Topic: IPOD SUPPORT (Read 38739 times)

marcmen · « **Reply #100 on:** June 02, 2004, 02:38:58 pm »

i did not see wav listed can you convert to wav when sync ipod wma is listed. can you store the files in flac format in your program how do you do it

SteveG · « **Reply #101 on:** June 02, 2004, 03:49:02 pm »

marcmen,

You are correct. Uncompressed wav is not currently an option. I will add it in the next version of MC.

Here is some information on implementing flac and MC....

http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?board=3;action=display;threadid=18343;start=msg151785#msg151785

bjsolem,

The duplication warnings are telling you that you have multiple entries in MC that have the same Name, Artist, Album, Genre and Track Number. This is acceptable within MC, but not acceptable when interfacing with Portables. MC uses these fields to attempt to uniquely identify songs on a Portable device and make decisions on what to send and what to delete. When you have duplicates (in regards to these fields), MC takes its best guess and the result is that some files delete and are resent. If you want to resolve the Portable issue, either sync only smartlists/playlists where the duplicates have been resolved, or resolve the duplicate issue in your library.

Steve

marcmen · « **Reply #102 on:** June 03, 2004, 03:08:19 am »

are you going to support flac where i can store all the files this way and convert to wav upon syncing or is ape the only losseless compression you support. I currently use the kenwood music keg that only supports flac. by supporting flac I could use your product to support the music keg as well as ipod as well as my home roku media player something to think about. As an audiophile the only losseless compresion that seems to be supported by hardware is flac. Wav is okay but there is no way of tagging the files with the song and artist information

marcmen · « **Reply #103 on:** June 03, 2004, 03:11:19 am »

when will the release support ipod with wav come out

SteveG · « **Reply #104 on:** June 03, 2004, 01:20:22 pm »

marcmen,

Here is the link to the info on MC and FLAC....

http://www.monsterfang.com/MCinFLAC/Encoding.htm

From my reading of it, this will enable encode and decode capabilities for FLAC within MC and so you should be all set.

Support for on the fly wav conversion to portables will be in MC 11 which wil not be for a while.

Steve

marcmen · « **Reply #105 on:** June 03, 2004, 02:48:04 pm »

how long until mc 11

bjsolem · « **Reply #106 on:** June 03, 2004, 03:16:08 pm »

Quote from: marcmen on June 03, 2004, 02:48:04 pm

how long until mc 11

I'm gonna guess that you won't be seeing an answer to that question....

marcmen · « **Reply #107 on:** June 03, 2004, 03:27:15 pm »

is there a way to store the audio files in flac and wav at the same time. is there a way to store the files and wav and by selection mass convert the files to flac

MattM · « **Reply #108 on:** June 03, 2004, 11:12:22 pm »

Am I missing something or is there no Ipod plugin for MC 10? If so why not?

NM - Reinstalled lastest ver. and saw that plugin incorporated in ver.

bjsolem · « **Reply #109 on:** June 04, 2004, 10:40:10 am »

Quote from: SteveG on June 02, 2004, 03:49:02 pm

The duplication warnings are telling you that you have multiple entries in MC that have the same Name, Artist, Album, Genre and Track Number. This is acceptable within MC, but not acceptable when interfacing with Portables. MC uses these fields to attempt to uniquely identify songs on a Portable device and make decisions on what to send and what to delete. When you have duplicates (in regards to these fields), MC takes its best guess and the result is that some files delete and are resent. If you want to resolve the Portable issue, either sync only smartlists/playlists where the duplicates have been resolved, or resolve the duplicate issue in your library.

I took a closer look at the error messages I am getting and they are all missing files errors (I 'moved' files to my palm memory card a few times instead of copying, and haven't re-ripped yet). I have only seen the Duplicate file warning once or twice and have cleaned up my smartlists so it shouldn't happen again.

I still get a number of files deleted (10-20) when I sync and do not have Delete Unselected checked. So I guess I'm still confused why songs delete when I start to sync, since it does not appear to be the duplicate file issue.

SteveG · « **Reply #110 on:** June 04, 2004, 10:41:54 am »

marcmen,

We don't know when 11 will be available.

Quote

is there a way to store the audio files in flac and wav at the same time.

I am not sure I follow. You can have both copies of the files but that seems too obvious.

Quote

is there a way to store the files and wav and by selection mass convert the files to flac

You can convert numerous wav files to flac. The files queue and convert one at a time.

park · « **Reply #111 on:** June 06, 2004, 07:36:37 am »

Hi all,

1.
I periodically (every few synchs) have a crash midway through the synch. An error message comes up in a bubble down by my clock saying "write error, failed to transfer F19. Please try to save this file elsewhere, it may be corrupt or missing on device" or words to that effect. Then MC has fun repeatedly connecting and disconnecting the ipod while it tries to transfer the untransferrable file. Eventually I have to force close MC, start it again and do a full initialize and full synch.

This has been happening for me ever since the way files are transferred to the ipod was changed. I have the latest build (10.45). I have done all the tips to stop itunes messing with the ipod. I am only synching mp3s. i have enough space for the synch.

There is nothing else going on on my computer while i transfer that would interfere with it, and i am sure its not one particular file thats causing the problem. my cables are in good condition and havent been tampered with or treated badly, so i dont think that the connection is the problem. Bythe way, i transfer using a usb2 cable.

2.
If i decide to cancel a synch by pressing cancel on the portable synch window (with all the playlists inside it which you choose to synch with), MC still synchs the playcounts, ratings etc to mc, regardless. This isnt totally unwanted behaviour but i do find it a little unexpected. I would expect cancel to cancel and do nothing whatsoever.

sgermino · « **Reply #112 on:** June 07, 2004, 12:54:25 am »

Hi.
I have an Ipod that is doing my head in.

I install MC as per the instruction in the support.
The problem is I can't transfer music from Mc to Ipod... nothign at all. I first thought that it was because most of my music had been copied with windows Media, but I tried now to rip a Cd in MC and I still can't pass it to Ipod.
IIt gives an error message saying: File Error Information
the following is a list of files that failed to transfer with an error code.
the it gives the location and name of each of the songs I tried to transfer and says in the end Unsupported File Type.
Can you please help me ? I've had my Ipod for a month and I still can't transfer music to it...

ph_bradley · « **Reply #113 on:** June 07, 2004, 05:06:41 am »

wma is a Microsoft format. do you really thinkyour lovely little Apple plaything is going to allow you to use an enemy's technology on their hardware? no. MC isn't lying to you. You really can't send wma files to your ipod (not if you want to be able to listen to them, anyway). It's worth doing a little bit of reserch before you splash out that kind of money on a gadget.

so what now? either you convert your music to mp3 (VBR is best) or the other formats supported by the ipod (e.g., AAC, etc) - ideally you'd rerip your cd's because you will egt better sounding mp3's, or you take your ipod back where it came from and get something instead.

sirshambling · « **Reply #114 on:** June 07, 2004, 09:37:24 am »

Steve,

After synching my Ipod last night in the usual way with 145 I found that "last played" in MC10 library looked very strange. About 2/3rds of the tracks are showing a date of "-312638.52.02", some are "never played" which looks right and a few are showing dates up to 271 days ago which look right.

Can you help me here?

TIA. John.

SteveG · « **Reply #115 on:** June 07, 2004, 10:46:09 am »

park,

Can you post a screenshot of the error you are seeing? After the crash, can you browse through Windows Explorer and see if there are files on your iPod in the iPod_Control\Music\F19 folder? If not, try to manually copy a file there and see what happens.

The synching of playcounts and ratings happens to MC happens before the file transfer starts is you have that option enabled.

sgermino,

ph_bradley is on the money. Thanks ph.

John,

Check the date and time on your iPod and confirm that it is correct. It sounds like it may have gotten set wrong and some point.

Steve

sirshambling · « **Reply #116 on:** June 07, 2004, 03:19:19 pm »

Steve,

The date and time are fine.

Noticed that the number of plays has been corrupted too - some with negative 11 digit numbers, some with positive 11 digit numbers.

Do you know any way to reset these? and the "last played" figures?

Thanks again. John

SteveG · « **Reply #117 on:** June 07, 2004, 05:00:38 pm »

John,

To reset them in MC, hightlight the files and select File Properties->Tag info in the Action Window. Then, slect the 'Last Played' or 'Number Played' tag and click on 'Clear'.

This still won't tell us what went wrong to give you these values. Nothing has changed in this code for a week or two.

Do you see any patterns in the files that got messed up? Were they ones you had recently played on iPod?

Steve

sirshambling · « **Reply #118 on:** June 08, 2004, 02:36:54 am »

Steve,

"To reset them in MC, hightlight the files and select File Properties->Tag info in the Action Window. Then, slect the 'Last Played' or 'Number Played' tag and click on 'Clear'."

Thanks for that - worked fine.

"Do you see any patterns in the files that got messed up? Were they ones you had recently played on iPod?"

No I didn't see a pattern. The files contained some that I'd listened to on the Ipod since the last synch - but 2,000 plus that I hadn't. All playlists were affected too. Most strange! I hope it doesn't happen again.

Thanks. John.

sgermino · « **Reply #119 on:** June 08, 2004, 02:45:26 am »

ph-bradley and Steve G. thanks. I know got an MP3 encoder and hopefully that will work.
Or I have to re-rip all my tons of CDs again...

SouthsideIrish · « **Reply #120 on:** June 08, 2004, 08:53:36 am »

I'm having the same problems with the negative numbers in Last Played, and in addition it doesn't seem as if my ratings are being updated correctly.

Here's the problem.

Had 214 mp3s in Five Star Playlist when there should only have been between 100 and 110. Went through all of the songs and changed the ratings on the bad ones and got it down to 110. Resynced, played the smartlist and I still have 214 mp3's in the smartlist.

Also, none of the songs that were played last night had the last played updated. They are still negative.

Time on iPod is the same as the time on the computer. Timezone on computer is set to Central Time Zone, and iPod to Central Time Zone (DST). Could this be causing the problem?

Bill McNair

SteveG · « **Reply #121 on:** June 08, 2004, 11:23:42 am »

Bill,

"Had 214 mp3s in Five Star Playlist when there should only have been between 100 and 110. "

In MC or on iPod? If you are saying you have a smartlist which has 100 files in MC but 214 on iPod, check that you have 'Delete unselected files' checked in your sync options and verify that you do not have other rules in the MC smartlist besides a selection for 5 star files.

Quote

Also, none of the songs that were played last night had the last played updated. They are still negative. Time on iPod is the same as the time on the computer. Timezone on computer is set to Central Time Zone, and iPod to Central Time Zone

I cannot duplicate this. On your PC, do you have the option checked to 'Automatically adjust clock for daylight saving changes'?

Did this problem just start occuring for you? If so, look to other changes you may have made recently. Nothing has changed in the relevant code for a few weeks.

Steve

park · « **Reply #122 on:** June 09, 2004, 11:25:35 am »

Regarding my previous post:

Seems I broke my ipod. its not an MC issue. It wont stay connected to windows at all, even to do a restore with the apple software. oh dear. warranty has just finished and brian is going to be paying lots hethinks.

Tip; avoid dropping ipod.
Another tip; when getting changed at a gym etc. be careful when you pull your trousers out of the locker.

SteveG · « **Reply #123 on:** June 10, 2004, 09:10:29 am »

Quote

Tip; avoid dropping ipod.
Another tip; when getting changed at a gym etc. be careful when you pull your trousers out of the locker.

Duely noted. Sorry for the cost of your tuition for learning this.

rhaehnel · « **Reply #124 on:** June 14, 2004, 02:29:20 pm »

<<
After synching my Ipod last night in the usual way with 145 I found that "last played" in MC10 library looked very strange. About 2/3rds of the tracks are showing a date of "-312638.52.02",
>>

This has been happening to me for some time(I posted about it a couple months ago). Its the reason I stopped using MC in favor of iTunes- my playcounts and Last Played dates were getting pummeled on a regular basis making most of my playlists useless.

Have you guys thought about using the iTunes COM interface for syncing between MC and the iPod? Its pretty slick and I believe it provides a mechanism for syncing. I wrote up a quick app to export my playcounts, LTP and rating into iTunes( I'm hoping to write another one going from iTunes TO MC if MC gets fixed

) and it was really quite simple. I'm not sure if they provide an interface into the dynamic playlists or not, but it might be worth a look.

SteveG · « **Reply #125 on:** June 14, 2004, 04:57:59 pm »

rhaehnel,

Can you recreate this problem in 10.0.146?

Steve

SteveG · « **Reply #126 on:** June 15, 2004, 11:37:56 am »

Bill and rhaehnel,

Tonight there will be a new build of MC. It includes modifications I made to hopefully eliminate strange behavior with Last Played and Playcounts. If you can test it out, that would be great. When synching, take note if the information is displayed correctly in the MC view of iPod before you sync and after you have disconnected your iPod and played/modified songs on iPod. If it is, after you select 'Synchronization', cancel the sync and check if the file information has been updated correctly in MC (assuming you have 'Sync data to MC' selected).

Thanks,

Steve

SteveG · « **Reply #127 on:** June 16, 2004, 04:13:25 pm »

Everyone,

Tonight's MC (10.0.148) includes some changes to continue to improve any problems with Last Played and ratings. Upon further searching, this is what I found...

Prior to this version there could have been problems with Play Counts and Last Played if you viewed your iPod in iTunes after making changes on your iPod and then went to MC. The reason is that as soon as iTunes sees your iPod, it rewrites the iTunesDB file which both MC and iTunes use to store data. The catch is that iTunes does not write the info in the way that I was set to check for it in regards to Last Played and Ratings based on the unofficial documentation of what fields are where in the iTunesDB. This would explain why Last Played and Rating behavior would have been fine using MC, but would get incorrect data if iTunes was introduced.

Anyway, I resolved this by standardizing on the iTunes way which should make this problem go away.

Steve

sirshambling · « **Reply #128 on:** June 17, 2004, 05:11:27 am »

Last Played seems to be fine now thanks Steve. John.

rhaehnel · « **Reply #129 on:** June 17, 2004, 12:57:11 pm »

I've tested a couple of syncs and it seems to be working properly- thanks.

Steve-
Now that MC is working again I'm writing a program that will import my itunes data(last played, play count, ratings) into MC. Everything works bu the 'last played' field. I cant for the life of me figure out what MC expects for the Last Played field. The only thing I can figure out for certain is that 0 is 'never played'- everything else I try end up as '34 years ago' or worse! Can you give me a little explanation as to what MC expects here?

One last question: Does the MC automation interface support access to the ipod database? Speciifically I'm looking to update the 'Play Count' and 'LTP' when playing songs on my iPod thru MC. If not, could this be a future enhancement?

SteveG · « **Reply #130 on:** June 17, 2004, 04:25:01 pm »

rhaehnel,

MC stores the last played time as Unix system time and iTunes stores as MAC time. To convert, MAC to Unix time subtract 2082844800 from the MAC time.

The MC automation interface does not support the iPod database. It would be possible in the future.

Steve

sirshambling · « **Reply #131 on:** June 18, 2004, 01:27:19 am »

Steve,

I'm sorry but "last played" has gone haywire again. Without going near Itunes, I did a synch this morning and every single track apart from the ones I imported last night has been overwritten into MC's Media Library by the Ipod with a series of negative numbers. I always synch wih the "synch data to MC" checked.

I knew something was wrong when a message came up "saving tag changes to 7,256 files"!

Can you help again please? TIA. John.

rhaehnel · « **Reply #132 on:** June 19, 2004, 09:58:01 am »

SteveG-
I now get the same problem as sirshambling and I think I see why its happening. I did a sync after having played 12 or so songs and the count and dates updated in MC just fine, however, the ipod view in MC showed that the songs LTP was still at 2 hours or so- the play count had been cleared but the LTP date was still there. Because of this after the next sync the 12 tracks that I had played(the ones for which the date had not been cleared) all showed negative numbers for LTP.

Anyone else see this?

SteveG · « **Reply #133 on:** June 22, 2004, 09:37:58 am »

Sorry for the delay. I will try to take a look at this today.

Steve

SouthsideIrish · « **Reply #134 on:** June 22, 2004, 06:49:59 pm »

Blasted! After three or four good syncs, the negative numbers in last played are back, and I didn't go anywhere near iTunes. Oh, and they are all of music I played yesterday, and I know that the dates and times are the same on the iPod and computer.

Bill

SteveG · « **Reply #135 on:** June 23, 2004, 04:22:39 pm »

Everyone,

Tomorrow there should be a new build of MC (10.0.150) in which I extended the recent changes to safeguard against corruption of Last Played and Rating syncs.

Thanks,

Steve

SouthsideIrish · « **Reply #136 on:** June 24, 2004, 07:25:28 am »

Wow! I've got songs on my iPod that I haven't played in over 38 years. Call me forgetful, but I didn't realize I had owned an iPod for 38 years. But then you do get to be forgetful when you are 80 years old.

I think I'll go back to my rocking chair and listen to Lawrence Welk.

Bill

SteveG · « **Reply #137 on:** June 24, 2004, 09:12:38 am »

Bill,

That bubble machine is something else.

Steve

bobrock · « **Reply #138 on:** June 26, 2004, 12:26:34 pm »

During snchronization i got this error on single file:

D:\Path to the file\Shavn Lee - Happines (Ashley Beedle's West Coast Beach Bossa).mp3 - 2

What does mean exit ERROR code 2 ?

TIA for explanation.

bjevers · « **Reply #139 on:** June 26, 2004, 05:47:09 pm »

SteveG - I just had a hd crash and lost all my music on my PC. I do have about half of it on my iPod. What is the easiest way to get it back on my PC? I browsed the iPod, selected all the tracks and hit Download to PC, but it just dumps them all in the destination directory. How can I get it to create the artist\album directories like it does when ripping?

Thanks...Brian

bobrock · « **Reply #140 on:** June 27, 2004, 04:32:52 pm »

Hi Brian,

You can try a tool like MP3 Collector.
I beleive it's capable to organize directory structure and RENAME in a batch your files recovered from iPod...

Wish you success

Bob

ph_bradley · « **Reply #141 on:** June 27, 2004, 04:48:10 pm »

alternatively - you could just use MC to do it!!

right click your selected files and select Rename Files from properties. In there, you have the option to set directory structures - it's very easy. Do this on the files you have downloaded from your ipod.

SteveG · « **Reply #142 on:** June 27, 2004, 04:55:37 pm »

bobrock,

That error means "The system cannot find the file specified. " . Most likely that file no longer exists at the location that MC thinks it should. Try playing the file in MC to confirm this.

Brian,

ph_bradley's advice is on the money. Good luck. Thanks ph_bradley.

Steve

bobrock · « **Reply #143 on:** June 28, 2004, 02:20:11 am »

Thanks Steve,

Indeed I have create a "coaster" CD ;-)))))))

I was importing CD's with mp3's and m3u Playlists and apearently it had incorrect path to some files.

This happend becouse CD was inproperly burned, in other words long filenames were truncated length of 64 characters and entry in m3u playlist was incorrect for files with longer name than 64 chr.

It will be nice if the Error messages in MC would be more descriptive and one have option to cut and paste them.

Thanks for answer

Rgds

Bob

mindracing · « **Reply #144 on:** June 28, 2004, 01:08:43 pm »

So, I'm definately not new to this iPod/MC synching lark but I am new to iTunes, now that we have it in the UK. If this is a dumb question I apologise.

I purchased 1 song from iTunes to give it a try.

It's m4p, plays in MC OK and transfers to iPod OK. I can play it from the iPod within MC but it won't play on the iPod itself. It just skips to the next track.

I have deleted it and resynched with the same result.

I'm running .146.

Any ideas?

SteveG · « **Reply #145 on:** June 28, 2004, 05:00:11 pm »

Ashley,

You must transfer one AAC file one time to iPod using iTunes. After that, the files should play. iTunes writes some information to iPod which authorizes it to play AAC.

Steve

pank2002 · « **Reply #146 on:** June 29, 2004, 09:00:42 am »

Problem:

When I try to sync my iPod with MC, I get the following messaged:

Media Center was unable to initialize the desired handheld. check that it is plugged in and turned on.

When I click ok mc crashes.

I use v11 build 11.

I can't initialize it again, as the messaged comes, even when I right click on the iPod.

It's at file 2141. don't know if that helps.

I haven't synced the iPod synce v10 by the way (I think... might be wrong.)

Please help as I need to add some new albums ASAP.

edit:
Thanks in Advance,
Rasmus

SteveG · « **Reply #147 on:** June 29, 2004, 09:38:55 am »

Rasmus,

Do you get the message when you first click on the iPod drive in the tree?

"It's at file 2141. don't know if that helps."

Do you mean that MC starts to count up and show the files on iPod but at 2141 it crashes?

If so, I do not think it is a v 11 problem, but rather a problem with your database. I can confirm this if you send me your iTunesDB file.

steve @ jriver.com

pank2002 · « **Reply #148 on:** June 29, 2004, 11:04:23 am »

It starts counting the files when I click on the iPod; "Reciving file info (2141)" I think it says.

The problem is as you describe.

I'll send my iTunesDB file in your direction.

Thanks,
Rasmus

bvm · « **Reply #149 on:** June 30, 2004, 12:40:22 am »

Quote from: SteveG on June 23, 2004, 04:22:39 pm

Tomorrow there should be a new build of MC (10.0.150) in which I extended the recent changes to safeguard against corruption of Last Played and Rating syncs.

Still eagerly awaiting it, nearly a week later (and 11 days after build 149). Any idea what the hold up is?

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Author Topic: IPOD SUPPORT (Read 38739 times)