Scrobbing iPods using the Last.FM application requires an iTunes installation and requires your iPod be automatically managed by iTunes. No thanks...

I'll send the data you requested after work, musicmusic...

I have no iTunes and everything goes ok. What am I doing wrong?

Last.FM clearly states the presence of iTunes installed on the computer inorder to scrobble iPods.

So...errr what are you doing?

Now I'm confused. I'm plugging my iPod and that's all 0.o

I would be very pleased if album arts which don't have a proportion of 160x160 pixel (which are not quadratic) were filled up with transparent or white pixels (center).

I'm looking forward to hearing from the developer.

Best regards,
qwerty85

Source filenames
File Names : 01 - A Necessary End.mp3, 02 - Giving In.mp3, 03 - Remember Me_.mp3, 04 - A Simple Test.mp3, 05 - A Hair On The Head Of John The Baptist.mp3

Destination filenames (Properties doesn't open due to the following error)
Could not load info (Unsupported file format) from:
"F:\iPod_Control\Music\F15\(0)."
Could not load info (Unsupported file format) from:
"F:\iPod_Control\Music\F31\(0)."
Could not load info (Unsupported file format) from:
"F:\iPod_Control\Music\F63\(0)."
Could not load info (Unsupported file format) from:
"F:\iPod_Control\Music\F79\(0)."
Could not load info (Unsupported file format) from:
"F:\iPod_Control\Music\F87\(0)."

Does this only affect some files and can you reliably reproduce this? If so I will make a version with some debug output to find out wtf is going on..

It actually occurs on ALL music I import to my classic.
Tried and Tested on two machines. My XP x86 laptop and my XP x64 desktop. Both have the same results.

And yes, I can VERY reliably reproduce this since I have yet to transfer a working file to my iPod.

Please note that the files are totally unreadable. Attempting to delete or copy the file in explorer results in a file not found error.

Hmm I just sent you a message

It seems like at some point it is losing the filename, though why is the question. BTW: the "number of extra filename characters" settings on the advanced prefs page/tools/ipod manager is at the default value of 4, correct?

BTW if you want to get rid of these files, using 'file/ipod/load library' in foobar2000 then 'ipod/remove from ipod' in the context menu should work.

"number of extra filename characters" is still set to the, untouched value of, 4.

Thanks for the log.

Basically, it is what I suspected: the codepage conversion from utf-8 to ascii of the filename is failing and instead blanking out the filename. The actual conversion code is part of the foobar2000 SDK, but that uses Win32 API.

What operating system are you running? I will send you another version in a bit with that code on my side and some debug logging.

Fixed it.
Since you mentioned codepages, I decided to drop by my Regional and Language options. Went to the advanced tab and noticed US-ASCII was un-ticked. Upon ticking and applying then transferring some music across...My music is now stored correctly and plays..

Yay!
Strange how both my computers has both them disabled...

Thanks for your help.

OK... Indeed, that is the used code page..

It is slightly annoying that it is possible to remove that codepage and break the conversion

I guess I will just call the relevant Win32 API directly so I can add some error checking.

In any case, thanks for tracking that down, glad it works now

OK noted.

If it wasn't you it could have been something like nLite.

Is there a way to get this to work on an ipod (video 5g) running Rockbox?

Is there a reason to use iTunesDB support component with Rockbox? foo_fileops is enough.

I've just made the jump to foobar and rockbox (from itunes), so I'm a little slow. thanks!

I have the latest plugin installed. I can't seem to find the "Ignore leading The when sorting" option. All my 'The' artists are grouped together (they were fine until I started using foo_dop ).

Edit: Nevermind, I see that it has been taken out. I don't suppose there is any way to change it back to the old sorting scheme?

Hi, I just bought an iPod Classic, and I'd really like to be able to use only foobar to manage all my music. So here are some questions that I had in regards to using dop_pod. Thanks!

1) I really don't want to use iTunes, so I'm assuming I'll be working with dop_pod. How do I transfer my ratings over? I've used the 2nd gen iPods with dop_pod, but my ratings were not transfer over when I transfered the music.
2) I use autoplaylist with my ratings, so that I have different playlists based on my ratings. Let's say all of my slow songs are 5 stars, and there's a "slow songs" playlist that I transfer to my iPod. If I rate a song on the iPod with 5 stars, will the song be added to the "slow songs" playlist automatically on the iPod?
3) Let's say that I rate certain songs with my iPod, is it possible to transfer the ratings of the songs onto my computer?
4) When I used my 2nd iPod with foobar, I couldn't make use of the "album artist" tag. If I had a soundtrack, the songs would be listed under each individual artist. I'd like it to have the album under the album artist, and then the songs under the album. That way all I don't have a bunch of artists with only one song.

You mean the songs under the track artist.

I'm pretty sure db78 means Album Artist.

This is a slight annoyance I have with my ipod as well. I tag for instance soundtracks with an Album artist as 'soundtracks'. i think it would be nice to have 'soundtracks' show up under artist view, instead of each song showing up under each artist (where you end up with a bunch of artists with one track).

its not a huge deal to me but it is something i wonder about.

Yeah, I do mean Album Artist. I know I can use iTunes and check it under as Compilation, but I'd like ot be able to make use of the Album Artist tag, rather than just have all soundtracks list under Compilation.

Hi,
Yes the option will return, should be in next version.


1. The ratings are transferred to your ipod via the RATING field with values from 0-5.
2. No. You need to create a live 'Smart Playlist' on your iPod. But, bear in mind ratings are not transferred back to your local files currently.
3. See 2.
4. See below.
5. dop_pod !? How did you come up with that...


I will add a mapping for compilation most likely for next version.

Hmm I have no idea how I got dop_pod..LOL

I'd really like a mapping for ratings. I use a 1-10 scale in foobar, so itd be nice if I could convert this before sending it to the ipod.

just put your folders on your rockbox(ipods) hard drive (drag & drop or send to) then use dop to add them to the library. that way you have a rockbox library & a ipod library. so u can switch between both

i use foo_dop for managing the music on my ipod (5G)

but i also still use iTunes for videos.

my question: every time use foo_dop to add music w/ album art, and then after i use iTunes to add videos, when i play music i added with foo_dop, the album art goes completely black. is there some kind of problem using foo_dop and iTunes?

I usually just going back into iTunes and erase the art on the ipod that was black, and then proceed to embed the art on the ipod. This works but is very tedious, and i'd like to be able to just add my music and listen

It has been requested before. But noted.

Basically, once you use it to make a change to your iPod, iTunes will go and reread all of the metadata and that seems to include artwork to some extent. I have seen it remove the artwork, but not set it to black. I'll check that, but any reason you don't use foo_dop to send video?

BTW foo_dop 0.5.2 TEST released. Not important yet, but for future reference you can flush the recent play counts from the iPod manually using the 'Rewrite iPod database' command.

One thing: under the 'Database' part of the preferences page, the text at the bottom reads: "Database settings a rewrite of...".
Shouldn't it be: "Database settings require a rewrite of..."?

I see you have completed the API you had mentioned. Congrats, certainly made me a happy bunny scrobbling my iPod, thanks.

Ooops I'll change it for next release.

Yes Special thanks to Florian for implementing support for it in foo_audioscrobbler and his helpfulness in testing the API

Just a few notes:
-Make sure you are using foo_dop 0.5.3 or newer.
-The recent plays will be scrobbled when foo_dop flushes the recent plays from the iPod. This happens whenever foo_dop makes a change to the iPod (you can do it manually via the 'Rewrite iPod database' command). So if you let another application modify your iPod it will probably flush the recent plays itself and so they won't be scrobbled by foo_audioscrobbler (so flush them via foo_dop first).

I just started using the synchronize feature and Im a little confused about how it works. I have an ipod playlist which I keep filled with anything I want on the ipod, and this is what I use to sync. First, I synced that playlist with my ipod. Then I added a few files to the playlist, and resynced. Instead of simply adding the new files, dop seemed to delete all of the existing songs on the ipod and then re-add everything. Shouldnt it detect the songs that already exist and just update changed tags and add anything new? Also, if I choose the "send to ipod" option, does it detect if the selected file(s) already exist and skip any that are there, or does it simply add them without checking?

I couldn't find the changelog of the 0.5.3 TEST release.
Do we already have the filling of a non-quadratic album art with transparent pixels?

Best regards,
qwerty85

If they were removed and recopied from the iPod they must have been modified at some point.

Latter.


Sorry, it was just some API fixes. No, I haven't made any changes yet. But I checked my code, it should be preserving the AR/centering already. It seems there was a bug which would cause some black bars though when displayed on the iPod. That should be corrected for the next build. Though, the fix for that made my Classic crop the image, but that is probably due to the funky way it displays them, I don't think other models will do that.

Regarding the first answer, no, none of the files were changed except for a few new files. I'll try syncing them again and see if it does the same thing, but I can't think of anything that could have modified every single one of those files.

As for the second answer, would it be possible to make a "Send to ipod if modified" which would check before sending each song to the ipod?

Do you write play counts to the files? Anyway, you can check the the last modified times of the files in question.

I will probably just add better duplicate handling to the existing command at some point.

Hello,

sorry for being so annoying, but do you mean to publish a new release (with the fixed album art function) still in 2007?

Best regards,
qwerty85

I'm a new user of foo_dop and I really enjoy using it!

However, I think the process of sending files to the iPod can be improved. Currently, the progress bar that is shown while sending files to the iPod gives no indication about the current state of the operation. Since it is very hard to predict any ETA (especially when files are converted during copying) it would be nice to see at least some status information on the console that gives some indication to the user.

Thanks musicmusic for this nice and useful component!

First, want to say thanks a lot for the DB and for getting the foo_audioscrobbler author to support it. Had been using a third party program for that when I remembered to, having it done automatically now whenever I transfer songs makes it much better. Much appreciate it and all the other work you've put into this plugin.

Now, a couple questions:
Currently there's no support for doing replaygain when autoconverting files. Is this something you have planned at all? Currently I'm converting manually and replaygain scanning before sending to iPod, but it would be great if it could be fixed to do it for me.

Second, there's an issue that's been bugging me for a while with smart playlists and the "load library and playlists" menu option. I use a lot of smart playlists that are based off time - "50 most played songs in the last 1 month", "50 most played songs in the last 3 months", "songs played in the last 7 days", etc. When I load the playlists in foobar they seem to be a cached version. Judging from the contents I think it's from the last time I actually used iTunes to send something to my iPod. When using the playlists on my iPod they all work correctly, but in foobar they just seem to be some old cached copy instead of being calculated. Is there something I'm doing wrong, is it a bug, or is it just not supported?

Probably.
Hi!

I could change it so e.g. the copying files step is displayed as 'Copying files (i of n processed) ...'. I would like to keep information useful rather than to give useless/irrelevant details. What I dislike about '(i of n processed)' on each subtask is that it isn't actually that useful for measuring overall progress, as it would start again on the next sub task. The progress meter does move for each file copied, so that should in theory give a good impression of the length of the operation (but see below).

It would be too much info in console if a message was added for each file copied.

Basically, I think I will
-Weight the subtasks properly in the progress meter. Each group of subtasks currently has the same space allocated which is wrong/misleading etc.
-Either change the statuses to be in this format: 'Copying n files...' or put that info in the console.

Of course, a estimated remaining time would be great but yes it's difficult to implement properly. I'll possibly come back to that later.


Welcome
Welcome

I also want that feature, however the problem is the lack of any proper replaygain API. I can essentially run the menu command on my side to do the scan, but that will possibly trigger popup dialogs (as well as secondary progress dialogs though there are already a few of those) and some other inefficiencies. The main issue is those user prompts that may appear though.

The good news is that if you let foo_dop convert the files itself, and manually replaygain scan the copies on your iPod those files will not be recopied on next sync (unless the local copy was modified). You can use the 'Update metadata in ipod library' command to update the soundcheck values in the database after the manual replaygain scan. (Of course if you're regularly sending files that need to be converted it's a bit tedious)

It's a bit of a quirk. Basically, for 'Live-updating' smart playlist the iPod dynamically generates content for the playlist (which you only see on your iPod). The smart playlists also have associated 'static' items which I guess are only of use (on the ipod itself) with 'Live-updating' disabled. iTunes updates those static entries whenever you use it (by basically applying the smart playlist rules to the ipod library) but foo_dop does not (I think you can imagine writing handlers to apply all of those specific rules would be pretty complicated)

OK, it's complicated but I'm not sure I actually fixed anything.

It would be helpful if you could tell me:
-What iPod model you currently have
-What behaviour you are currently seeing

I'm just started to use foo_dop yesterday and even tried to sync my 5xx albums into my iPod. Everything works fine except the album artwork. I'm sure that I had embedded the artwork into my MP3 directly but still, the plugin doesn't seem to copy the artwork into the ipod artwork database though. Only 3 out of 5xx of my synchronized album displayed the artwork.

Any updates?

AFAIK, the component doesn't add embedded artwork - only a "folder.jpg" stored in the same folder as the songs from the album.

Exactly. You can use a user-defined action in MP3Tag to extract all embedded artwork to folder.jpg files, for example.

I own an iPod of the fifth generation (30gb). With album arts that are quadratic there's no problem. With album arts that aren't quadratic (for example 160x158 pixels) there's a problem: The two missing pixels (to fill up the image to a quadrat) are black/dark. With album arts that have a resolution of 160x135 pixels (for example the cover of a single) there's no problem at all.

Best regards,
qwerty85

Thanks for the reply. Btw, will this plugin caused any PERMANENT DAMAGE to my iPod Classic 6G? Just curious and wonder should I just use iTunes or foobar2k.

The fact is, after I had added my music (1xxxx) songs to iTunes library, iTunes automatically fill in the 'Comment' tab with numbers, eg: 1000dx0c030..... My thought will be, that number indicates iTunes normalize volume details? It's kinda weird as it totally mess up my Comment idTag.

Besides, I had issues after I had added those songs to iTunes. It delete the cover art embedded inside the mp3 files. Whenever I click a particular album, it only shows a BLANK WHITE image instead of the cover art itself. Foobar2k wouldn't have such issues, would it?

Not only that, iTunes aren't able to read the track title correctly. Eg: A song had tagged with title 'A Dreadful Night'. When displayed in foobar2k, the title column just displayed the title, which is 'A Dreadful Night'. However, when displayed in iTunes, it showed up as 'Album name - Artist name - A Dreadful Night'. After I click and play the song, then only the title changed back to 'A Dreadful Night' (notice that the album-artist name had gone)

In my opinion, I didn't think iTunes had improved much, especially it's music library. Hopefully my choice to use foobar2k + foo_dop will be a wise choice. Just crossing my finger for foo_dop next updates. (stable update )

Two questions from new foo_dop user (not that new user of foobar itself):

1. Are there any plans to use foo_converter to convert files instead of own implementation? Own implementation looks pretty bare - e.g. no support for presets and simultaneous encoding. And rather then re-invent wheel, isn't it better to use existing piece of code? That's a good dream of code reusability.
2. Is there any existing nice-looking foobar preset with foo_dop? I want to upload one on my iPod nano to be able work with it on machines that do not have iTunes/foobar2000 installed. That is smth. like a "portable foodop". By nice-looking I mean user-friendliness in the first place - like all foo_dop commands put as buttons on UI to be accessible in one cllick, etc.

first of all: thanks for this great plugin it works very well on my ipod classic

but i have two little problems: i have synched my ipod with my media library and i have now added covers to some albums that didn't have one and i have also downloaded some better covers for albums that already had one.
is there a way to automatically update the new and changed covers or do i have to manually delete and send those albums again?

and the other problem: i have sent two videos from two different folders with each different folder.jpgs as thumbs to the ipod, but when i browse them on my ipod they both have the same thumbnail.

Directly - it's not really possible. I have not seen any issues but worst case is using disk mode on your iPod and restoring it.

It uses one for SoundCheck data and one for gapless data as far as I know, but I think the latter will only turn up in iTunes encoded files.

Sounds like id3 mess. I think foobar preserves album art these days but I'm not sure.

Possibly multiple tags with different values in the file, or maybe that was the filename ?

Well if it is not you can always switch back to iTunes...

What are you looking for in the updates ?

Well, it's not possible because there is no API for foo_converter. (Even if there was, I don't see any APIs in foobar2000 SDK with custom progress hooks so say hello to double progress dialogs) Converting multiple files simultaneously is not exactly related to this either.

I don't know of any, sorry.

You can add new covers by using the 'update metadata in iPod library' command on files listed by 'load library' but it's not possible to update covers already added currently.

It's related to sparse artwork on the new iPods, my handling of that falls over due to lack of metadata I guess, I'll fix that. Thanks for reporting.

thanks for your reply. concerning the updated covers: will future versions be able the identify updated albumart and replace it? it's not really urgent, but it would be nice