Just tried 0.9.9f. When I attempt to "Sync Current Playlist" on my library, I get a dialogue that says "Unable to read the iTunesDB file" and then "If you have a new or freshly formatted iPod, this is not an error" My iPod is neither new nor freshly formatted, and everything was working ok with 0.9.9e.

Oh I forgot to mention that that at the end of my last sync (0.9.9e), fb2k crashed. Tried rebuilding database with 0.9.9f, but it doesn't seem to like my iPod anymore. I can't find any way to fix this with foo_pod...and I can't find 0.9.9e anywhere.

(Although my iPod still works fine.)

Edit: ok i got it working, for some reason my drive letter had changed. bleh.

I don't have this problem with 0.9.9f: perhaps something's wrong with your db...

HTH.

Alessandro

It almost looks like your tracknumbers are messed up in the iPod database. The browse menu speedup shouldn't have any effect beyond the Artist/Album/Genre/Composer/Song Name level, but I'll have to admit that I haven't fully tested (or even fully understand) how they work on the iPod.

If you would, please send me the before and after databases, so I can check them out. Thanks!

I sent you a PM of the files directly from the iPod itself. I was originally going to send you the XML conversions, but they came out identical for some reason. As they are now, at least they're different filesizes (376kb vs 385kb).

With the browse menu speedup my tracks are out of order too (Music/Artist/Album).

Hmm...ok, I'll take a look at the files quazi sent and see what is going on.

Edit: Just to be clear, I can reproduce this as well.

Sorry, if this has already been adressed. Is there some way to reduce the thread priority when transcoding to my iPod? I would like to be able to continue listening to music uninterrupted and be able to do other stuff with my system. I do it when using the diskwriter, but haven't figured it out for foo_pod yet.

Thanks for the help and as an aside, I was anti-iPod until I found this component and then I went out and got one the next day. lol

Cheers,
Pete

I don't explicitly set the priority, so it is inherited from Foobar. When I want to transcode in the background, I usually set Foobar's priority to Below Normal, and any subsequent encoder tasks will also be Below Normal priority. Having a user controlled priority for the transcoder would be a good feature to add to foo_pod - I'll make sure I add that for the next version.


Cool! I'm sure Apple will be happy to cut me a commission check for helping to sell iPods!

Thank you Aero!

Thanks both for your speedy response, but even more importantly for this great component! Me <3 Aero

Thanks,
Pete

Great Work, Aero! Foo_pod rocks.
Excellent, fantastic, marvelous... are all adjectives I can think of about your work.

I find out that some songs in my ipod are too soft after Sound Check enabled, could I modify the Sound Check Value by foo_pod?

Thanks, thanks, and thanks!


What you want to do is set (or increase) the pre-amp volume slider, found at the bottom of the Main foo_pod Preferences tab. Personaly, I set it to about 20% in order to boost the volume for ReplayGain/SoundCheck songs to a more normal level. The next time you save the database (when you add or remove a song, for example), the preamp value will be applied to all songs.


This works on all tracks, although as I was typing this, I thought that adding separate pre-amp sliders for tracks with SoundCheck and those without SoundCheck would be a good idea (not an original idea, though - Foobar already has this feature for ReplayGain).

With separate pre-amp volume controls, you could turn down the volume for songs without SoundCheck (or leave it at 0% and turn up the volume for SoundCheck songs), and get a better balance of volume levels. I'll add that to the list of things to add/fix for the next version.

Having just discovered foo_pod, all I can say is THANKS Aero. I have beed using it with my Shuffle and am anxious to be able to use the "OttoFill" feature. Is there any need for help or testing?

Thanks!

I don't have anything ready to test yet, but since I have so little implemented, the OttoFill feature set is open for suggestions. I have actually never used iTunes' AutoFill feature, and all I know about it is what I have read and various screenshots.

My idea for the basic OttoFill feature is a small dialog that pops up, with a slider to control what percentage of the iPod Shuffle to use for music. If you don't do anything, it automatically starts in 10 seconds (I have all of that implemented already). What I haven't decided is if the songs should come from the currently selected Foobar playlist, or from all open playlists (maybe there could be a checkbox on the OttoFill dialog?).

One more advanced OttoFill feature I want to implement at some point is the ability to transfer songs directly from a hard drive based iPod to the Shuffle. That would include some kind of option to choose from all songs, or maybe from a particular playlist/smart playlist. Depending on how fancy people want it, maybe the OttoFill could run its own smart playlist, so you could select only 4 or 5 star songs, most/least played songs, etc.

Anyway, I'd love to hear what people would want to see in the OttoFill feature.

Something like this (except not as ugly)



I think of it as pretty basic, "fill (size) from (source) according to (criteria)", but allows for complicated criteria if the need arises.

Size
a slider and a "replace all songs" checkbox (like iTunes, I guess)

Source - pull-down menu:
- current playlist
- entire database
- another iPod

Criteria - options:
- random
- basic Smart Playlist options (by rating, most/least played, etc)
- advanced: TAGZ strings ("OttoFill by Hotness", anyone?)

Since a big part of Foobar's design philosophy is "options, options, options", someone out there would probably use "fill from multiple playlists". (I'd just make a new playlist and filter it from there.)


EDIT ..and support for more than just an iPod Shuffle -- I might want to OttoFill to my iPod mini.

Don't worry, I have plenty of experience is creating ugly interfaces! I am currently working with this dialog design.


I like the "Replace All Songs" checkbox. I assume that most people will want to completely replace the contents every time, but it isn't much more work to support partial fills as well. The slider is pretty cut and dry, although in my code, I'm filling the slider with the current free disk space (I'm using my computer's hard drive as the example - I've selected about 50% of the space to use for music, and there is about 35% of the disk currently free).


I have the same items here, except I did them as radio buttons (it makes selecting the iPod easier).


I hadn't thought of using TAGZ strings as a filter. Along with the smart playlist option, it will probably have to wait for a future release, though.

Thanks for your design! I'll probably use something very similar as soon as I add some of the "criteria" features.

Edit:

Done and done! OttoFill isn't limited to an iPod Shuffle, although it will only automatically start when transferring to a Shuffle (to prevent accidental wiping of hard drive based iPods).

Sweet! That's the big one I was looking for (otherwise I wouldn't have been able to use anything else).

BTW, I like your slider a lot better -- mine turned out really ugly because I can push Excel VBA Forms only so far..

Did I mention that I didn't get an iPod until three weeks ago, and it was also mainly due to this thread? (You can safely say foo_pod has a cult following)

I too finally bought an ipod after seeing the progress that foo_pod has made over the past year. If I wasn't going to be able to use my ipod with foobar, there is no way I would have purchased one. Foo_pod has definitely been an awesome plugin. Thanks for all your hard work!

BTW, a new software update was released for the ipod photo today. One of the new features includes a compilation menu. Basically, when activated, any compilation albums that are on the ipod won't show up as individual artists in the "artists" menu, which is easily cluttered due to VA albums. It doesn't seem to work on my ipod, so I'm guessing there is some sort of tag that itunes adds to compilation albums that the ipod detects. Any ideas?

Thank you! You would think that with all of the alternatives to iTunes (not just foo_pod, but GnuPod, Ephpod, ml_ipod, and the various commercial apps) that Apple would take notice and realize that if they opened up the iPod and made it developer friendly, it would benefit them in the long run.


I don't have an iPod Photo (anymore... ), but I assume that it is using the compliation bit in the database. foo_pod currently sets this if the artist is "Various Artists" or there is a metadata item "COMPILATION" in the song. If you want, try sending a song with either of these set and see if it puts it in the Compilation menu.

I just chose those 2 things arbritrarily, since I don't use Compliation/Various Artists myself. Is there a better standard to use instead? (metadata item "VA", or Album Artist?)

Ah ha... I bet that will do it. I will try it out and let you know.

Do you think it would be possible to detect compilation albums without a special designation, though? For example, foo_columns_ui detects VA albums solely based on whether or not all of the artists for a particular album are the same. Could foo_pod use a similar check, and then when a VA album is discovered, the proper flag is created in the ipod DB?

Oh, and sorry to hear about your ipod photo! I remember reading about that a few weeks ago, but I didn't realize it was you.

Foobar2000 & Columns_UI read "Various Artist" from the "Album Artist" tag in your audio file.

Maybe, although it is easier for foo_columns_ui, since it has all of the information available to it, in memory, all at the same time. With foo_pod, you might send a song here and there. Also, I'm not really dealing with album as such.

I guess I could go through all of the songs after they are written, and determine if tracks with the same album have different artists, and mark those as compilations. Up until now, there wasn't much point in bothering with compilation, since only Smart Playlists used that database field.

Yeah, I guess I could have just checked for myself (from the default Foobar playlist formating):



So if I'm reading that right, if ALBUM_ARTIST is "VA" or starts with "Various", it is a compilation. I'll do that same in the next version of foo_pod.

Oh... I thought the organization string that I've been using on my collection was from columns_ui, but I must have added it myself. Either way, it is possible to do, and I'd be more than glad to share my organization string. However, this is a small request, and by no means needs to be added to foo_pod. I think I can handle a few extra artists listed on my ipod rather than having you spend the time to code this in to foo_pod.

Hi guys, quick observation regarding automatic playlist creation with transcoded files.

A lot of my mp3s have really messed up id3 tags (didn't start properly tagging till recently), so I usually arrange my mp3s on the ipod by playlist -- a playlist for every album. I drag+drop a folder from my harddisk into foobar with ColumnsUI, and a playlist with the folder title is automatically created. Then, I just use foo_pod's "send all playlists to iPod" feature, and I'm all set. This arragement works really well for me.

One problem I'm having though is when foo_pod runs into a playlist that is filled with files that need to be transcoded into mp3. When foo_pod automatically transcodes them, these transcoded songs are then seperated from the playlist and aren't where they should be when I look for them on the ipod. In order to access these transcoded songs, I need to search for them individually by artist/title whatever; they aren't in the playlists like they are in foo_pod.

I don't know if this is a bug, or if I'm doing something wrong. It's not a big inconveinence by any stretch of the imagination, I just thought I'd bring it to your attention (and if anybody has any ideas for a workaround, so that I can do on-the-fly transcoding with playlists intact, I'd greatly appreciate it).

Thank you for an otherwise awesome component! I'm not much of an itunes fan, and this meets my needs very nicely.

It would save me a bit of trouble, but I like being able to configure it with TAGZ strings. On my current strings for example, I'm checking for when album artist exists, but isn't equal to VA, do something else (because my collection has different types of compilation discs).

A quick "check for compilation discs" checkbox would make sense along with the encouraged tag standards though.

Thanks for reminding me of this - the problem of missing transcoded songs in a playlist is a known bug in foo_pod (at least to me). I looked at fixing it at one point, but it was unusually difficult to fix for some reason, and I eventually forgot about it. I'll take another look and see if I can do anything with it.

The compilation bit in the database is either a 0 (for normal tracks) or 1 (for compilations). So would you want a TAGZ string that was able to return 0 or 1 based on whatever was in the string?

How do you:

-delete a playlist off the iPod? (I have a playlist with everything single song on my iPod...which I never ever use and want to get rid of it. Tried left/right clicking everywhere.)
-prevent the On-the-Go playlist from being deleted whenever you sync?

I just can't find any way to do these 2 things with foo_pod?
'Thanks!

I'm not too sure what I was getting at.

I think the best idea is to have a checkbox: "Autodetect compilations based on Album Artist". When this is checked, all tracks with an album artist tag will get the compilation bit. That way it's really simple, but we can still use TAGZ strings when we want to get crazy with it.


Sorry, but I just can't shut up about global metadata.. I don't know about anyone else, but that is the handiest feature in any piece of iPod software! For those of us who didn't want an iPod because it wouldn't let us organize by folder structure, this lets us get in there and do it anyway ..and it's non-destructive! (but anyway..)


foo_pod menu / Playlist Editor / "Remove Playlist" button

You don't. This is not possible. The OTG playlist is a separate file that is basically a list of indexes to the songs in the iTunesDB file. If the iTunesDB file changes (as in during a sync) the iPod itself will delete the OTG files.

During a sync, foo_pod could read the OTG playlists first and convert them into normal iPod playlists. There's functionality in the iPodDB classes to do this. But that's the only way to save 'em, they won't be OTG playlists anymore after it does that.

It would be awesome if it was controlled by a user-customizeable TAGZ string, that way it would work with just about any collection.

In the settings there could be a checkbox for "Use compilation TAGZ" along with a text box that would be activated to enter the appropriate string.

Of course, this assumes that I am understanding everything correctly.

I see - so you would envision it as a textbox where the user could enter their own TAGZ string to determine if a song is part of a compilation, followed by a checkbox that, if checked, would use the default method (ALBUM ARTIST = "VA" or starts with "Various") instead? That should be pretty easy to hook up...


Originally, I was planning on adding support for a scriping language, like Lua. But TAGZ strings are almost as powerful, and a lot easier to use.

Hi Aero, thanks for your great plugin. I'm another who would not have got an iPod unless this plugin existed.

Anyway, I think I've found a bug in the latest version. Because I have serveral "Greatest Hits" albums, I've had to use a POD_ALBUM tag to seperate these on the iPod's Albums list. For eg. "Greatest Hits" by Queen would become "Queen's Greatest Hits". However, This appears on the iPod as "Queen[SYNTAX ERROR IN FORMATING STRING]". Obviously the inverted comma is causing problems. This doesn't happen on normal tag information, only the alternative POD_ tag information. Should be an easy fix.

I had the idea without the textbox, just a checkbox for compilation checking. I was referring to the TAGZ strings on the global metadata tab. But I think the textbox idea is better though:


(feed the compilation bit a "1", everything else is a "0")

Okay, now I see where you're going: what happens if I enable the checkbox but leave the textbox blank? Will it automatically use a preset string built into the plugin? Or should I do away with the checkbox and have the string itself do all the work?

Ah heck, don't listen to me.. Make something that makes sense!


yeah, I think one language is bad enough.

Thanks!


Hmm...yeah, I can see where could be a problem. The single quotation mark is used to start a literal string in TAGZ, and without a matching closing single quotation mark, you get the SYNTAX ERROR.

I guess I'll have to escape the strings before running them through the TAGZ processor. Not only single quotes, but also [ and ].

Thanks for finding and reporting this bug!

Well, since I don't usually use compilations, I need feedback from people who do use them.

I think actually understand want you are looking for now, though. The checkbox would enable/disable compilation checking completely, so if you didn't want the compilation bit set, you would uncheck the box and the TAGZ formatting string would be ignored. But if you did want compilation, you would check the box, and foo_pod would use the TAGZ string to determine when a song was a compilation. By default, I would supply a string that checked ALBUM ARTIST, and if it was "VA" or "Various", it would be considered a compilation. But the user could change the TAGZ string to their liking (maybe they are non-English speakers, and want to check for "varios artistas" instead).

No worries!

Well, how about checking just to see if ALBUM ARTIST exists? For my compilations, I use the ALBUM ARTIST tag, but I don't simply put VA or Various Artists in there, I put the name of the Compilation in there and use the Album tag for other information. I realize that's probably not a standard thing, but I hate the idea of having something as boring as Various Artists show up in my playlist or my iPod.

I just used %album artist%=various artist or =name of the main album artist. (i.e. an album where the main artist collaborate/sing/etc... with a lot of different artists in every track).

Not everyone uses that the album artist metatag, though. That's why it should be left up to the user to type in the correct TAGZ line, IMO.

True, I was just saying that in response to Aero mentioning that he would only tag something as a compilation if ALBUM ARTIST was equal to VA, etc. I know he said it would be customizable, but my worry is that the contents of my ARTIST ALBUM tags aren't consistent with each other. If we're going to do something like that and it's going to be customizable, I hope there is a way to just say "if ALBUM ARTIST exists, it's a compilation."

edit: I guess I'm just wondering how extensive the comp support is going to be. As long as I can do something like $if(%album artist%, %album artist%, %album%) or whatever, I'll be fine, which is actually what I think I do now. I just hope that doesn't get broken.

I think there is some general confusion (me too!) about how the compilation support works on the iPod, and what will be implemented in foo_pod.

In the database, a song is marked with either a 0 if it is not part of a compilation, or 1 if it is. Apparently the latest iPod Photo firmware does something special with compilations, so the compilation bit in the database is suddenly important. If you don't have an iPod that supports the compilation menu, then the whole discussion won't really affect you.

What foo_pod is going to do is instead of hard coding detection of compilations (which is currently incorrectly looking for ARTIST = "Various Artists"), it will add an advanced option to control how the compilation bit is set.

The current plan is add a checkbox that will allow the user to just disable the compilation bit completely. But if you do want to use compilation, you will check the box, which will enable a textbox that lets you enter a TAGZ string that will, in turn, determine when the compilation bit gets sets. The default will be something like:



So if ALBUM ARTIST = "VA" or starts with "Various", the compilation bit will get set to 1. Otherwise, it will be 0.

99% of users will probably be fine with this, but if you want to change it for whatever reason (different language, don't use ALBUM ARTIST, etc.), you can create your own TAGZ string that will return either 0 or 1. Nothing else will change.

So I could just do this, and be fine, right?

Like what a few others have mentioned, just check for %album artist%. For those of us who follow the encouraged tag standards, we always use it on compilation albums, but we set it to anything not just "VA" or "various". (For example, notice how on each of my naming schemes, I use the aa tag on every compilation disc, despite what the tag contains.)

The reason why I added %various% is that instead of %album artist%, some people use %various%=1. It's not part of the tag standards, but that doesn't stop 'em! But that's why I recommended:



If anyone is working any weirder than that, then I'd imagine they'd know what to change to make it work for them.


Yeah I think I'm in the same boat -- I don't really need compilation support since I already turn my comp discs into normal discs with the global metadata, but it would certainly let me consolidate some of my code.

Yes, I believe that is valid TAGZ and simply instructs foo_pod to set the compilation bit if the ALBUM ARTIST metadata is available.

I copied my TAGZ example string out of the default Foobar playlist title formatting, which does the more rigorous checks to see if ALBUM ARTIST not only exists, but is certain values. But if you don't care what ALBUM ARTIST contains, just that it is there, then your string is perfect.

Ok. I will just use jayzer's string as the default.

Unless you make a smart playlist that relies on the Compilation flag. Not likely I admit, but it's possible.

The current version of foo_pod is making my ontextmenus take a second or two to appear (No iPod connectted ATM).

All versions of foo_pod I have used do this. They do not seem to do it when the iPod is connected.

I don't see this on any of the machines I use foo_pod on, but you might want to try forcing the iPod drive (in the Main tab in foo_pod preferences or use the "Select iPod To Use" menu item) and see if that helps.