Hi again everybody!

Well, I think this is more requests than questions, but, anyway, I just want to know if it is possible.

I'm trying to free mi ipod from any pc. Actually, I have my music in a portable HD as a backup, and I have foobar in this HD. I use to sync my ipod with this database. But what I want is to be able to use my ipod as my main music database and have my HD just as a backup. It is not problem at all in use Foobar2000 directly from my ipod, but there are two small things that I think are gonna make this more like my HD experience.

First: There is no a way to retrieve back the artwork from the ipod to foobar. I can't see any of mi artwork in foobar, so, I don't know if an album already has artwork or not without seeing directly in the ipod. Actually, I see that floola can do that (that's the reason it is still in my ipod) So I wonder.... ¿Why foo_dop can't? this wolud be a great feature.

The other one is the time that foobar takes to retrieve the ipod database. I know this depends of the number of files you have, but I was thinking that it would be great that foo_dop give us the option to save a "pseudo-media library" (I mean, a playlist ) that will load faster than the database, and I can recreate, or update any time I read the database from ipod. Actually I do this by hand, but, well, I lose nothing asking for this

thanks for this wonderful plug in and regards!

musicmusic - great plugin, great updates Thank You!

Here are couple of suggestions:
- Could the playlist created by "Load library" be sorted? Now it seems to be in dates order, that may be useful in some cases but I find myself always sorting it by general string so albums are grouped.
- I think there should be info about doing transcode from lossy source, perhaps it could be presented the same way as when gapless info cant be determined?
- As stated above by Adi Corrales finding missing covers isnt easy. Maybe give that information in similar way to new playcount plugin so it will be possible to use it in tagz for custom columns?
- I would really like to have an option to resize cover (instead of adding black bars) if the width to height ratio isnt huge. In most cases this is unnoticable on small iPod screen and would look better than bars.

And finally one thing that bothers me - I have a few movies send to ipod by itunes so they have names like EKKP.mp4 without any tags. When foo_dop will erase info about them from database and replace it with own data (ie filename)? It happened to me once and that was confusing I tried "Refresh iPod library metadata" but the info its still on the iPod. Don't really want to experiment with rewrite database now

I was meaning to post that one myself one day, but you were faster...

I guess it's sorted by path and filename now, which thanks to the iPod's silly file storage scheme doesn't make much sense at all for everyday use...

NB: I'm playing files directly off my iPod at work, so sorting files by Album automatically is the first thing I do before putting together a playlist in Foobar2000...

What exactly are you trying to do? Anyway, there is a column in 'Browse iPod' that tells you if a track has artwork.

It builds a metadata cache which takes time the first time. It should be faster afterwards though. Which part of the process is slow?


1. It's currently unsorted: it is just the order they are in the iPod database. In general that is the order they were added to the iPod. I use this so I may add an option to control the sorting.
2. Well, the copy on the iPod isn't meant to be a backup, and it is basically using the settings you provide.
3. Without background loading of the iPod database it isn't exactly possible directly in the foobar2000 playlist.
4. Basically, it is slightly complicated. Some iPod models / artwork image formats request cropped images, but foo_dop doesn't provide those which can result in black bars. In other cases, foo_dop provides info on how much of the image is padded out but some issues there may have resulted in some small black bars. Which iPod model do you have?
5. Yes, that is what "Refresh iPod library metadata" will do. Add some metadata to the file and run 'ipod/update metadata...' in contextmenu instead (that does the same as the main menu command but limits it to the selected items)

Anyway, now that I know this info is in browser column there is no problem for me
Hmm I see, I have 3G Nano.
BTW - there is helpful tool from microsoft called contig. It allows defragmenting only certain files, for example .ithmb ones.

I cant find a volume normalization feature in foo_dop. Can it be added? TIA

Without it I frequently have to adjust the volume on my nano.

Strangely enough, on my iPod Classic tracks really seem to be in this order (in the iPodDB), but on a 3G Nano they are exactly in reversed order (in the iPodDB). Is there a reason why the files are written in a different way? Both iPods are managed by foo_dop 0.5.3.

Also, I have a bug to report, using 0.5.3 and an iPod Classic: I have two albums, with a different album artist but the same album title. In the "Cover Flow" and "Albums" views I see both albums separately in the list, but when I click on either one, all songs from both albums are listed under each one. In the "Artists" view they are properly separated. Do you maybe have an idea why this might be? Can this be corrected?

And one other thing, which might not even be a problem your plugin caused: I wanted to check out Floola for iPod management, and when I started it up, it complained that my iPod is not set up correctly (after using it managed by foo_dop for weeks), and if I want Floola to set it up for me. I did not allow this, of course, but my iPod's DB was reset nevertheless (now this is probably a Floola bug). Luckily, foo_dop managed to rewrite the DB, and all's well now. Do you have an idea why Floola, and sometimes iTunes complains about my iPod Classic not even being initialised for use?

And a third thing comes to my mind Is there a way to detect if I want to send duplicates to my iPod? And to prevent it? (i.e. I have an album on my iPod, but I forget about it and send it again later. All tracks will then show up twice on the iPod )

Nothing else for now! Just to thank you for creating and maintaining foo_dop!

Yeh, I have a Classic and that mainly wants cropped images, Nano 3G is probably the same. I will sort this one day..

I have the whole Sysinternals suite on my drive but I didn't notice that Thanks.

If your files have Replaygain data that will be converted to SoundCheck data by foo_dop.

It doesn't do anything different on those models. Bear in mind files may be re-added during a sync (that puts them at the end) also if you send multiple files at once they will all be at the end but in an undefined order. Again, I guess it's complicated

I don't think this is my issue (but rather an issue with the iPod). If they are compilations setting them as so may help. Does the artist field vary between the tracks/albums? I have seen issues similar to this, I may check it out or alternatively you could try adding the same songs via iTunes. Also make sure you are using the latest Classic firmware.

iTunes shouldn't complain if you've just been using foo_dop. But other 3rd party apps may cause issues. The rewrite command just reads (parses) the database and writes it out again. So if that fixed it floola must have written a bad db (iTunes/iPod perform some additional security checks when reading the DB which foo_dop doesn't care about).

BTW: I have had the Classic do odd things. Basically after disconnecting it from the computer, I have had it reconnect once the "OK to disconnect" progress was completed and then disconnecting and repeating.. This also resulted in the iPod service giving a message along the lines of "Your iPod needs to be reformatted for use with Windows". That message can be ignored in this case, just disconnect it in the small "OK to disconnect" window.

Not really yet.. I'll make some changes there at some point though. Personally I just use sync.

Welcome

i have a request: it would be nice if it was possible to exclude certain filetypes. i have a lot of .dts files and everytime i sync my ipod i get a list of errormessages that these files can't be converted because they have more than two channels.

I usually just send the files to both iPods. And when sending multiple files they seem to end up in their original playlist order on the iPod Classic, and reversed on the 3G Nano. Not that this would matter much

I have the latest 1.0.3 firmware. Both albums are non-compilation albums, and each album has tracks only from one artist (which is different between the albums). I will check the same tracks sent from iTunes, though that would leave me without covers...

I think this is basically the same behaviour I'm getting. Maybe Floola is also checking some stuff for itself...

I've been using sync as well, but I lost the playlist I was syncing to. And I have 2 computers with no possibility to share mp3s between them, so I tend to just "send" tracks from either one.

Firstly, thanks alot for this plugin... foobar is my music player/manager of choice and using it to sync my iPod is a natural choice. Keep up the good work!

However, I'm getting alot of "I/O Error" messages when trying to add gapless data for my tracks... some albums succeed, others fail. Albums that fail consistently fail, but if I fire up iTunes it adds gapless data for all those that foo_dop fails for. I know for a fact that these files have gapless tags in the id3 tags, as I just ripped them myself (LAME 3.97).

FYI, I am running Windows XP 64 with an iPod classic 160Gb.

Basically foo_dop is having trouble parsing the file, typically caused by some junk at the beginning of the file before the audio data, such as a second id3v2 tag or some other junk.

Are you using any other programs to tag/modify the files?

If you upload a sample file (e.g. yousendit.com) I can check what the problem is (PM me the link).

PM sent.

It has two id3v2 tags. One seems to have been added by LAME, and one by EAC. I think you've probably set both of them to tag the file.

You can remove the first tag by loading the file into foobar2000, from MP3 Tag Types in the context menu deselect id3v2. That should remove only the first tag.

Wow, that's odd... EAC is set to tag the files when I rip them, if I decide to change something after ripping (i.e. genre) then I use foobar to edit the tags. I've no idea why foobar is adding another ID3V2 tag instead of editing the existing one. If it does need to create a new one for padding purposes, why leave the old one?

One other question... how can one easily add album art to albums that don't already have album art? How about those for which I have replaced the art with a better or corrected picture?

No I think you've set Lame to add a tag, I think it has some options to specify artist etc. through command line. It seems EAC has added a tag instead of using the existing one. The contents of the tag makes that clear (one has a TSSE field specifying LAME 3.97 alpha, the other has a TENC field specifying EAC. So it seems clear they have each added a tag).

I think this has been covered in the posts above.

Yeah, sorry about that last post... I'd started on the New Years booze a little early.

Thanks for your help so far MusicMusic, as ever I've a few more questions :

1. Is there a quick and easy way to add radio shows using foo_dop? I often download mp3s of talks, discussion shows etc and would like to add them to my iPod such that they appear in the "Radio" area, and not amongst the main artist section. If I use iTunes, it seems to routinely remove album art which is painful to fix.

2. Have you considered opening up the source to foo_dop? There is huge potential for this plugin and as popularity grows there will probably be more feature requests / bug reports than you can easily handle. Not to mention that the half-life of foobar plugin develpments in general seems to be terribly short and one ipod plugin has already died off (foo_pod). Collaborative efforts have a much greater chance of success. I'm a software engineer by trade and whilst I have never participated in an open-source project, this is the first one I have felt I would like to contribute to.

Sorry for the delay... actually I think that show the covers in an albumart panel would be could, but i can live without that jejeje... I just like to see the cover of what I'm playing




Upsss! Forget this.... It was mi Foobar instalation. For some reason, it was deleting ALL the playlist when it closes, so I have to reload the iPod library every time I open it.... I reinstall foobar and now, it seems to keep the playlists the way I leave when it closes.... I guess that I just have to change the drive letter of my ipod to be sure the playlist is correct in every PC...

1. Do you mean podcasts? No there isn't really much support for those.
2. I am against it. Anyway, if foo_pod didn't die off there wouldn't be any foo_dop

Well the cache is independent of driver letters and keeping playlists open. It should take only several seconds or so (longer with like a more than a few thousand songs/videos) to do a load library if everything is cached.

If you are browsing the forum not logged in could you log in please...

Put simply, I was wondering how easy it would be to trick the iPod into categorising an mp3 in the radio section of the music browser (which presumably refers to podcasts), akin to the "VARIOUS" flag and compilations. A bare minimum implementation which does the necessary to achieve that would be cool.



That is a great shame. If foo_pod hadn't died then we wouldn't need the retrograde step of a ground-up reimplementation. I can only ask that if you ever abandon foo_dop or development tails off that you release the source in recognition of what inspired you to write it in the first place.

The only radio menu I am aware of refers to actual radio (via the radio remote).

A chunk of foo_pod was actually based upon some iPod database library with public source code. From my point of view I really don't think there was anything that I could have salvaged from foo_pod source, even if I had it. This stuff about foo_pod isn't actually that relevant, but anyway I don't plan to do any disappearing acts.

BTW: Anyone else with a 5G iPod and non-square artwork black bar problem?

foo_dop is working wonderfully on my iPod Classic. The only annoyance is that the harddrive spins up to load the cover-art every time I browse to a new iPod. I'd assume that this is an issue with the iPod itself, and not foo_dop (since storing all the art in RAM would leave no room for caching MP3s), however I can't be sure as I've never used this iPod with iTunes, except to update the firmware (1.0.3).



Don't. Your iPod will soon die. Ideally you should access the iPod harddrive as little as possible, ie. don't use a harddrive iPod as your USB drive. Of course, if you have a flash based iPod there's no problem, but I'd assume you have more than 16GB of music .

Errr, what exactly makes you think that a hard drive in an iPod is more crash-prone when used as a hard drive than flash RAM? That's the first time I heard of this...

Constant use hasn't killed any of the hard drives in my PC lately, so why should the one in my iPod be any different? Not to mention that by setting foobar's "cache files up to" option high enough should make it access the hard drive once per song, just like using the iPod as a mobile player does...

OK, I understand (the radio option disappeared when I updated the firmware)... so I think what I really want is some sort of podcast support.

I do have a further suggestion regarding my gapless problem... I am currently going through the painful process of fixing all my mp3s (roughly half of my 76Gb of MP3s are affected and foobar is little help in identifying them!).

It occured to me, why are you parsing the "accurate stream data" from the file yourself? Surely it would be much faster to use the cached data that foobar can provide. In order to add files to the iPod, they must be in a playlist which means foobar has already parsed them. That data is available via the TAGZ engine and presumably there are internal hooks in the API as well. Not only would it circumvent problems like mine, but it should also be much faster...?



Also, according to this multiple id3 tags are to be expected.

It does use that data. However, the iPod also requires the audio stream byte offset of the 8th from last frame in the stream. I have to parse the audio data for that.

Well, that is kind of more applicable to radio (or other) streams I guess. I could fix this on my side, but I think you would be hard pressed to argue you intended your files to be like this, or that there is a legitimate reason to have two id3v2 tags separated by null padding only. The iPod itself apparently doesn't always play files with double id3v2 tags if you look over the thread history a bit. I think you should complain to the EAC author instead for the brain dead tagging.

I don't want to be a dick about this as I do appreciate your efforts... but I disagree. This *is* a bug in your plugin, whether or not you want to fix it.

I opened the file I sent you in a hex editor myself. What I found was that there are two ID3v2 tags as you say... one ID3 v2.3 and one v2.4. This is entirely reasonable. ID3v2.4 is apparently only supported by a few software players, if you want id3v2.4 then it makes some sense to include ID3v2.3 as well for backwards compatibility (instead of ID3v1 for example). Having both tags is no more or less non-standard than having id3v1 and id3v2.3, for example. Not to mention that the spec says it is allowed. Do you still think it is worth me complaining to EAC about "brain dead tagging". There is "a legitimate reason to have two id3v2 tags separated by null padding only". (The null padding is for the ID3 tag itself, so that new entries can be added to the tag without a complete file rewrite)

Anyway, I know how configure EAC for new rips... that is not the issue. The issue is that "fixing" my existing tracks is nightmarishly difficult. Foobar will not tell you which variants of id3v2 exist in a given file (nor, more importantly let you create a playlist with just those files), only that one or more of them exists. So I have no trivial way to make a playlist with just those files in, such that your suggested workaround can be applied. If any one of the files in the playlist has only one ID3v2vX tag, then it will be thrown away. The only alternatives are all extremely laborious manual processes which would take far longer than it would to fix what I can only assume is a fairly trivial piece of code (not wishing to reignite this argument, but I would happily fix it myself if the source were open).

Even if I manage to "fix" all my files... the next sync will take forever as your plugin needlessly deletes compliant files and copies them back again, stressing the HDD and probably fragmenting the files. The alternative would be to flush the whole thing and start from scratch.

As you say, we already know that I'm not the only person that is susceptible to this problem. If the iPod has ever had troubles playing these files, it certainly doesn't for me on the current firmware. There is no trivial workaround to this and you are likely to be asked about it again.

[EDIT] I've found another reason why your workaround is poor. Foobar removes the first ID3v2 tag it finds, which is the one it updates. This means that any changes you've made to id3 tags in foobar since you originally ripped the track are lost, it returns to the original ripped state. This is especially poor as EAC/LAME don't support the %album artist% tag so these have to be applied manually. Now I have to go and fix a bunch of my mix CDs which I just broke

Well, this is clearly not what you were trying to do. Did you try and load that file in some app that only supports id3v2.3 anyway?

I think it is pretty different.

This is what the id3v2.3 spec says:
It was the second tag in your file of course, so not the first information in the file.

This is what the 2.4 spec says:


I didn't see any explicit reference in the actual specs to multiple tags at the beginning of the file (maybe you could point me to those), and mixing v2.3 tags and v2.4 tags. What you linked was some developer guidelines, again not about mixing v2.3 tags and v2.4 tags but metadata changes in internet streams (and it also mentions a lack of distinct files which we have here).

Yes. You can set it to write v2.3 tags right? If you do that, does it still add a whole new tag?

Right. I didn't say otherwise.

All you are proving is that it is entirely impractical (for you/a user) to work with files with multiple id3v2 tags at the beginning. I am pretty sure that method I mentioned to remove the first tag using foobar2000 isn't by design, just a result of it not expecting multiple id3v2 tags in this manner. Unticking ID3v2 and then opening the dialog again to see it ticked again should be a good indicator of that.

Try a hex editor and disassembler instead then? What did you really expect me to say to that?

No it is not needless. You modify the file, it gets updated on the iPod. Metadata etc. *is* important information. One example of the iPod using it is that it reads lyrics directly from the id3v2 tag.

As far as I am aware it was just an issue on the iPod Classic/Nano 3G. It didn't sound like you had one of those.

Well, I knew that. I don't know why you blame my workaround though when you are just showing you don't have a practical way to manipulate that second tag.

OK you got me there. If I untick the EAC box for ID3v2.4 then it still writes an extra ID3 tag. That certainly looks like an EAC bug.

However, your claim that it is non-standard and therefore not worth supporting is weak. The parts of the spec you quote don't explicitly deal with the possibility of multiple id3v2 tags, to claim that they imply this is disallowed is disingenuous, especially when the accompanying developers guide says that it should be supported.



Are you suggesting that reversed tags would work with your app (i.e. 2.3 before 2.4)?

iTunes copes with multiple tags perfectly well as does every mp3 player I've ever tried (including the audio player your plugin is based upon) - they are all perfectly capable of finding the beginning of the audio stream and determining gapless data. I think it would at least be worth noting in your FAQ that your plugin doesn't support files like these. I really don't understand why you are so against adding this to the list of things to do. It really can't be more than a few lines of code. I'm not demanding an instant fix / workaround, merely requesting that you add it to the TODO list.

Oh well, I guess I'll have to write an app that scans all my MP3s and spits out an m3u of tracks that suffer from this. Maybe with a view to adding a function to strip the tags too.

Why not just use MP3Tag to write all tags to a text file, have it remove all ID3v2 tags then re-apply them from the text file?

No need to re-invent the wheel, and TBH it's more comfortable than Foobar2000 when it comes to editing tags.

Next question: why doesn't it itself write both v2.4 and v2.3 tags before the audio data if you enable that option?

No. I am implying your file didn't comply with the statement in that quote. You were the one saying it is in the spec and referred to something that was not the spec and was actually out of context here anyway. Did you find me some software that itself writes both id3v2.4 and v2.3 tags at the beginning of the file? Don't you wonder why foobar2000 doesn't do that?

OK let me make it clear:
They don't skip the second id3v2 tag because it is an id3v2 tag. They skip it because they are written to skip junk data while seeking to the first MPEG frame. This is confirmed by the fact that iTunes *does not* play (or accept) the sample file someone else previously provided that the iPod also doesn't play. It is similar to yours except the second id3v2 tag is 23KB. Clearly iTunes/the iPod wasn't written to skip so much garbage data. I also made my own test file with similar results.

Similarly, you can replace the second id3v2 tag with some random bytes (that doesn't look like audio data) and foobar will still play the file. I just am not trying to write a complete audio player / MP3 decoder that covers every possible contingency.

I can change the error message. And I may write a FAQ entry on skipped files on the iPod.

Because in the time it takes to add it to the to-do list I could change my code (if I wanted to). I could have changed it several times over in the time I wrote this post as well. I just am not changing it because one person ripped all their files with screwed up settings/software/whatever. Before you refer to the other person I referred to, they were complaining about the file not playing on their iPod.

musicmusic, after thinking about this some more I see you are right... mp3s are not intended to have more than one id3v2 tag, I was wrong about that. The only way to achieve this is through an EAC bug.

As a matter of pragmatism it may prove useful to some people if you could put handling for garbage data in their mp3s rather than refuse to parse them... you could also spit out a warning so that people are aware, so they can fix them if they choose.



I think I'd fixed most of my files anyway, but this should work to fix the rest. Thanks!

Yes I will try and do that

Well, I can't really see a way that wouldn't seem out of context (it probably won't impact gapless playback).

Thanks! I've a feature suggestion to bounce off you... not all of my tracks have gapless information included. I've no particular interest in having the majority of them play gaplessly anyway, but iTunes has an annoying habit of trying to estimate the gaps for these tracks whenever I use it to add a video or podcast, which I think screws up their album art in the process.

Would it be easy to have an option to add ineffective / null gapless data to the database for these tracks, so iTunes doesn't think it needs to do this? Alternatively, it looks like iTunes has some sort of "ignore gapless" flag it can add to the id3. I presume you have no intention of adding gapless guessing routines anyway, I certainly have little use for them.

Excellent plugin! I love the way it interfaces seamlessly with foobars playlists. Goodbye bloated iTunes.

I want to report some strange behavior on my 6G ipod classic which I am not certain was intended.

If for example from a blank state (no mp3's) I synchronize my media library and playlists, it will copy the songs that are in the playlists over twice into two separate files! That is, it seems to first see an mp3 in the media library and copy it over, and then when it sees it again on a playlist it will copy it over a second time.
Browsing on the ipod, it will confirm that there are in fact duplicate songs of anything that was on a playlist.
If, after this occurs, I synchronize again with the media library and same playlists selected however, it will report that it has removed some files, and indeed they are the duplicate entries.

So it's not a huge deal, I just synchronize twice whenever I want to update the ipod. This seems to me like unintended behavior, so I thought I should report it.

edit - nevermind; upgraded from foobar 0.9.4.5 to 0.9.5 and that seemed to fix it! Nice plugin!

Well I would still need to seek through the file to calculate the value of the field I mentioned before. Basically, I don't think it is worth it, because I believe iTunes will still decide to 'correct' all the metadata/artwork when you try to add a file.

Hi,
Yes of course you are right it is not meant to behave like that. I found something that may cause that to not work correctly, I'll change that for next build so it should work reliably then.

Firstly, this works perfect with my ipod classic 160gb.

There is only one thing I would like is to be able to see the tracks being transferred instead of it saying copying files, so I can see how long its going to take to finish.

Thanks!

Hmm, I don't think I explained very well... when your plugin decides that a track has no gapless data, it seems to leave the database in a state which makes iTunes think it still needs to scan the track itself.

For example, when I first loaded up my iPod classic, I forgot to tick the gapless tick box in foobar. When I next used iTunes, it started scanning all 11,000 tracks one by one (which I cancelled).

I later manually used the plugin "Determine gapless information" and it found gapless info for about half my tracks. However, next time I used iTunes to load a video, it started scanning again... only this time it only had about 5,000 tracks to scan, presumably because the others had already been updated by your plugin. If all my tracks had gapless info, iTunes would not have tried to do anything as your plugin would have correctly added gapless data for every track. Having now fixed all of my files with the id3 problem and resynced, iTunes now thinks I've got about 1000 tracks that need scanning.

So all I would like is an option for the plugin - having already scanned the tracks itself - to mark in the database those tracks that definitely have no gapless data, in such a way that iTunes doesn't try to re-scan them. Not being familiar with the iPod database, I don't know if this is possible.

On a loosely related note, it would seem that "SharePod" does something to the iPod database that makes your plugin think it is corrupt (I've been using this to add videos, to get around the iTunes problems). Mine is a Classic 160Gb.

Whatever it does, iTunes doesn't mind and seems to fix it so your plugin works with it again... I've no idea if this is a bug in SharePod or your plugin, but I seem to remember reading earlier in the thread someone else having this problem with another iTunes style app.

SharePod website

Some (very) late replies:

Tedious, and there's the problem of figuring out which files need to be scanned. I can't think of any way in foobar to sort by replaygain. In an average week I probably send a few hundred tracks to my iPod with about half being mp3 and the other half being a mix of flac, tak, and ogg. Even more tedious than having to manually scan the files and the update metadata is having to first check every file sent to see whether it needs to be scanned. Something as simple as an optional dialog box that would pop up after a send operation and list which files were converted would make the process easier. Sort of the opposite of the transcode warning someone wanted earlier, I want to know what was converted once the job is done so I can do some followup, not before. Currently I leave covnersion off so that the files will error out, then convert them to a temp dir, replaygain scan, and send in a second batch.


Ah. Weird, but that does explain the problem. It's mainly an issue for me because I use my ipod as a portable music hard drive 8+ hours a day at work. None of my playlists work there. I can see your point about applying all the rules. It doesn't feel like much to me since all my smart playlists are based off number of plays, date added, and/or date last played, but I realize that there's a ridiculous amount of options for smart playlists. Thanks for the reply.


Is there any chance of getting some options for controlling the order that they're sent? This is related to my smart playlists and to using it as a hard drive full of music while at work. In all the smart playlists that are based solely off time and not off number of plays, the songs are displayed in the order they were added to the database. The plugin seems to be very fickle as to what order it sends them in, depending on whether the album is VA or not and how I click on them in the playlist for sending. Sometimes I get everything in the same order as they were in my playlist, sometimes I get completely jumbled, sometimes I get some albums completely in order with others mixed together, etc etc. It makes browsing those playlists very interesting. Sorting by album before sending, or simply always sending in the same order as they currently are in the playlist would make me much happier.

---

Also, for the people with the dual ID3 problems, wouldn't "select all->right click->Tagging->MP3 tag types->checking APEv2 and unchecking everything else->applying->going back in and doing it again to make sure all ID3v2 tags are gone->applying->going back in and checking Id3v2 and unchecking everything else" take care of it?

I don't think any such flag to indicate a file has been scanned for gapless data and it wasn't fond exists in the database (I looked and didn't find any). Bear in mind that iTunes likes to estimate the data. So I reckon it probably just tries to fill missing data.

I don't know if it helps you, but I finally managed to put all the pieces together to calculate the gapless data for Nero MP4 (AAC) files (recent Nero encoders only). So they will get gapless data from next version of foo_dop as well.

What is the error message? If it is 'Unsupported format or corrupted file' it is probably some incorrect size field or something, foo_dop checks those very strictly whereas iTunes is probably a bit more liberal there. Is there something you dislike about using foo_dop for videos?

The ReplayGain Scanner skips files with existing replaygain data. Anyway, I can't automate this at all (apart from the possible user prompts during the scan I don't seems to have anyway of knowing when the scan is finished.) So yes, the best I can do is ask to send the converted files to a playlist so you can manually scan and reload info on them.

Do you mean you are sorting your smart playlists by date added to your iPod? I see how that may cause some issues. The order they are added was just a result of my handling for duplicate items, but it should be possible to change it back to the order the items are received (order in playlist etc.) (edit: seems a bit more complicated than I thought but I'll put it on my todo)

Sorry if this was covered before, I did do a quick search.

Is it possible to have the albums in the iPod library sorted first by date and then by name, or you don't have any control over this?

For example, Music -> Artists -> Led Zeppelin gives me:

• Houses of the Holy
• Led Zeppelin
• Led Zeppelin II
• Led Zeppelin III
• Led Zeppelin IV
• ...

And I would like go get:

• Led Zeppelin
• Led Zeppelin II
• Led Zeppelin III
• Led Zeppelin IV
• Houses of the Holy
• ...

Yes, I expect that iTunes deduced the scanned status implicitly... if it is marked has having "accurate" or "estimated" gapless info then by definition it has been scanned. Here is where a workaround may be possible... I assume foo_dop doesn't use the "estimated" option for gapless as it has no mechanism for estimating gapless info (and I don't think anybody wants one). I presume iTunes estimates gapless info by just scanning for silence at the beginning and end of the track. Of course, some tracks may not have any silence at all (the track genuinely ends at the end of an MPEG frame) and so iTunes will add estimated gapless data to this effect.

What foo_dop could do is mark all tracks with no accurate data as having "estimated" gapless data that equates to "no lead in, no lead out". The iPod playback of the file would be completely unaffected but iTunes would think the file had been scanned already and would not try to rescan.



Not me personally as I don't have any AAC files, but I'm sure other people will be. Good work!



Yes I think it was that message... I only used this app as it offered more flexibility over how to classify videos (i.e. as Music Video, TV Show, Film etc.). Some of the other apps (and iTunes) allow you to edit video specific metadata about the show, like episode number, series etc. I've nothing against using foo_dop, but as foobar isn't much of a video handler itself I wasn't expecting much in that regard from foo_dop.

Had you considered a dedicated video handling dialogue, for adding video and editing the database metadata directly? Just a thought.

[edit] Oh wow, how did I never spot the video specific metadata fields in your FAQ? Doh!

OK, I have a feature request. I've fallen over a bug / feature of the new iPod classic, whereby it orders episodes in a TV series according to the "release date" and not the episode number. See:

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=6298710

Could we get a field mapping for this database field? Or is there one already?

[edit] on the other hand it is widely being reported as a bug in the latest firmware, hopefully Apple will fix it.

I'm not explicitly sorting by that, but it's the criteria for being added to most of my smart playlists. Most of them are of the type "Date added < [1|7|30] days" or "Last played < [1|2|7] days" Anything based off number of plays is sorted by that and is easy enough to browse that way, but all of the time based ones appear to be sorted by when they were added onto the iPod. So when I use those playlists on my iPod, browsing gets interesting. Also when I do a load library in foobar2000 and play songs off my ipod as an external hard drive, I generally just skip to the bottom of the list and listen to the most recently added stuff. In foobar it's easy enough to re-sort the albums that are jumbled up, but on the iPod itself it's a pain.

I do have control over this. However, messing with the sort order can get complicated, mainly due to issues with the 5G iPod. If they added support for all of the sort fields in the last firmware update for the 5G then it would make my life easier. I am not sure if they did though. It's easy to check though if you have a 5G iPod: Hold Ctrl whilst clicking the 'View iPod device information' button in foo_dop prefs. Check if there is an entry as follows:


Ignoring other concerns, setting the track's gapless data as 'estimated' doesn't seem to stop iTunes from rescanning it.

Hmm yes as you noticed it is possible to control those through metadata I did realise already that a specific tagging dialog for those fields is kinda needed, but I put it off as just the underlying functionality is good enough, at least for a TEST version anyway As a compromise you could use Quick/Mass Tagger presets.

Hmm no remapping but there are metadata fields for them. There are various sort tables for the TV shows so not sure if the Classic is not using them or they are the problem or what... iTunes 7.6 was released very close to the recent firmware update. I'll try and check it out anyway.

OK. I'm looking into changing it.

Hmm, that is odd... somehow iTunes does know whether it has personally scanned a track. It also does avoid rescanning tracks that foo_dop has marked as having accurate data. It is a mystery.