poke poke, download linky broken?

Musicmusic - can I make a feature request please..
1) More feedback to user when sync'ing/uploading files to ipod - on the progress meter can we have more information regarding which track is currently being processed and how many are queued
e.g. "Muse - Origin Of Symmetry - Bliss.flac - copying 5 of 1267"

I ask this because sometimes its useful to know how long transfer is likely to take and also Nero has crashed during conversion of a couple of files and I am unable to work out which one was causing the error in order to remove.

Also - a quick question, if the sync process is cancelled partway - some files have been uploaded but the ipod database not updated. Are the files left on the ipod or do they get removed on next sync process? I'm concerned that this might mean I have lots of music files on the ipod that are using up space but not accessible through the ipod and in most cases duped.

Hi, there is limited space there and I can't change the layout since the dialog is provided by the foobar2000 core. I could squeeze the filename in, but not "x of n" as that's what the progress meter is for and it would be possibly confusing because of the several processes that actually occur. Still though I'm not convinced knowing the file that is currently being copied is particularly useful (see next answer with regard to encoder crashing) but I'll probably add it.

I take it you are referring to the Nero Digital encoder? I think its pretty strange that would crash, I'm using it for my transcoding also. It could be my bug so I would be interested in the outcome of that. What I will also do is look into using the process exit code to determine if the transcode was successful; if not clean-up and add an entry to the error log displayed at the end of the process (which would identify file that failed).


This is what currently happens:
-The new files copied are deleted
-The iPod DB remains unchanged. So the files that were identified to be removed as part of the sync process will still be in the iPod's DB.

Now that is not optimal and is something I do want to change. What I would like it do behave like is:
-Stop the process and update the iPod DB for what has already occurred in the process.
Although that still isn't great, as copying files, adding artwork, and scanning gapless data are separate processes. So you could end up without artwork on new tracks or only half of the new tracks with artwork.

The other thing I will point out is that it is not an 'Cancel' button; usually cancel would imply reverting to the state before the process started.

In the future maybe I will add some commands to look for orphaned and/or missing files to deal with any mess on your iPod.



BTW if anyone who knows would like to explain to me how to calculate the encoder delay and encoder padding values for a Nero Digital Audio MP4 file I would be pretty grateful. I had a good look around in my files but wasn't sure which values in the files are actually used to calculate these, and didn't find anything conclusive on the internet either.

Next version of foo_dop has gapless support for iTunes MP4/M4A AAC files so it would be great to add support for Nero files too.

This is amazing, thank you!!!

it would be great if you did custom mapping for ratings and lyrics. Ratings, especially, because I use a 0-10 scale in foobar, and would need to use some formatting code to make it translate to the ipod.

I have a feeling it is due to my slight overclock on my PC - its a memory error. I thought it might have been a tag issue since it was the same files. Just reduced the overclock and it transferred the errored files - it is producing a window at the end with gapless errors though for my M4A files.

I will consider a rating mapping.
For lyrics, this has been discussed a few times already; the iPod reads the lyrics direct from the file's tags. You could put in a request for foobar2000 to map id3v2 ULT/USLT to LYRICS instead of UNSYNCED LYRICS if you want things less messy.

Yes, that's just a warning and to be expected. Current version doesn't support gapless data for MP4 files and so it's just letting you know that those files won't play gapless. I'll replace that dialog with a better one at some point.

I have png files and jpg files as artwork. How do I add support for both? I want foo_dop to pick up the first valid filename out of a list...

For example, my foo_title string:


... is separated by semicolons. Can I do this?

foo_title is extension agnostic, so for other extensions I've had to double the number of criteria (one each for PNG and JPG). Also there is facility for "no album art".

EDIT***

Figured out to do it with cwb_hooks. Posting it here for others' benefit. All my album art shows up now from my ginormous sync.

I've added linefeeds so it's easier to read...


Really have to complement musicmusic's hard work on this extension. It proves how foobar really goes beyond anything else available for music on a PC (and now beyond...)

Thx

I think we can all agree that iTunes sucks

... but playing a file in iTunes seems to wipe out its album art (put there by foo_dop) on the iPod subsequently. Also, the album art I see on my iPod is not present in iTunes. Anyone else experience this?

BTW, iTunes has this annoying popup @ startup about Artwork which I hit Cancel on. I have unchecked "download album art automatically"

Thx

Another question. I have a few mp4 music files. These show up as videos in the iPod. Is the header or something incorrect in these files? Anyone seen this behavior?

Thx

You can rename MP4 files with audio only to M4A instead... hopefully they won't be processed as a video then.

Yes it looks in the files for a track with a video header. I don't know why your files have those, what made them?

You can override this by changing extension to M4A or adding a MEDIA KIND field with value music.


The removal of the artwork is for a similar reason to the fact that the metadata in the database changes. You don't see the artwork in iTunes because (I guess) it looks in the tags and its own artwork database.

Make sure your iPod is on Manually managed mode for songs.

musicmusic, Pokeparadox,

Thx for your answers!

Am I doing something wrong here? Any smallest changes I want to make (i.e. sending a few new tracks via "Send playlists") seem to provoke a full scan of all the mp3 on my iPod, and it takes forever to scan a 60G ipod! It is the expected behavior?

Edit: never mind... I should not keep deleting the playlist "iPod Media Library"!

Is there any easy way to display the remaining space on ipod? My ipod is always at "danger zone"; it would be very helpful if I know how much space is left before I add new stuff or delete old stuff.

Also, an aside, since this probably has nothing to do with foo_dop. Is there any easy way to display the size of the selected song and current playlist? I'm currently looking at Properties and trying to make sense of the size there (quoted in bytes...)

Had a couple questions about ALBUM ARTIST
* Does foo_dop pick up ALBUM ARTIST like iTunes would pick up BAND? I am actually just wondering if anyone knows what iTunes typically considers ALBUM ARTIST
* Is it possible to add custom mapping for album artist so that we do something like: if album artist is missing then use artist

Thx!

It shouldn't make a difference if you remove that playlist (though I know how it could). What version are you using? Try the latest if not already.

foo_dop doesn't show that anywhere currently. I would recommend checking you have enough free space before running commands on your iPod also.

It transfers the ALBUM ARTIST field onto the iPod. I don't know if or how the iPod uses it, or if it is displayed anywhere on the iPod. So I can't say if it makes any sense to have a mapping for it.

Note that there is a separate compilation field on the iPod, foo_dop doesn't do anything with that. A remapping for that could make sense but again I'll need to check what the iPod actually does with the field.

I'm using the latest version. It seems that foo_dop needs at least one full scan before everything can work. I did not try to delete "ipod media library" to see if foo_dop would work without it since I don't want to risk a full scan...


Can foo_dop give a warning if the files to be send to ipod are larger than the space left in ipod? I hope it is not difficult to implement.

Thanks for this awesome component!

About "Album Artist":

Info from: http://www.tunequest.org/new-to-itunes-alb...rtist/20060912/


More info here: http://www.tunequest.org/compilations-cove...rtist/20061006/

Also... this is what I believe Album Artist does in the "Albums" submenu (note: Not the "Artists" submenu):
So if two albums have the SAME name, they will be treated as different albums only if they both have different album artists... for example, at the moment, I have two albums called "Closer". One is a soundtrack, AA = Various Artists, another is by Better than ezra, but I am not using the AA field... both are lumped into "Closer" (a single entry) under "Albums"...

anyone else familiar with this behavior?

Thx

As an aside, if the mp3 file has ID3V2 tags Album Artist "Artist" and Artist "Various" then iTunes will display the Artist correctly on a compilation disc ie, Album Artist has priority over Artist if the AA tag is present.

Do you know how to mark an album as a compilation in foobar? What's the tag i should use?

Thx

The answer is...I don't know how one would mark an album as a comp in Foobar. Apologies for not being helpful.

I'm using the "Synchronise iPod..." feature and selecting a playlist that contains a subset of my media library (the whole thing would be too big to fit on my iPod). But when I remove songs from this playlist in fb2k and synchronize again, the removed songs are still present on my iPod. These isn't exactly how I would expect a "synchronization" to behave. Am I doing something wrong?

wow, i must say, i have converted 2 more people from itunes to foobar mainly because of this plugin!

I would double check the songs are not in any of the playlists you are syncing with, and the media library if you ticked that.

Hey musicmusic-- I'm wondering if it's possible to make data from foo_cwb_hooks available to this component? I'd like to use the system year and month in the genre mapping field, to have browsable added-by months. Thanks.

There's some technical/design reasons they aren't available, but anyway the mappings are also used at times other than sending files to the iPod.

The date added is stored in the iPod database, and you can create some smart playlists (using iTunes) around it if you wish.

is it possible to further improve an ipod shuffle's support? There are some disturbing song order issues (the song order appears to be strictly linked to order you send them to ipod's memory)....

Hi, I may revisit it in the future, but not at the moment. Please see release notes for list of known shuffle issues.

I'm working on a smart playlist editor for next version. Its unfortunately complex business however..

0.4.6 TEST released. Its the first version to parse smart playlists and support editing them so it is marked experimental (so making a backup of iTunesDB is a good idea as usual). See changelog and notes page for details.

To create or edit a smart playlist run the "File/iPod/Browse iPod" command. Then just right click in the playlist list. Finally click "Close and save" to save changes.

This update works on an early iPod Photo 60GB.
Fantastic stuff.
One bug - from Foobar File | iPod | Load library and playlists returns the smart playlists as empty in Foobar although they are populated correctly on the iPod.

Hi,
yes this is just related to live updating. foo_dop doesn't update/populate the playlists (there's a message if you try and disable live updating) so they will stay like that when viewed in foo_dop. It would be some task to populate the playlists on my side (i.e. actually apply the rules to the iPod library), and it doesn't seem worthwhile if the iPod's gonna do it for me... I do wonder if older models support live updating though.

No worries

Hi, foo_dop seems not able to recognize ipod when ipod is in emergency disk mode. I don't know if ipods use a different identification id when in emergency disk mode and normal mode, but if there is too much work to recognize ipod when in emergency disk mode, a simple find folder dialog to tell foo_dop the path of the supposed ipod drive letter will be nice.

Hi everybody! As almost everybody here I hate iTunes and love Foobar. To avoid iTunes, I'm using rockbox in my ipod video 80 gb and It is great! I always have my portable foobar and my library with me on mi iPod when i'm on a desktop, and Rockbox when i'm away (exactly the same database, names, dirs, etc... no problems at all).

But a couple of days ago, I did something wrong and damage the rockbox files. As I was at home, I just reinstall it, and everything worked ok again. But I was wonder... If i'm on the way, and this happend again, I will not be able to acces my music from the original firmware...

As I read, this pluging can generate am iTunes database with my music in my own order... is that true? or will I have duplicates entries (one with the real name and other with the DFAS names)? Can that database be read by the original iPod firmware?

By the way, some of my songs have more than 57 chars in the path... is this still a problem as I read in the wiki?

THanks for your help and I hope this is what I was looking for!

Hi, my 5.5G is recognised over USB in disk mode. Are you over USB or firewire?

I think you can appreciate disk mode isn't exactly for transferring songs to your iPod. However I may be able to add support for it, I just need to know how your iPod identifies itself. Can you tell me the model & connection type first?

Hi,
Some iPod firmwares will refuse to play files unless they are in a certain folder, and some also have a limit on the path length as you have described. foo_dop enforces the path length limit.

You can add files on the iPod to the iPod database by simply using the send files to iPod command.

Hi musicmusic. Just dropping by to say thanks for adding support for smart playlists, and that everything is working well with my 5.5 model.


By the way, field remapping enabled something I've wanted on my iPod for quite a long time: shuffle artists. I couldn't be more pleased with that.

Best,
M.

I have a 5th gen, 60 GB ipod and am connecting with USB. I'm mainly using rockbox (but still keeping the original firmware), and rockbox shove ipod into emergency disk mode when connected. Since the emergency disk mode is Apple's software, I hope rockbox is not causing the problem.

Thanks

There's two things you can do:
-Try putting it into disk mode manually: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=93651
-Get me the VID/PID when its in disk mode (and not working). To do this fire up Device manager, change the view to "device by connection", navigate to your ipod (it will be under something like ACPI PC/ACPI system/PCI Bus/USB controller. Parent to your iPod will be "USB Mass Storage Device". Double click that and go over to the details page. Paste the "Device Instance Path" property here (I think it's called "Device Instance Id" on XP).

The device instance ID is
USB\VID_05AC&PID_1209\000A270014E35DBO

not quite sure if the last character is O or 0

Thanks

Yes that's completely normal. Can't really see any good reason it shouldn't be detected with that info (especially if the layout was like I described - i.e. USB Mass Storage Device / Apple iPod USB Device).

So it is working when not in disk mode (i.e. from Apple firmware)?

Also bear in mind foo_dop watches for iPod connections/disconnections in the background. It won't find an iPod until it gets the notification from Windows that the iPod's volume has been mounted, sometimes there can be several seconds delay from when you physically connect the iPod. You can force foo_dop to rescan drives by restarting foobar2000. If that works I may have some ideas as to what's going wrong.

After re-starting foobar, foo_dop successfully recognizes the ipod. In fact, it now works as expected even after I mount/dismount ipod again. Weird... I'm positive that before foo_dop does not recognize my ipod even long after I mounted it; don't know if the problem has to do with me leaving foobar (and my computer) on for a long, long time. Also, Windows itself takes a long time to recognize my ipod in emergency disk mode (takes about a minute or so, while with other usb devices, including ipod in the normal Apple firmware, it usually takes only seconds), so that may be part of the problem.

Thanks

Hi, maybe, I don't know. Maybe it was never fully recognised (i.e. volume mounted) by Windows? I think its not so important though now anyway.

My iPod is recognised at normal speed in disk mode so I don't know why yours takes so long (lots of factors - could be iPod/USB controller/OS..). You could check in Event viewer if there's any messages in there about it.

It is not working again... My ipod drive is shown in My Computer, but foo_dop reports that ipod is not found. I looked the event log, but there is nothing useful or informative. This is totally weird... At least I can always restart foobar and make it work.

OK well then well there are three possible things happening:

-I'm not getting the notification of the new volume
-There is a timing problem (I'm getting the notification before the new volume is available for use)
-The flags in the notification aren't the ones I'm expecting.

So I made a special version for you which I'm about to send you a link to. With this it will log the device arrival and removal notifications in the foobar2000 console (View/Console).

So do this with it:
-Start foobar2000 and open the console.
-Connect your iPod.
-Wait until its visible in My Computer and some seconds longer
-Check if its working in foo_dop. If not paste the Console messages here. Also tell me the drive letter your iPod was mounted at.

There is nothing in the console when it does not work (i.e. ipod shows up at My Computer but not at foo_dop). But when it works, after I restarted foobar, the console says

Startup time : 0:02.844061
Drive is not expected type or GetVolumeNameForVolumeMountPoint failed. Drive: C
Drive is not expected type or GetVolumeNameForVolumeMountPoint failed. Drive: D
Drive is not expected type or GetVolumeNameForVolumeMountPoint failed. Drive: E
Drive is not expected type or GetVolumeNameForVolumeMountPoint failed. Drive: F
New iPod detected. Drive: P Device Instance ID: USB\VID_05AC&PID_1209\000A270014E35DB0
DBT_DEVICEREMOVECOMPLETE: type: 2
volume details: mask: 00008000 flags: 0

Ok.

So if there's no DBT_DEVICEARRIVAL message when it doesn't work it means I'm not getting the notification at all. I can't fix that but I would suggest it's maybe related to the slowness you are experiencing.

My original thought is to have the user enter the drive manually, but restarting foobar to make it work is not a bad option.

Thanks

hey music music > got an ipod shuffle today > installed itunes > setup the shuffle uninstalled itunes and now use foo_dop without any issues what so ever. what a great easy to use component > thanks for your hard work

running 0.4.6 TEST with ipod shuffle > used itunes 7.3.1 with latets firmware

iPhone support?

http://modmyiphone.com/forums/showthread.php?t=3232