iPod management component for foobar2000 0.9.5+.

Home page with details and download

Notes/FAQs/changelog available here. If you read the notes and FAQs before asking any questions, it will keep me happy

Seems to work for me so far. I have a 2G iPod i think (touch-sensitive wheel with the buttons encircling it, that's 2G, right?).

It loads the songs pretty fast. I don't understand the difference between the play lists 'iPod Media Library' (which contains 1522 tracks) and 'iPod (iPod)' (which only contains 652 tracks), though.

One feature you might consider... if you're taking them yet... is an option to read the tags as they come in, as opposed to just getting the information from the DB.

Sweet, man. I hope you get this one going.

I've got a 4G nano and it's seems to work fine with that. Only ever been used with itunes database.

I have a 4G 20G iPod, with a foo_pod written 4.7 iTunes database file. All is working well here, so far. Both of the foo_dop generated playlists read exactly the same. Though, I know that I currently do not have any playlists loaded in the iPod.

I would also like to thank you for giving this plugin a whirl. We iPodders truly appreciate your efforts.


P.S. I enjoy your little word play of the plugin name. ;-)

Thanks for tests so far.

The two different playlists just relates to the format of the database on the iPod. But I thought they would have the same contents to be honest.

Which one has all the music your iPod? And what files show up in the first but not the second?

I know what you mean I think it depends on a few factors what behaviour would be better. I personally don't really want to wait around ~4 mins for it to read all the metadata of my iPod, and the drive letter can probably be too volatile to add it to your media library (if you actually wanted to) so it won't necessarily be a one-time activity. Also far less important but it will probably suck up battery if you're running it of 4-pin firewire.

Maybe I can add an option for it later, but for now you can simply select all the files in the library playlist and right click / tagging / reload info [if changed]. But take a look at the metadata it read first and check its roughly OK.

Tried your plugin on a 20GB ipod and works good!

Hope this is the start of something good. I don't like iTunes and foo_pod appears to be dead. Thanks for your efforts so far.

BTW, the iTunes DB was created by foo_pod and I have iTunes v4.7 installed.

Um. Well iTunes says that i have 1522 songs on there, so clearly 'iPod Media Library' is the one with all the tracks.

I can't really figure out a pattern to what's missing from the 'iPod (iPod)' list. 'The Saga Begins' by "Weird Al" Yankovic (which is a random single track, albumless) is missing, and a few other random singles are missing, but there are also some full albums (Belle and Sebastian EPs) missing as well. A Billy Joel album is missing, so is a Camera Obscura one. As far as i can tell it doesn't seem to be doing this based on play-list contents (some tracks are on smart play lists, some aren't) or on play count (some i've played before, some i haven't).

I dunno, i don't get it. I want to help though, so if there's anything i can do to help you solve this just tell me.


Also i found what may be a problem: If i'm typing in Opera here, and then i switch back to foobar by clicking an arbitrary item in the play list, it locks up foobar (and the trackinfo and albumart panels don't redraw) for like 2 or 3 seconds. Navigating the play list also sometimes locks up foobar for a second. Is this just a limitation of loading songs from FireWire or something?


Yeah, it's not really a big deal. In this case i was just a little disoriented when all these tracks started showing up randomly in my play list (because my sort string depends on %album artist% and %disc% and all this other stuff that iTunesDB doesn't carry over).


edit:
Oh, and you said in the first post that only normal play lists will be loaded. I have six smart play lists and one normal play list. All of them, including the normal one, are empty.

OK thanks for looking into it. Maybe you can upload your iTunesDB (from the /iPod_Control/iTunes on your iPod) (or email it to me, musicmusic [at] morbo [dot] org, if you prefer) and I'll take a look at it. What wrote it BTW?


It seems to be caused by foo_uie_albumart looking for albumart.

The disc number field is stored in the iTunesDB. Just whatever wrote it didn't put it in there I guess. It also does store a "compilation flag" but I'm not sure what field I could map that too..



I would expect the smart ones to show up empty. But not the normal one, I'll take a look at it if you upload your iTunesDB.

Just iTunes (the newest one).


lol. Compressed to 4% of original size. I used your favourite.

http://www.yousendit.com/transfer.php?acti...C84AE7731DC4F63

Your not going to like this.. it seemed to load fine here, both library playlists had 1522 tracks and all of the rest non-empty.

I think I have an idea what the problem is though, I'll have a version for you to test later.

lol. Okey-dokey.

foo_dop v0.1 works like a charm with my fifth-gen iPod Video (60GB)
It even loads my Smart- and On-The-Go playlists correctly.

Both "iPod Media Library" and "My iPod (iPod)" contains the same number of files.
DB written by iTunes 6.0.0.18

Keep ut the good work! This initiative is very much appreciated.

Can you try both 0.1.1 above and this test version and tell me which (if either) work. Thanks!

Mmm... they both do. The two lists mentioned earlier now have the same file count, and all the play lists from the iPod are loaded properly.

I can also verify that both 0.1.1 and the Test version are working properly. Quite a bit quicker too.

Hi. Posting to state that 0.1.1 loads correctly the ipod library as well as all smart playlists and all regular playlists (except playlists saved on-the-go). Mine is a 4g with greyscale screen and its iTunesDB was created with Winamp's ml_ipod 1.32. It was very quick to load as well.

Thanks musicmusic for making foo_dop.

Thanks for the additional tests people.

Strange In that case, please delete the test version. Thanks for testing.

I made a little optimisation in that respect Scanning for the drive is the slow part now

Good work, and good luck. You'll soon make foo_pod look like a toy.

musicmusic: I've got an iPod Mini. As soon as I get some stuff set up, I'm going to try out foo_dop and give some feedback. I'm very excited about this project and would be happy to lend some assistance in terms of testing functionality and such.

Cheers.




edit: works like a charm. Loads the playlists and library. Counts for the library are correct. All my playlists show, and also one that's just named after the iPod itself (I'm guessing that's the "On the go" playlist inherent to the iPod).

Whoa, works perfectly, and its fast as well. Using a 4G iPod, latest firmware, latest iTunes.

Works nice with iPod 5G 30GB (firmware v1.1.1) and iTunes 6.0.4.2.

I really look forward to using this for writing to my iPod (with Replay Gain conversion).

Cheers,
Magnus

Working perfectly with iPod 3G 20GB with the DB written by foo_pod.
Keep the good work

0.1.5 released with "Rewrite iPod database" feature. Details above, but its only really for testing Once you've tested it, you may wish to restore the backup database.

If you decide to test it, please let me know how well it worked for you, and what iPod you have also

4G, 20gb, tested the rewrite feature. Didn't break anything :)
Can you add a feature so I can specify what tags it writes? It would be great if I could make it write "%album% CD%disc%" in the album tags :)

Hi musicmusic,

The rewrite on my 4G 20gb was perfect. All looked and played as it should. I already had a 4.7 version DB created from foo_pod, so I really did not expect to have any issues there. It's great to see that you are making some serious progress with foo_dop. Also, I'll take a slow drive scan over a slow DB read anyday.

Thanks again!


Neither foo_dop, foo_pod nor iTunes for that matter, writes tags to an iPod. Rather, it writes a database file that accesses the music played on the iPod. Any tagging program will do what you are asking, and even foobar2000 itself.

Tried with my iPod Nano 2GB. So far so good. Actually, it's perfect! I'm not even going to bother with restoring the backup database. What's the point?
Keep it up, musicmusic!!! We all are counting on you

musicmusic, between this and columns ui I've decided if you were a chick I'd have the hots for you.

I know, I just wanted to express that I'd like to be able to change what foo_dop writes to that database.
Sorry if I put it wrong. ^^;

Thanks for the tests and feedback people


Its possible I guess. For the moment I would like to get some other basic functionality implemented before I do anything like this

One thing that will be great is to have the possibility to send file to ipod as a file-tree customizable (%artist%/%album%/%tracknumer%-%title%) for example.

And then to create the itunes DB, so that it could work both with rockbox (with the filetree) and with the apple firware (with the itunes DB).
It will also have the possibility to see your files on the ipod and copy them back easily on any computer, instead of having the itunes architecture (h:/ipod_control/FC05/mdfj.m4a) wich sucks .

I know it's not for today but i think it will great and i know it's possible

I think that's not possible, because the iPod firmware supports (AFAIK) only 4-letter-filenames (which is a pain when trying to copy your music back to your PC...)

Actually the firmware just use the itunes DB to find the music and if there are only 4letters filenames i think it's the apple protection so that you can't copy back your music easily.

I'm almost sure we can do that and that would be great



So if foo_dop could in the future send files to Ipod like the "move, rename or copy files", and then create the iTunesDB, we could have a tidy and convenient iPod working on the official firmware as well as on Rockbox firmware

However that procedure has been proven to not work on iPods with recent firmware. It doesn't work on my 4G iPod, the tracks appear in the iPod database but when played it continually skips to the next track without playing anything.

It works for me with the latest firmware, but I also use 4.7 version DB generated from foo_pod, and that is the reason that it works for me.

Where was this proven? More information, please

Yamipod is a nice freeware app for Windows, Mac and Linux that will copy music from your iPod to a hard drive with titles and metadata intact. It does a lot more as well.

I think the file name limit on the ipod's database is more like 20 characters.

I have a couple of questions:

1. How do you add new music to the ipod with this? With "Load library & playlists" it did exactly that. I tried dropping new files in the "iPod media library" and then doing "Rewrite Ipod database". It seemed to reload all the music on it since it took a long time, but the new files I dropped never made it to the ipod.

2. Is there a way to put videos on with foo_dop?

Thanks so much for foo_dop. I'd love to come back from itunes!

1) 2) You can't for the moment

This plugin is currently only being tested. It does not have full functionality at the moment. It currently only reads and rewrites the database for music already on the iPod. Feel free to join us in that testing. The author, "musicmusic" will keep you/us informed of improvements in functionality as the plugin progresses to maturity.

Thanks for the answers. Yes, it reads and rewrites the database perfectly on my 5g. I did notice that the video menu on the ipod was populated with the song list, just fyi.

Regarding songs in custom locations: it seems to work on my iPod fine, actually. AFAIK the limit on the path is 56 characters excluding drive letter and colon.

At the end of the day, foobar2000 is an audio player. So I wouldn't expect that feature


Thanks for testing on your 5G. Yes I expected it wouldn't work great on a 5G currently. I'll fix that in a few versions time when I switch to writing a later version of the database

I'm thinking about getting an iPod, so correct me if I'm wrong but does the iPod sort videos in a similar way to audio. For instance, your video file is placed on the iPod and then the way that the firmware recognises it, is by using iTunesDB file? If this is true, would it be possible to add some function to just write something in the iTunesDB to point to the file. E.G. you place the file on the iPod yourself then use foo_dop to tell the iPod it's location. Obviously it's a feature for down the road (if of course you want to implement it ) but at least that would mean I could do all my updating through foobar2000.

Wow.. it's finally taking shape. Thank you~ :3 Now, what about transcoding? Coz I only have lossless on my foobar. T_T

And to make it increasingly ridiculous, while still remaining useful:

• Use the existing converter, with custom default presets for only supported formats.
• No tagging for the converted files, since all the information will be transferred from the original files to the iPod's database.
• Cache up to N files or N megabytes worth of transcoded files in a configurable directory. Files will be named according to a hash of the original file's name and/or tags, size, and last modification timestamp, something that can be quickly generated. Any time a transcode already exists, its modification time will be retouched to the current time, as transcodes can be deleted after a configurable number of days, and when a new file exceeds the cache size maximum, the oldest file will be deleted.

I told you it would get ridiculous.

I don't own a 5G iPod. But from I have seen, I would say it does.


Problem is, you really need more than just the path to put them in the database properly. I need to identify videos from songs, as well as fill the database with the standard metadata and categorise them (TV Show, Music Video, ..). So true I don't really need foobar2000 to be able to play videos, but at least recognise them (as video files).

I think there's a little while yet before I think about things like that

I thought I read someone complaining about no converter API ?
Still, if you want to rebuild the database, play files of the iPod on your computer, or something.

AFAIK what foo_pod did was name the file on the iPod by some hash of the original file. I don't know though; if you re tag your files, you don't exactly want to convert them again, but Im not sure if there is actually anything practical I could do about that..

Personally I just keep transcoded copies of whatever on my hard drive, less hassle I thought but you have redundancy / consistency issues..

Ah ok then I don't suppose I'd use the video function that much anyway. Now for another matter... is it worth £200..? (rhetorical)

Depends... You're just paying a lot of it for the design. There's no question that it's stylish. It's designed very well. The controls are intuitive. But if you don't care about style, you can get the same function for much less.

0.1.7 released Details above.

For the moment, I wouldn't recommend 5G users use it at all until I add iTunes 4.9 database reading/writing. For everyone else its still entirely experimental, and expect the worst