firstly this is a great plugin!

can you sent playlists to ipods via this plugin. I tried sending them (right clicking on a playlist and selecting send to ipod) all the songs were transfered to my ipod but the playlist wasnt.

im using the 0.2.1 and a 4g ipod

to my knowlegde this feature is in the works.

IIRC, there were some incompatibility issues between newer firmware versions and iTunesDB format (written by foo_pod). But don't quote me on that.

If synching the media library means "send everything from any foobar playlist" then I'd definitely like it to be optional.

Anyway, thanks for your attention.

Cheers.

Alessandro

[Edit]Does foo_dop require the iPod Service?

Yes, AFAIK it requiers iPod Service to be installed.

Well, I hope musicmusic will find a way to remove this restriction.

Alessandro

No it doesn't. That's only for the mount/unmount commands.

0.2.6 released, details in changelog (its mostly clean-up).

this plugin is amazing

thank you so much musicmusic

two questions

i was looking at the "to do" list- i know that full syncronization is the ultimate goal- but what about being able to send specific playlists to the iPod?

can this write a DB from scratch or does it depend on the presence of an itunesDB already?

just curious

thanks for the GREAT work!

Just want to say thank you for this great component musicmusic.
Been waiting for it after foo_pod died a bit..

I just wanted to let you know that I used this to populate a new 5G iPod and it seems to work very well.

Thanks.

First, thank you very much for this, great to have an iPod plugin for 0.9.

Have a 20gb 4g iPod with click wheel, noticed just a few bugs so far:

1. Tried the rebuild database function, it completed (foo_pod always crashed foobar when I tried doing that with it) and was mostly accurate. One song ended up with missing tags (had been transcoded from ape to mp3 by foo_pod if I remember right) but no other songs were messed up. My On The Go playlist became a regular one (same always happened with foo_pod) and the songs were messed up in it. Previously had several albums of songs by 2 artists in it, after the rebuild had a few songs each by a dozen or two artists, mostly (or possibly completely, can't remember 100%) tracks added to the iPod at the same time as the tracks that were in that playlist before.

2. I have three smart playlists for stuff added in the last 1 day, 1 week, and 1 month. Hadn't added anything to my iPod in a couple weeks so only the 1 month playlist had any content. Transferred about a dozen albums to it on Saturday with 0.2.7, but not all as one batch, mostly groups of 1 or 2 albums at a time as I was browsing my recent stuff playlist in foo. Once I finished I disconnected my ipod and found that only the last album that was transferred showed up in the 1 day and 1 week playlists. 1 month one had that same album plus the stuff loaded a couple weeks ago that was there before. None of the other stuff transferred with foo_dop though.

If you want copies of my ipodDB before+after I can send later when I'm at home, but right now just have ipod and no cable.

On the good side though:
- Some Korean albums by 이정현 had previously had their tags messed up in the database by some problem between iTunes, Anapod, and foo_pod, the rebuild fixed that finally.
- Had no language problems at all. The files that were already on there had tags in English, Spanish (accented characters and the upside down punctuation marks), Korean, Japanese, and Chinese. All showed up fine after the rebuild. One of the albums transferred was tagged in Thai (I use pubble's thai edition of the ipod firmware that adds thai display support on my ipod) and that has no problems either.

And for wishlist, I'll join others in hoping you can get around to adding transcoding, have a lot of ape or flac + cuesheet rips. foo_pod never handled them very well and itunes doesn't at all. It gets to be a pain to remember what's in what and transcode in advanced before transferring, especially since you have to rescan for replaygain. Keeping dupes of it all pre-transcoded on hard drive is confusing, plus even more space per album...

I've noticed something very strange whilst listening to my iPod and wonder if anyone is seeing the same thing. I updated to the latest version of foo_dop last night and repopulated my iPod (5G btw) so basically started from afresh. On my journey to work this morning I was flicking through the various songs and for some reason, rather than playing a new song from the start it would begin playing it from where the last song left off i.e. I listened to a song until 1:50 and then skipped, the next song would start at 1:50 and not from the beginning.

Hope that makes sense as it beats the hell out of me why it's doing it Apart from that everything else is working spot on and I'm loving it

I think I will add that. My only concern for playlist sending was the method of identifying which songs are already on the iPod (but files not identical) since you don't want to end up with duplicates if you've modified the files locally or something. But I think I will just go with metadata comparison for that (ARTIST, TITLE and ALBUM fields).

Needs valid iTunesDB present currently.

Thanks

Your welcome

Thanks for testing




That file probably had no tags. I guess foo_pod's author thought like kode54.

Indeed, intended. I recall iTunes doing the same.

Not too sure why they ended up with wrong tracks, unless you started using foo_dop before version 0.2.5. Is that the case?

Strange, not sure about that one. Well I have an idea, can you check where the last modified date/time is for those files you added locally on your computer? If it is that the album that showed up is in the last day/whatever and the others are before one month then it somewhat makes sense as to the cause.

Yeah, I think I'd like to look at them, even if the answer to both questions above is yes. Thanks.

Transcoding: No converter API as far as I have seen. Even then, its not too high on my priorities (it can be worked around, other things less so)
Chapters: Still haven't seen an example of proper chapter data in the iPod's database and so I don't know what the iPod does with it or even if its any use at all. If not I can look into some other solution to get it working.

Hmm

I think maybe its related to the "Remember playback position" flag on each track in the database. I was setting it but the only 5G database I've seen doesn't seem to have it set on its songs. I've changed it so that the next version doesn't set it for new songs sent by foo_dop.

Not sure why it ended up with behaviour you saw though.

one thing that has happened twice- at least to me. (most likely a fluke)

when the on-the-go playlist is changed to a regular playlist (i did not load the library or rewrite the DB- i simply plugged in the ipod and sent a new song)...let me start from the begining.

all the music on my ipod is form itunes. i load up foo_dop and send one track to the ipod (no problems- i love it) i then add an album to the OTG playlist. then add the one new song.

when i plug in the ipod to send another song to the ipod (no loading of the library and no rewriting of the library- just one song sent to the ipod) the OTG list becomes a regular playlist (as it should) but the last track the one that i added with foo_dop has changed to a different song. no trouble with any music- it's just a different song- in fact it changes to the same song both times i recreated the "problem".

is the meta data crossing? should i rewrite the DB?

Its not metadata crossing but looks like wrong track being written to the playlist after converting it OTG -> Normal playlist. I doubt rewrite DB will do anything useful.

Someone complained of same above. I'll try your steps myself and see if I can reproduce it.

Otherwise iTunesDB + OTGPlaylistInfo* backups at each step would be nice but I'll try repro it before I ask for those.

http://www.pastecultureclub.com/

The Paste Culture Club podcast has integrated chapters. Maybe you can toss it on your iPod and take a look at the database data it generates?

No, I have a number of other files sent with it via transcoding, just that one was goofed up. Suspect it was just a fluke, file probably got messed up at some point. Possibly it was why trying a rebuild always crashed foo_pod.

No, 0.2.7 was the first version I ever installed and tried.

Nope. They were almost all ripped within the last week. The ones from the last batch added that actually show up were the only older ones:
Created Tuesday, March 16, 2004
Modified Saturday, June 17, 2006
(I changed the genre tag before sending)

However now that I looked through the artists list on my ipod more heavily, I don't think the other ones that were added last time are showing up anywhere. I'll do another DB rebuild when I get home and see if I'm right, pretty sure I added some stuff that doesn't appear to be there at all.

Also found that I have a duplicate artist with the same exact albums listed under both copies of it after the DB rebuild. Think it might be case related. The list goes:
けちゃっぷMania
けちゃっぷmania
けちゃっぷMania

Middle one I screwed up at one point and used fullwidth ascii instead of regular ascii while tagging one of their songs, so it should be seperate and only has the one track under it. After previewing this I see the board automatically converts fullwidth ascii to regular in posts, so the list looks confusing - middle one should be %EF%BD%8D %EF%BD%81 %EF%BD%8E %EF%BD%89 %EF%BD%81 for the "mania" part, not regular ascii. The first and third entries are identical in display and in albums listed under them. Band's name should be just けちゃっぷmania and I know I had an album or two accidently tagged as けちゃっぷMania with a capital M in the past, they're corrected now on my hard drive but I don't think they are on the iPod. I'm guessing the rebuild combined the lowercase and capital versions like it should, but then entered it under both the lower case and upper case spots.


Alright, can do in about 2 hours.


I wasn't even thinking chapters, actually. The normal converter splits tracks into seperate mp3s when you use it on a lossless+cue rip unless you tell it specifically to put it all in one file. And I realize it's low priority since everyone can seperate their lossless stuff, do the usual right click->convert, then readd them, replaygain scan, and then send to ipod with the rest of their stuff. Just nice when you don't have to think about that and can just select all->send to ipod. Just felt I should mention it so you know how many people are looking for that feature.

So far I didn't have any problems. If you can repro it and could make those backups that would be great. Otherwise I'll keep an eye out for this.

Thanks, I tried that. Well my 3G iPod did nothing at all with the chapter data.

I think maybe best way to handle it is going to be to add the entries to the DB separately and use the start/stop time fields.

Right, but by your example the ones that showed up in the last day/week smart playlist had the modified date as within the last day (on Sat). I'll look at the DB it should give me somes answers.

[Edit] Yes, I found the cause of the bug. It should be fixed in next version.


Well, I'll look at your DB as to what exactly the latter is about.

For the former I think the songs should be there someplace, especially if they are listed elsewhere in the iPod? You could load the DB into foobar, sort it by Artist, and that should give you some indication where foo_dop would have put it in the Artist list.

BTW, in case you thought otherwise, rewrite DB does not scan the iPod for files (like foo_pod's rebuild DB does?), it only uses whatever was in the DB already. Or maybe you meant you were going to try with foo_pod, dunno..

Latter - have some databases: http://www.filepulse.org/files/313/temp/ipod.rar

Edit: should mention, did another DB rebuild like I said, still duped up.

Former - I'm starting to doubt my own sanity now, the files are simply not there at all. Checked one I know I transfered, it's not on the iPod. Checked total files from a dir /s in the music directory on it versus number of songs listed when I load the media library with foo_dop, they match. Sorry for wasting your time... Only guess I have is that after transferring them they were selected in the playlist and I did something stupid like deleting them while cleaning some other older stuff off it without realizing they were selected too.

And yes, I didn't realize it only checked the existing files, foo_pod's rebuild scans the whole drive if I remember right and will add files outside the usual ipod file structure. Good to know the difference.

One more feature request that I forgot to make in my first post: "Check free space" in the iPod menu. Always convenient to have that within the app rather than having to check it in explorer or finding out when you're low by getting a disk full message.

Thanks, I have an idea what the problem is: the sort I use isn't case sensitive but the iPod is. Basically, I write a list of the songs sorted by Artist to the iPod but the artists of those songs end up in this order:

けちゃっぷMania
けちゃっぷMania
けちゃっぷMania
けちゃっぷMania
けちゃっぷmania
けちゃっぷmania
けちゃっぷmania
けちゃっぷMania
けちゃっぷMania

And that confuses the iPod. I'll check if this is correct tomorrow

Ok well basically one of your files has a wierd ARTIST field.

In a hex editor it looks like this:

Its the one that sticks out on your iPod ("Welcome To Paradise").

The problem is that the iPod considers that different from the other tracks by the same artist but foo_dop doesn't.

You can fix it in the DB at the same offset by changing those FF bytes to 00. Or better would be retag the file with a proper Artist field (copy it from one of the other files) and rewrite the DB.

I think it can be fixed on my side, so that that track stays a separate entry in the Artist list but the others don't double up, I'll look into it.

That's the accidental fullwidth ascii one I mentioned. Changing it to halfwidth ascii and doing a DB rebuild did fix it, thanks.

But if foo_dop considers fullwidth and halfwidth characters the same that's going to cause problems with Japanese stuff like that semi-often. It's rather easy to forget what input mode you're in when typing in mixed kana/kanji + ascii names and ending up with the ascii parts in fullwidth by accident. Sort by unicode codepoint after the initial sort might take care of it... Most apps I've seen treat them as the same if compared to other characters, but different if compared to each other. ｶ follows カ before キ does and Q (fullwidth) is after Q but before R. http://www.unicode.org/charts/PDF/UFF00.pdf is the doc on them if that helps, just the FF00-FFFF range needs special consideration...

Well it considers them different, excepting when it comes to sorting (I guess this is what you were talking about):

If I sort by artist only, it will differentiate the double-width one and put it after the sindle-width ones.
If I sort by artist following some other varying data, the comparison func will treat the double width and single width ones the same and sort by the varying data afterwards.

You can see the same in foobar by loading your library, and seeing the difference when you sort by:
"%artist%"
or "%artist%|%album%|%discnumber%|$num(%tracknumber%,2)|%title%".

So it treats them different, but the same at the same time

I wrote a fix anyway, just testing it now.

o.O Interesting weirdness, I see what you mean. Never noticed it before since I generally don't sort my playlists in foobar. Thanks for your time on getting this straightened out, really appreciate it since I can't honestly say it'll come up for many users.

Does it play the files through the iPod, with the iPod as the player, or does it load them into foobar2000 to play them? Under the first scenario it might just play my ALAC files, but it won't under the second

It loads them into a regular foobar2000 playlist with the metadata from the DB file. But there is an alac decoder component http://www.foobar2000.org/components/ so foo should handle them...

I don't believe its possible to control the Ipod via the firewire or USB connector. I think you need to use the serial interface on the dock connector to do that.

0.2.8 TEST released. Details in changelog. Main thing that needs testing is how new drive scanner works. The drive scanner is the first step in most of the iPod commands.


Yeah, I mean the string should have really been something like:
"%artist% | %album% | %discnumber% | $num(%tracknumber%,2) | %title%"
But that doesn't help here anyway.

In anycase, the problem should be resolved in 0.2.8 TEST.

Well, then it IS required. Or am I missing something? For the record, foo_pod does NOT require the service: it mounts/unmounts the device regardless.

Alessandro

1. What is the problem with installing iPodService? I must be missing something.
2. Otherwise, just don't use the Mount/Unmount commands? If you need to unmount you can do it from Safely Remove Hardware in the notification area, or even through My Computer / iPod context menu / Eject.
3. iPodService is a permanently running service with admin priveledges. You can't replace that with a foobar2000 component. Neither do I know the specifics of how it does its "soft/warm" eject/mount on the iPod: but I will guess it needs admin priviledges.


1. This is not foo_pod, nor is it in competition with foo_pod, or intended as a replacement.
2. I'd like to see you mount the iPod using foo_pod without iPodService installed.
3. You don't need iPodService to use foo_dop either. And it will stay that way for the forseable future. Because iPodService is an undocumented API and I can't have that kind of dependency.

In short: did you actually try and use the component?

I think that avoiding iPod service is not worth the hassle.
It's installed with iPod updater wich is really a must have tool if something goes wrong with your device.
Even Rockbox developers recommend using it in case it fails to load properly or freezes.
In any case I don't notice it running except it's listed in task manager.

When sending files to iPod, the plugins always read floppy disk, any body confirm?
foo_dop 0.2.7
foobar2000 v0.9.2

Installed, drive scanner worked fine here. Couldn't tell if it was faster since the old one wasn't noticably slow for me ever. Did a reload info on the DB to clear up any possible lingering sort issues. Seems to be working fine.

Also deleted everything I've added with foo_dop so far and then readded them. All of my "recently added" smart playlists work right now, all tracks showed up regardless of last modified date on files.

Thanks again.

Sometimes (at work, for example) you are not allowed to install software at will.I wasn't trying to compare the two products: I just wanted to say that it should be possible (if another component can do it). Please accept my apologies.I don't have my iPod to do a test now, but I'm pretty sure I never needed to specifically mount the device to do file transfer (perhaps foo_pod does that automatically somehow).In short, yes.

If I try Check if up-to-date on iPod or Find songs on iPod I receive a No iPod found! error (and yes, I can access my iPod from Windows Explorer). This is with 0.2.8 TEST.

Alessandro

Does 0.2.7 work? If so it must be problem with new drive scanner, let me know and I'll make you a test version to find out the cause. What OS also?

Edit: Actually, if this is Windows 2000 I found one probable cause of this.

Try this test version. Check if it works, and either way post all the info under "File/iPod/Debug" here (with your iPod connected).

Thanks

I'm having playlist issues again. (see my earlier posts). this time all of the "smart" playlists are entirely changing when i mount the ipod.

i'm not sure how to attach the DB files to this post or even where to send them (all together they're 14 MB)

music music how would you like me to get you these files?

also- regardless of this- as soon as playlist managment is implemented i'm kissing itunes goodbye.

thank you so much MM.

I used latest "test version" and it went smoothly except for some files which produced the following failed to transfer error "gave up searching for a reasonable file name"

does this mean that the filename on my computer is too long?

I don't know if this is an issue with foo_dop, but recently my iPod has started behaving strangely. When I skip to the next track, sometimes it will start playing that track at a random point, sometimes half way through, sometimes near the end, sometimes a few seconds after the start. Pressing the 'previous track' button causes it to start playing from the start, but it's still very annoying.
I'm using 0.2.7. I'll try 0.2.8 now.

I had exactly the same problem with 0.2.7 but since upgrading to 0.2.8 the issue has been sorted for me. In fact the way things stand I can't think of anything that is causing me any problems now, so much so I uninstalled ITunes today

Mounting the iPod shouldn't really change anything. I don't really use smart playlists, so I don't have much experience of them (and when exactly they are meant to refresh). But I think the iPod checks if the DB changed after you mount/unmount, maybe that relates to it.

Also just opening iTunes will cause iTunes to rewrite the database. Im not sure why, but I have ideas. But maybe this is related?

If you want to upload the DB you can compress the files, it should compress to something like 8% of original size using 7-Zip/LZMA/Ultra. There's an upload forum on this forum, I'd prefer that actually. But Im not sure how useful they would be anyway.

Otherwise I'll put some smart playlists on my iPod and see what I notice.


Were they files with "non-ascii" characters? (ASCII characters)

If when it tries to transfer the file, the dest filename exists it tries appending (n) to the filename, n=1,2,...,99. If all of those exists it gives up with that error. If the original filename is non-ascii there would be some chance of it being hit since those characters would be replaced with underscores. But there are 100 directories it sends files to so it would need a lot of files on your iPod for you to hit it. So Im somewhat skeptical that actually happened.

So check if you see anything like that (i.e. files with (1), (2) upto (99)) in your iPod music folders (the Fxx dirs under iPod_Control/Music I think, just go there and do a search for * to get a quick list of all the files there). If so Ill bump the number of filenames it tries. Otherwise there must be a bug in the code that handles this.


Yes, it was discussed a bit earlier. Its fixed for new files sent using 0.2.8. I don't think it shouldn't be random time but last position your left that track at. For existing tracks you can toggle the "Remember playback position" setting using iTunes.

i'm sorry- not smart playlists.

the OTG playlist. when i mount my ipod it is saved as OTG1, OTG2 etc.

everytime i plug in my ipod the contents of OTG change when it switches to OTG1. and even the previously saved OTG2,3,4 change when i mount the ipod.

I've found a bug that Im surprised no one else has found due to its impact of the use of your iPod (4g iPod 20gb in my case). What happens is that when selecting a song I can not select anything that has multiple words, I have to first select a song that is a single word and then go next. For example I can't play the song Dani California unless I select the song Charlie and press previous twice. I think this is why oldmate Apple renamed the files to four unspaced letters when sending them to the iPod. It would be great if this would be fixed in the next release so I can continue using foo_dop as my primary iPod thingy

I've not seen this behavior on 5G iPod.

neither have i.

OK.

Well, mounting itself shouldn't change anything.

Have you configured iTunes to open when you connect your iPod?

What other software are you using with your iPod?

Also, when using foo_dop, keep the console open, and check for any errors there. Because any error reading the OTG playlists are going to go there at the moment. If there is an error, it will maybe cause some problems.

For the backup, I need: OTGPlaylistInfo + iTunesDB before the OTG playlist is saved as regular playlist, and iTunesDB afterwards.


Also not here on 3G iPod.

Maybe the "remember playback position" bug in 0.2.7 is the cause?

Otherwise, could you explain what you mean by "can not select". And upload your iTunesDB, why not.

sorry for being so dumb but how do i get those files before the OTG is saved as a regular playlist- it does this every time i plug it in. i've never used anything but itunes and foo_dop for my ipod and itunes does not open automatically. but everytime i plug it in it changes the OTG playlist to regular one.

my ipod is a 5G (video)...

anyway i'll see what i can do to get these files for you-

one more stupid question- where is the attachment option for this forum?

Hmm.. strange. I wonder what's conveting them. Because my 3G doesn't do that automatically (needs iTunes, or foo_dop or something to do it). It could be the iPod but Im not so sure. Maybe you could try stopping the iPodService service (or kill the process, doesn't matter to me) and then attaching your iPod.

The files are usually kept in the hidden dir iPod_Control/iTunes on your iPod.

Also, does this happen without any foo_dop intervention. I mean, does just a mount and eject mess it up, no foo_dop involved.

Also, looking at the other report about this, could you try this:
-Load your iPod library into foobar2000 (leaving the order of that tracks unchanged).
-Disconnect the iPod, add some tracks to your OTG playlist.
-Note the position ("playlist numbers") of those tracks in the foobar2000 playlist you loaded earlier. (You can add %playlist_number% to your playlist display to make it easier)
-Connect your iPod, eject it so that the playlist is saved messed up.
-Note the position of the tracks that now appear in the saved playlist on the iPod in the playlist in foobar2000.

Post the numbers before and after here if you could.

Thanks for your help with this.


You have to use the upload forum.

I'll do all of this and get back to you.

When i load the library i do change the sorting order in foobar- is that bad (at the moment *to be fixed later).

this all happens without me doing anything- however my ipod service center does run. I'll make sure it doesn't when i try this next.


thank YOU for all help.

Sorry for not being clear before. But for example if I wanted to play Dani California and I selected it, the iPod would stop for a second and go to the next song. I often find that selecting a song with one word as the title it plays with no questions though sometimes I can get a multiworded song to play, sometimes. Althought if I play a one word song and go back to the song I wanted it would play fine as well... its quite the mystery.

iTunesDB