Topic: iPod sync - iPod fails to play certain songs (Read 6180 times)

kpod · « **on:** January 22, 2005, 06:52:42 am »

Steve,
I finallly upgraded from .140 to .179 finding out that syncing of my numerous smartlists worked fine again. Thanks!

A pity I experienced a new challenge:
Some (not all) of my > 1 hour .mp3 fail to play on the iPod (40 GB photo). Symptom: Clicking on those songs shows them in the display for 1-2 seconds but they do not play and the pod jumps to the next song which plays as expected. Possibly a problem with the pod itself or the db on it because those songs play perfectly when started by MC (no difference wether started on PC or pod harddisk).

Already tried this without any luck:
- reinitialization, rerecognition and complete sync of iPod
- deletion and reimport of problem songs by MC

Do you have any idea for me?

Klaus

wizbang · « **Reply #1 on:** January 23, 2005, 01:47:03 pm »

Hi Klaus,

Just a thought. Do the files that fail to play have non-US characters in them? e.g. âåêæö

The iPod, having been designed in the US, doesn't recognise that there are any other countries or languages in the World, so it skips anything that is not in the standard US English alphabet.

I think Steve put a fix in a few releases ago to replace non-US characters with a "_" during synchronisation, but maybe there is still a bug in his workaround.

tlongacre · « **Reply #2 on:** January 23, 2005, 04:24:17 pm »

Klaus,

Are the songs that are skipped from iTunes Music Service? If so, it may be that you need to copy one song over from within iTunes and then switch to MC.

kpod · « **Reply #3 on:** January 24, 2005, 05:28:39 pm »

wizbang,
I checked this first: No special characters found in name and tags of the problematic songs. Then I rembered my most exotic spelled artist 'Øystein Sevåg' (Scandinavian I suppose) does not cause any challenges. This iPod is delivered with the European firm ware version.

tlongacre,
the behaviour is exactly like in the case you mentioned. But my itunes .m4p work fine. The skipped songs are .mp3, 160 kbit/s with around 87 MB. Others with comparable scale still work. Didn't experience this with MC 11.140 I upgraded from. Strange.

Nevertheless thanks for your ideas.

Klaus

tlongacre · « **Reply #4 on:** January 25, 2005, 03:41:48 pm »

Hmm, I'm having this problem, but only with one song (well, there may be more, but on my 60gb iPod, I haven't run into them yet). I've tried everything except the final step which is to reinitialize the iPod. I think I'll get to that tonight. So far Steve hasn't been able to figure out why this is happening.

SteveG · « **Reply #5 on:** January 26, 2005, 02:13:38 pm »

Klaus,

For starters, could you email one of the files that skips and I will see if I can replicate this here?

Thanks,

steve @ jriver.com

kpod · « **Reply #6 on:** January 27, 2005, 05:26:37 pm »

Steve,
currently I have 5 'problem .mp3'. All off them are trance sessions streamripped from web radio - none of them < 70 MB. I think mailing is not realisitic.

At weekend I have the possibility to sync them with my wife's ipod - I will try this. As I said no problem to play them with MC.

Klaus

SteveG · « **Reply #7 on:** January 28, 2005, 02:17:24 pm »

Klaus,

Thanks for the note. If you can update me after you try this with your wife's iPod, that would be great.

Thanks,

Steve

kpod · « **Reply #8 on:** January 28, 2005, 02:20:08 pm »

Steve,
in this second I sent you a mail with attachment.

Hope this helps.

Klaus

gpvillamil · « **Reply #9 on:** February 24, 2005, 09:52:19 am »

Quote from: wizbang on January 23, 2005, 01:47:03 pm

Hi Klaus,

Just a thought. Do the files that fail to play have non-US characters in them? e.g. âåêæö

The iPod, having been designed in the US, doesn't recognise that there are any other countries or languages in the World, so it skips anything that is not in the standard US English alphabet.

I think Steve put a fix in a few releases ago to replace non-US characters with a "_" during synchronisation, but maybe there is still a bug in his workaround.

Nope. All iPods can handle Unicode. I have a US-purchased iPod which handles Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Eastern European and Nordic character sets with no problems.

The problem is in the transfer process, or when Unicode characters appear in the *filename* on the iPod, which is why iTunes (and probably MC) rename them to numeric codes.

risingdamp · « **Reply #10 on:** March 22, 2005, 12:05:32 pm »

I've come across this issue where certain tracks on an album are skipped on the iPOD but MC plays them fine. I'll send them to you steve with a link to this thread. Perhaps you could try and replicate this.

risingdamp · « **Reply #11 on:** March 22, 2005, 04:56:46 pm »

This is a big problem for me now. I just came accross an album that wouldn't play tracks 2,3,4, or 5 but all others were OK.

risingdamp · « **Reply #12 on:** March 22, 2005, 05:18:03 pm »

I made a copy of a problem track and removed all tags using MC but it still won't play so it doesn't look like it's tag related. I'm stumped and hoping Steve has a brainwave.

risingdamp · « **Reply #13 on:** March 23, 2005, 02:52:07 am »

Just found this on iPOD lounge which suggests I might have a hard drive problem.

http://forums.ipodlounge.com/showthread.php?s=8a666affe27c33870beecf6e6ba37f07&threadid=20662&highlight=skip

Steve, if you can't replicate my problem with those files I sent you I'll return my iPOD for a new one.

risingdamp · « **Reply #14 on:** March 23, 2005, 04:45:46 am »

Or maybe this is the answer we are looking for:

Fix for when your iPOD skips over songs.

I haven't had time to try this yet but I will.

risingdamp · « **Reply #15 on:** March 23, 2005, 11:29:38 am »

Here's another update:

A long search of ipodlounge gave me a list of potential causes:

1. Encoding problem
2. Hard drive problem
3. Funny characters in tag
4. Firmware bug (meaning iPODs are buggy and it's tough!)
5. MC Problem
6. Track is too long (big) - encode at lower bit rate.

I started off by trying the fix suggested in the link above. That involves browsing the ipod via iTunes and playing a snippet of the affected track. I couldn't do this without restoring the ipod as iTunes just crashes when I connect it, presumably 'cos it's been "MC'd".

So the next step was to restore the ipod and try importing the affected tracks using iTunes. Bingo! no more skipping. So I think that takes me straight to potential cause number 5 above. I guess this is good news for me as I don't have a knackered iPOD but bad news for steve and co as there's some investigation needed into why MC causes this behaviour.

Please let me know if there's anything else you want me to do to help resolve this.

risingdamp · « **Reply #16 on:** March 23, 2005, 12:06:23 pm »

Well I seem to be the only one talking here but now I'm excited cos:

Eureka! Solved!

iTunes shortens the filename to 31 char or less. Through more testing I've determined that the iPOD 60GB Photo can only cope with filenames upto and including 40 char. 41 characters and it won't play.

So can MC do the same as iTunes and shorten filenames when it transfers them? I can see this being complicated though - like what about synching data back to MC? and what if the shortened filename matches the name of another file? I guess there's ways round this though. Now I've done my bit I'll leave it to the experts.

risingdamp · « **Reply #17 on:** March 23, 2005, 01:13:59 pm »

If anyone is suffering from this problem and wants a temporary solution just use rename files from properties with this naming convention to ensure any filenames you want to put on your iPOD do not exceed 31 char (as per iTunes):

[Track #]-Mid([Name], 0, 24)

You must have one of the latest versions of MC11 for this expression evaluator to work.

sirshambling · « **Reply #18 on:** March 23, 2005, 03:26:52 pm »

That's very interesting - I'll have to do some testing on this.

Thanks for your work on this one. It may be inaddition to the non-alphabet characters issue which has caused track skipping on my 60GB Ipod photo.

John.

risingdamp · « **Reply #19 on:** March 24, 2005, 07:08:41 pm »

Any comment from JR on this?

rldoose · « **Reply #20 on:** March 24, 2005, 11:32:31 pm »

I have been having the same problem and it has been driving me nuts..... My songs play fine with i sync using iTunes, but most dont when I use MC. I will try the short file name thing.

Reagan

SteveG · « **Reply #21 on:** March 25, 2005, 09:26:54 am »

MC needs to safeguard against the iPod limitation of 31 characters and foreign characters. This can and will be done.

Steve

risingdamp · « **Reply #22 on:** March 25, 2005, 10:12:06 am »

Cheers Steve. In the meantime at least we have a workaround.

lOth · « **Reply #23 on:** March 26, 2005, 06:27:12 am »

Quote from: risingdamp on March 23, 2005, 01:13:59 pm

If anyone is suffering from this problem and wants a temporary solution just use rename files from properties with this naming convention to ensure any filenames you want to put on your iPOD do not exceed 31 char (as per iTunes):

[Track #]-Mid([Name], 0, 24)

You must have one of the latest versions of MC11 for this expression evaluator to work.

Thanks a lot for this. Could you provide as well a formula to make a smarlist or a search query that would bring up all the 31+ char filenames that need to be converted?

risingdamp · « **Reply #24 on:** March 26, 2005, 07:35:52 am »

Quote from: lOth on March 26, 2005, 06:27:12 am

Thanks a lot for this. Could you provide as well a formula to make a smarlist or a search query that would bring up all the 31+ char filenames that need to be converted?

No but I'd sure like one. I think that request will need cross posting in the main forum. I'll do it now.

risingdamp · « **Reply #25 on:** March 26, 2005, 08:20:35 am »

Ok I did it and I'm feeling really proud of myself

Create a view scheme with an advanced expression using this rule:

If(IsEqual([Filename (Name)], Mid([Filename (Name)],0,31), 1),OK,Too long)

lOth · « **Reply #26 on:** March 26, 2005, 10:51:34 am »

Quote from: risingdamp on March 26, 2005, 08:20:35 am

Ok I did it and I'm feeling really proud of myself

Create a view scheme with an advanced expression using this rule:

If(IsEqual([Filename (Name)], Mid([Filename (Name)],0,31), 1),OK,Too long)

It seems to work except that all filenames that contain parentheses appear as too long. Any idea of how to prevent this?

But good job, you're getting close

risingdamp · « **Reply #27 on:** March 26, 2005, 11:04:45 am »

I recommend you clean those filenames separately. It's just asking for trouble.

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Author Topic: iPod sync - iPod fails to play certain songs (Read 6180 times)