wow, this was so much faster then itunes. thanks so much, i hated using itunes.

I am excited about this plugin. I didn't know where to turn to after foo_pod died. Anapod just didn't do it for me. and itunes was out of the question. I tried rockbox firmware for a while. Rockbox still has a long way to go. High quality songs (320kbs) skipped. Hopefully foo_dop will do the trick.

Edit: It will be interesting to see how quickly this plugin is developed. I know this plugin is *brand* new, but file conversion would be nice, as well as custom tags.

0.1.7 is running beautifully on my trusty old 2G. Only issue is that Mount and Unmount both give me a "Class not registered" error, but the component is perfectly functional without those commands. Thank you thank you.

Just tried 1.7 on my ipod Mini. Successfully wrote songs from several playlists to the 'pod.

Hi musicmusic,

I am having problems with songs skipping that were sent over to the iPod with version 1.7. I sent 25 songs over (12 trk album m4a, 12 trk album m4a, 1 single mp3) and all of the tracks transferred over ok. The database file had all the tracks listed properly. So far, so good. From within foobar all the songs played properly within the playlist. When I disconnected the iPod from foo_dop and foobar and accessed the songs directly from the iPod, all of the tracks listed out on the screen properly, but certain tracks skipped. The single track was sent by itself and it skipped. The 2 albums were sent in one transfer. Track 2 and then tracks 9-11 from the 1st album skipped, the rest were OK. The 2nd album only track 7 skipped. I tried a few variations of deleting & resending, but still had the skipped tracks problem. Finally, I used foo_pod (I still have fb2k 0.8.3 on my system) to send the same tracks over to the iPod. All tracks listed out on the iPod screen correctly and played as expected. Let me know if you need further information.

Edit: Skipped track- It showed the "Title", "Album" & "Artist" on the iPod screen for a second or 2, but then it skipped through to the next playable track. So, for example, with tracks 9-11, each track showed on the screen in sequence, but a track did not play until it reached track 12.

Edit 2: Changing File name length fixed the skip with the "Single" mp3 track. The filename was 32 characters including (.mp3) the extension. So, filenames can only be 31 characters max. (27 name, 4 extension, including the dot).

Edit 3: After counting the characters of my other skipped files, they were all over the 31 character limit. Tomorrow morning I will shorten the names to 31 characters and resend, to test if they will play.

Not bat at all for an alpha version Here's one thing. Sorry, I'm dumb I wrote more before, but updated the post after reading the notes on the new help page.

Before trying foo_dop I've decided to use iPod Updater to completely erase everything and restore default settings. After doing so I tried to mount iPod using "Mount iPod" menu item but kept receiving an error saying "No iPod found". So I had to use some other software to load some music files to my iPod so that it would first create the neccessary folder structure, I believe. After that I could use the foo_dop plugin.

Using iPod Nano 2GB, Software Version: 1.1.1

Regards.

Hi, its kind of hinted at in the wiki page You need the iPod Updater installled, there's a link on the wiki page too. I will make it a more friendly error later.


You're correct, I was truncating 1 char less than I should have been. I fixed it in 0.1.8. Please test



Yes, known/intended for now. The component tries to find an iPod currently just by looking for the iTunesDB file.

I wanted to know really what state the iPod is after reseting it with the Updater.

I havn't tested foo_dop yet because I own a 5g ipod. But I know I had the same problem once in a while with foo_pod. It also skipped alot of files that apparently had to long filenames.

Hi musicmusic,

I can't get foobar to even start up (instant crash) with foo_dop 0.1.9 installed.

Edit: I tried again. This time a warning popped up that the crash was with foo_pqview.dll. Upon removing it, foobar opened as normal with foo_dop 0.1.9 installed.

Im not doing anything special at startup so I wouldn't imagine foo_dop should cause a crash there. Still I would look at any crashlog you have.

BTW I uploaded 0.2.0 to fix some bug in 0.1.9.

Versions 0.1.9 and 0.2.0 is still truncating filename length at 32 characters instead of 31. Other than that it is working great.

It was truncating to 33 characters before (which was wrong), I changed that to 32 which I thought was correct and does work on my iPod.

I changed it to 31 in 0.2.1 since you say 32 doesn't work, please try that.

The change to 31 in 0.2.1 did the trick. Thank you! :-) Everything is working & playing as expected. If I can find the windows crash report regarding foo_pqview.dll I will send it to you.

This seems to be a three way issue between foo_pqview, foo_browser and foo_dop. Any combination of two works fine, but add the third and foobar won't even startup. So, it is not just a foo_dop problem.

P.S. I can't find where Windows places that crash report. Now, I can't even reproduce the crash window. A click on the foobar icon just does nothing.

Sounds like its component load order related / race condition.

If it was a foobar2000 crashlog, it will be in %appdata%\foobar2000 if you enabled per-user settings, otherwise the foobar2000 program files directory.

If for some reason it was intercepted by Windows (Dr Watson), it would usually be logged in a log file in some hidden directory, usually "C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Microsoft\Dr Watson" (But you can check by running drwtsn32.exe). (I think it doesn't log it if its not the default debugger though.)

Is the newer iTunes database format known to you and, if so, will you utilise it in future?
I ask because I have a iPod Nano 10gb and would really like to use this plugin!

Your wiki states:
but it works fine with my shuffle Thanks, musicmusic!

Hi musicmusic,

The problem occurred on my work computer. At home, I have the same three plugins, and same versions running, and there are no problems whatsoever. So, it must be something particular to my work PC.

Last night, I deleted and sent over 350 files with version 0.2.1 and it worked flawlessly. Thank you very much for taking the time to create this plugin.

Well, yes and no to the first question. And yes to the second, Im adding support for it to the next version.

10GB iPod nanos? Since when

Well, I will be truthful I don't have a clue. I thought it uses some other database format, iTunesSD. But well glad it works for you

I think if it happened with any two of those three components loaded, it could be that the problem is actually in another component.

Your welcome

I'm quite interested in this plugin as the lack of foo_pod for version 0.9 has stopped me from upgrading from 0.8.3. One thing I would like to know is with regards to album art. All of my MP3's have embedded album art which is carried over to the iPod when I sync with ITunes but not when I use foo_pod. Will foo_dop allow the usage of the embedded album art on my iPod or would I have to stick to using ITunes to do my transfers?

Well sadly for me, your wiki is correct. It all works fine loading , deleting and playing files via foobar2000 but wont play via the headphones. All I get get green and yellow flashing lights -an error warning no doubt. Oh well, never mind. I should have checked this before I got over excited

Foobar2000 can't read embedded art for the time being, so the answer is probably stick with iTunes.

I'm having intermittent lock-ups while transferring songs to my iPod... not sure where the fault lies though. iTunes doesn't have this problem, nor does ephPod.

Also, having textual indicators of progress would be nice. Being able to see the filename of the song currently being transfered would help identify if there's progress still happening.

Sorry about the 10gb bit, must have stuck in my head from reading the previous posts. Anyway it's 4gb, and I'm absolutley thrilled you are going to support the newer db!

Need more info.

1. Define lock-up.
2. At what stage does it lock-up.
3. Get me the call stack of the foo_dop thread using Process Explorer and the latest version of foo_dop. (in process explorer, right click foobar2000 / properties / threads and double click a thread to see the stack, foo_dop one will be one of the foobar2000 entries, if you can't work it out copy all of the foobar2000 ones)

Also, the progress indicator moves after after each file is transfered anyway.

1. Lock-up as in it ceases to transfer files and the Abort button ceases to function (still depresses when clicked, but clicking does nothing).

2. It locks up while transferring files, like I said. I select the files in foobar, right click, and select iPod->Send to iPod. I'm not certain what other info to give. The progress dialog reads "Sending files to iPod...".

3. Hopefully, the correct information is below.

Is that really the latest version of foo_dop?

Will foo_dop eventually support Unicode as the vast majority of my music is in Japanese text. Just been having a play around with it as I decided to upgrade to foobar 0.9.2 today and so far, apart from it not moving my Japanese MP3's it's working great. Just wish it could carry over the embedded artwork but can't have everything I suppose

Well, of course it supports Unicode, the behaviour you describe is a bug.

The iPod will only play the file if its path and filename consists of ASCII chars only. After converting the filename to ASCII it ended up with some ?s in place of characters that couldn't be mapped to anything else, and of course those are not allowed in the filename so the copy operation failed.

I fixed the bug for the next version.

Ah, didn't realise it was a bug, and looking forward to the next release as this component will mean bye bye to ITunes for me

Ack, apparently I was still using 1.7. I thought I remembered upgrading. Will test and get back to you.

Sorry for the mistake.

0.2.2 TEST released. Super-experimental (more so than 0.2.1) and only for testing. It writes something more like an iTunes 4.9 database, somemore details in changelog.

BTW if anyone has a 5G (or otherwise), updated by iTunes, with any of the following:
* TV Shows with episode number/season number set
* Podcasts
* Something with chapter data (Podcasts?)

I wouldn't mind looking at your iTunesDB

I just tried rewriting my iPod 5G database (originally written with foo_pod, later maintained by iTunes latest version) using foo_dpo 0.2.2 TEST.

The good news:
- It worked.
- foo_dop did a better job than iTunes on some tags (tags from the latest foobar had a strange "blank" character at the end when uploaded with iTunes)
- Playcount and last played were preserved.
- Smart playlists were preserved.

The bad news:
- "Kind" is deleted from all files ("MPEG audio file" etc)
- Podcasts seemed to be converted into normal audio files.
- iTunes (for some strange reason) changed it's setting for maintaining podcasts to "Manual" instead of "Automatic"

Now, after that I tried syncing podcasts again with iTunes, and then adding some files with foo_dop. This worked perfectly with only one small problem: The podcast playlist (automatic itunes) is converted into a normal playlist and then when iTunes is started a new, smart one is created (resulting in two podcast playlist).

Anyway, I'm thrilled. I will start using foo_dop regularly to upload music to my iPod. If you want me to perform any more tests, tell me so here or on mail (i just sent you a mail with my iTunes DB).

Regards,
Magnus

Thank you very much for testing it

Actually that was kind of knowingly done - I didn't think the iPod displayed it anywhere. I fixed in 0.2.3 TEST. But it will write foobar2000 "codec" tech field + "file" for files sent using foo_dop.


I fixed a bug in 0.2.3 TEST which was the probable cause the first; and maybe the latter was caused by the first too.




Thanks for that and thanks for your detailed feedback

0.2.3 TEST

i am beside myself with excitement over this- i've been waiting to ditch iTunes for a while.

musicmusic- the website says that the 5G (video) isn't supported- is this in reference to videos or for the DB structure as a whole- i'm assuming that note is in reference to an older version of foo_dop and/or videos- given magnus' success...?

can i start to use this on my video ipod? (videos excluded)?

musicmusic, first of all thank you for the time you spend on writing this plugin! I have one question ony. I was wondering how soon do you think you can make it working for files with non-ASCII characters in their names. There's a lot of such files in my music library therefore I'm still forced to use this freaking iTunes. Thanks a lot.

Thanks for your time, musicmusic.

I have an "old" 20Gb click-wheel iPod and I'm currently using foo_pod (no iTunes, thanks). I'd like to test your plug-in but, before I do, I have a couple of questions, if you don't mind.

1. 99% of the work I need to do with my iPod is synching: I have a single PL in foobar that is "replicated" on the iPod and when I change it in foobar (adding, updating or removing songs) I simply "sync" it with foo_pod. Is this feature already implemented or are you planning to develop it in the future?

2. As I use foo_pod, I have not upgraded the firmware to the latest release: will this be a problem with foo_dop?

I look forward to trying your new toy!

Alessandro

The TEST version is the one that is aimed to work properly on a 5G. You can use it, if you're feeling brave. If there are no reported problems, it will replace the non-test-but-alpha version.

The only bug I know of like that was fixed in the TEST version if you want to try that one.


1. Sync is my main target to implement Its not implemented yet, but what I planned was sync with foobar2000's music library + selected playlists. I guess probably I could make the media library bit optional as well then.
2. It must be newer than the latest 3G firmware I think so I doubt it But generally I think later firmware is prefered (out of interest, what problem does that create with foo_pod?)

<quote>
1. Sync is my main target to implement Its not implemented yet, but what I planned was sync with foobar2000's music library + selected playlists. I guess probably I could make the media library bit optional as well then.
</quote>


isn't this already there in the "load library and playlists" option?

i took two new albums and "send to iPod" and it worked perfectly. if this is the case for all transfers, what is the "rewrite ipod database for"? didn't it do that automatically?

i guess i'm confused as to what some options are for if they are done automatically?

sorry for the questions.


the transfer i did (5G with the 2.3 TEST) worked perfectly.

Excellent. This seems to work now. "Kind" is not shown on the iPod but it is shown in iTunes and can be used in smart playlists (I think). For this reason it might be advantage if you used the same kinds as iTunes...

Video podcasts are still lost after a rebuild. The other podcasts work on the iPod, but when I syncronize with iTunes they are not recognized by iTunes as podcasts, and end up being re-copied to the iPod (duplicates).

The second problem mentioned above is no longer a problem.

I agree it would probably be more ideal. But the problem is I don't know all of the ones it uses
I know foo_pod seems to have used:
MP3: MPEG audio file
M4A (AAC): AAC audio file

I assume this is the same as iTunes? Also need to know what exactly is used for other types you might send through foobar (WAV, ALAC).

Ok thanks for testing that.

Using your database, I found a couple more bugs relating to this so hopefully the next build will clear those issues up.

Yes, it works just fine. Thank you! One thing I noticed is that non-ASCII characters are replaced with underscores when copied to iPod. Is it intended?

Yes The iPod only plays ASCII filenames (at least 3G). So if a character in the original filename doesn't map to anything in the ASCII char set then you get that. I agree if that's all the characters its somewhat stupid. But either way you're going to have a useless filename.

0.2.4 TEST released
I hope it fixes Podcast problems. But probably just introduced new problems

I was using 2.1, but it wouldn't transfer some files on my 3G (possiblely because they had an apostrophe). I updated to 2.4 Test and everything seems to work great.

Thanks for the plugin.

I'm pretty sure my 4G supports non-ascii characters, at least the europeanish ones. It correctly displays all the weird characters in Sigur Rós track names.

Edit: the Mount and Unmount commands used to work fine (I have iPodService installed, and am using firewire,) but now i get:

IDispatch error #56938 Code: -7FFB1F96

Edit: Just tested 0.2.4 on my 4G, seems to work fine, however it messes up the sort order (it's now purely alphabetical, it used to ignore 'The'. Perhaps once this component matures we could configure a custom formatting string for use in sorting the Artist/Albums/Tracks?

But that's not the filename, is it? The metadata is usually fine. (In fact, stored in Unicode).

However, one character that my iPod refuses to display in the ARTIST list is ý. I wonder if they fixed that in later models.

I have seen it do that once too, it seems to be slightly temperamental (I didn't change anything from the previous versions). My guess is it has something to do with whether iTunes is running. I have no idea what the error code means right know, because the iPodService uses its own error codes. I'll see if I can work it all out..

Known, mentioned someplace on wiki.

The sort strings I am using are:

If I make those strings user-configurable, there's some room for user error, since they have to follow a specific pattern. I guess putting it on the advanced prefs page would counter-act that Alternatively I could make each of those fields configurable (TITLE, ALBUM, ..) which would also eliminate that.

The other alternative is not writing the 'sort tables' at all, which seems to give back the normal ordering, but that make browsing the library super-slow (on my 3G at least).

Sorry, mustn't have read the previous post properly



Advanced prefs page sounds like a good idea; at least then users can have a fiddle and restore the defaults if they break something.

Also, for the soundcheck values, is album or track gain used? Perhaps this could be user configurable, as well as a replaygain 'preamp' value for those with volume limited (european) iPods.

WAV: WAV audio file
MP3: MPEG audio file
ALAC: Apple Lossless audio file
AAC: AAC audio file

Note that both ALAC and AAC files created with iTunes use the file extension .m4a.

Now, if movies should be of any interest, I'll list those as well:
MOV: QuickTime movie file
MP4: MPEG-4 video file
(Irritating that they use both "movie" and "video", complicating smart playlists based on Kind).


I did a new "Rewrite database" with 0.2.4 TEST, and it works very well. Podcasts are kept, both audio and video versions. The only oddity I experienced now was that a WAV file (the only one I had) lost all its tags and got the name "BWAB" after foo_dop wrote the database.

Keep up the good work, musicmusic! This is exciting.


I really hope Album gain is preferred over track gain. Anyway, David, if you have a volume limited iPod, I really recommend you the program goPod, downloadable for free here. It is dead simple to use and requires no installation (i.e. you can run it off your iPod). The only disadvantage is that you have to re-run the program every time you upgrade your firmware. That will set you back approximately 15 seconds every four months .


Regards,
Magnus

My bad, I found the definition to the error codes. Yours is:
kErriPodHandle = -2147164054,
Which indicates I had a bad "handle" to the iPod. Given the fact I obtain the handle the line before, something else is happening in between.

Did you do something like pull out the iPod before it finished unmounting? In fact that's the only time I ever saw an error so far, but I didn't note down the code.

Awnser in wiki (Album used if present otherwise track gain)

I'll add the latter at some point, but not for that reason

Excellent, thank you very much for that list

Phew I was running out of ideas

Idea of "rewrite database" is to rewrite database using tags as read by foobar2000. Of course, foobar2000 doesn't read any tags from WAV files, so foobar reports no metadata in the file. So the component puts the filename as the TITLE as you saw. In fact, using the filename like that is a bad idea if the file is on the iPod, it was intended for files on the computer, so I will change that.

I can add a special case for WAV files so it leaves existing metadata for such entries in the database untouched.

Thanks