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

[Aero]

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?

I am able to confirm this with 0.9.9c. I'll try to get a fix released soon.

Thanks for the bug report!

[Aero]

Version 0.9.9d is now available.

This bug fix release fixes the playlist bug reported by NEMO7538, which was introduced in Version 0.9.9 and caused playlists to not be created on the iPod when using the "Send * Playlists To The iPod" features.

Also, one new feature is that if a song has iTunes SoundCheck information in its COMMENT metadata, translate that into a Soundcheck value on the iPod.

[Otto42]

Also, one new feature is that if a song has iTunes SoundCheck information in its COMMENT metadata, translate that into a Soundcheck value on the iPod.

Is this an option? I mean, can you use the ReplayGain data instead? It's possible for a file to have both, sort of thing.

[jkwarras]

Aero,

I think that you could allow sync between play_counts between ipod and fb2k if the user install this mod version of foo_playcount. It stores the counts in a external database using sqlite (so no tagging). If you will interested in implementing this, you could also point to this mod version as the only to be used with foo_pod to get this sync working.

If someone could allow quicktag to use sqlite as this mod does, this would also solve the rating sync issues.

This post has been edited by jkwarras: Feb 23 2005, 12:00

[Klato]

I don't normally have a drive letter assigned to my iPod when I connect it to my USB port (I can only get this in iTunes if I enable disk access), so how do I mount it? I went to "Select iPod To Use" and had it automatically find an iPod, but all it does is minimize fb2k...what am I doing wrong?

[Aero]

Also, one new feature is that if a song has iTunes SoundCheck information in its COMMENT metadata, translate that into a Soundcheck value on the iPod.

Is this an option? I mean, can you use the ReplayGain data instead? It's possible for a file to have both, sort of thing.

Sorry, I forgot to mention that this is only a supplement to ReplayGain - RG always takes precedence. In other words, if both iTunes' iTunNORM and ReplayGain information is available, foo_pod will use ReplayGain.

[Aero]

I don't normally have a drive letter assigned to my iPod when I connect it to my USB port (I can only get this in iTunes if I enable disk access), so how do I mount it?  I went to "Select iPod To Use" and had it automatically find an iPod, but all it does is minimize fb2k...what am I doing wrong?

The iPod must show up as a drive letter. So like you said, you have to enable disk access (either in iTunes or in foo_pod's iPodService preference) to use foo_pod with your iPod.

[Aero]

I think that you could allow sync between play_counts between ipod and fb2k if the user install this mod version of foo_playcount. It stores the counts in a external database using sqlite (so no tagging). If you will interested in implementing this, you could also point to this mod version as the only to be used with foo_pod to get this sync working.

If someone could allow quicktag to use sqlite as this mod does, this would also solve the  rating sync issues.

Interesting. Would you mind doing a little research on this for me, since there doesn't seem to be any details in the post and I'm not familiar with the component.

In particular, what would I need to do in order to utilize this? Just set the metadata (PLAY_COUNT?) as normal? And does this prevent the metadata from being written to the file?

[jkwarras]

Interesting.  Would you mind doing a little research on this for me, since there doesn't seem to be any details in the post and I'm not familiar with the component. 

Sure, if I can help.

In particular, what would I need to do in order to utilize this?  Just set the metadata (PLAY_COUNT?) as normal?  And does this prevent the metadata from being written to the file?

I'm not sure to understand your question, but I'll try

This component seems to use two metadata fields:

%__play_counter% (as opposite to the %play_counter% tag)
%__play_timestamp% (in a Unix format I think, but just guessing)

And it uses whatever the user puts into the optional fields (where normally people enter %play_time%, %play_date% or %last_played%) and put it into the proper metadata fields (%__play_date% or %__play_date% or %__last_played%).

I guess that you could just do a $add(%ipod_play_counter%,%__play_counter%) into the %__play_counter% metadata.

I see that foo_pod also uses %ipod_last_played_time% in a numeric format. It could also be transfered to fb2k files into whatever file user has specified i.e.
if user uses %last_played% field (which is the newest recommended format) with this format %Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S, then with sync foo_pod should update a metadata field called %__last_played% with this format specified.

Hope that this makes sense. You could also contact kode54, he's the author of this mod playcount and could help you more than me

This post has been edited by jkwarras: Feb 23 2005, 19:38

[Aero]

Big news for iPod Shuffle owners! The latest firmware update fixes compatability with non-iTunes AAC files. I haven't tested Nero's encoder yet, but FAAC 1.24 created files play fine with firmware 1.1.

One warning - after doing the update, go to your iPod Shuffle in Windows Explorer and delete the iPod_Control\iTunes\iTunesStats file. It will be 0 bytes, and if you don't remove it, foo_pod 0.9.9d will crash when you try to read the iPod database. I'll fix this in a future version.

[Otto42]

For you 3G owners, the latest update (version 2.3) also brings now new stuff (about time, it's been almost a year since 2.2).

The download is a whopping 43 meg. Guess they've added a lot of new firmware types since the last update..

The main stuff this release seems to do is bring the older models up to date with the newer menu system.
-The "Browse" menu is gone, replaced by the "Music" menu which is basically the same.
-There's a new "Audiobooks" menu under the Music menu. You can even put it on the Main Menu if you like (I do).
-There's a new "Shuffle Songs" toggle that you can put onto the Main Menu. I'm not very happy with it, as basically all it does is to start playing all the songs on the iPod, shuffled. Fairly annoying that it can't be used to toggle the normal shuffle setting on/off easily. I turned it back off when I found what it did.
-The charging screen now shows a continous battery with 8 steps instead of the 4 blocks it had before. I think it looks cooler. Easier to see too.

I probably missed some bits, and I haven't looked at the actual files on it yet to see the differences, but since they say it's iTunes 4.7 capable, I'm assuming it supports some of the newer internal file differences. Not much to explore there though.

Edit: Ahh, I missed the multiple On The Go playlists. Those are now on the 3G's.

This post has been edited by Otto42: Feb 24 2005, 16:31

[herr klang]

still no luck with nero

[Klato]

Aero,

Thanks, working fine now. Just a quick question about Enable Synch...this only applies to audio files and nothing else on the iPod, I hope? (i.e. it won't touch any other files I have stored on there?)

[joelpt]

Aero - I have spent a little time looking at the Foobar SDK and it looks like it should support all the metadata/"media library" functionality you would need to do your playcount/ratings/GUID storage. Much of it looks to be in metadb.* and metadb_handle.*.

I haven't actually tried writing any test components to see how these functions behave but here's a few that I ran into looking through the SDK source.

CODE

in metadb.h:

// returns a list of metadb_handle's of everything in the database
metadb::get_all_entries(ptr_list_base<metadb_handle> & out)

// update the database from 'info', which contains meta fields
metadb::update_info(const file_info * info,bool dbonly=false);//using playable_location from file_info, return -1 on failure, 0 if pending, 1 on immediate success; may take a few good seconds to execute


in metadb_handle.h:

// for a given metadb_handle, get the value for a specific meta field
metadb_handle::handle_query_meta_field(const char * name,int num,string_base & out)

I'm not sure if there is a get_metadb_handles_matching_meta_field() type of function in there, I'm not too familiar with this code. Obviously it can be done manually by iterating over the list returned by get_all_entries(), using handle_query_meta_field(), which is probably what the SDK would have to do if it does provide such a function already. I would doubt the meta fields are indexed.

I also see that the author of foo_dbsearch apparently created a mini SDK for database querying, this seems to simplify things quite a bit:
http://www.stud.uni-karlsruhe.de/~uzbs/fb2k/foo_dbsearch

Hope this helps!

[Aero]

Thanks, working fine now.  Just a quick question about Enable Synch...this only applies to audio files and nothing else on the iPod, I hope? (i.e. it won't touch any other files I have stored on there?)

That's correct - foo_pod won't delete anything that isn't in the database (i.e. music only).

[Aero]

still no luck with nero

Do you mean that Nero encoded AAC files don't play on the Shuffle, even with firmware 1.1?

Edit: Yeah, it looks like FAAC 1.24 works, but Nero's AAC encoder (I tested aacenc.dll 2.9.9.96) doesn't work with iPod Shuffle firmware 1.1. In fact, if anything Nero encoded AAC files seem to be a little worse with 1.1 - before, they just wouldn't play. Now, some of them appear to lock up the Shuffle completely...

This post has been edited by Aero: Feb 25 2005, 06:51

[rexy]

Just wanted to say that I was able to make my iPod display Hebrew by hacking the fonts in the firmware using iPodWizard and using masstagger to create alternate tags that correspond to the replaced characters and to flip the text. It works and looks really great and the single only problem is that if the title is too long and the iPod puts elipses, it omits the beginning of the title instead of ending, because the title is flipped. So, I was just wondering if anyone is interested in this, becasue I know I would be if I hadn't fixed it for myself already.

Also, seeing that the 3G now supports multiple on-the-go playlists, I was also wondering if anyone knew whether the 3G now also supports line out SoundCheck. Does it?

[Otto42]

Also, seeing that the 3G now supports multiple on-the-go playlists, I was also wondering if anyone knew whether the 3G now also supports line out SoundCheck. Does it?

No, line output is unchanged. I just tested it on mine. Play a song, plug some speakers into the top connector, toggle soundcheck on and off. That works. Do the same using the line output, no change.

[SNAG]

Hey there! Nice nifty updates there, but encountered a small problem here... Was wondering if someone could help me out here:

I currently have 2172 songs in the DB, but when I went to the iPod_Control\iTunes\Music folder to do a "Folder Properties" check, it showed 2174 files.

Which means that I've got 2 orphaned files...

Is there any particular function in foo_pod which allows me to search for orphaned files, and adds them into the iTunesDB itself? Restoring the DB is a nightmare, where all my playlists (both smart and dumb, as I so call it ) are set and defined.

I clicked the "Fix Skipped Songs on the iPod" (without knowing what it was for), and it showed this:

CODE

INFO (foo_pod) : iPodService version 13
INFO (foo_pod) : iPod Firmware Version 2.3 (0x00030001)
INFO (CORE) : startup time: 547 ms
INFO (foo_pod) : WriteITunesDBFile: backup of j:\iPod_Control\iTunes\iTunesDB to G:\foobar2000\iTunesDB.bak succeeded
INFO (foo_pod) : WriteITunesDBFile: DeleteFile(j:\iPod_Control\iTunes\iTunesDB) succeeded
INFO (foo_pod) : iTunesDB successfully written

It prompted me that 85 songs were found, but the song count in the DB still showed 2172 songs.

Any gives for this? Am using 0.9.9d (or whatever the last revision was, I've lost count. )

EDIT: I've realised that the "Fix Skipped Songs on iPod function renamed the files on my iPod, but it did not update them accordingly on my iPodDB... Gotta rebuild the DB.

This post has been edited by SNAG: Feb 27 2005, 14:57

[towolf]

Nah, I somehow dislike these animations on transfers.
Why not go for something more PIXELIZED

like this ersatz :

[mimeryme]

I get the following warning when I load my iPod playlists:
WARNING (foo_pod) : Unable to parse Play Counts file 'v:\iPod_Control\iTunes\Play Counts' (error 13)

Is there something I can do to fix this?

[Aero]

I get the following warning when I load my iPod playlists:
WARNING (foo_pod) : Unable to parse Play Counts file 'v:\iPod_Control\iTunes\Play Counts' (error 13)

Is there something I can do to fix this?

Please send me the v:\iPod_Control\iTunes\Play Counts file so I can take a look at this.

[Aero]

Is there any particular function in foo_pod which allows me to search for orphaned files, and adds them into the iTunesDB itself? Restoring the DB is a nightmare, where all my playlists (both smart and dumb, as I so call it ) are set and defined.

Rebuilding the database now (as of a few versions ago) retains your smart playlists. Normal playlists, however, are not able to be recreated.

I clicked the "Fix Skipped Songs on the iPod" (without knowing what it was for), and it showed this:

CODE

INFO (foo_pod) : iPodService version 13
INFO (foo_pod) : iPod Firmware Version 2.3 (0x00030001)
INFO (CORE) : startup time: 547 ms
INFO (foo_pod) : WriteITunesDBFile: backup of j:\iPod_Control\iTunes\iTunesDB to G:\foobar2000\iTunesDB.bak succeeded
INFO (foo_pod) : WriteITunesDBFile: DeleteFile(j:\iPod_Control\iTunes\iTunesDB) succeeded
INFO (foo_pod) : iTunesDB successfully written

It prompted me that 85 songs were found, but the song count in the DB still showed 2172 songs.

Any gives for this? Am using 0.9.9d (or whatever the last revision was, I've lost count.  )

EDIT: I've realised that the "Fix Skipped Songs on iPod function renamed the files on my iPod, but it did not update them accordingly on my iPodDB... Gotta rebuild the DB.

85 songs means that 85 songs with illegal (at least on some iPods) filenames were found and fixed. They should have been fixed in both the iPodDB and renamed on the iPod - otherwise, this feature wouldn't be very useful.

[Aero]

Nah, I somehow dislike these animations on transfers.
Why not go for something more PIXELIZED 

like this ersatz :

That's pretty nice, although the 3G iPod is way out of date (even if it is the best looking of the iPod series, IMHO). If you would be willing to do the opposite animation (data flowing out of the iPod into Foobar) as well as an animation for deleting songs, I would defiinitely consider replacing the existing animations.

[Klato]

First off, thanks for a great plugin Aero! Second, I'm a little confused about Replaygain/iTunesNORM. I read in an earlier post that if a file has Replaygain info, then this will be used in the ipod db? Do Replaygain and iTunesNORM from iTunes achieve the same thing? Would it make more sense to scan all of my music as an album in order to achieve similar volume levels? Sorry this might be a bit of a newbie post!