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Author Topic: Features Request for Ipod support.  (Read 4477 times)

olarte

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Features Request for Ipod support.
« on: October 03, 2007, 11:47:13 am »

Now that builds 335 and 337 have fixed the scrambled cover art, I'd like to request some additional functionality so we can do away with using Itunes altogether other than for firmware updates.

1. Ability to add the custom fields (not standard id3 tags) to any file that Itunes uses for
    Compilations, Save bookmark, and Skip when shuffling.

2. Ability to support the TV Show categories as found on the Ipod\Itunes. THis is the only way to categorize\organize Videos since since it does not use genres etc... instead I for one use TVSHows\Seasons to organize things like Music videos, you tube etc...

Even if the video support cannot be anabled one could use Itunes strictly for video management.

But having to go to itunes to mark files as skippable, bookmarked or compilations is a pain as one needs to build an itunes music library to do this which is painful to maintain.

Unfortunately because we need to make compilations the same artist so they show up properly on the Ipod classic, these albums must be set manually as compilations in Itunes.


Thanks in advance.
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lalittle

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Smartlists (i.e. Playlists) AND Podcasts out of order on iPod.
« Reply #1 on: October 04, 2007, 07:13:59 am »

I've previously reported that Podcasts are out of order once transferred to an iPod -- I cannot tell how they're sorting, but it's not by name, filename, date, or track number.  I was trying to use smartlists as a workaround for this issue, and I discovered that they files are STILL out of order when accessed via the "Playlist" category on the iPod.  On top of this, I noticed that the main playlist I use to sync my iPod (i.e. the one that contains ALL my files on the iPod) is ALSO out of order.  I still get "groups" of files in the correct order -- i.e. an album of songs will be grouped together and the songs will be in order -- but overall there doesn't seem to be any recognizable pattern to why the album groups are listed in the order that they are, or why some songs are not grouped with their album.  It's not by artist, date, or album name, and I honestly don't see the pattern.

I have a suspicion that whatever is causing the podcasts do list out of order is the same reason that songs are listed out of order.  Note that this issue may not show up when viewing only a few items since many of the tracks still group together for 8 or 9 in a row.  If you have a lot of files in a single podcast, however, it quickly becomes obvious they are NOT sorting correctly.

Could someone from JR possibly look into this?  It's been reported for quite a while now, and it's become a much more serious issue with the new Classic iPods -- it's no longer just a minor nuisance.  Because of this issue, there is quite literally NO way to display podcasts in order on the new Classic iPod.  I used to be able to navigate to Genre > Podcast, but "Podcast" is no longer included in the Genre list of the 6th gen units.  I have podcasts with dozens of episodes, which makes it VERY difficult to find the next one in order.

Note that I see similar behavior on two different iPods (5th and 6th gen) after syncing on two different systems (XP and Vista.)

Thanks for any help with this,

Larry
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m1abrams

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Re: Features Request for Ipod support.
« Reply #2 on: October 04, 2007, 07:38:48 am »

I would like to add a few more features:

1.  [DONE 12.0.340] Be able to NOT have the MC logo loaded as the default image if no image exists.  This is particularly annoying with podcasts that do not have an image or video podcasts that NEVER have an image.  Short of that can we have the option to manually add an image to a podcast feed so that all podcasts for that feed have them we assigned.

2.  [DONE 12.0.340] Use the video thumbnails as the image when loaded into the ipod (this would go a long way to solving issue above).

3.  [DONE 12.0.343] The new iPod classics have a very nice new UI feature for podcasts, they show the Date of the podcast.  However MC does not seem to sync the proper data for this to happen and they all show up as unknown.  We already have the date associated with the podcast if MC could just put that data in the correct location that would be very nice.

However I really really would like to be able to turn off that default MC logo that gets put into the ipod.  I am able to handle it with my music that is missing artwork by assigning a placeholder of my own.  But being able to NOT have artwork would be nice.
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m1abrams

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Re: Features Request for Ipod support.
« Reply #3 on: October 04, 2007, 07:40:48 am »

Forgot one:

This one might be a bit tougher but would be very handy.

Support folders in the ipods playlist.  This is another new feature the ipod now has which if you have lots of playlists this helps soo much.
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SwellGuy

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Re: Features Request for Ipod support.
« Reply #4 on: October 04, 2007, 09:38:14 am »

Great ideas - we will implement these as time permits. I'm going to sticky the topic so it stays highly visible.
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olarte

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Re: Features Request for Ipod support.
« Reply #5 on: October 04, 2007, 12:20:39 pm »

Great ideas - we will implement these as time permits. I'm going to sticky the topic so it stays highly visible.

Thanks, and do let me know if you need volunteers to test.

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lalittle

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Re: Smartlists (i.e. Playlists) AND Podcasts out of order on iPod.
« Reply #6 on: October 04, 2007, 04:39:00 pm »

I've previously reported that Podcasts are out of order once transferred to an iPod -- I cannot tell how they're sorting, but it's not by name, filename, date, or track number.  I was trying to use smartlists as a workaround for this issue, and I discovered that they files are STILL out of order when accessed via the "Playlist" category on the iPod.

I don't understand why this post was moved to the "feature requests" thread.  It seems like this clearly classifies as a "bug," and as such doesn't it deserve it's own thread along side the threads on this forum dealing with "cover art," "sync speed," and "file type" iPod problems?  Having Playlists and Podcasts properly sort on the iPod is not a "new idea" -- it's something that should happen on the iPod by default.

Thanks,

Larry
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Cheburashka

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Re: Features Request for Ipod support.
« Reply #7 on: October 04, 2007, 11:08:39 pm »

Here are three, two of which are long-standing:

1.  Properly support mix-files with .cue's.  Now, if you try to sync one file from a .cue, the entire media file (i.e., whole album) gets transferred to the ipod.  This means it fills up way too quickly, and also that you can't play just the song you wanted to sync.  The correct behavior is to extract the one song from the media file.

2.  Tag mp4 files.  There are free libraries for doing this now, so...   (Actually, a related "feature" would be conversion to m4a, m4b, and m4g.)

3.  Sync with the #*(@#* iPhone.  With jailbreak, etc. now available, there's no reason this can't be done.
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JimH

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Re: Features Request for Ipod support.
« Reply #8 on: October 05, 2007, 07:20:35 am »

3.  Sync with the #*(@#* iPhone.  With jailbreak, etc. now available, there's no reason this can't be done.
This won't happen anytime soon.  Apple seems determined to lock other people out, so even if we did it, the next iTunes "update" would probably close it again.  If things settle down and Apple stops doing that, we may do the iPhone.

You could let Apple know what you want.
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Chris Shaw

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Re: Features Request for Ipod support.
« Reply #9 on: October 09, 2007, 02:20:47 pm »

Mapping of custom MC tags to iPod tags. e.g.
iPod Artist = [Album Artist (auto)]
iPod Album = [Date(Year)] - [Album]
iPod Name = [track #] - [=If(IsEmpty([Album Artist]),,[Artist] -) [Name]
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gummbah

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Re: Features Request for Ipod support.
« Reply #10 on: October 09, 2007, 03:07:28 pm »

Something I posted in another tread:
Let the user choose between track gain or album gain to be transferred to the ipod.
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rjm

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Re: Features Request for Ipod support.
« Reply #11 on: October 10, 2007, 04:57:07 pm »

This won't happen anytime soon.  Apple seems determined to lock other people out, so even if we did it, the next iTunes "update" would probably close it again.  If things settle down and Apple stops doing that, we may do the iPhone.

Does this statement also apply to the iTouch?

My son wants to buy one and I am wondering if I should discourage him.
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JimH

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Re: Features Request for Ipod support.
« Reply #12 on: October 10, 2007, 10:39:13 pm »

Yes.  We're probably not going to do it soon.
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BartMan01

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Re: Features Request for Ipod support.
« Reply #13 on: October 12, 2007, 11:33:40 pm »

Don't forget:

Dynamic playlists (on the iPod) support.
On-The-Go playlist support.
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m1abrams

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Re: Features Request for Ipod support.
« Reply #14 on: October 16, 2007, 09:25:17 am »

I know the Devs love seeing a huge list of features before all the bugs are worked out  ;D

However another feature that would be handy is being able to sync "skipped count" on the ipod.  Just like it syncs play count.

EDIT: It appears that feature already exists :)
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Cheburashka

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Re: Features Request for Ipod support.
« Reply #15 on: October 18, 2007, 10:49:03 am »

Here are three, two of which are long-standing:

1.  Properly support mix-files with .cue's.  Now, if you try to sync one file from a .cue, the entire media file (i.e., whole album) gets transferred to the ipod.  This means it fills up way too quickly, and also that you can't play just the song you wanted to sync.  The correct behavior is to extract the one song from the media file.

2.  Tag mp4 files.  There are free libraries for doing this now, so...   (Actually, a related "feature" would be conversion to m4a, m4b, and m4g.)

No-one at JRiver has responded to these two.  These have been outstanding for a very long time, and I think they're serious if you want to be able to switch entirely from iTunes to MC.
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JimH

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Re: Features Request for Ipod support.
« Reply #16 on: October 18, 2007, 10:56:48 am »

Sorry.  We don't usually reply to feature requests.
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leezer3

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Re: Features Request for Ipod support.
« Reply #17 on: November 06, 2007, 07:47:21 pm »

Slightly broken bit of behaviour here, probably belongs in this thread  ;)
MC12 classifies M4B files with embedded chapter art as video (The media type needs to be manually changed to audio). The chapter art shows correctly when playing in MC, but when syncing to the Ipod, these embedded images are replaced with the standard MC logo.

No biggy, but would be nice if fixed.

-Leezer-
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sealskej

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« Reply #18 on: November 26, 2007, 02:04:59 pm »

I would buy Media Center, if I could scrobble my ipod played tracks to last.fm server. Live changing of smart playlists in ipod would be also great. Now I use Winamp and ml_ipod plugin, which supports these two features.
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m1abrams

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Re: Features Request for Ipod support.
« Reply #19 on: November 29, 2007, 07:56:26 am »

How about comments from podcasts syncd to the ipod?
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TB2

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Re: Features Request for Ipod support.
« Reply #20 on: December 22, 2007, 09:29:33 pm »

I'd also like to add something:

The iPod sorts pictures alphabetically after the content of the {date} tag. For anyone using a date format like DD.MM.YYYY this turns out completely wrong, e.g. March 2nd comes after April 1st (01.04.2005 stands before 02.03.2005 alphabetically). The second problem is that some cameras include the time, as in DD.MM.YYYY-hh:mm for example. Mine does this, and this results in a totally bloated list like this, and every entry only containing one or two images, which I took in exactly that minute  ::) :

...
01.03.2007 06-46
01.03.2007 08-22
01.03.2007 09-04
01.03.2007 09-12
01.04.2007 01-04
01.04.2007 01-12
01.04.2007 02-28
...

This is total nonsense, and I can't believe Apple actually did this.

So it should be possible to:

A) On-The-Fly convert the dates into an alphabetical order and automatically remove stuff after a rule so that DD.MM.YYYY-hh:mm would apply to a rule like [day].[month].[year]-[hour]:[minute] and would turn out on the ipod as YYYY.MM.DD for example. It should be possible to define how the conversion should look like. E.g. I would prefer having a whole month in one entry, so mine would need to look like: YYYY.MM

or

B) Even better: insert useful information into the date tag to overcome the feature lack of the iPod. E.g. if you use additional tags in your MC library it should be possible to OTF convert the useless YYYY.MM.DD-hh:mm into something like P200 - 07.11 - Greece if you would want to use a tag rule like [Camera] - [YearShort]:[Month] - [Location] or whatever rule would suit you.

All this is already pretty much possible with normal tagging, but it would be great if such an option could be implemented into the OTF conversion options, too. Most people probably don't want to change their date tags on the Computer itself, but this Option would greatly improve the usability on the iPod itself.

Thanks
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Lossless Dave

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Re: Features Request for Ipod support.
« Reply #21 on: December 24, 2007, 06:46:37 am »

I completely agree with the various posts here regarding full .m4a .mp4 etc. tag support.

MC needs to get with the progress made by other media packages if it is to have a real crack at the iTunes replacement market - which must be huge given the quality (not) of Apples offering.

I recently bought MC to do this job and I am disappointed to find that only when I ran into the buffers was it revealed that tags in m4a were not fully supported.

I am currently investigating the viability of reverting to flac for PC media and MC library management of thereof, and then converting on sync with my iPod.

Has anyone else got workarounds in place for this ?

Regards to all
Lossless Dave
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