John (and anyone converting more than 10 files at a time on the fly with disappearing playlists while synching)
Good news. I think I found the root of your problem. I have fixed it, but it will not be available until the next build of MC which won't be until next week. Sorry for the delay and for the aggravation.
mclaugh,
When you say you get the crazy numbers, is that when you have selected 'iPod' in the tree and are viewing the files on iPod from MC or is it in MC after the sync? I am unable to duplicate it with 1.3 firmware. Try this, close MC and from within Windows Explorer, go to your iPod\iPod_Control\iTunes directory and delete your 'Play Counts' file. Without opening MC, disconnect your iPod and play some files. Reconnect iPod and see if the playcounts are displayed correctly.
jniz,
Your iTunesDB is probably corrupted. Please try the following.. (you may end up losing all your data on the iPod, but hopefully not)
1) From Windows, go to your iPod\iPod_Control\iTunes directory and delete your iTunesDB file. When you view your iPod in MC you will not see your files listed. Your files are still there, they just are not recognized by MC.
2) Right click on your iPod drive letter and select 'Rebuild Database from iPod'. This will reconstruct your iTunesDB but will not recreate playlists.
3) If you want your playlists back, resync your iPod with your Playlists selected. This should go relatively quickly because MC will not need to retransfer the files, but only the Playlist data.
Ashley,
Any time delay you see is most likely attributable to the retrieval of the data from iPod's database, not the hardware connection iteself. You can verify this by deselecting the right click option 'Show files at root'. With this deselected, MC should recognize your iPod when it connects at virtually the same time as Explorer recognizes the iPod.
In regards to the playlists, the characters to watch out for are '|' and '\'. Monday's build will fully safeguard against any possibility of creating playlists with these characters. Currently MC does not support '\' in a Playlist name and if you have '|' in a playlist name it will be converted to a '?' character. What will change Monday is that you will no longer be able to manually create a playlist directly on iPod with those characters.
In regards to iPod's sorting of non alphabetic or numeric characters, I would have to test to be sure, it is determined by the firmware on iPod.
Everyone,
If you followed any of Vivvy's posts, let me make a few comments. I am always available to work with whatever problems users are having. The combination of layers of hardware, drivers, competing software solutions, the necessity for our own software to evolve, and no documentation on iPod from Apple,makes solving problems difficult and frustrating at times, but generally not impossible. In order to productively move towards solutions, it is necessary for users to cooperate with suggestions and be patient, I intend to return the same courtesy. Vivvy seems to want me to somehow solve his problems without his cooperation. I wish him well and look forward to helping others in whatever way I can.
Steve