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[Robert Joe]

I am about to purchase an iPhone so I started this thread is to discuss your iPhone / iTouch Syncing Methods.

Searching these forums, it appears there will always be issues because Apple is a closed system. Any firmware updates may break what was working. I have decided that for the method to work reliably I will be using a virtual handheld folder and iTunes to sync the iPhone.

I have a HTPC with a minimal Windows XP installed, MC11 for music and TheaterTek for DVD. My music is all FLAC and the album art all scanned and photoshop touched up 1417 x 1417, 300dpi. There is no junk on this computer. I only use it for media playback. I never go out on the internet or do any other work on this PC. Naturally I won’t be installing iTunes on this computer!

My home office PC is my regular work PC. Since I will be using iTunes to sync Outlook calendar and contacts to my iPhone then I may as well use it to sync audio as well. This PC will contain a folder for iPhone MP3’s. That folder will be shared on the network and my HTPC will map that folder and create a virtual handheld on it. I realize I will be syncing over the network but only the first sync will take a long time and who cares as I will just let it run while I am sleeping. Subsequent syncs won’t take very long as I don’t change what I sync to my handheld that often.

There has been talk about Cover Art Shinkrage option for handhelds (http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=41675.0). Even if this is going to be implemented I won’t be using it. It can’t see it being better than the algorithms that Photoshop use to re-sample images. Adobe have invested years of R&D into things like that. I will have two images for all my album art. One will be the high resolution one that MC will use. The other will be a smaller/lower resolution one for embedding into MP3’s. Photoshop and Photoshop Elements have a batch convert so I can create all the smaller images with just a few mouse clicks.

For the handheld sync setup, I will be specifying the path of an executable for the external encoder. This will be a script that invokes LAME, passing it the file name of the album art to embed in the MP3. Starting with with LAME 3.98b4 you can embed album art.

 --ti <file>     audio/song albumArt (jpeg/png/gif file, 128KB max, v2.3)

Questions:

I would prefer not to have to embed the album art in an MP3. But I have not found out if iTunes supports something like the folder.jpg of MC. If anyone knows please let me know.

The iPhone screen has a resolution of 480x320. Does the iPhone use the entire 480x320 for displaying the Album Art or is part of the screen used for something else? What I am asking is what is the optimal resolution album art I should be aiming for? I want it to be exact, I don’t want iTunes or the iPhone to degrade the images by doing any further re-sampling on them. 320x320 would be the logical thing since that is square.

[dasfoo]

One thing I noticed is that in using Media Center to sync up the music to my iPhone all the phone-related functions stopped working. I could no longer receive or make calls.

That's probably a bug.

[JimH]

... all the phone-related functions stopped working...

Which build?  487 is current.

Is your phone "Jailbroke"?

[dasfoo]

It's not jailbroke. It's a two-week-old new iPhone using aT&T and factory settings.

First MC didn't recognize the phone at all, so I used iTunes to sync it by just importing one of my MC playlists into iTunes. Worked fine.

Then I updated the iPhone software and noticed that MC recognized it. So I wiped off the iTunes syncage, and synced a couploe of playlists through MC.

Afterward, however, I couldn't receive or make calls. But I could still play music and connect to WiFi (did notice that the album art was all screwed up, however).

So I used iTunes to restore the factory settings and everything worked again.
Also, I've noticed that MC is crashing more than it used to, and I think it's always been when my phone is connected and charging for an extended period, but I haven't really nailed that down yet.

[JimH]

Which build of MC are you using?

[dasfoo]

Which build of MC are you using?

12.0.473

I checked for an update, but it said I was up-to-date.

[SwellGuy]

Please try it with 12.0.490 http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=46417.0 - there have been several improvements made since 473 regarding iPhone support.

[dasfoo]

I did the update and was able to sync my iPhone without losing phone functions. Thanks.

I also finally ironed out the discrepencies in the artist listings (the iphone uses "band" as well as "artist" but ignores "Album artist").

Only bug this time was none of my album art (all embedded) got transferred. I do have support for that enabled in the device options, and the same mp3 files sync with art if I do them through an MC playlist imported into  iTunes.