Actually the lockups I am talking about I believe are unintentional. When I transfer MP3s, foobar doesn't allow me to do anything yet I can see the tranfer taking place, that is the files are counted down. However when I tranfer MPCs foobar "whites out" and although it eventually transfers all of the files, I can't track the progress and can't even see foobar after minimizing it and then trying to look at it again. Hope this pictures shows what I mean:

http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....ST&f=35&t=22091

As I said, not a big deal because the song is eventually transferred however I can't track the progress. BTW my system specs are:

Duron 600
512 MB DDR 266
Matrox G450

From the screenshot you posted, it looks like the transcoding process is using up so much CPU time, Windows isn't able to repaint the Foobar window. You wouldn't see that on a regular MP3/AAC file transfer since there is almost no CPU usage required for a simple copy.

It is harmless, and you probably wouldn't see it (as much) on a faster system. Trying to avoid moving the cursor or the transfer status dialog window around while transcoding might help a little.

Version 0.7.1 is now available.


By popular request *ahem*, I added not only a custom encoder dialog (stolen from foo_clienc), but I also preconfigured several FAAC compatible presets. There is also a new mid-range LAME setting (--preset fast medium -Y). The FAAC settings work quite well, I must admit, and as long as you are ok with AAC files, the -q115 setting is probably a good mix between quality and file size.

I didn't test Nero's AAC encoder, but it can probably be made to work with the nencoder command line interface and the custom encoder option.

Finally, to make room for all of this new goodness, I split the configuration dialog up into 3 tabs.


From the Readme:

Thank you very much for the AAC support (though FAAC is not my weapon of choice) - works great so far!


edit: spelling

this feature of Version 0.6.2 doesn't work anymore. i cannot find the item "Save iPod File to disk" in the context menu anymore..


EDIT: okay! forget about it. it is back again... just started foobar once again and now the item is back

Send/Deleted Selected Files only appears on the context menu when there are files selected AND the action is appropriate.

By that, I mean that if the files are already on the iPod, you won't get Send Selected Files, and if they aren't on the iPod, you won't see Delete Selected.

well, thank you! that was not the problem.... i do not know, what went wrong actually. but it's okay again..


something else:
managing playlists is not implemented yet IIRC. so, what about just letting a popup open where you can see all ipod-playlists and then let one create new playlists within there. to modify those playlists one could delete desired files within them and drag'n'drop new songs into them..
i imagine the foobar-iPod-songlist on the left and right beside it the playlist-managing-window..
would that be possible or is it too hard to implement?

Version 0.7.3 is now available.

Edit: The bitrate detection code doesn't seem to be working consistantly, so please wait for the next release to test this feature...

Edit 2: This should be fixed in the just posted 0.7.3

This version adds a potentially very powerful feature - in the Transcoder preference tab, you can specify whether MP3 and AAC files should also be transcoded, if they are over a user specified bitrate.

By using this feature, you can tell foo_pod to transcode all MP3 files over 160kbps, for example, into smaller a MP3 or AAC format and be able to fit more songs onto your iPod.


From the Readme:

That is a pretty good idea. There really isn't a good way to manage iPod playlists from within the constraints of the Foobar default UI, so you would definitely need something else.

I don't really have the time or interest to implement this right away, but perhaps some other programmer could (hi DanZ!). There is a programmer's interface for foo_pod that allows 3rd parties to create components that use foo_pod. There isn't enough interface available right now to do the iPod playlist component, but if someone is interested in writing it, I would be willing to add what is needed to the interface.

Feature request: Some way of seeing how much space is available on the iPod, and how many songs could fit on there, or how much of the current playlist is possible or whatnot.

Then of course, this should be extended to automate transcoding - If you were to transcode these 100 MP3 files to 128kbits, then all files would fit blah blah.

Sounds good, eh?

Free iPod disk space - good idea.
How many songs will fit & automatic transcoding - good ideas, but not practical.

The problem is that it would work only for CBR (constant bit rate) encoding, which no one should be using unless they absolutely must do so.

What I could do is pop up a window that says xxx MB free, then provide examples of how many songs would fit at various bitrates.

Is there any way to pull that data directly from the Settings | About page?

I love you Aero

How about a graphical representation of free and used space (progress bar, pie chart, whatever)?

Also, is it not possible to reasonably estimate a song's filesize based on its length?

Maybe different multipliers for different settings - ABR 128kbit would be approximately 1.12MB per minute or whatever. It wouldn't have to be perfectly accurate, but just to give an idea.

Well, I could do that, but you get the same data (with pie chart) from Windows just by selecting Properties on the iPod drive, so I don't know how fancy I want to make it.

The problem with calculating the number of songs is that you don't really know the bitrate, you don't really know how long each song is, so you can't really calculate how much space X songs will need - so you can't calculate how many will fit in the available disk space. You can start making assumptions, like an average bit rate and average song length, but then how good is the calculation going to be?

What I could do is have a "Will These Fit?" feature, where you could select some files or a playlist and foo_pod could use the actual file sizes to see if they would fit on the iPod. That would probably be a lot more useful than a WAG on how many theoretical songs would fit.

I have been playing around with the "Transcode above ___ kbps" feature, and if you haven't tried it out yet, you might want to give it a look.

I did two tests - first, I transcoded MP3 files above 160kbps using the FAAC -q100 setting, and ran it against some of my music files. The input was 8.78GB of mainly MP3 files (average bitrate 146kbps). The output was a total of 1.13GB (average bitrate 123kbps). That is the equivalent of turning a 40GB iPod into a 311GB model...

The AAC sound quality was actually very good - it was a little muffled due to the high frequency cutoff at 16kHz, but I didn't notice any recompression artifacts and overall, it definitely was accepatable quality.

The second test was much larger, and took over 15 hours(!) to do all of the transcoding. I used the -q115 FAAC preset for better quality (and also larger filesizes) and again transcoded all MP3 files over 160kbps. The input was 38.48GB (avg bitrate 139kbps), and the results were a total of 33.81GB (avg bitrate 122kbps). Not quite as impressive as the first test, but it did allow me to fit all of the music on my iPod, with 3GB to spare.


The next upcoming feature is a Repair Database menu item, so if the iTunesDB database somehow gets corrupted and there are songs on the iPod, foo_pod will be able to rebuild the database from the song's metadata. It isn't perfect - you won't be able to recover playlist, play counts, or rating, but if you just spent 15+ hours transcoding music onto the iPod, you might appreciate the new feature.

An interesting side effect of the Repair Database feature is that you can copy songs to the iPod however you wish (maybe something like a batch or script file), then run Repair Database and it will generate a usable iPod database.

I think you mixed up something in that calculation --- as the average bitrate went lower by ~16% and the occupied space went lower by ~87%. But I think we all get your point

(Or am I wrong here?)

Yeah, I couldn't believe it either, but I tripled checked the transcoded filesizes in Foobar, Windows Explorer, and the Settings->About menu on the iPod. The average bitrate calculation might have been incorrect.

were any steps done in this regard yet? i'd really appreciate it if somebody would be able to code this - others would like that feature as well, i guess!

and another thing: the foobar-iTunes ratings which are implemented via quicktag don't seem to work here... any suggestions?


edit: vocabulary

Version 0.7.5 is now available.

Edit: There was a fairly serious regression introduced in 0.7.4, which would cause transcoded files to be incorrectly added to the iPod database. If you are using 0.7.4, please upgrade to 0.7.5.

0.7.4 adds the Repair iPod Database feature, which is way of recovering a workable database if it somehow gets corrupted. As I mentioned before, this is not a perfect repair since things such as playlists can not be recovered. But if, for example, you sync your iPod and suddenly no songs are visible, this feature will at least get you back to the point where you can browse and play all of the songs on your iPod.


From the Readme:

I haven't heard from anyone regarding this, yet...


I haven't tested the ratings with QuickTag, but I believe it just uses the RATING metadata, which foo_pod presents to the Foobar. I know I have seen ratings work in general.

I'll try QuickTag out and see if I can discover the problem, but until then, how exactly does it not work? Can you not see ratings, not add/change ratings, or both?

Just a minor question: I've set it to automatically update my playlist named "iPod", and I've added in a song from foobar. But the "iPod" playlist does not seem to refresh by itself.

Is that supposed to be normal?

EDIT: I'm facing a problem right now, which happened after I've did a "backup database file" option. It sorta corrupted my DB file. Some files were not in the DB.

I can't seem to sync any files inside the iPod. It'll just "preparing DB file, and then writing DB file". Not sure what happened, . I've did a restore, but I still can't sync the files in as well.

Tried reinstalling foo_pod, foobar, restarting my PC, redocking my iPod, but to no avail.

I'm using 0.7.5 though.
I feel so helpless without foo_pod... All my RG values +APE tags are not captured with any other s/w... And I can't go back to 0.7.3, as I just overwrite-d my 0.7.3 with 0.7.5...

PS: Could someone send me a copy of 0.7.3 to tasdevil55 at hotmail dot com?
Many thanks!



I have no problems with iTunes and Ephpod though.

In general, unless there is a version that is really bad (e.g. 0.7.4), I tend to keep several past versions online at http://www.loodi.com/foo_pod_versionnumber.zip. So 0.7.3 is http://www.loodi.com/foo_pod_0.7.3.zip.

Try 0.7.3 and see if it fixes your problem. Meanwhile, I'll try to figure out what is going on.

Edit: Yeah, it is a bug. I'll fix it shortly, but the workaround for now if to turn on transcoding (even if you don't use it).

Version 0.7.6 is now available.

This versions fixes the problem reported by SNAG and generally improves the whole process on deciding whether a file should be transcoded or copied to the iPod.


From the Readme:

Aero,

When using the foo_colums UI, the function to ignore playlists when syncing doesn't work properly (in other words, they sync, regardless). Can you take a look at that and let me know if I need to ask the foo_colums folks for a fix?

Tried 0.7.6, but it still does not sync the files inside. I did a iPod restore before sync-ing the files in.



This is what I got after 2 tries.
Reverting to 0.7.3 does work once again.

Actually, my transcoding options have been set to "LAME - High Quality" all along.

PS: And I just realised that foo_pod is smart enough to detect if there's a exact duplicate of the song, it'll prevent it from re-copying into the iPod. Sweet!

Great work, Aero!!

I just installed foo_ui_columns version 0.1 with Foobar2000 0.8.2 and foo_pod 0.7.6, and Ignore Playlist worked just fine with both Send and Sync Playlist:

This is using the default settings for foo_ui_columns. Unless it is doing something very bad with the playlists and the playlist_switcher, I can't really see how this would not work. I even tried Unicode characters (a bunch of Hebrew and Arabic glyphs) and foo_pod still correctly ignored the playlist.

Since you can apparently reproduce this problem, try different foo_ui_column preference settings and see if there is something that triggers the problem. For example, try this:

1. Backup your foobar2000.cfg file.
2. Remove foo_ui_columns.dll from the Components directory.
3. Start Foobar2000 and see if you can ignore playlists with the default UI.
4. Replace foo_ui_columns.dll (this will restore the default preferences)
5. Start Foobar2000, set the UI to foo_ui_columns, restart, and see if you can reproduce the bug.

If you can reproduce the bug after step 5, then something very weird is going on, and it is almost definitely a foo_ui_columns bug. If you can reproduce the problem at this point, I'll whip up a special debug version of foo_pod so you can take the output and show it to the foo_ui_columns guy.

Hey Aero,
I've been following this thread ever since I knew I was gonna get my 40gig iPod in the mail soon. I've been waiting to be able to use my favorite audio player with my iPod. So now it's here and I formatted it for windows and updated its firmware and all, but now I'm having problems transfering songs using foo_pod. I can send songs using iTunes without any problems, but, unlike it, foo_pod refuses to understand that the iPod is mounted. The send songs to iPod context menu item is never available and when I go through the menu and select send current playlist to iPod it opens a window and says it's transfering but then in the console it says it didn't due to file error. I tried everything: with iTunes installed, with the startup entries for iTunes diabled, with iTunes uninstalled, with 0.7.3, 0.7.5, and 0.7.6... none worked... well once it was able to transfer an album but upon opening foobar and putting my ipod in in the same conditions it wouldn't work again. I tried restoring the iPod to reset it but to no avail.... Am I doing something wrong???

EDIT: Ok, now it recognizes that the ipod is mounted and adds it to "My Computer" but when I send files and makes it look as though it's sending and everything is fine and doesn't show up the console but then I eject the iPod and browse through it only to find that nothing was added.

Heh. Thanks!

Yeah, foo_pod is very smart (it is only about 10 lines of code away from becoming self-aware...), but it is pretty dumb about informing the user why it did what it did. I have been tripped up by similar things in the past, and I have been meaning to overhaul the whole logging system to give better information.

Umm...well, let's start from the beginning and see if we can get something working.

First of all, you need to make sure that iTunes isn't running, and preferably, doesn't automatically start when you dock your iPod. You might already know this, but if you have iTunes set up to automatically sync with your iPod, iTunes will undo everything that foo_pod has done. This is because as far as iTunes is concerned, the files the the foo_pod has put on the iPod don't match the iTunes library, and thus should be deleted.

The next step is to make sure the the iPod shows up in My Computer. It can take upwards of 15 seconds from when you dock it until it shows up, so be patient. If it doesn't show up, start up Foobar, go to the foo_pod preferences, then to the iPod Service tab, and select Enable Disk Mode.

Once you can see the iPod in the My Computer window, go to the Foobar2000 components menu, then foo_pod, then select Delete All iPod Music and Playlists. This will give us a clean iPod to work with (as its name suggested, it will also wipe your iPod clean).

Next, copy some songs from Foobar to the iPod. To make it simple, select some files, right click, and select foo_pod: Send Files To iPod. You should see the files being transferred and see the results in the Foobar console. If this worked, eject the iPod (using the Components->foo_pod->Eject iPod menu item), and see if you can play the songs you just transferred.

If you can't, then there is a big problem. If you can, redock your iPod (give it time to mount), and try different options like Send Current Playlist. Be aware that Sync Playlist will delete songs from the iPod so that it matches the current playlist(s), so at least until you get comfortable with foo_pod, don't use sync.

Anyway, try that and let me know how it works out. Be sure to cut-n-paste exact output to help debug any problems you might continue to have.

Speaking of ITunes, now that the COM interface for iTunes has been released by Apple, it appears possible that I could add some code so that songs added by foo_pod would automatically be added to the iTunes library. This would synchronize both players (at least iTunes with foo_pod, although an "Import from iTunes" feature isn't impossible), and prevent iTunes from wiping out songs that foo_pod transfers.

I don't use iTunes, so this situation doesn't really affect me one way or another. But if enough people do use iTunes in addition to foo_pod, I might consider it. Also, does anyone have experience with the iTunes COM interface? I have just briefly looked over the docs, but it looks like it would be as easy as calling IITLibraryPlaylist::AddFile() for each file that foo_pod copies to the iPod. Is this correct, and would I have to worry about duplicate files?

Well, I am aware of the whole iTunes sync thing and I do have iTunesHelper removed from starup. As before, the iPod did appear in My Computer when docked with the name I gave it when I formatted it. Then I went to foobar and added an album, right clicked it, and selected send to iPod and even though this is exactly what I did before, now I got this:

And as the console warned, no files were found on the iPod...
I have no problems transfering files using either iTunes or ephPod and neither was running while foobar was.
Now there is this process named ipodservice.exe running and I know it comes from iTunes but foo_pod refused to work whether iTunes was installed or not.
Got any idea what could be done?

And you're sure you did a Delete All Songs And Playlists before sending the files to the iPod?

One thing to try - go to My Computer and get the drive letter for the iPod (d:, e:, etc.). Then go to foo_pod preference, Main tab, and set the same drive letter for Force iPod Drive Letter. Then see if you can send some files.

Edit: One more thing - what version does foo_pod report for the iPodService? It will be near the top in the Foobar console, and should be something like "INFO (foo_pod) : iPodService version 11".

Yes; I am positive.

I just tried that and it doesn't help.

Yup, it reports version 11.

Another thing is that now it doesn't pop up the console but if, after "transfering" files, I open it, I see this:

That might be because foo_pod thinks that the files are already on the iPod. Try sending new, never been sent files (still using the Force Drive Letter) and see if it does anything.

Edit: Also run Delete All Songs And Playlists with the Force Drive Letter set, just in case.

*Sigh*... nope; still 0 files copied... this is really weird and really frustrating.

i am using iTunes aside from foo_pod so i would surely like that feature!





I can see ratings-tag, can add ratings etc... the only thing is, the ratings which I apply in Foo_pod don't appear in iTunes. or is this a general problem of the iPod (2nd gen.) that such stuff cannot be applied on the iPod database?

sehested posted a Pearl-script in another thread, take a look
here.

is this something that helps? hope so!

I have the same problem (as quoted above in my earlier post) as well.
This happens even after I did a iPod restore...
But my problem occurred with 0.7.6, and it was gone by using 0.7.3.

Erm are you sure the confusion is not coming from the fact you shoved the command on the context menu with name "foo_pod: Select To Ignore This Playlist", which shows up when you right click playlists ?

I don't know why you don't put it into the main menu, and give it a saner name..

If I am missing something, please give a description of how you command eactly works..

I know I said I already tried 0.7.3 but I tried it again and now it works and foo_pod is indeed awsome! I just hope that this annoyance is fixed in the next version so I can use the new features it'll bring.
So 0.7.3 does work now but I'm having problems with transcoding... whenever foo_pod wants to transcode a file it outputs this:

And even if I use lame it just says the same thing only with lame.exe. I tried the exes from 0.7.6 (even though they should be the same, and were) and it still does that... maybe I should compile my own lame... I'm not sure why these exes wouldn't work though... or maybe it's the clienc and not the encoders? In any case, does anyone have an idea what could cause this?

EDIT: Oh, and also another thing: whenever foo_pod finishes a process which required it to open a progress window and that window closes, it takes away the focus from foobar and gives it to the window that had it before... this is really annoying. Is anyone else experiencing this?

The problem isn't with understanding which playlists are to be excluded (although I agree with you, the phrases used could be clearer).

I won't have time to do any heavy-duty testing today. I hope to have some answers tomorrow. I'll also make sure my colums_ui dll is current.

What I meant was, are you right clicking on the playlist, or the playlists (i.e. tabs or sidebar)?

As far as I know, the command ignores the active playlist, which is what I meant about right clicking on the playlists. If you already thought/knew that then ok..

Obviously, the playlist is the user interface component which lists songs. Tabs are merely the UI implementation of playlist_switcher, which as its name implies, switches between playlists. Just the fact that you can have a playlist without tabs proves this. So when someone says they right clicked on the playlist, they (should) mean that they selected the context menu while in the playlist area, not on the tab itself.

As for the name, yes, by This Playlist, foo_pod really means Active Playlist. Since I originally expected that users would select it while in the playlist, the name is perfectly sane and correctly located.

I'm surprised that 0.7.3 works while 0.7.6 doesn't. Hmm...I thought I tested all of the combinations to make sure 0.7.6 worked, but it looks like I'll have to check it out again. Just be aware that 0.7.3 would incorrectly copy duplicates of transcoded files (transcoding from MP3->AAC, for example).


Did you copy faac.exe and/or lame.exe to your Foobar2000 directory (not the components dir), or otherwise have them on your path (e.g. in c:\windows)? That error likely means that foo_pod simply couldn't find the .exe to run. BTW, there is nothing special about the faac.exe and lame.exe that I included - they are the standard executables.


I haven't noticed that, but when I run foo_pod, it is usually in the debugger, which tends to steal focus anyway, so I probably wouldn't have noticed it. I'll see if I can do anything about that issue.

I apparently don't fully understand how the iPod uses ratings, because I am writing the correct values to the iPodDB, but the ratings don't seem to show up on the iPod. I'll put this on my todo list...

Erm ok. I wasn't disputing that..


Well yes, but who said that?

The ignore playlist function works fine here (checkmarks show anyway), and you said it works for you. I was merely pointing out that Lew_Zealand may have been right clicking on a tab/playlist instead of the playlist, and expecting the playlist he/she right clicked on to be ignored, rather than the active playlist.

Perhaps I was wrong, but whatever.


The name is very long and makes my menu twice as wide.

The name is confusing because it says "Ignore This Playlist" when right clicking on a tab. It should say active playlist, or not appear there. It doesn't matter if you never intended it to be used from there, it still appears there.

You can check that the caller is the playlist to prevent the menu item from poping up in all kinds of places, or place it in the main menu (maybe under "Playlist/Selection/", but the user could put it there themself if they want).

Edit: BTW I also have 0 files copied problem with 0.7.6 & sync all playlists..

Oooh I just tried sync all playlists (columns ui) and indeed it doesnt work - the playlists where still transferred to my ipod. (foo_pod 0.7.3)

But it was the same for the default UI.

I also got lots of Error #3s for a directory of files (they had a long path) and a Error #2 for one file..

make sure you're not forcing a drive letter to be used in the preferences.

Well I'm still on 0.7.3 and hoping that I'll be able to use 0.7.7 when it's out. And yes, Lew Zealand, even if I didn't force a drive letter 0.7.6 didn't work and 0.7.3 work regardless.
Besides that I would like to make a feature request: as you all know, the iPod firmware doesn't support all characters - in my case Hebrew characters. Well I wouldn't mind having my Hebrew songs on the iPod tagged with phonetic speeling using Enlgish letters but I don't want to also have these tags in foobar, so what I suggest is having foo_pod check if the file contains tags with characters that would be incompaible with the iPod and if it does it will use alt_<tag> instead. So, for example, if the title tag contains at least one character that doesn't work in the iPod, it will use the alt_title tag, if present, instead leaving the copy on the computer intact and the copy on the iPod with a title tag equal to the alt_title tag on the computer. And you can prolly use virtual functions so it doesn't add the strain of an if statement to every file transfer when the user doesn't even need it so only people who expect using this can turn this on.
Either this or maybe you got a better solution yourself? You seem to have come up with great innovations for foo_pod in the past.

Hmm...I handle the case of unsupported filenames, but I never thought about the metadata displayed on the iPod. Does iTunes do anything special with unsupported metadata?

Your alternate tag idea is certainly reasonable and doable (assuming that one knows exactly which characters the iPod does and doesn't support), although I might want to tweak the name a little...something more like POD_<tag>, ENG_<tag>, LANG_<tag>, or something similiar. Its not that big of a deal, its just that alt_<tag> isn't very descriptive. It could be also be a preference item, then we wouldn't have to worry about finding the best name.

Edit: After thinking about this a little more, I came to the conclusion that this might be useful for purposes other than just a workaround for unsupported metadata characters. Earlier in the foo_pod thread, there was some discussion about someone wanting to have the Comment field displayed in place of the artist. So if foo_pod looked for POD_<metadata> and used that in place of <metadata> if it was non-empty, then anyone could tag their songs with POD_ and have some control over how metadata is displayed on the iPod.

Unless anyone has any suggestions for improving this, I will probably add it as of the next version.