I'm very psyched to see this, Aero! I won't be able to provide any feedback for a few weeks, as I'm off on vacation, but thanks again for the continued development of foo_pod.

btw, I use XP Pro, so no help there either.

The latest version works like a charm...

And Aero, sent a copy of my DB to your email.

I'm trying to set up a rule in the smart playlist editor for "date added is in the last 2 weeks", but every time I click apply and open the smart playlist editor back up it has changed from 2 weeks to 2 days. The rule seems to be working correctly though, so I assume it's just a display glitch.

Just so everybody knows, this method of building the playlists should be identical to the way iTunes does it. But I may have missed something, as it's a medium sized piece of rather annoyingly complicated code to do it.

So anybody with a 1st or 2nd gen iPod, keep a close eye on any smart playlists you create, and if you happen to notice anything "off" about them (on the iPod side), please let us know. This may not be an easy one to spot, as the playlist may simply be populated incorrectly, with songs there that should not be, or vice versa. Still, keep an eye open for it.

The new rules work, BTW, but will likely make iTunes freak out or behave oddly or something. So I would not recommend using these rules if you use iTunes with your iPod. But they work well, best as we can see. There's some other possibilities for rules that are not implemented in iTunes too, and I'll be looking into those. The iPod has a lot of hidden capability.

Thanks for the bug report. Yeah, that was just a typo in the initialization code for the days/weeks/months drop down box, so as long as you change it back before you click Apply, everything should be fine.

I have just fixed the bug and it will be in the next version.

I did a little experimenting with Nero's AAC encoder tonight, and here is a short guide on how to get it to work with foo_pod's transcoder.

Step 0: Buy Nero 6 and install it. The free demo also works, but you are limited to 50 encodings and a message box pops up before each encoding.

Step 1: Download NAACEnc, unzip it, and put NAACEnc.exe in your Foobar2000 directory (where foobar2000.exe is located).

Step 2: Go to the foo_pod Preferences, Transcoder tab, and select "Use Custom Encoder Settings". Click on the "Configure" button.

Step 3: Change the following settings:
Encoder: NAACEnc.exe
Extension: m4a or mp4 (doesn't really matter)
Parameters: -internet -qf -lc %s %d
Highest BPS Supported: 16
Display Name: Nero AAC (Fast Internet AAC-LC)

Step 4: There is no step 4.

You can change the encoding quality by replacing -internet with one of the following (from lowest to highest quality): -tape, -radio, -internet, -streaming, -normal, -extreme, -audiophile, -transcode. Also, the -qf argument means to use the fast quality setting. -qh (High quality) doesn't seem to be any slower than -qf, but the bitrates are higher than with -qf. Display Name can be anything you want, but it is written to the transcoded file as the TRANCODER metadata, so pick something descriptive.

I did some informal tests, and the Nero AAC encoder seemed to produce about the same quality as FAAC 1.24, at a 10kbps lower bitrate. So it isn't a huge difference, but if you already own Nero 6, it might be worth using instead of FAAC.

Areo,

I've just been experimenting with Otto's iTunes scripts (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....showtopic=22391) and Foo diskwriter/foo_podclienc to transcode using iTunes (to ACC or Lossless) driven by foobar.

This is almost giving me a one hop route to import my flac collection into iTunes. But is giving me error messages if I just import files to iTunes (i.e. don't enable the copying of the converted file back to the destination location expected by foo_podclienc.)

1) Would it be possible to turn off whatever error checking is done in foo_podclienc to create "ERROR (foo_podclienc) : Encoding failed" in the console which interupts the process.

2) Have you considered writing a transcoder which accesses iTunes directly as this gives access to Lossless as well as AAC. Looking at the documentation for the iTunes interface it appears the functions accessed by Otto's script are also directly accessable from C?

Greate work on foo_pod btw.

Triode

It would be pretty easy to write an EXE to use the COM interface of iTunes to convert files into whatever format you want, of course. If this is needed I can create it pretty fast, if someone wants it. The script method was just simpler.

But foobar doesn't actually support Apple Lossless, does it? I mean, if you had an ALE file then foobar wouldn't be able to read it or play it, right? Would it work with foo_pod in that case?

Hi Otto,

I can't make up my mind whether to convert from Flac to Apple lossless. At present I think Flac is probably safer as my main archive. Hence I see two applications:

1) Bulk conversion of Flac (or other format) into iTunes as ACC/Apple lossless (not my primary application, as I am not yet converted to iTunes!)

2) On the fly transcoding to Apple lossless for download to iPod via Foo_pod. This is probably my favourite as I stick with Foo_pod and Flac on the PC.

The scipt works well for 1, except for the error checking done by foo_podclienc (as I have turned off the copy of the file back at the end)

I do have a problem with the script when file copying is enabled as I can't seem to stop my virus checker (McAfee) complaining every time! Hence a com/exe solution would probably help here (ideally with the option to do ACC or Lossless).

Triode

Possible, but the check is there on purpose to catch real encoding errors, and it removes the song from the iPod database, so you don't have dead entries on the iPod. I haven't tried it, but it could be that the encoding error is due to the script returning the "wrong" return value.


I hadn't considered it, but it is an interesting idea. Personally, I wouldn't use lossless encoding on the iPod, since I can get transparent quality with MP3 and/or AAC at much lower bitrates. Using the iTunes AAC encoder might be worthwhile, though, since it is free (as in beer) unlike Nero and is supposedly better than FAAC at the same bitrate.

As far as I can tell, Otto's script should work in foo_pod as a custom encoder - I'll test it later tonight and see if I can see why it isn't working.

That is correct - Foobar doesn't play or understand Apple Lossless encoded files, so foo_pod won't do anything with them. I think triode's point is that he can take files the Foobar does play (like FLAC) and use the iTunes encoder to write either AAC or ALE encoded songs to the iPod. That should work fine, although there might be some hidden complication that is causing it to fail.

Just to clarify - it works, but because I have turned off the file copy at the end of the script, foo_podclienc creates the error message. I think it is just looking to see if the correct file is produced (which it isn't as I have dissabled this due to my virus checker).

The scipt + foo_podclienc works fine appart from this and my PC is busy transcoding a few hundred flacs at present. NB this is importing them to iTunes not really foo_pod, but it is a very worthwhile side effect of the code. Thanks to you and Otto.

Triode

Well, if that's the only real problem, then I'll see what I can do to make an EXE version of the script. Should be simple enough, really. Probably easier than writing the script was, because I don't know javascript too well.

Kinda sucks that McAffe has no way to turn that off though.. Norton complains too, but I tell it to "Authorize this script" and it stops complaining for that script and that script only. Until I modify the script, at which point it complains again.

So this would allow the use of iTunes's encoder from within foobar? That'd be pretty handy.

Umm, sure. I guess. I don't exactly know how foobar works with that sort of thing. But it's just a command line program, sort of thing. Should work with most anything.

I'm working on it now, will have it within an hour or two, no trouble. All it does is to take some parameters, then call iTunes to do the actual work. Simple enough.

Oops. Sorry. Posted twice somehow.

What Mike means is that instead of using LAME, FAAC, or NeroAAC as the encoder used by foo_pod when transcoding, it is now also possible to use iTunes' encoders.

Basically, this adds the ability to transcode to Apple's Lossless Format (so FLAC/APE/Shorten users can keep their music unmolested on the iPod, without have to resort to WAV or AIFF), as well as a high quality AAC encoder for free. The downside is that iTunes' COM interface doesn't appear to allow setting the encoder settings, so you have to use iTunes to configure the encoder or accept the default values.

Ah. I see now. Okay. I was just confused before.

Anyway, I'm done. Took me a couple extra hours to figure out weirdness with regard to how to convert between two similar COM interfaces. But then i'd never programmed COM stuff in C++ before, so I learned something new.

Here you go: http://otto.homedns.org:8888/iTunes/iTunesEncode.zip

Feel free to mirror a copy somewhere else if you like (rarewares?), as my connection may go up and down, being on cable and such.

Anyway, the command line options for this EXE version are similar to the script version, but different, so you may want to read the readme file first.

Enjoy!

Thanks Otto,

Works well and doesn't annoy the virus checker. (I found that you can totally dissable script checking with Mcafee, but not authorise a specific script )

Triode

May want to grab another copy, I found out that the -d option didn't work properly (it left a copy of the file hanging around). That's now fixed.

As I was rushing to load up some songs on my iPod this morning, I realized that I spend a lot more time wiping and reloading my iPod than enjoying it. So I was wondering - does anyone have an iPod with a dead battery, upgraded to a larger iPod, or whatever, and would be willing to sell it?

It isn't a big deal, but it would help foo_pod development a bit. (I'll have a new version ready to post as soon as a 17 hour transfer/transcoding session completes... )

Why not get the iPod the way you want it and then back it up to the hard drive? A simple copy of the iPod_Control folder would back up all the music and database and everything else. Then you could restore that to the iPod after you were done messing with it. Seems like it'd be a heck of a lot faster than transcoding anyway, at the cost of some hard drive space, I grant you. Of course, I recently bought a 200 gig firewire drive, so I'm kind of space happy right now.

Obviously, if you have enough free disk space, backing up the iPod is simple. But the iPod disk/interface is fairly slow (around 10MB/sec), so a complete backup can take over an hour to copy it off and another hour to copy it back. Certainly better than retranscoding, though. Like I said, it isn't a big deal...

Hmm.. Assuming you don't fully erase the iPod with every test, you could use something like rsync to undo the changes made, as long as you have a complete copy of what you want the drive to look like. That'd certainly be faster than erasing and recopying the whole thing back, because it could copy back only the files that were modified in your testing. But yes, the drive space would still be needed to keep a copy around.

Version 0.9.2 is now available.

This version fixes the display bug noted by eido, and added the Playlist smart playlist rule. This isn't completely tested, so please report any problems or inconsistances. There are also new units (minutes, hours, and years) that are available for In The Last smart playlist rules, and not supported by iTunes.

There is also a new option that will hide the Foobar2000 window during file transfers to the iPod. This is particularly useful for long transfers, such as when doing a lot of transcoding.


From the Readme:

I just want to add a thank you for writing such a fantastic plugin, it's pretty much transformed the way i use my iPod now that i can do everything from within foobar2k.
I do have a couple of small suggestions too. Would it be possible for the foo_pod playlist name to be the same as the iPod's name? And would it be possible for the foo_pod playlist to automatically be created when the iPod is plugged in? Basically so that when i plug in my iPod the playlist 'Graeme's iPod' would automatically be created.

Thanks.

Those are both good ideas!

The only problem I can see with using the iPod's name as the playlist name is that it might already be in use (i.e. it is unlikely, but you might already have a "Graeme's iPod" playlist open). In that case, I guess foo_pod would have to replace the existing playlist with the contents of the iPod.

Also, adding the playlist when the iPod is connected also implies that the playlist would be removed when the iPod is ejected.

In foo_pod, I would keep the current preferences for the playlist name and the automatically update checkbox, so the behavior could be overridden. I'll see about adding this to the next foo_pod release.

Another ramification of doing the on connect thing is that you have to be running the iPod service (which I, personally, disabled due to current uselessness).
But if you do end up creating it, be sure to add a corresponding listener to pod.h. That would be awesome for personalized fast syncing, even if I'll have to re-enable the iPod service and waste like a bunch of RAM. Maybe you can make a third party, lean iPod service and maybe make it all powerful with awesome features that the iPod firmware supports but Apple refuses to make public? (like you did with smart playlists) Okay maybe I'm just making up stuff that aren't at all feasible... but are they? Cause that would be hella awesome.

Nope - I can just detect when the iPod hardware is connected - no iPodService required.

As far duplicating iPodService, that would require a lot of low level reverse engineering. Although as I was thinking about your post, I thought about the "waste a bunch of RAM" part, and thought of a new feature. I could add an option to shutdown the iPodService (if present) when Foobar exits. Also kill iTunesHelper all of the time, since it doesn't seem to do anything useful. Its purpose is unknown, but I believe it has something to the initial iPod user registration. It seems to collect user supplied data (like iPod Serial Number and the user's name, zip code, and occupation?!?) and sends it to "littlebuddy.apple.com".

littlebuddy.apple.com?! That's a funky hostname. Haha. Anyway, managing the iPod service like that sounds like a good idea... but... err... what are the benefits of running it anyway? I can still have a unique name for my iPod and have it in disk mode without the iPod service... is there anything else?
And iTunesHelper can easily be killed through startup tweaking so that's not an issue, but you might wanna have a button like "Remove iTunesHelper from startup" that will simply remove its startup entry.

There aren't many benefits, but the main ones are being able to get the iPod name (for the playlist naming thing), and being able to do a soft eject (which means you can mount it again without having to undock the iPod).

BTW, one problem I have discovered with stopping the iPodService is that it takes upto a minute after starting it again before it recognizes any connected iPods. It must detect iPods when they are connected, as well as a via a timer set to go off once a minute. So I'll keep the feature in there, but it probably best not to use it .

Also, iTunesHelper might be part of Windows startup, but I also believe iTunes (or possibly iPodService) also starts it. Stopping iPodService also closed iTunesHelper, so they are somewhat related.

Is there no function in the service's API to force it to look for an iPod, ignoring the timer?
And your experience with iTunesHelper seems to contradict my experience: I had the iPod service running just fine with iTunesHelper never ever running and off the startup list.

Not that I'm aware of.


I'm not certain on how and when iTunesHelper is started, but I know in my case, it not started by Windows (the excellent Autoruns utility verifies this), yet sometimes it is running after I exit iTunes. So either iTunes or iPodService is starting it, and since closing iPodService also caused iTunesHelper to exit, there seems to be some connection there.

Hello,

thanks for foo_pod. It replaced all my other pod software! I have a couple of questions but first of all I have a suggestion: This forum thread is getting HUGE! and thus, it is getting unclear and very cluttered. Makes it hard for occasional visitors who just seeks basic foo_pod information oto actually find any.

Since the thread is huge I suppose the interest in the plugin is huge. Why not create a sub-forum here so the thread can be split up into different topics? A website or at least a sticky post containing FAQs and the likes would also be very helpful...

I'd be willing to help, too.

Sascha

Question:

As I understand foo_pod, you manage the iPod songs through the foobar ipod playlist. How do you create custom playlists for files that are already on the pod? Say I have 5 albums of one artist on the pod and now I want to create a favorites playlist that displays under the iPod's playlist menu item. How?

Also, what's the difference between "send files to Ipod" and "Sync Playlist"?

And next: Are smart playlists automatically updated when plugging the pod in?

Thanks,
Sascha

Getting cluttered and unclear? I thought the foo_pod forum was always cluttered and unclear!

But you do have a point - documentation for foo_pod is basically non-existant. I've already had an offer to help write documentation, but I have been negligent in providing information, so far, since foo_pod is still adding major features such as the smart playlist editor.

Version 1.0 will need to have some sort of documentation and a FAQ, as well as a simple installer.

If you create Foobar playlists with the same songs that are already on the iPod, foo_pod will create the playlist but not copy the duplicate songs. Creating a smart playlist is also another solution.


Send means copy the selected files to the iPod, unless they are already there. Sync Playlist means add and/or delete songs from the iPod so that it matches the Foobar playlist or playlists.


Currently, nothing happens automatically when the iPod is plugged in. The smart playlists are updated when you click Apply in the smart playlist editor, or when you add songs to the iPod.

Just to OT a little:
The 4G iPod has been exposed on the upcoming issue of Newsweek. Specifications are uncertain though.

http://www.thinksecret.com/cgi-bin/pic.cgi...jpg&p=newipods2

From the first impressions of it, I think I still prefer the 3G design...

I agree with SNAG. I see the difference between the 3G and 4G to be about the same as the difference between the 1G and 2G. Some minor cosmetic differences, minor size differences and a change in the controls. I think I would just as soon wait for a 5G to upgrade. I think the biggest difference would be in the processor. I think I read that the processor that the mini uses fixes a flaw in the cache (or something) making the possibility of playing OGG more of a reality than before.

Yeah, although the 4G iPod looks to be a little shorter than previous versions, it doesn't seem that much shorter to justify removing the buttons. One thing that struck me is the "Music" menu item - as if actually playing music is just another feature now rather than the main focus. OTOH, maybe they just renamed "Playlists"...

Hopefully there will be updated firmware for 3G and earlier iPods as well, but I'm not holding my breath. Like Pete Townsend said, "I got to move with the fashion, or be outcast.".

Unless there's been a code change recently, you need to understand that "sync" will remove everything from your iPod except what you're syncing. So, if you're syncing only one playlist, but you used to have multiple playlists on your iPod, they will all be removed, and the synced one will remain (including changes to that playlist if it already existed on the iPod.

I don't believe there is yet a way to update the contents of a single playlist, as send just adds songs, doesn't remove. (For example, if you had a playlists of Beatle albums, and you decided you needed to take "Let It Be...Naked" out of rotation.) Then again, I could be wrong.

Also, I believe just sending files by right-clicking a group of songs (as opposed to sending a playlist) will add the songs to your iPod, but it won't associate them to a specific playlist (but of course, if they're properly tagged, you shouldn't have any issues finding them by artist/album/song.

I was just syncing all playlists with my iPod, which was almost completely filled with documents I store there for work, and I ran out of diskspace halfway through. So i moved some work files from the iPod to the hard drive and restarted the Sync all playlists. foo_pod figured everything out, didn't delete anything more and just copied all the files over that it should.

However, and I am not sure if this is foo_pod's fault... When I look in iPod_Control\Music, I see that folders F00-F19 have the hidden attribute, while F20-F49 do not. Is this done on purpose or not?

Edit:
Oh, and foo_pod also created my playlist named Radio (which contains some radio station HTTP streams) even though I selected to ignore it by right-clicking the playlist tab. It doesn't contain any entries, it is just a blank Radio playlist on the iPod.

iTunes creates the Fnn directories with the hidden attribute, but foo_pod doesn't.

What happened is that you had F00 - F19 that were created by iTunes (or when you first formatted your iPod), and when you updated your iPod, foo_pod created F20 - F49. Originally, iTunes (and foo_pod) only created F00 - F19, but as of the latest iTunes, it now creates F00 through F49. So I changed foo_pod to also create F00 - F49 - the more directories, the less likely there will be filename conflicts.


Are you sure you ignored the Radio playlist? You can't right click on a tab and have that playlist be ignored - what you need to do is select the playlist first, then right click to ignore it. If you select the Radio playlist, and it is already ignored, then there is a foo_pod bug.

I have never used iTunes, but wouldn't it be better for foo_pod to have the option of emulating iTunes more closely - i.e An option for setting the maximum amount of FXX directories, and having them all hidden?


I am very sure that I ignored it properly. However, I will attempt to reproduce this playlist-creation tonight.

Doesn't really matter that much, in this particular case. iTunes can cope with whatever foo_pod does in that respect. The iPod doesn't care whether the directories are hidden or not, iTunes will make them hidden if you happen to use it (or maybe not, either way, it's unimportant). And older iTunes versions can cope with the extra amount of directories. So really, this is kind of a moot point.

The real reason for the extra directories isn't due to filename conflicts (although that is a potential possibility), but due to the way the iPod reads directory structures. When it's going through a FAT32 filesystem, and it wants to load up a song, it has to read the directory structure in order until it finds the file it's looking for. All systems reading FAT32 must do this, actually. With the iPod, it causes a problem because it'll starve the decoder while looking for the file if the number of files in the directories get too large, and this causes issues like songs getting skipped over and such. Anyway, more directories = faster lookups on songs, and as they increase the size of iPod drives, this becomes pretty crucial. I'm somewhat surprised that they didn't push it up to F99 already.

But the iPod itself doesn't care what the directories are. You could call them G## or name them after the planets or the stars in the sky or cartoon characters. Whatever, it's just looking up the file's location in the database and passing it along. iTunes uses F## directories, which is why you want to stick to that for compatibility reasons. But there's no need to go overboard in the fiddly unimportant bits. There's enough other important fiddly bits to keep the programmer occupied for the moment.

If you didn't care about maintaining iTunes compatibility, it might be simplest and best to simply arrange the tracks in an artist/album/tracknum_songname.ext method. This would provide for fast enough lookups in most all cases I can come up with, while making it easier to find files on the iPod directly if you wanted to copy them back off the thing.

So it is more a question of "why not do it?" than "why do it?"...

Not really. It's more a question of seeing that it's compatible enough as is, and not bothering to worry about the unimportant minor details that don't really matter anyway.

Nope: http://www.apple.com/ipod/download/
The new firmware only updates the new iPods with all the neat stuff, but I can really live without all those features and the reduction in dimensions isn't that significant, nevertheless desirable.
I wonder if the iPod database interface Otto created will need updating to work with the new iPod. How was it when the mini was released?

Since they haven't had to release a update to iTunes to handle the new iPods I would assume that nothing has changed in terms of the interface with the iPod database.

I made no changes specifically to support the mini. And as far as I can tell, iTunes, which creates the databases, creates the same kind every time, regardless of what kind it's connected to. So far, anyway.

The multiple OTGPlaylist support will require changes to foo_pod, but I'm betting that it's just using multiple OTGPlaylist files and so should be relatively easy. But, no way to tell until somebody gets ahold of a 3.0 iPod and lets us know. Annoyingly, multi-OTGplaylists and deleting from OTGPlaylists should be software only and thus they could probably add these to the 3rd gen iPods.