Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[ForsakenArdor]

Hello, I recently got a 5.5g 80GB iPod Video and it's been working great with MC12 and it was even preloaded with the Windows firmware out of the box (version 1.2).  Out of the list in the sticky, I picked mine out (A450,   V9R).

Anyway, it was mostly working well since it arrived a few days ago, but suddenly, a few seconds after a song, it went silent.  I didn't notice for several seconds, but it had reset itself.  I went back into my playlist and found the last song that played and played the one after it, then it reset again.  The song was Help Me, Rhonda from The Beach Boys album Summer Days (And Summer Nights!!).  Technically, it was the early version of the song, spelled Ronda, but I spelled it Rhonda so it'll be counted as a duplicate for my MC smartlists.  Anyway...

The first thing that stood out to me about what was different about the file was that it was encoded from a mono wav file.  The CD was mono, but it rips to stereo.  I use an audio editing program to zoom in and determine whether the left and right channels are identical, and if they are, I convert it to a mono track to save space and encoding time.  I then encode with MC's LAME plugin at VBR extreme (non-fast).

I tried a song from Beach Boys' Pet Sounds, which is also mono, but at 128kbps encoded with L3enc ages ago.  It played fine.

So, I'm wondering what's up with my iPod.  Is it MC?  Is this an unaddressed issue that Apple needs to know about?  My MC about says 12.0.94, but it downloaded some sort of update a few days ago, it just doesn't reflect on the About window.

[SwellGuy]

Can you send me (rick at jriver) one of the files causing the problem?

[ForsakenArdor]

I was going to send one, but started testing just to make sure.  After repeating the problem once, the problem has mysteriously vanished after I left it on pause for a while until the cover art loaded in.  I would notice a significant lag time when loading in the cover art, so maybe the new iPods don't like playing before it can "find" the cover art.  I'll send a song and the cover art file I use for it if it happens again.

[mooseman]

I'm seeing the same symptoms with my 60GB 5g, when trying to play a certain podcast.  This seasons Battlestar Galactica commentary in mp3 format.  I've made the file available at http://www.mlanghorst.us/files/bsg_307.mp3, it was downloaded from the podcast available thru itunes.

Seems like the same symptoms as above, though I can't pause it successfully.

[mooseman]

Though removing the cover art makes no difference, the ipod still resets itself on these files.

[SwellGuy]

Thanks, mooseman, we'll look into it.

[SwellGuy]

This is an iPod bug - if you transfer the file with iTunes it will reset the iPod, too.

It seems to be related to Gapless playback. If you zero out the gapless playback information for the track in the iPod database the iPod no longer crashes.

The file doesn't play correctly for me using iTunes or MC. Does it play for you?

[mooseman]

Well it worked before, must have gotten corrupted during upload.  But I double checked, and the file straight from scifi.com exhibits the same symptom.  The file is located http://media.scifi.com/battlestar/downloads/podcast/mp3/307/bsg_ep307_FULL.mp3.

The file transfers fine with iTunes.  How do you remove the gapless information for that track in iTunes?

[mooseman]

By bug, do you mean something with the firmware, or is it a defect?  Do you have a link?

[mooseman]

Wow, I guess once you understand the symptoms a bit better, it becomes much easier to find.  Looks like they've been having this issue since 4G ipods came out.

Another fix appears to be turning off the EQ when playing these files.