all artists

C)or in the case where I have selected many songs from many artists just to create a named playlist - "funky music" or something.

Also anyway to delete a playlist or songs from an ipod ? Maybe when you have a foobar playlist you have an option which says delete this playlist from the ipod ?

Hope that makes sense.

Thanks

This post has been edited by woodyuk: Feb 20 2005, 16:02

[Biscuits]

I first tried removing and replacing tags, but that didn't work, so then I tried transcoding and it works now. Thanks!

-Tristan

[Nexus6]

Just a quick question...

Why does it take so long to do a sync? Once I've got my iPod loaded, and I want to add a couple of albums by doing a sync all playlists, it takes ages for foo_pod to begin copying the files. Is it verifying the database during this time? Is that absolutely necessary?

[Aero]

Been using foo_ipod and its great! ... however a quick question with playlists.

Thanks!

I have one foobar playlist with a number of albums in this playlist.

What I would like to do is select all the songs from one album (inside this foobar playlist) and copy to ipod (which i can do now), however when finish copying it asks me if I want to cerate a playlists based on those songs I have copied.  The options would be

a) create playlists based on album / artist.  Which means if i copied 5 albums of music from 3 artists - it would create either 1 playlist for each artist containing all songs from the ablums - it asks you

B) playlists from each album for all artists

C)or in the case where I have selected many songs from many artists just to create a named playlist - "funky music" or something.

What you want to do is create a new Foobar playlist tab, name it, then copy whatever songs you want in it. Then select Send Current Playlist To iPod - this will copy any files necessary (duplicates on the iPod are automatically ignored) and create an iPod playlist with the same name and contents. If you want some automation (like your examples above), the Extended Playlist Generator component will help you create the Foobar playlists, which you then send to the iPod using foo_pod.

Also anyway to delete a playlist or songs from an ipod ? Maybe when you have a foobar playlist you have an option which says delete this playlist from the ipod ?

Sure. Deleting playlists can be done from the foo_pod Playlist Editor. Just select the playlist you want to delete, click the Remove Playlist button, then the Apply button to actually remove the playlist on the iPod (you can click Cancel and undo all of your changes made in the Playlist Editor as well).

To delete songs from the iPod, first load the iPod songs into Foobar using the "Load iPod Songs To Foobar2000 Playlist" menu item. Then select one or more songs, right click, and select Delete Songs From iPod.

[Aero]

Why does it take so long to do a sync?  Once I've got my iPod loaded, and I want to add a couple of albums by doing a sync all playlists, it takes ages for foo_pod to begin copying the files.  Is it verifying the database during this time?  Is that absolutely necessary?

If you are just copying some new albums, use the Send options rather than Sync. Send is much faster, since it doesn't need to do the matching and comparing to see what needs to be deleted and what needs to be copied.

[woodyuk]

Hi

>What you want to do is create a new Foobar playlist tab, name it, then copy >whatever songs you want in it. Then select Send Current Playlist To iPod - this will >copy any files necessary (duplicates on the iPod are automatically ignored) and >create an iPod playlist with the same name and contents. If you want some >automation (like your examples above), the Extended Playlist Generator component >will help you create the Foobar playlists, which you then send to the iPod using >foo_pod.

The problem with this method is that I end up with about 100 foobar playlists which is not really workable. Foobat is fine with a few playlists, but on the ipod I tend to have a playlist for each artist or album. The main reason behind this is that although I am working on it - not all songs are perfectly tagged - so listening from my ipod using browse artist / album does not work too good - so playlists mean i can create a list of all artists and albums.

>To delete songs from the iPod, first load the iPod songs into Foobar using the "Load >iPod Songs To Foobar2000 Playlist" menu item. Then select one or more songs, >right click, and select Delete Songs From iPod.

Yeh got you, however save issue as above - end up with hundreds of playlists in foobar :-(

[Aero]

The problem with this method is that I end up with about 100 foobar playlists which is not really workable.  Foobat is fine with a few playlists, but on the ipod I tend to have a playlist for each artist or album.  The main reason behind this is that although I am working on it - not all songs are perfectly tagged - so listening from my ipod using browse artist / album does not work too good - so playlists mean i can create a list of all artists and albums.

But 100 playlists on the iPod is workable?

You don't have to have all 100 playlists open in Foobar at the same time, but I kind of know what you are getting at. You would probably like a way to open a single iPod playlist as a Foobar tab, like from the Playlist Editor. I'll definitely consider adding that feature.

But the bottom line is that at some point, you're just going to have to bite the bullet and get your metadata up to snuff (at least Artist/Album/Title). I know I suffered when I first got my iPod, but with some good utilities, like ID3-Tag It and Foobar's own MassTagger, a lot of the work can be automated.

>To delete songs from the iPod, first load the iPod songs into Foobar using the "Load >iPod Songs To Foobar2000 Playlist" menu item.  Then select one or more songs, >right click, and select Delete Songs From iPod.

Yeh got you, however save issue as above - end up with hundreds of playlists in foobar :-(

I'm not sure you do understand - Load iPod Songs To Foobar2000 Playlist is exactly 1 playlist which contains all songs on your iPod.

[Otto42]

The iPod can be picky about tags sometimes. If it can't understand the tag, it'll skip the file. Try removing the tags and adding them back to the file. Kind of a PITA, but it often works.

Is this right? I have never known the iPod itself to be sensitive to tags, although I can see this happening if there are some weird ID3v2 tags (located at the beginning of the file) that cause the iPod's MP3 decoder to error out.

If removing the tags doesn't work, try transcoding the song and see if that helps. Maybe the original encoder is weird and the iPod refuses to play song created by it?

When I first got my iPod, I had several MP3 files that simply got skipped on the iPod as he describes. No amount of magic juju I tried would allow them to play. Finally, total tag removal (using tidymp3.exe) followed by retagging from scratch (using Tag&Rename to add both ID3V2 and ID3V1 tags) solved about 95% of the problem tracks.

I suspect that a tag which is bad enough to corrupt the "do not play" frame that it sits in will break the iPod's playback functionality. It doesn't care about the tag itself, but if it can't understand the frame, it skips it. This is just an educated guess, mind you, I have no real idea how tags are properly added to MP3 files.

All the problem files I had played fine in Winamp, and about half of them would play in iTunes and WMP. Winamp is very, *very* forgiving about bad MP3's.

This post has been edited by Otto42: Feb 21 2005, 10:19

[NEMO7538]

hello (how are you jeff?),

Using the latest foo_pod version with an iPod mini at the latest firmware level (1.2 - Nov. 2004 IIRC), and when I copy playlists to the iPod, it seems that :
- tracks are copied, and the DB updated accordingly
- playlist are not copied

can anyone confirm ? is there a workaround?

Thanks

This post has been edited by NEMO7538: Feb 22 2005, 08:06