INTERACT FORUM
More => Old Versions => Media Center 11 (Development Ended) => Topic started by: SteveG on May 21, 2003, 05:32:11 am
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Hello All,
For anyone who is new to MC, please be sure to get the latest version.
If you want to read an excellent help file (thanks Adam) on using MC and iPod please go to....
http://www.home.earthlink.net/~ashawley01/
For additional information, please check the previous help thread at...
http://www.musicex.com/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?board=MediaCenter;action=display;num=1051037810
For any issues not covered, please post below and someone will respond ASAP.
Thanks,
Steve (JRiver)
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I can successfully upload MP3s from MC 9.0.174 to my 20Gb iPod from my Laptop (1.2GHz Pentium III, plus 1394 PCMCIA adaptor). Windows XP Pro.
However, no success uploading from my main home computer (profile below) through Creative Audigy Platinum built-in Firewire ports. Firewire ports have Creative-supplied Unibrain Firenet drivers loaded.
Upload appears to proceed (albeit slowly), then completes with an MC error message indicating failure for all files with error code 23.
Following this failure, iPod has lost track of all files previously uploaded (from Laptop), although they still appear to occupy iPod space. Only remedy is to reformat.
What does error code 23 mean, and how can I overcome the problem? (all my 1000's of mp3s actually live on the main computer, not the laptop!)
System info:
Media Center Registered 9.0.174 -- C:\Program Files\J River\Media Jukebox\
Microsoft Windows XP Workstation 5.1 (Build 2600)
AMD Athlon 1210 MHz MMX / Memory: Total - 523 MB, Free - 261 MB
Internet Explorer: 6.0.2600.0000 / ComCtl32.dll: 5.82 (xpclient.010817-1148) / Shlwapi.dll: 6.00.2600.0000 (xpclient.010817-1148) / Shell32.dll: 6.00.2600.0000 (xpclient.010817-1148) / wnaspi32.dll: Internal ASPI Layer
Ripping / Drive D: Copy mode:ModeBurstBigBuffer CD Type:Auto Read speed:Max
Drive E: Copy mode:ModeBurstBigBuffer CD Type:IDE Read speed:Max
Digital playback: Yes / Use YADB: Yes / Get cover art: Yes / Calc replay gain: No / Copy volume: 32767
Eject after ripping: Yes / Play sound after ripping: No
Burning / Drive E: IOMEGA CDRW9600INT-B Addr: 1:0:0 Speed:24 MaxSpeed:24 Use MJ Engine:Yes
Test mode: No / Eject after writing: Yes / Direct decoding: Yes / Write CD-Text: Yes
Use playback settings: No / Normalization: None
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From the previous support thread from SteveG....
My best guess is that there may be a problem with the file paths for those files. You can confirm this by trying to play those files from within MC. If there is a problem, the files will not play.
Steve,
You were correct. Apparently, when I tried to incorrectly upload the file to my iPOD the computer just concidered it another hard drive. So the path name was changed to another drive letter within MC. I just needed to reimport them into MC to resolve the issue.
Thanks again,
Jorge
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However, no success uploading from my main home computer (profile below) through Creative Audigy Platinum built-in Firewire ports. Firewire ports have Creative-supplied Unibrain Firenet drivers loaded.
There are loads of people who have had problems uploading to their iPods using the Audigy firewire port. Most people ended up buying an additional firewire card as the only way to resolve their problems. I believe a possible solution is to disable networking via the firewire port on the Audigy. The simple fact is though that iPods don't get on well with Audigys.
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Steve,
Just a quick note to say that my Ipod is working extremely well now - the link with MC9 seems to be very secure.
Thanks for all your work and help.
John
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mcphzgig,
Phil's advice is on the money (thanks Phil). Error code 23 is a generic Windows error which means.. "Data error (cyclic redundancy check). "
John,
Thanks.
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steve, i've been having some problems for some time now. it seems that certain albums (they always begin with a) have a problem duplicating themselves and being all out of order. for instance if you go to albums in ipod, "abbey road", "a rush of blood to the head", and "Ágaetis Byrjun" appear on the list twice. if you select one of the albums the songs are usually out of order. however each time i sync, different albums (although they always start with "a") will be affected. for instance, sometimes "a rush of blood to the head" appears on there 3 times. then the next time i sync it will be fine. i was also having a problem with "a hard days night" but i renamed it to just be "hard day's night" and it works fine now.
I have reformatted my ipod multiple times and have deleted the albums from my library and reimported them and even deleted and reripped them. still nothing. this has been happening for me for at least a month but i never bothered reporting it. i will send you my itunes database file and maybe that will help. such a weird problem. has anyone else encountered this? try checking on your ipod, you might just not have noticed it yet. hopefully we can figure this out. and i know if anyone can its you steve. ;) thanks in advance.
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willrmc,
I cannot duplicate this. Can anyone else? If no one else can, I will presume the Plugin does not have a bug and I can try to make some suggestions on how you may be seeing the results you are getting.
Steve
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There are loads of people who have had problems uploading to their iPods using the Audigy firewire port. Most people ended up buying an additional firewire card as the only way to resolve their problems. I believe a possible solution is to disable networking via the firewire port on the Audigy. The simple fact is though that iPods don't get on well with Audigys.
I have an Audigy 2 and the firewire port works fine with my iPod.
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I have an Audigy 2 and the firewire port works fine with my iPod.
Aye, in the past year or so of being an iPodder, I've seen about a 50% success rate with Audigy cards. Some work, some don't, and there doesn't seem to be a pattern.
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My 20Gb iPod only seems to retain the Composer list from the most recent upload.
E.G. If I upload in two batches, then the Composers from the first batch no longer display when Browsing by Composer.
Is this how the iPod works, or an MC issue?
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Just got me new ipod and it is all working perfectly with MC.
Only thing i have noticed is that most of my music files are either MP3 - 320 or .ape
I have set it to convert everything to mp3 - 192 which seems ot work perfectly.
Only thing is out of about 300 files done so far it is leaving about 10% of them in my temp directory either as file.mp3.xxxxx or as file.wav
Shouldnt these be deleted automatically.
Also- anyone got a recomnedation for better headphones.
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Are some of your files read only?
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Just checked about 10 examples.
None are read only.
Actually ive just noticed that all the .XXXX files are 0bytes in size.
Its not a major prob as i just delete them when i'm done.
How about the Headphones then.
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This isn't a problem with MC9 but it may shed some light on why songs get cut off on the iPod.
Yesterday I decided to re-rip my favourite CD's using LAME 3.90.2 as an external decoder. I ripped one CD whilst at work using MC9 but couldn't synch the files to my iPod since it synchs with my home PC. Instead I got clever, a little too clever as it happens.
I looked at my iPod folder using MC9 to see which folders the 10 tracks from the CD were in on the iPod and what they were called, for example F01/681.mp3. I then created the same file/folder structure on my PC with the newly ripped files and copied them to the iPod manually, overwriting the original versions of the files.
The new MP3's are ripped with --alt-preset standard which resulted in a higher average bitrate than the original ones. The tracks are still listed on the iPod correctly since they have the same names, locations etc as the original ones. The only change is in the bitrate.
When I play them on the iPod the last 20-30 seconds are cut off. When I look at the iPod in MC9 the bitrates are lower than the bitrates for the files in the MC9 library. Obviously MC9 must tell the iPod the bitrate of the files during the synch, even when they are variable bitrate files, and if there is a discrepancy, the iPod can't play the entire length of the track.
Maybe people who are getting their files cut off should have a look at the bitrates displayed on their iPod and for the original files to see if they are the same. If the bitrates on the iPod are lower the songs will get cut off.
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Everyone,
There is a new Plugin posted (v 9.0.20). Do not get it unless you read this.
I made some changes in the way MC and the Plugin communicate and I think the transition will be seamless. But to be extra safe, here is the deal. MC 9.0.177 includes the necessary changes to run with the new Plugin. It should continue to be compatible with older plugins. The new Plugin, once installed, will not work with older versions of MC (pre 9.0.177). The new plugin is not automatically installed with MC although I will change this next week if there are no problems.
The new plugin (with MC 9.0.177) will resolve any crashing issues involving tag info that included semicolons. There should also be an increase in speed of data reporting and uploading. Finally, the feature of skipping conversion (transcoding) of files that already exist on iPod is now enabled (by default).
The ability to report space info for synching will grow out of these changes.
mikeh,
The new plugin should resolve the issue of 0 byte files you mentioned
Phil,
Thanks for your detective work. I cannot duplicate your results. Even if I set the iTunesDB bitrate to 0, I do not have a problem with files being cut off.
mcphzgig,
I cannot duplicate what you are seeing. Can anyone else? If so, please give me additional instructions.
Everyone,
Have a good weekend, I am off to fire up the grill.
Steve
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I hate to post on a weekend--well, a weekend for most of you (darned entertainment industry...), but I've stumbled on a bug and am trying to pin down if it's an MC issue or an iPod software issue.
The newest generation of the iPod includes a feature called "On-the-Go" playlists. It's supposed to serve as a song queue, where you can be playing tunes and add additional ones to the end of the queue.
Now, there are documented problems on other discussion boards about how the feature doesn't work as it ought. Most notably, while actively playing from the OTG Playlist, songs added to it are recognized, but not played when the original songs run out.
However, my problem is with the song order. I'm usually an album listener, so I like to pick a few albums and add them to the OTG playlist. The problem is that the track order is messed up. Sometimes only a couple of tracks are inverted, but other times, the entire album is in a random order.
I've made sure that shuffle mode and repeat modes are turned off on the iPod--it doesn't make a difference. My 2 guesses are:
1) MC9 is messing with the track order somehow when copying songs to the iPod, so I'm actually getting some kind of "internal DB order" instead of "track number order" with this feature.
2) Apple has something else wrong with this feature...
Any ideas?
Brad
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Brad,
I do not have the iPod with me to test this. Perhaps someone else can try to verify what you are reporting and if they can see it, I will get on it next week if not before.
Steve
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I'm having a nightmare.
I've been so looking forward to getting my Ipod, and I can't get it to work at all. Any help would be much appreciated. I've been following the help file at the beginning of this link. I'll talk you through my problem (day).
1. I have MC 9.0.174 running on Windows XP. I've been using MJ for years have about 40gb of music and am quite familiar with it.
2. I've got a brand new 30 Gb Ipod, one of the new models. Obviously I don't want to use MusicMatch so have skipped the installation of it as recommended by apple.
3. My firewire card does not charge the Ipod. I understand that this is the case with some cards, and I can live with it until I get a new one.
4. Following the guide, I've connected the ipod through the cradle to the PC, it shows up as drive G in windows. The guide says to rename the drive IPOD. When I attempted to do this, it said I couldn't rename the drive until it was formatted, so I accepted the option to format. 30 minutes later, it says the format is complete. For good measure I do a reboot.
5. The guide says I have to then format the Ipod for MC from within MC. I don't have the option to do this from a right click, though I do have the option to synchronise files.
6. ALL this time, the ipod is displaying "do not disconnect"
7. So I line up a small playist of 20 tunes to sychronise, and set it off. MC displays the files as they're going through. It all looks good.
8. MC completes it's synchronisation. The Ipod is still displaying "do not disconnect", and isn't responding to any pressing of buttons. I seem to be able to explore the Ipod from MC and view the playlist.
9. Ignoring the Ipods "do not disconnect" message, I pull it out of it's cradle. It then displays "OK to disconnect" with a big tick. But still none of the buttons work. I can't even turn the thing off.
I walked 4 miles this morning to get this. I've spent a weeks wages. And I'm very frustrated. Please help before it flies out the window.
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Did you find Adam's help file? Link is in the first message of this thread.
"Do not disconnect" is normal when the iPod is connected. It should be ejected with a right click on the iPod drive in MC.
You may be looking at the drive under "My Computer" in MC. That won't work. Find it in the MC tree with "CD, DVD, and Handhelds". Click on the + to open this section.
Format it with a right click from the same place.
If that doesn't work, try connecting directly to the PC, without a cradle.
If that doesn't work, reinstall the iPod software from the disk that came with it. When it starts to install Musicmatch, cancel.
Then try the format.
Also, once you have selected the files, click on the drive under "CD, DVD, and Handhelds" and then press "upload". You should see your files "queued" just before you do this.
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Skeet,
Step 9 of your procedure killed you.
Here's how to recover
1) Flip the switch at the top of the IPOD to the locked position and then back to the unlocked position. Then press both the menu and play buttons and hold them until the IPOD reboots. You should be good to go unless the drive got messed up when you disconnected.
2) When you need to remove something in Windows XP, you have to use the safely remove hardware icon that you will find on the right side of your task bar. It looks like a little green arrow over a rectangle representing a removable drive. Double click on that icon to bring up the dialog window, select the apple computer ipod and then click the stop button. When windows reports that it is safe to remove and the IPOD screen stops saying do not disconnect then you can remove the IPOD.
If you have corrupted the drive, reformat again.
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Where can I find the new plugin (v 9.0.20)? I went to the plugin download page and only saw .19 listed. I downloaded it anyway and the plug in manager says its .19. I did clear my browser cache before downloading.
Thanks,
John
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There are loads of people who have had problems uploading to their iPods using the Audigy firewire port. Most people ended up buying an additional firewire card as the only way to resolve their problems. I believe a possible solution is to disable networking via the firewire port on the Audigy. The simple fact is though that iPods don't get on well with Audigys.
Bought the additional Firewire card, installed it and connected the iPod through it. PROBLEM IS that the uploading performance is exactly the same - poor.
Lost approx. 600 VBR mp3s out of 2200 in the first upload attempt. Faulty transfer is about 80% repeatable on the tracks that have a problem. BUT one time in five, I will get a previously faulty track through on its own.
Error code is generally 23. Individual tracks seem to abort part way through their own upload.
I followed the instruction manual for removing the Audigy-supplied networking driver and they have gone - most of the time. Makes no difference.
Is there any link or links available to a list of other Audigy sufferers? Although the evidence doesn't point so strongly to the Audigy IEEE 1394 ports, now that it is duplicated using third-party PCI ports.
Anyone have any ideas on how to 'cleanse' the Windows XP IEEE 1394 drivers, without having to reinstall Windows?
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quote author=SteveG
There is a new Plugin posted (v 9.0.20). Do not get it unless you read this.
Steve,
Can't find this on the usual download page.
Have you hidden it somewhere else?
John
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Bought the additional Firewire card, installed it and connected the iPod through it. PROBLEM IS that the uploading performance is exactly the same - poor.
Lost approx. 600 VBR mp3s out of 2200 in the first upload attempt. Faulty transfer is about 80% repeatable on the tracks that have a problem. BUT one time in five, I will get a previously faulty track through on its own.
Error code is generally 23. Individual tracks seem to abort part way through their own upload.
I followed the instruction manual for removing the Audigy-supplied networking driver and they have gone - most of the time. Makes no difference.
Is there any link or links available to a list of other Audigy sufferers? Although the evidence doesn't point so strongly to the Audigy IEEE 1394 ports, now that it is duplicated using third-party PCI ports.
Anyone have any ideas on how to 'cleanse' the Windows XP IEEE 1394 drivers, without having to reinstall Windows?
Open up device manager (right click My Computer>Properties, then click the Hardware tab). On the Hardware tab will be Device Manager.
Then, delete the iPod drive (under disk drives) and the delete the firewire cards (under 1394 Host Controllers). To delete them, right-click and select "Uninstall".
Then do a reboot. Windows will install any needed drivers.
I'd stick w/the new card, although it might be the even the new card doesn't work w/the iPod.
Cards that I recommend....
Adaptec 4300 (the cadillac of cards)
Orangelink cards from OrangeMicro
Belkin cards (not the ones from Apple
Usually any cheap VIA chipset-based card will work.
Good luck....
Adam
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Hi,
I switched last week from 88 to 176, then 177. With 177, MC does not seem to see my iPod anymore : when clicking on the E spot, I get an empty error box, then often MC would crash. However the E drive structure is visible in explorer, and BTW the iPod works fine...
Any idea? The iPod plugin installed with MC 177 is (still?) 9.0.19.
Thanks,
- Philippe
Media Center Registered 9.0.177 -- C:\Program Files\J River\Media Jukebox\
Microsoft Windows 2000 Workstation 5.0 Service Pack 3 (Build 2195)
Intel Pentium III 365 MHz MMX / Memory: Total - 327 MB, Free - 114 MB
Internet Explorer: 5.50.4807.2300 / ComCtl32.dll: 5.81 / Shlwapi.dll: 5.50.4807.2300 / Shell32.dll: 5.00.3502.5436 / wnaspi32.dll: Internal ASPI Layer
Ripping / Drive G: Copy mode:ModeSecure CD Type:Auto Read speed:Max
Digital playback: Yes / Use YADB: Yes / Get cover art: No / Calc replay gain: No / Copy volume: 32767
Eject after ripping: Yes / Play sound after ripping: No
Burning / No burners found.
Test mode: No / Eject after writing: Yes / Direct decoding: Yes / Write CD-Text: No
Use playback settings: No / Normalization: None
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Try updating the plug-in.
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Jim,
I'd tried that before reporting the issue but the latest plugin published seems to be 9.0.19 (May 15).
I have re-installed 176 but it didn't work.
Thanks for standing behind your products even on holiday ;)
- Philippe
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Thanks Jim, I finally got it going. I think it was down to a number of problems. I think I was following Adams instructions TOO precisely, as I hadn't installed the Ipod manager software.
Installing this helped, as you might imagine.
Also because the Ipod was not charging on the firewire. It never had enough battery life to last the initial 25 Gb sync, so was dieing and corrupting the disk or something. So I synced in batches, doing a full charge in between.
Thanks for your help. It took a day to sort out, but I'm happy now!
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Phillipe,
There is probably a flaw with the iTunesDatabase.
Try running the iPod updater and then reformat the iPod from within MC.
Everyone,
In regards to Plugin 9.0.20, there must be a problem with the weblink. For now, just use 9.0.19 and I will check it out tomorrow.
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I'm seeing the same problem as Philippe with .177 and .19. The IPOD and MC get in a state such that if I try to start MC with IPOD already attached, MC will crash immediately. If I have MC up first and plug in the IPOD, MC will crash as soon as I open the handhelds section. If I use the updater to restore IPOD then reformat with MC, I can get it working again and download songs but after a couple sessions, we're back to the crash mode. I'm always using the safely remove hardware feature to remove the IPOD and confirming that both XP and the IPOD are happy before physically disconnecting the cable.
This didn't happen before I moved to .177.
Another piece of info: If I use the IPOD updater to restore after a MC crash, it will do the restore but complain at the end that it couldn't unmount the IPOD. If I do the restore after rebooting, I don't have that problem. It seems like something in .177 is not properly finishing a transaction and causing the database to get corrupted.
I have not been able to figure out a way to get out of the bad state without using the updater to restore.
John
Media Center Registered 9.0.177 -- D:\Program Files\J River\Media Jukebox\
Microsoft Windows XP Workstation 5.1 Service Pack 1 (Build 2600)
Intel Pentium 4 1593 MHz MMX / Memory: Total - 523 MB, Free - 246 MB
Internet Explorer: 6.0.2800.1106 / ComCtl32.dll: 5.82 (xpsp1.020828-1920) / Shlwapi.dll: 6.00.2800.1106 (xpsp1.020828-1920) / Shell32.dll: 6.00.2800.1145 (xpsp2.021108-1929) / wnaspi32.dll: Internal ASPI Layer
Ripping / Drive E: Copy mode:ModeSecure CD Type:Auto Read speed:Max
Drive I: Copy mode:ModeSecure CD Type:Auto Read speed:Max
Digital playback: Yes / Use YADB: Yes / Get cover art: Yes / Calc replay gain: No / Copy volume: 32767
Eject after ripping: Yes / Play sound after ripping: Yes Soundfile: D:\WINDOWS\Media\chord.wav
Burning / Drive E: HP DVD Writer 200j Addr: 3:1:0 Speed:12 MaxSpeed:12 Use MJ Engine:Yes
Drive I: CD-R/RW RW7060S Addr: 1:3:0 Speed:6 MaxSpeed:6 Use MJ Engine:Yes
Test mode: No / Eject after writing: Yes / Direct decoding: Yes / Write CD-Text: No
Use playback settings: No / Normalization: None
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I'm not experiencing this problem. I do notice, however, that when using eject device from within MC the iPOD is ejected (shows safe to disconnect message on iPOD) but Windows XP Safely Remove Hardware utility shows it as still connected.
30GiPOD
Media Center Registered 9.0.177 -- C:\Program Files\Media Center\
Microsoft Windows XP Workstation 5.1 Service Pack 1 (Build 2600)
Intel Unknown 178 MHz MMX / Memory: Total - 383 MB, Free - 141 MB
Internet Explorer: 6.0.2800.1106 / ComCtl32.dll: 5.82 (xpsp1.020828-1920) / Shlwapi.dll: 6.00.2800.1106 (xpsp1.020828-1920) / Shell32.dll: 6.00.2800.1145 (xpsp2.021108-1929) / wnaspi32.dll: N/A
Ripping / Drive D: Copy mode:ModeBurstBigBuffer CD Type:Auto Read speed:Max
Digital playback: Yes / Use YADB: Yes / Get cover art: No / Calc replay gain: Yes / Copy volume: 32767
Eject after ripping: No / Play sound after ripping: No
Burning / Drive D: TOSHIBA CDRW/DVD SDR2102 Addr: 1:0:0 Speed:8 MaxSpeed:8 Use MJ Engine:Yes
Test mode: No / Eject after writing: Yes / Direct decoding: Yes / Write CD-Text: No
Use playback settings: No / Normalization: None
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I was successfully using an older beta version of MC9 and the Ipod pluggin for several syncs. Having now updated my software to the latest version of both MC9 (9.0.175) and the IPOD pluggin (9.0.19), MC crashes when I click on the IPOD in MC. (I get a blank warning sign with H. in the title bar). Windows then asks to send an error report. I have tried connecting the IPOD before and after I boot up MC 9, to no avail. Any thoughts?
System Info:
Microsoft Windows XP Workstation 5.1 Service Pack 1 (Build 2600)
Intel Pentium 4 2532 MHz MMX / Memory: Total - 523 MB, Free - 266 MB
Internet Explorer: 6.0.2800.1106 / ComCtl32.dll: 5.82 (xpsp1.020828-1920) / Shlwapi.dll: 6.00.2800.1106 (xpsp1.020828-1920) / Shell32.dll: 6.00.2800.1145 (xpsp2.021108-1929) / wnaspi32.dll: Internal ASPI Layer
Ripping / Drive E: Copy mode:ModeBurstBigBuffer CD Type:Auto Read speed:Max
Drive F: Copy mode:ModeBurstBigBuffer CD Type:Auto Read speed:Max
Digital playback: Yes / Use YADB: Yes / Get cover art: No / Calc replay gain: No / Copy volume: 32767
Eject after ripping: No / Play sound after ripping: No
Burning / Drive E: HL-DT-ST DVDRAM GMA-4020B Addr: 1:0:0 Speed:12 MaxSpeed:12 Use MJ Engine:Yes
Drive F: LITE-ON LTR-48246S Addr: 1:1:0 Speed:48 MaxSpeed:48 Use MJ Engine:Yes
Test mode: No / Eject after writing: Yes / Direct decoding: No / Write CD-Text: No
Use playback settings: No / Normalization: None
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Everyone,
Sorry for the plugin link problem. Plugin 9.0.20 is now available. Do not get it unless you read this.
I made some changes in the way MC and the Plugin communicate and I think the transition will be seamless. But to be extra safe, here is the deal. MC 9.0.177 includes the necessary changes to run with the new Plugin. It should continue to be compatible with older plugins. The new Plugin, once installed, will not work with older versions of MC (pre 9.0.177). The new plugin is not automatically installed with MC although I will change this next week if there are no problems.
The new plugin (with MC 9.0.177) will resolve any crashing issues involving tag info that included semicolons. There should also be an increase in speed of data reporting and uploading. Finally, the feature of skipping conversion (transcoding) of files that already exist on iPod is now enabled (by default).
The ability to report space info for synching will grow out of these changes.
Endymion,
If I have MC up first and plug in the IPOD, MC will crash as soon as I open the handhelds section.
This really points to a hardware problem not related to the plugin. Also, the constant database corruption would support this theory. Do you have MusicMatch installed? If sp, it could be trying to grab hold of the iPod and causing problems.
Snooden,
Try running iPod updater and then reconnect your iPod. Right click on the iPod drive letter and select "Format".
Mindracing,
I see this too. Disconnecting seems to work fine even though "Safely Remove Hardware" is not updated to reflect the iPod removal.
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As a complete new entrant to the MC9 / ipod scene, can I say a huge well-done and thankyou to you Steve, and the other clever folks who developed the ipod plugin.
I've had MC9 for a couple of weeks - already realised it as a huge advance over anything other digital music programs I've tried for PC - I used MMJB for the last year, and the power-up from using MC9 is incredible. Like going from a kid to an adult. I've got about 30Gb of music now, and other programs just don't seem to be able to handle it!
As for the ipod plugin - genius. I've used MMJB with my mate's ipod 2, and it never really seemed satisfactory. I've had my ipod 3 30Gb for 5 days - done about 15 syncs and every one has worked perfectly, with much better speed than MMJB, and much more control.
Thanks again for all your hard work ;)
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PS - what's going to happen when iTunes for Windows is released then? Are you guys prepaing for the battle?! ?
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rikM,
Thanks for the comments, that is always nice to hear. In regards to iTunes for Windows, we will fight that battle if and when it comes.
Steve
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PS - what's going to happen when iTunes for Windows is released then? Are you guys prepaing for the battle?! ?
Bah!! Let the battle come!
I've used iTunes. It's a very nice program. It operates primarily on the K.I.S.S. principle (Keep It Simple, Stupid). You can rip your music, play it, tag it, and make playlists/smartlists with it. That's about it.
No TV tuner. No HTPC front-end. No playback of video files. No advanced tagging or custom fields. Limited smartlist criteria. No customizable view schemes (you browse ONLY by Genre, Artist, or Album).
I anticipate the arrival of WinnieTunes with much enthusiasm. I forsee a domino effect that works a bit like this:
1. WinnieTunes is released. It is compatible with Windows iPods in the same manner that regular iTunes is compatible with Mac iPods.
2. Thus, Apple re-enables all of the things that they've disabled on WinniePods (sound check, playcounts, last played date, on-the-fly ratings).
3. Steve builds the newly-enabled features into MC with the quickness.
4. MC is still more robust and full-featured than WinnieTunes and has perfect iPod support.
WinnieTunes will definitely be a boon for "normal" users. An iPod out of the box with WinnieTunes is better than one with Musicmatch Jukebox. But for power users or users that want more than a "barebones" program like iTunes offers, MC will still be the hero of the bunch.
Heh. Bring it on.
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Everyone,
This afternoon there will be a new build of MC (9.0.178 ). There is also a new Plugin posted but not included in the build (9.0.21).
Do not get it unless you read this.
I made some changes in the way MC and the Plugin communicate and I think the transition will be seamless. But to be extra safe, here is the deal. MC 9.0.178 includes the necessary changes to run with the new Plugin. It should continue to be compatible with older plugins. The new Plugin, once installed, will not work with older versions of MC (pre 9.0.178). The new plugin is not automatically installed with MC although I will change this soon if there are no problems.
The new features include an available space report on the synchronization dialogue. The available space you see should reflect the files from the selected playlists when added to the iPod and takes into account skipping files that already exist on the iPod. It does not reflect size after conversion but can be modified to do so in the future. Please check it out and let me know if it looks about right.
Kurt,
As always, thanks for the encouragement.
Steve
-
rikM,
Thanks for the comments, that is always nice to hear. In regards to iTunes for Windows, we will fight that battle if and when it comes.
Steve
You'll win the battle and the war! Kurt is right-on with his comments...
adam
-
Steve-
Been a loyal MJ user for quite some time; just downloaded v9 when I bought an IPOD. Great program!
My prob: I set up the IPOD in MC just as requested in these postings. Hooked it up, worked great - loaded 1000 songs in 15 min. However, I added a bunch more songs to MC via CD burn; I went to upload these new ones to the IPOD and my MJ bombed w/no specific error. Multiple computer restarts did not resolve prob. I uninstalled MC and reinstalled. Now MC doesn't bomb, but I can not load more songs to my IPOD. I get a random error box with no text, just a big red circle with white x in it. Seems to recognize the pod, but can't upload.
Any ideas?
Media Center 9.0.175 -- C:\Program Files\J River\Media Center\
Microsoft Windows 2000 5.0 Service Pack 2 (Build 2195)
Intel Pentium III 929 MHz MMX / Memory: Total - 260 MB, Free - 96 MB
Internet Explorer: 5.50.4522.1800 / ComCtl32.dll: 5.81 / Shlwapi.dll: 5.50.4522.1800 / Shell32.dll: 5.00.3315.2902 / wnaspi32.dll: 4.71 (0001) , ASPI for Win32 (95/NT) DLL, Copyright © 1989-2002 Adaptec, Inc. / Aspi32.sys: 4.71 (0001)
Ripping / Drive D: Copy mode:ModeBurstBigBuffer CD Type:Auto Read speed:Max
Digital playback: Yes / Use YADB: Yes / Get cover art: No / Calc replay gain: Yes / Copy volume: 32767
Eject after ripping: No / Play sound after ripping: No
Burning / Drive D: LG CD-RW CED-8120B Addr: 1:0:0 Speed:12 MaxSpeed:12 Use MJ Engine:Yes
Test mode: No / Eject after writing: Yes / Direct decoding: Yes / Write CD-Text: No
Use playback settings: No / Normalization: None
-
You'll win the battle and the war! Kurt is right-on with his comments...
adam
iPod users should not worry about iTunes for Windows. Apple will not deliver a product anywhere near as functional or stable as MC9.
There will be no battle, there will be no war, MC9 will simply rule.
The only exception is for those willing to use a simple free package (assuming Apple bundles it instead of MusicMatch).
Randy
-
Steve:
Just to let you know, I used the new plugin tonight and had no problems. I didnt' use any of the transcoding options, but everything worked find on my sync.
The only feedback I have is the Available Space Left After Sync info looks like it's in a form field which might lead the user to think they can change it. Might just want to display the text...just a cosmetic thing.. ;)
Adam
-
Hello Guys,
I have a little problem with MC 9.0.177 that it doesn't seem to sync with my iPod properly. For instance I've re-ripped some songs that are already on my iPod to a higher bit rate, I used the same filenames and tag infos as the replaced songs, MC's had no problems updating itself but when I tried syncing with my iPod via playlists, it doesnt seem to reflect the newly re-ripped files, its still showing the previous files. I tried this a few times, even formatted my iPod, but the same result. I would need to delete the existing entries on my iPod before I could have an updated copy on it.
Does anybody encounter the same problem ? Or is this a limition of MC ? Or maybe I'm just missing something.
Appreciate any feedback.
BTW, MC9 is just to great that I won't be anything else for my iPod. Good job and keep it up !!!
-
New to the Ipod world, using MC9 to sync to my 30G Ipod - works like a dream. Great product.
I'm looking for a way to prioritise some albums and playlists to the top of the list in my Ipod. Using a hyphen or underscore sorts it to the top of list in MC9, but in the Ipod it sorts by the first alphanumeric character. I found a thread in the Apple support forum which listed suitable sort characters on an Apple, but none work on a PC.
Can anyone suggest a way of prioritising things to the top of a list short of prefixing with a number? Sorry if this is the wrong place, my attempts to get an account on Apple's support page have been about as successful as Apple's support when I had a dodgy firewire card...
-
nlegs,
If the tag info for the tracks is the same, then MC will not replace the songs on the iPod with the more newly ripped versions. MC compares the basic track info, such as Artist, Album, and Song Title, as well as file name when determining what tracks to put on the iPod, and since all of that information is probably the same (I am assuming that the only difference between the old and new versions of each track are probably the file size and the bitrate), MC doesn't (as far as the iPod plugin is concerned) doesn't see a difference, so it will not try and put a "duplicate" of a track on your iPod. The only way to get the newer version onto the iPod is to delete the original from the iPod before syncing the newer versions of the tracks. Maybe, eventually, the iPod plugin could look at bitrate as well when it's trying to determine what songs to actually put on the iPod, and what songs just need to have their tag info updated.
Hope this helps.
Wobbley
-
dougf,
Please get MC 9.0.178. I cannot duplicate the crash you report, but one possibility is that some of your tags may have included ";" in the info which would have caused a crash prior to 9.0.177. To resolve the current problem, reformat your iPod with iPod updater (you will lose all your data) and then connect with MC. Right click and select format and then resynch your files.
Adam,
I will make a change to make this look better.
Wobbley,
Thanks for responding to nlegs.
nlegs,
MC assigns a unique id to each file in the database. When you reripped your songs, they were assigned a unique number and are viewed from iPod as separate files from the ones you already have on. If you want to get rid of the iPod files and replace them with the new ones, do a synch with the "delete files not in synch" option selected. When you set up your synch, select all the files you want to have on your iPod and do not select the older copies of your newly reripped tunes. If you do this, the synch will remove the old copies and replace with the new. Remember, you must select all of your music from your library that you want on your iPod when you do this option.
Dallardice,
This is a great place to look for this advice. I will defer to others to give you some good suggestions.
-
There is a tremendous amount of information contained within this topic and I know that I have found numerous solutions to problems I have had. I appreciate the community nature that everyone exhibits in helping others to resolve their problems. The one thing I am noticing though is the number of different questions that are contained within this thread. It is at times challenging to follow all the conversations that are going on. Has JRiver considered having a sub-message area dedicated to handheld devices? The number of different threads that are on the message board dealing with the details of portable devices might justify such a change. By having a board devoted to handhelds, it would give everyone one place to look for information regarding Media Center's support and allow users the ability to follow specific threads that they are interested in helping the flow of information.
Just a suggestion.
Jeff
-
Ipod support disappeared. It was working, but when I go to Plugin Manager, Ipod is no longer there. When I click on I: under Handhelds, MC crashes immediately (Media Core has encountered a problem...). I am using the most current plug-in, 9.0.21. I have never installed Musicmatch, but of course have installed all other Ipod files for my 30Gb Win Ipod. It is viewable under Explorer, set as Drive I: named IPOD.
Media Center Registered 9.0.178 -- C:\Program Files\Media Jukebox\
Microsoft Windows XP Workstation 5.1 Service Pack 1 (Build 2600)
Intel Pentium III 730 MHz MMX / Memory: Total - 391 MB, Free - 121 MB
Internet Explorer: 6.0.2800.1106 / ComCtl32.dll: 5.82 (xpsp1.020828-1920) / Shlwapi.dll: 6.00.2800.1106 (xpsp1.020828-1920) / Shell32.dll: 6.00.2800.1145 (xpsp2.021108-1929) / wnaspi32.dll: Internal ASPI Layer
Ripping / Drive E: Copy mode:ModeBurstBigBuffer CD Type:Auto Read speed:Max
Digital playback: Yes / Use YADB: Yes / Get cover art: Yes / Calc replay gain: Yes / Copy volume: 32767
Eject after ripping: Yes / Play sound after ripping: No
Burning / Drive E: TDK CDRW121032 Addr: 1:0:0 Speed:12 MaxSpeed:12 Use MJ Engine:Yes
Test mode: No / Eject after writing: Yes / Direct decoding: Yes / Write CD-Text: Yes
Use playback settings: Yes / Normalization: None
-
Dallardice,
When I sync my iPod with MC9 via playlist sync, all of my playlists appear alphabetized when viewed on the iPod's screen. This is true no matter what playlist group (or subgroup) they're in.
If I want a particular playlist at the top, I prefix it with an exclamation point (!). The !playlists always show up at the top of the list.
-
schwaa,
Your iTunes database file is most likely corrupt. If you do not want to lose your files on iPod, you can try deleting the iTunesDB file from your iPod (DriveLetter\iPod_Control\iTunes\iTunesDB) and then run MC and right click on your drive letter. Select "Rebuild Database from iPod". This should make your files visible again. The downside to this is you will lose your playlists. Also, before you do this, get the Plugin I will post later today (v 9.0.22) because it fixes a bug in this procedure I just came across.
Another plan would be to run iPod updater, reconnect your iPod and then right click on your iPod drive letter and select "Format". This is probably best, but you will lose all your files.
Jeff,
Not a bad suggestion. I do not know if we will do it.
Steve
-
Steve -
thanks for the help - much appreciated. I feel stupid, because I see others with tech specs quoting v178, but when I go to the download page, all I get is v175. I just downloaded/installed a new vers, and still 175. Help/Get Updates says "none available"
thanks for the help!
dougf
-
Please see the first thread here. The latest build is always here, but it doesn't get moved to the downloads page until we think it's pretty sure to be good.
-
Ipod support disappeared. It was working, but when I go to Plugin Manager, Ipod is no longer there. When I click on I: under Handhelds, MC crashes immediately (Media Core has encountered a problem...). I am using the most current plug-in, 9.0.21. I have never installed Musicmatch, but of course have installed all other Ipod files for my 30Gb Win Ipod. It is viewable under Explorer, set as Drive I: named IPOD.
schwaa, sounds like the same problem I was having. I did not have Musicmatch installed either. Had the same problem on 2 different PCs.. My solution: I installed Musicmatch and use it to sync to my IPOD. Haven't had any problems since I switched except that Musicmatch is god awful slow at syncing.
-
If I want a particular playlist at the top, I prefix it with an exclamation point (!). The !playlists always show up at the top of the list.
Thanks for this, Kurt. Oddly, this works for playlists, but not for albums - eg the album "!Double Hipness" appears after "Affectionate Punch". Anyone found a similar trick for album names? Thanks in advance
-
dougF,
Here is the thread to get the latest version...
http://www.musicex.com/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?board=MediaCenter;action=display;num=1054071386
Endymion,
Whatever problem you were having is almost certainly solvable. If you want to pursue it further, let me know. It will require carefully going through some steps, but I am confident it will work out.
Schwaa,
Please follow the advice above and let me know how it turns out.
Steve
-
Thanks for this, Kurt. Oddly, this works for playlists, but not for albums - eg the album "!Double Hipness" appears after "Affectionate Punch". Anyone found a similar trick for album names? Thanks in advance
Huh! I didn't see that coming. You're right, that is a bit odd. You're probably experiencing some blowback from the logic that makes "The Doors" get filed under "D" -- I get the feeling that there's nothing you can do about it.
An alternative then, would be to prepend a "1." or something like that... I know that the album "1" by the Beatles always shows up at the top of my albums list.
-
I have the latest build of everything. MC9.178 and hand held plugin v9.0.22.
When i click on my iPod I get a tiny little error dialog with no words. If I dismiss it and click on the iPod again, MC9 crashes and dies.
If I delete my iPod's iTunesDB file everything is great. If I rebuild the database from file, I get a message every time i do anything to the iPod that states something like "illegal argument". Shutting down MC9 and starting it back up again brings right back to where I started.
Reformatting the iPod and loading it again seems to have corrected the problem.
I wonder if there was a bad MP3 on the device? The last time I had used the iPod connected to MC was probably in February and as I recall the plugin was pretty flaky at that time.
-
I wonder if there was a bad MP3 on the device?
Possible, it is hard to say. If everything is OK now, hopefully you are all set.
-
An alternative then, would be to prepend a "1." or something like that... I know that the album "1" by the Beatles always shows up at the top of my albums list.
Or try zero?
-=Tim=-
-
Hi Steve!!!
I've been playing quite a bit with synchronizing and the new conversion feature and have the following to report:
Methodology:
Restored the iPod usings Apple 1.2.6 Updater.
Formatted the iPod from inside Media Center.
Created a Smartlist that had a single artist for a small sample size.
Synchronized with
- Delete files not in list checked
- Update tags checked
- Autosync unchecked
- Options: force file conversions during uploads checked, normalization set to 90%, conversion to 160, high speed. (For reference, all my MP3s are ripped at 320.)
Resynched with no changes.
Added second artist. Resynched.
Added third artist. Resynched.
Deleted second artist. Resynched.
Left clicked on iPod drive in Media Center, selected the second artist's songs and deleted them.
Right clicked in iPod drive in Media Center and formatted the iPod (to try and return the iPod to a known state). Resynched.
Right clicked in iPod drive in Media Center and formatted the iPod. Resynched with:
- Delete files not in list checked
- Update tags checked
- Autosync unchecked
- Options: force file conversions during uploads unchecked
Observations:
First sync worked flawlessly (converted to music 160 and normalized).
Second sync worked as well. It was great that Media Center recognized that the files didn't need to be reconverted as this saved a lot of time. I was surprised, however, that it took about 5 seconds to verify that each song was on the iPod and didn't need to be converted. Is there anything you can do to speed up this process?
Third sync broke down. Media Center falsely determined that the songs from the second artist did not need to be converted and uploaded them at their original quality of 320 and without normalization.
Fourth sync performed exactly as the third sync did. Media Center falsely determined that the songs from the third artist did not need to be converted and uploaded them at their original quality of 320 and without normalization. At this point the iPod had the original artist converted, normalized, and uploaded correctly, while the second and third artists were uploaded at the original quality.
Fifth sync did not delete any of the songs from the second artist. The iPod was left in the same state it was after the fourth sync.
Deleting the songs directly from the iPod didn't work correctly. The Artists, Genres, and Playlists were all updated correctly, but the second artist's albums were still left in the iPod's Albums list.
Formatting the iPod from inside Media Center appeared to work fine as all the songs, albums, artists, genres, and playlists were cleared from the iPod. However, when I resynched the sixth time, I immediately got a dialog that said "Failed to normalize".
Seventh worked for all the songs that weren't tied to the original three artists. For those artists I got a "File Error Information" dialog box that said "The following is a list of file that failed to transfer with an error code." I assume the error code is the "- 2" that is after each filename in the list. When I went to look at those files on my hard drive, THEY WERE GONE! I can assure you they were there originally. This is bad, bad, ju ju!
This is entirely reproducible on my PC / iPod combo.
By the way, any idea when I'll be able to normalize against replay gain? Is there a simple man explanation as to why this so difficult to do since you can normalize against ?
One more thing. I've been playing a lot with the "Full Albums" smartlist modifier and the "completealbums" keyword. From what I can determine, it looks like for a given playlist that the "Full Albums" modifier should identify all the albums that correspond to the given playlist and then return all the songs that are on those albums regardless of whether the albums are missing any tracks or not. The "completealbums==1" keyword also identifies all the albums that correspond to a given playlist, but differs from "Full Albums" by returning only the subset of tracks from the original playlist that belong to a complete album (i.e. albums that are not missing any tracks). Do I have this figured out correctly? If not, then can you explain the difference?
I'll be out of town until Tuesday so I won't be able to do any follow up testing until then. But I promise to bang some more if you can get rid of these bugs!
Cheers,
Kevin
Second generation winiPod (20GB) v1.2.6
Media Center Registered 9.0.179 -- C:\Program Files\Media Center\
Microsoft Windows XP Workstation 5.1 Service Pack 1 (Build 2600)
AMD Athlon 697 MHz MMX / Memory: Total - 392 MB, Free - 168 MB
Internet Explorer: 6.0.2800.1106 / ComCtl32.dll: 5.82 (xpsp1.020828-1920) / Shlwapi.dll: 6.00.2800.1106 (xpsp1.020828-1920) / Shell32.dll: 6.00.2800.1145 (xpsp2.021108-1929) / wnaspi32.dll: 4.60 (1021) , ASPI for Win32 (95/NT) DLL, Copyright © 1989-1999 Adaptec, Inc. / Aspi32.sys: 4.60 (1021)
Ripping / Drive E: Copy mode:ModeBurstBigBuffer CD Type:Auto Read speed:Max
Drive I: Copy mode:ModeBurstBigBuffer CD Type:Auto Read speed:Max
Digital playback: Yes / Use YADB: Yes / Get cover art: No / Calc replay gain: Yes / Copy volume: 32767
Eject after ripping: Yes / Play sound after ripping: Yes Soundfile: chord.wav
Burning / Drive I: HP CD-Writer+ 9300 Addr: 3:0:0 Speed:10 MaxSpeed:10 Use MJ Engine:Yes
Test mode: No / Eject after writing: Yes / Direct decoding: No / Write CD-Text: Yes
Use playback settings: No / Normalization: None
-
I downloaded .178 yesterday and the latest iPod plug-in. I have a 30G iPod. I used .175 yesterday and it worked beautifully.
It worked for a while. After I did some sync, removed iPod to listen to some music and put it back. Now MC wouldn't work at all. I am not sure about the timing but somewhere along the line I imported a lot of jpeg pictures. Now it crashes almost everytime I start it. It'd beep and flash a dialog box very quickly and crash. The one time it didn't crash, I was able to grab the system info (see below).
I tried to go back to the previous version of MC and it crashed too. I have no way of saving the iPod plug-in from yesterday so they may not be compitable. How do I get back to .175 and a proper version of iPod plug-in?
=====================================================================================================
Media Center 9.0.178 -- C:\Program Files\J River\Media Center\
Microsoft Windows XP 5.1 Service Pack 1 (Build 2600)
Intel Pentium 4 1188 MHz MMX / Memory: Total - 523 MB, Free - 261 MB
Internet Explorer: 6.0.2800.1106 / ComCtl32.dll: 5.82 (xpsp1.020828-1920) / Shlwapi.dll: 6.00.2800.1106 (xpsp1.020828-1920) / Shell32.dll: 6.00.2800.1145 (xpsp2.021108-1929) / wnaspi32.dll: N/A
Ripping / Drive D: Copy mode:ModeBurstBigBuffer CD Type:Auto Read speed:Max
Digital playback: Yes / Use YADB: Yes / Get cover art: No / Calc replay gain: Yes / Copy volume: 32767
Eject after ripping: Yes / Play sound after ripping: No
Burning / Drive D: TOSHIBA CD-R/RW SR-C8102 Addr: 1:0:0 Speed:16 MaxSpeed:16 Use MJ Engine:Yes
Test mode: No / Eject after writing: Yes / Direct decoding: Yes / Write CD-Text: No
Use playback settings: No / Normalization: None
-
The friendly chaps at Audible.com have said that I need to install MusicMatch so that iPOD Manger gets installed in order for Audible Manager to communicate with the iPOD.
Firstly, is this correct?
Secondly, will installing MusicMatch and the iPOD Manager cause problems with MC and the iPOD plug-in?
30G iPOD 2.0 firmware
Media Center Registered 9.0.178 -- C:\Program Files\Media Center\
Microsoft Windows XP 5.1 Service Pack 1 (Build 2600)
Intel Unknown 74 MHz MMX / Memory: Total - 383 MB, Free - 34 MB
Internet Explorer: 6.0.2800.1106 / ComCtl32.dll: 5.82 (xpsp1.020828-1920) / Shlwapi.dll: 6.00.2800.1106 (xpsp1.020828-1920) / Shell32.dll: 6.00.2800.1145 (xpsp2.021108-1929) / wnaspi32.dll: N/A
Ripping / Drive D: Copy mode:ModeBurstBigBuffer CD Type:Auto Read speed:Max
Digital playback: Yes / Use YADB: Yes / Get cover art: No / Calc replay gain: Yes / Copy volume: 32767
Eject after ripping: No / Play sound after ripping: No
Burning / Drive D: TOSHIBA CDRW/DVD SDR2102 Addr: 1:0:0 Speed:8 MaxSpeed:8 Use MJ Engine:Yes
Test mode: No / Eject after writing: Yes / Direct decoding: Yes / Write CD-Text: No
Use playback settings: No / Normalization: None
-
Kevin,
I will look into this today.
jioupahn,
Try getting 9.0.179. No need to get a different plugin, it is built into 9.0.179. If you are saying MC crashes when you try to start it, it is unlikely it is related to the Plugin unless you have "Auto-synch" enabled. If the crash is when you click on the iPod drive letter, try a reformat.
mindracing,
I do not know for sure if what Audible told you is correct. If you want to heed their advice, install everything they say and then rename your MusicMatch directory to something else so it will be unable to try to auto start and interfere with our connection.
Steve
-
Steve, I do have auto sync turned on. I tried 179, it does not crash all the time. Actually, it appears to be OK without iPod connected to it. When I plugged the iPod in and right click on the G letter, a dialog box with "h" and an OK button showed up. It did allow me to proceed but the same dialog box kept popping up. I was not able to sync with it.
You suggested to reformat? Is a particular reason why? It appears to be a MC 9 problem. Thanks.
Jiou-Pahn
-
Jiou-Pahn,
If MC crashes when you click on the drive letter, your iTunesDB is probably corrupted. If you do not want to lose your files on iPod, you can try deleting the iTunesDB file from your iPod (DriveLetter\iPod_Control\iTunes\iTunesDB) and then run MC and right click on your drive letter. Select "Rebuild Database from iPod". This should make your files visible again. The downside to this is you will lose your playlists.
Another plan would be to run iPod updater, reconnect your iPod and then right click on your iPod drive letter and select "Format". This is probably best, but you will lose all your files.
Also, for now deselect "Auto-Synch". This could be causing problems for you. I am redoing this code in the near future.
Steve
-
Not a problem - more of a question.
I have the new 15G iPod and use it with MC - That side of things is working perfect.
Only problem i seem to have is it doesnt go very loud.
Ive tried a few different headphones and also normalised the tracks on transfer - and although it helps a little i need it to go louder.
Someone told me that because i live in the UK that the firmware restricts the max volume due to some EEC legislation etc and that the USA ones go a lot louder.
Has anyone heard of this - and if so where can i get a copy of the USA version.
Either that of i'm going deaf in my old age.
Any help appreciated.
thanks
-
Playlist sync problems:
Currently using v9.0178 & plugin v9.022. I am not able to sync playlists on either ipod. One is a 3rd gen and the other a 2nd gen. I did not have this problem with the 3rd gen ipod using v9.0175 with an older plugin.
My setup is the same for both ipods: I have one main playlist (smartlist) that contains all songs I want on the ipod. The initial sync would work just fine. But I can't seem to add or sync any add'l playlists after that. (I can, however, continue to sync my main playlist though.) I do not get any error messages during the sync so it would look like it went ok. Initially, I can even see the new playlists on the Ipod in Media Center. But when I eject the Ipod, I can see my main playlist but the new playlists do not show up. Eventually, this process would crash media center and I would need to reformat the ipod because Media Library won't recognize it. Strangely though, Ephpod can access the ipod just fine.
However, I can create playlist manually on the Ipod without any problems. As long as I go the handheld section and send files from within the ipod to the new playlists.
Prior to using Media Library, I've uninstalled MusicMatch completely and I've run the updater on the 3rd gen ipod so I would have a fresh start (but not on the 2nd gen ipod, just a format).
-
Kevin,
Based on your comments I made some modifications which will be included in the next build of MC and will hopefully resolve the issues you report.
Your description of how Full Albums and Complete Albums works is right on.
Replay gain is on the to do list.
mikeh,
I do not know the answer, maybe someone else can chime in.
ChrisG,
Can you try getting MC 9.0.179, run iPod updater on the iPod to clean it and then run MC and right click and select "Format". This will start your iPod clean with the latest version and then if you are still having problems I can troubleshoot from there.
Also, check if you have the "Delete Files not on Ipod" box checked. If you do, this could cause similar behavior to what you are seeing because it will delete any Playlists not checked in your Synch dialog.
Steve
-
All is well... finally figured out my ipod problem!! I had mentioned that I was able to sync my playlist with v.90175 but not with v.90178. It has nothing to do with the different versions. It seems like it has everything to do with the way I do my INITIAL transfer of songs to my ipod. When I had it working with v90175 I created my smartlist of about 9gig of songs and "sent" it to the ipod. But after I upgraded to v.90178, and ran the Updater & reformatted the ipod, I initally "synced" my main smartlist instead of "sending" it. That would work just fine until I decide to add and sync new playlists. This would eventually corrupt the itunes db.
In order for me to successfully sync my playlists, I have to "send" and not "sync" my initial smartlists that contains all my songs. Then, after that I can sync subsequent playlists properly. I'm happy to report that both ipods (gen 2 & 3) are now working and syncing perfectly. I did not even have to run the updater or reformat them. I just deleted the itunes.db file & let MediaCenter rebuild the database. This would let me retain all my songs but delete all my playlists, including my initial one.
I have since ran a couple of tests and I am able to duplicate the playlists sync problem everytime. I'm curious if it's just me or if others can duplicate this problem.
-
ChrisG:
I've never used the send to feature (well, months ago I did, before sync was available) and I've been using the plugin since day one, so I really can't help you there, but I just wanted to say what you're experiencing is not normal. I also sync w/ 2gen and a 3gen iPod's.
Mikah:
It is indeed true that the european firmware is slightly lower than the US firmware. The US firmware goes to 104dbs, the EU firmware goes to 100dbs to comply w/a French law.
Check out the forums at the iPodlounge for more info on this (www.ipodlounge.com).
Adam
-
Jiou-Pahn,
If MC crashes when you click on the drive letter, your iTunesDB is probably corrupted. If you do not want to lose your files on iPod, you can try deleting the iTunesDB file from your iPod (DriveLetter\iPod_Control\iTunes\iTunesDB) and then run MC and right click on your drive letter. Select "Rebuild Database from iPod". This should make your files visible again. The downside to this is you will lose your playlists.
Another plan would be to run iPod updater, reconnect your iPod and then right click on your iPod drive letter and select "Format". This is probably best, but you will lose all your files.
Also, for now deselect "Auto-Synch". This could be causing problems for you. I am redoing this code in the near future.
Steve
Steve, Rebuilding iTune database did the trick. Many thanks. As a professional software developer, I would like to see the plug-in be more robust - don't crash because of a corruptted database. :-)
I am happy that the recovery is really straightforward and rather painless. Thanks again.
Jiou-Pahn
-
Steve, Rebuilding iTune database did the trick. Many thanks. As a professional software developer, I would like to see the plug-in be more robust - don't crash because of a corruptted database. :-)
I am happy that the recovery is really straightforward and rather painless. Thanks again.
Jiou-Pahn
You're having the same problem I've been having. My IPOD is one of the new 30G ones too. Wonder if that's a factor.
-
Whilst playing around with the Audible Manager and AA files I have had to reformat the iPOD twice.
Each time I get a selection of files that fail to transfer to the clean iPOD.
First time there were about 20 files with error code 2.
I deleted these from MC and re ripped them. They then transfered fine.
This time no files sync, all with error code 55.
In both cases the files have been on the iPOD before without any problem.
I am working from a clean install of MC and all Audible and iPOD Manager programs heve been removed.
When looking at the iPOD tree within MC, all that is listed after a sync is the names of the playlists - but no songs.
Any ideas?
30G iPOD 2.0
Media Center Registered 9.0.179 -- C:\Program Files\J River\Media Center\
Microsoft Windows XP Workstation 5.1 Service Pack 1 (Build 2600)
Intel Unknown 65 MHz MMX / Memory: Total - 383 MB, Free - 80 MB
Internet Explorer: 6.0.2800.1106 / ComCtl32.dll: 5.82 (xpsp1.020828-1920) / Shlwapi.dll: 6.00.2800.1106 (xpsp1.020828-1920) / Shell32.dll: 6.00.2800.1145 (xpsp2.021108-1929) / wnaspi32.dll: N/A
Ripping / Drive D: Copy mode:ModeBurstBigBuffer CD Type:Auto Read speed:Max
Digital playback: Yes / Use YADB: Yes / Get cover art: Yes / Calc replay gain: Yes / Copy volume: 32767
Eject after ripping: Yes / Play sound after ripping: No
Burning / No burners found.
Test mode: No / Eject after writing: Yes / Direct decoding: Yes / Write CD-Text: No
Use playback settings: No / Normalization: None
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So, following a reinstallation of iPOD updator and another format the problem is gone.
I have a old 20G and a new 30G iPOD and now realise that MC keeps a database of what is on 1 iPOD (last one to sync) to manage the next sync. Clearly with 2 iPODs this is a bit of a problem.
How could 2 iPODs best be managed without having to rebuild the DB from each iPOD before synching?
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Was running my ipod without the plugin with no problems. Got curious and installed the plugin. After installing the plugin everytime I tried to access my ipod via MC the progam crashed. Long story short, I had to completely unistall MC and it's library and reinstall to be able to use the program with my iPod again (no ipod plugin installed.
Brian
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You're having the same problem I've been having. My IPOD is one of the new 30G ones too. Wonder if that's a factor.
But, wait, there is more :-) I tried to add more songs and got the Microsoft "send error rerport" everytime. I reformated the iPod and re-downloaded all of the songs (including the two I watned to add initially), it seemed to work. I don't use auto-sync anymore. I just clicked on "synchronize" and got the error.
If I have to reformat my iPod to add new songs, ... :-(
Jiou-Pahn
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Jiou-Pahn and Endymion,
My best guess is there is something peculiar about a file or files that you are synching that is causing a corruption of your database. If MC crashes, try going to your iPod and copy the iTunesDB so that you can email it to me so I can take a look (steve @ jriver.com). Also, you could try synching small playlists to try to isolate which one is causing the crash.
Mindracing,
MC does not keep a database of the files, but I need to test to see if I can duplicate the problem you are having. I will do this tomorrow when I am at work.
Brian,
The plugin to access the iPod is automatically installed with MC. If you were accessing the iPod from somewhere other than CD, DVD, Handhelds, you may have been copying files to the iPod, but they would have been unplayable on the iPod. How are you accessing the iPod?
Everyone,
When testing with iPod, please get MC 9.0.179. Newer plugins may not be compatible with older versions of MC. Old plugins will run with newer MC versions.
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I access it by expanding CD, DVD, Handhelds, everything is okay now that I unistalled MC and reinstalled it.
Brian
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Playlist sort order? I think I'm just missing something here but how do I sort songs on the playlist on my ipod. It doesn't seem to matter how I sort the playlist in MC ... when I send it to the ipod, it sorts in artist order. THanks.
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ChrisG,
When you create a Playlist, whatever order you have created in the "seq" column is the order the files will be created on the iPod.
Steve
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Thanks Steve,
How about smartlists? I do not see a sequence # column on smartlists that I have created nor do I see an option to select it under Visible Columns.
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ChrisG,
Smartlists do not have a static order. They are ordered by whatever columns you have selected in their view.
Steve
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Mindracing,
I just tested my two iPods at the same time with Windows XP and had no problem synching them. Can you give me a specific test that you know fails for you and I will try to duplicate it?
Steve
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So, following a reinstallation of iPOD updator and another format the problem is gone.
I have a old 20G and a new 30G iPOD and now realise that MC keeps a database of what is on 1 iPOD (last one to sync) to manage the next sync. Clearly with 2 iPODs this is a bit of a problem.
How could 2 iPODs best be managed without having to rebuild the DB from each iPOD before synching?
Thanks for checking that out Steve. I don't have a specific problem. I was anticipating one so asked for some advice before running into problems.
I guess my question really refered to keeping 2 librarys - one for each iPOD - that contain different songs and different playlists.
How would that work with 2 iPODs.
Great service as usual!
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mindracing,
It can work a couple of different ways. One way to do this would be to create smartlist groups, one for each iPod and then when you synch, just select the appropriate group. If you can describe what you would like to do I can suggest how best to achieve it.
Steve
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That's what I do Mindracing....
One Playlist Group for my wife's iPod (a 2nd Gen) and one for my iPod (a 3rd Gen).
Works like a charm, never had any problems.
Of course, each playlist group starts off with a master playlist, that has all the tunes I want on each iPod. Any other playlists in the group start w/the filter Playlist="master playlist".
Adam
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ChrisG,
Smartlists do not have a static order. They are ordered by whatever columns you have selected in their view.
Steve
So if I get my smartlist view sorted just right, sync with my iPod then iPod will have the same order?
I understand playlists can be sorted the way I wanted. I just like to have the ability to sort smartlists. Thanks.
Jiou-Pahn
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Jiou-Pahn,
No, currently when smartlists transfer the view order is not preserverd. Perhaps I can add this in a future version. If order is important, use Playlists.
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Jiou-Pahn,
No, currently when smartlists transfer the view order is not preserverd. Perhaps I can add this in a future version. If order is important, use Playlists.
Ah-ha...maybe this has something to do with my On-the-Go album ordering problem. I use a single smartlist to synch my iPod with a selection of about 85% of my music library. The smartlist is sorted in Album->Track order.
As I posted earlier in this thread:
However, my problem is with the song order. I'm usually an album listener, so I like to pick a few albums and add them to the OTG playlist. The problem is that the track order is messed up. Sometimes only a couple of tracks are inverted, but other times, the entire album is in a random order.
I've made sure that shuffle mode and repeat modes are turned off on the iPod--it doesn't make a difference. My 2 guesses are:
1) MC9 is messing with the track order somehow when copying songs to the iPod, so I'm actually getting some kind of "internal DB order" instead of "track number order" with this feature.
2) Apple has something else wrong with this feature...
Someone on the Apple iPod forums mentioned he cured his problem with this by making sure iTunes had the sorting correct before he synched....
Any ideas?
Brad
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Brad,
Try clicking on an Album from within MC under the iPod. You should be able to view the track numbers associated with the songs. You then should be able to verify if MC correctly assigned the track numbers. The ordering within a Playlist should not affect the track number.
Steve
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Topic Moved.
Confirmed that the problem is that when the orginal file is served from Media Server, MC can't convert and then place file on IPOD.
MC has no problem transferring .mp3 files from Media Server to IPOD.
Workaround - convert on server, create separately Playlist, transfer that. A pain, but works.
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interested,
Try MC 9.0.180. On the fly conversion should work without doing the intermediate steps you describe.
Steve
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Try clicking on an Album from within MC under the iPod. You should be able to view the track numbers associated with the songs. You then should be able to verify if MC correctly assigned the track numbers. The ordering within a Playlist should not affect the track number.
Steve,
I think you're on to something here. When I look at the files on the iPod under the drive letter, everything appears ok--track numbers are assigned correctly, etc. When I drill down to iPod->Albums->someAlbum, a new column appears called "Seq".
The numbers in the "Seq" column start at 0 and continue in order through the rest of the tracks. The interesting thing is that on many of my albums, "Seq #" does not equal "Track # - 1". If I go to the iPod itself and play an album, the album plays in track number order. However, if I add the album to the OTG Playlist on the iPod, the tracks get added in Sequence# order.
Although I can sort the tracks when looking at an Album in MC, I can find no facility for changing the sequence number. Drag-n-drop doesn't do anything. Is there a "reorder" command somewhere?
Is it possible to make MC assign things so Sequence # = Track #? How can I go about correcting this?
(obOddBehavior: Also, sticky views don't seem to stick when working in the Handhelds tree node....)
Best,
Brad
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Brad,
The next build of the Plugin will remove that "Seq" field. It should not be there. The correct way to modify the track order is to modify the track number field for the files. I found a new MC bug that causes this not to work so well ( the rename). I will fix this and it will be resolved in the next MC build. I confirmed that the "On the go" playlist does not respect the track order. I do not think this is a MC issue but an iPod issue.
Steve
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Brad,
The next build of the Plugin will remove that "Seq" field. It should not be there. The correct way to modify the track order is to modify the track number field for the files.
Steve
Steve, I actualy quite like the way seq works. I am able to create a playlist, order the songs the way I like, and perform "update order." If you remove the seq field, I assume I will lose this ability. Is there a way to achieve the same results without permanently changing my MP3 files?
Jiou-Pahn
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Hi Steve!
I have to say that I'm disappointed in the fixes of 9.0.180. I didn't even get past the second step of my testing before I noted the same failure I reported last time. Here's what I did:
Methodology:
Restored the iPod usings Apple 1.2.6 Updater.
Formatted the iPod from inside Media Center.
Created a Smartlist that had a single artist for a small sample size.
Synchronized with
- Delete files not in list checked
- Update tags checked
- Autosync unchecked
- Options: force file conversions during uploads checked, normalization set to 90%, conversion to 160, high speed. (For reference, all my MP3s are ripped at 320.)
Resynched with no changes.
Observations:
First sync worked flawlessly (converted to music 160 and normalized). Although I didn't test it, I was wondering if music that is in the basic Media Center library at the correct bitrate will be transcoded? These files should be skipped and uploaded directly if at all possible. Heck, what about lower bitrates? Will they be upconverted if the transcoding is set for a higher bitrate? They should be skipped and uploaded directly as well.
Second sync worked to the iPod, but failed in Media Center. It was great that Media Center recognized that the files didn't need to be reconverted as this saved a lot of time. I was also surprised that it took about 5 seconds to verify that each song was on the iPod and didn't need to be converted. Is there anything you can do to speed up this process?
Unfortunately, all the files were deleted from my hard drive after the second sync. This is a terrible bug and could cost someone quite a few files in their library.
I didn't go any further this time as it seems to be a waste of time until this issue is delt with. I'm keeping my fingers crossed for the next release.
Cheers,
Kevin
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HELP ME!! I finally broke under the pressure and bought a 3rg gen 30GB Ipod after never really being happy with what else was on the market. Apple has been no help and neither has MusicMatch. After 3 days of just wanting to put my 5000 mp3's on it I am on the verge of cracking. I downloaded your media Center 9 build .180 and I must say that I am very impressed with what this program can do, however I have yet to get it to work with my iPod.
My problem is that basically I can load any number of mp3's on it and then eject it. Plug my headphones in and hope to God it worked but yet again, it doesnt. It shows all the MP3's in the ipod as being there but then it tries to play each one and it cant. It lists length, name, all that good junk, fiddles around for a sec and then gives up and tries the next song with the same result. So I went and plugged it back and looked at all the contents with explorer and it shows the mp3's as being there and I can even play them on my computer, but why wont they play on the ipod. I have done it all, updated to the latest version, ran the updater on iPod 100 times to restore it and nothing works. Please if anyone can help I would greatly appreciate it.
Also, one other thing, when I upload my mp3's, I get a message at the end saying that it couldnt upload these songs and then lists them, why is that? Then I go back and try again and it uploads a few of the failed but it still has a list that didnt work. PLEASE HELP ME, I am starting to lose hope in Apple as a company after this sad example of the best mp3 player on the market.
Thanks to all for your insights so far.
~Ed
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Please read the instructions in the first post of this thread carefully. See Adam's instructions there.
Some things I would try:
Uninstall Musicmatch.
Right click on the drive under CD,DVD, and Handhelds and choose format.
Then upload a few files.
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Jiou-Pahn,
The seq column will not be removed from MC, just from the view within the Plugin where it has no meaning.
Kevin,
Please double check that you have Plugin 9.0.23 installed (it is the one on the website).
I was wondering if music that is in the basic Media Center library at the correct bitrate will be transcoded?
It should be skipped when sending the files to iPod.
Will they be upconverted if the transcoding is set for a higher bitrate?
Currently yes, but I will change this.
Second sync worked to the iPod, but failed in Media Center. It was great that Media Center recognized that the files didn't need to be reconverted as this saved a lot of time. I was also surprised that it took about 5 seconds to verify that each song was on the iPod and didn't need to be converted. Is there anything you can do to speed up this process?
Unfortunately, all the files were deleted from my hard drive after the second sync. This is a terrible bug and could cost someone quite a few files in their library.
A lot of this is confusing to me. What do you mean by "worked to iPod, but failed in MC"?
It does not take 5 seconds per song for me. This leads me to believe we may be out of synch by version. Perhaps wait to install tonight's release to get us on the same page.
When you say all the files were deleted from the harddrive, what do you mean? The original files?? This should not be and I cannot duplicate this. I do delete the temporarily converted files, but this seems logical.
Ed,
Jim is on the money. Try right clicking on the iPod drive letter and select "Format" You will lose all your data, but then you should be good to go.
Steve
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Hello,
I downloaded the latest version of MC v9, and everything is working great with the new IPOD.
The only problem i have is transferring playlists.
I've uploaded all the songs the IPOD already, and now I am making new playlists. I made a custom playlist of 36 songs, and tried to upload to IPOD.
I get asked that there are duplicate files and if I want to overwrite them. I say yes and so files are transferred but at the end, I get error code - 80 for each song in the playlist.
Now, I go into the IPOD itself, and the songs on the playlist are now missing and I can't find them anywhere in the IPOD. The playlist name did transfer but there are no songs. However, the songs do appear in teh IPOD explorer window in MC, but when I try to play it on the IPOD itself, it does not show up.
Deleting the song from IPOD and re-uploading it did not work...I had to re-format the entire IPOD drive and put back ALL the songs.
I find that this error also occured when I re-tagged some songs (i.e changes genre) and tried to upload and overwrite the old songs. It seems to be a problem when MC tries to overwrite current songs in the IPOD.
any advice.
thanks!
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James330i,
Error code 80 is a notification that the file already exists on the iPod at the time of transferring the file. When I test here, the code does what I intended it to do, namely first delete the existing file and then replace it with the new file.
Can you give me some specific instructions on how you can repeat this error. Can you do it after your have reformatted the iPod from within MC?
What version of MC do you have installed? If not 9.0.180, please get this version.
From your description, it sounds like you are dropping the playlists on your iPod icon to transfer them. You also may want to explore "Synchronization" by right clicking on the iPod icon.
Steve
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Steve,
There's been a report over at the 'lounge that playlists cannot be used as an alarm when created via MC9.
That is, on the new 2.0 iPod, there's an alarm clock. You can set it to go off at any time, and can use a beep or a playlist. If you choose beep, well... the iPod just beeps. If you use a playlist, the iPod will start playing the playlist at the given time.
Here's a link to the thread (http://www.ipodlounge.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=2057). The user reports that playlists created via MMJB work fine, but playlists created via MC9 don't work at all.
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Brad,
The next build of MC will resolve the Rename issue. Renaming will now work correctly.
Kurt,
Thanks for the heads up. I will take a look.
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James330i,
Can you give me some specific instructions on how you can repeat this error. Can you do it after your have reformatted the iPod from within MC?
What version of MC do you have installed? If not 9.0.180, please get this version.
From your description, it sounds like you are dropping the playlists on your iPod icon to transfer them. You also may want to explore "Synchronization" by right clicking on the iPod icon.
Steve
Steve,
right now, all my songs are in IPOD and there are no playlists.
If i make a playlist, and transfer, it then asks me if I want to overwrite...I say yes, and at the end of transfer, I get error code 80.
This happens as well when I tried to change the genre and some songs and upload back to IPOD. Error code 80 again.'
I will check the version of IPOD I have.
Thanks for your help
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James330i
I will check the version of IPOD I have.
Do you mean what version of MC? That is what is important. If not 9.0.180, please get it from ..
http://www.musicex.com/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?board=MediaCenter;action=display;num=1054751628
Also, try deselecting "Overwrite". This should create the playlist for you with the files. The overwrite should work as well. It does for me so if it does not for you we need to figure out what is different.
Steve
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Everyone,
If you want to check out the latest MC go to the first thread at...
http://www.musicex.com/cgi-bin/yabb/YaBB.cgi?board=MediaCenter;action=display;num=1054935446
Please read through all the information. If you install it, there are a few new iPod things. First, a button on the toolbar which when clicked will automatically send any selected files. The purpose of this is for a really easy way to get files to the iPod. For users who want to control their files by playlist, etc, this is not the best option.
The other new feature is an auto detect for your iPod (for you Kurt :)). You will notice that the "Auto-Synch" button is removed from the synchronization dialogue. To set Auto-Synch, go to Tools->Options->Device Settings and then look for "Action to perform when media is inserted". IF you set this to "AutoSynch", MC will detect when you plug and unplug your iPod and take you to the Synch dialogue when you connect.
Hanve a good weekend all.
Steve
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Does MC have to be running for this new feature to work? Or when I plug in, will the Windows Autoplay dialogue come up and offer me an MC autosync as an option?
I can't WAIT to get home and fiddle! (Since I got my new iPod, I no longer plug in at work... only one proprietary cable. Sigh)
And just to confirm... we need the 9.1 beta to try these new goodies out?
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Hi Kurt,
Be cautious about using 9.1 with iPod right now. Everything is new (and maybe unstable).
So did you find the link to ipodlounge at the bottom of this page yet?
http://www.musicex.com/mediacenter/handheld.html
That one's for you, bud. Well, Adam too, and probably some other guys, but I don't remember their names.
It is a GREAT site. I really enjoy reading the forum.
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Media Center 9 worked well for the first week I was interfacing it with my ipod. However, any time I now attmept to view the Ipod (in my case drive E under the Cd/Dvd/handheld tab, I merely click on it and every time get the response "media core has encountered a problem and needs to close...." when I click more info. I get "AppName: media jukebox.exe AppVer: 9.0.174.0..."
This morning, I completely reformatted my ipod, through the Apple software and then formatted it for MC9. Clicking on the drive letter was no problem, I synched my play lists and it put all 5,000 songs on my ipod, however, when it was done synching, instead of the "synch complete...." I got the media core error again without doing anything and get it now every time I click on the ipod drive letter.
I am running Windows XP on a new 30GB ipod. I have installed the Ipod plugin and have attempted a compete reinstall of MC 9 to remedy the problem, however, have had no luck. I love the program and would really appreciate any advice as to what may be wrong.
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I upgraded to 9.1 and synched--worked flawlessly. And in the little amount of time I've played with the new build, I must say it looks great...
One thing that would be nice--I love the ipod icon on the toolbar--it would be very cool if, when you clicked on it, the synch screen would come up rather than the "select files to transfer" screen (I think Kurt may have already mentioned this).
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sarvis:
You're using a relatively old version of MC9. I suggest you get the latest version. It will be one of the first 3 threads in the MC9 board here. The build you want (as of today) is 9.0.180
Don't download version 9.1 (the newest beta). It was just released today and will be buggy and is just for us expert masochistic types. ;)
Download and install .180 right over your existing version. Nothing else to add.
Once you do that, right click the iPod and select "rebuild iPod database". Your iPod's database is probably corrupted, but I think Steve has nailed this one, I've not had the problem in many builds.
Adam
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I'm having exactly the same problem as sarvis, and I'm on 9.0.190.
Initially my Ipod synced perfectly - now whenever I insert my ipod, and click on the drive icon under handhelds, Media Core crashes. I can't right-click to rebuild the database because the crash happens whether I right- or left-click.
The only solution I've found is to Restore the ipod using the Apple updater, restart MediaCenter, format for MC, and Sync everything again.
Then, I burn some more CDs, plug my ipod back in, and it starts crashing again... Oddly, the 'Safely Remove Hardware' icon no longer appears in the system tray, so the only way I can eject safely is through MediaCenter, which I can't do if it crashes whenever I right-click....
Media Center 9.0.180 -- C:\Program Files\J River\Media Center\
Microsoft Windows XP Workstation 5.1 Service Pack 1 (Build 2600)
Intel Pentium 4 1793 MHz MMX / Memory: Total - 392 MB, Free - 113 MB
Internet Explorer: 6.0.2800.1106 / ComCtl32.dll: 5.82 (xpsp1.020828-1920) / Shlwapi.dll: 6.00.2800.1106 (xpsp1.020828-1920) / Shell32.dll: 6.00.2800.1145 (xpsp2.021108-1929) / wnaspi32.dll: 4.60 (1021) , ASPI for Win32 (95/NT) DLL, Copyright © 1989-1999 Adaptec, Inc. / Aspi32.sys: 4.60 (1021)
Ripping / Drive E: Copy mode:ModeBurstBigBuffer CD Type:Auto Read speed:Max
Drive F: Copy mode:ModeBurstBigBuffer CD Type:Auto Read speed:Max
Digital playback: Yes / Use YADB: Yes / Get cover art: Yes / Calc replay gain: Yes / Copy volume: 32767
Eject after ripping: No / Play sound after ripping: No
Burning / Drive E: _NEC NR-7800A Addr: 1:1:0 Speed:16 MaxSpeed:16 Use MJ Engine:Yes
Test mode: No / Eject after writing: Yes / Direct decoding: Yes / Write CD-Text: No
Use playback settings: No / Normalization: None
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This is a report on 9.1.194...
I should first add that I don't do frequent iPod updates, usually just dump 1/3 of my music into the iPod (20GB) and live with that for several weeks. I'm out of town for a week and decided to live dangerously so I did a full reload with 9.1.
Overall great news, I've got the songs in with just a few problems. I used both Sync and Queue with good results. Peak thruput on Queue was 8.90 MB/s. I used the "Delete Files not in List" option and all went well.
Bug: When I right click the iPod icon after backing out of a Sync I crash into Media Core.
Ques: How the heck does Force Conversion work? :) I have mostly MP3s with a few APE files. I wanted to just get the APE into MP3 format for their transition to iPod. If I do Force Conversion with MP3 as the format MC converts the MP3s as well as the APEs which I def. don't want.
Anyhoo, I'm happy that I got a stable load.
Thanks Steve!
-=Tim=-
Media Center Registered 9.1.194 -- C:\Program Files\J River\Media Center\
Microsoft Windows XP Workstation 5.1 Service Pack 1 (Build 2600)
Intel Pentium 4 2399 MHz MMX / Memory: Total - 523 MB, Free - 172 MB
Internet Explorer: 6.0.2800.1106 / ComCtl32.dll: 5.82 (xpsp1.020828-1920) / Shlwapi.dll: 6.00.2800.1106 (xpsp1.020828-1920) / Shell32.dll: 6.00.2800.1145 (xpsp2.021108-1929) / wnaspi32.dll: N/A
Ripping / Drive E: Copy mode:ModeSecure CD Type:Auto Read speed:Max
Drive F: Copy mode:ModeSecure CD Type:Auto Read speed:Max
Digital playback: Yes / Use YADB: Yes / Get cover art: Yes / Calc replay gain: Yes / Copy volume: 32767
Eject after ripping: No / Play sound after ripping: No
Burning / Drive F: AOPEN CD-RW CRW4048 Addr: 1:1:0 Speed:12 MaxSpeed:40 Use MJ Engine:Yes
Test mode: No / Eject after writing: Yes / Direct decoding: Yes / Write CD-Text: No
Use playback settings: Yes / Normalization: None
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I upgraded to 9.1 and synched--worked flawlessly. And in the little amount of time I've played with the new build, I must say it looks great...
One thing that would be nice--I love the ipod icon on the toolbar--it would be very cool if, when you clicked on it, the synch screen would come up rather than the "select files to transfer" screen (I think Kurt may have already mentioned this).
Then you're both smart dudes, I agree as I think synch is the preferred method of getting data into the iPod. :)
-=Tim=-
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Adam -
Thanks for the advice. Unfortunately, it hasn't resolved my issue. I upgraded to 9.0.180, at which point I was able to click on the ipod drive and get options including "rebuild ipod database" which I did. Now when I click on the drive for the ipod I get a window titled "h." with a red "x" in it, when I click on "ok", I get the "media core error" again and MC shuts down.
Any advice would be much appreciated as I like the layout of MC9 and would really like it to work with my ipod. Thanks.
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Kurt,
Yes MC must be running for the autosynch to work.
sarvis,
Can you email me your iTunesDB file which is causing the crash so I can figure out why. If you see a crash after the synch, something is getting written wrong in the database. I can sort it out with your iTunesDb file. --
steve @ jriver.com. Also, try reformatting the iPod from within MC rather than rebuild. You will lose your files, but hopefully synch will work.
cct1,
This is easy to change, but is a little different than what it was intended for. Let me take a look next week.
dallardice,
My best guess is that the problem is related to synching newly ripped files. I have never been able to replicate this but I have seen reports like yours. I will try to solve it again next week. Do you have MusicMatch installed?
TimB,
Bug: When I right click the iPod icon after backing out of a Sync I crash into Media Core.
Do you mean if you cancel a synch in the middle?
If I do Force Conversion with MP3 as the format MC converts the MP3s as well as the APEs
This should only happen if the bitrate you are going to is less than the file's bitrate. If the selected bitrate is the same or more, conversion should be skipped.
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For some reason I can't get a playlist (mixes) to showup on my iPod. I created a new mix today and have synched with that mix checked in my synch list including the other things that are on my ipod. I synch and everything goes as it should go however I can't see the play list in my ipod screen, it does appear in MC under my ipods playlists, but not on the iPod it's self. What's going wrong?
thanks,
Brian
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dallardice,
Do you have MusicMatch installed?
No, I don't. Not sure if this helps, but if you think it's to do with ripping: occasionally (one CD in 10) I get an error 'Read track failed. Failed to extract digital audio' and MC won't rip it. Real Jukebox will rip the CDs without a problem and then I can import into MC. However, the failed MC rip creates three MP3 files in the relevant artist/album sub-directory of 'My Music', each 625 bytes long. These are imported into MC too when I import the RJ-ripped files and appear in (Unassigned Artist). I wonder if the ipod sync fails because of these files? Deleting the files from the HD and MC doesn't help, but perhaps there's some corruption the first time I try to sync when those files are present. If I get a chance today, I'll experiment with that further, but do you think that's possible?
By the way, love Media Center: it is so many head and shoulders above Real Jukebox!
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Dallardice,
This could definitely be a problem. Those 625 byte files are bogus. If they are getting assigned duplicated info in the MC database, it could cause problems on synch. I will check it out tomorrow.
nyc-ink,
Not sure. Try dragging and dropping the playlist on the iPod icon and see if it shows up. If this fails, could you try reformatting or if you don't want to lose the files do the option to recreate the database from iPod. This will remove your playlists, but after it is done you can readd the playlists.
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Tried both reformatting and dragging and dropping, in fact after reformatting none of the playlists showed up! Went back to using musicmatch for my ipod synching, it's not as fast but at least my play lists show up.
Brian
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sarvis,
I had the same problem about 2 weeks ago (the "h" and the red "x"). After a little exploring, I found that I was missing some key files and folders on my iPod. I'm not exactly sure how they were deleted, but I am suspicious that it may have had something to do with improperly undocking the iPod. I fixed my problem by r-clicking the iPod in Windows explorer and chosing reformat. I had to do this because once my iPod had a few files/folders deleted, I could not run the iPod Restore to "Restore" the iPod. Every time I would try and run the restore, it would be almost complete, but then the restore app would tell me that it could not unmount iPod. So, after reformating the iPod in Win Explorer, I then disconnected the iPod, then reconnected it, then ran the restore which worked fine after reformatting the iPod. Then, I undocked the iPod, restarted my PC, opened Media Center, connected the iPod, and it showed up in MC. I immediately checked the iPod contents in Win Explorer and saw that the folders that had been deleted were now back on the iPod. I r-clicked the drive letter in MC, formatted the ipod for MC, and it's been working fine ever since. I think there is some problem between the built-in Win XP plug and play detection (the little grey/green arrow icon for safely removing hardware) and the iPod service that's installed when you install the apps that come with the iPod. I saw this because before I had the problem I just described above, there were times when i would connect the iPod, and the "Safely Remove Hardware" icon would then appear in the system tray, but the iPod manager icon would still have the little red "X" over the iPod icon in the system tray. I could undock the iPod using the "Safely Remove Hardware" icon, but never the iPod icon in the system tray. After reformatting the drive and running the restore, I haven't had that problem and at all. In fact, Windows seems to recognize the iPod (when plugged in) more quickly than it ever has.
Hope this helps.
Wobbley
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sarvis,
One more thing, before you do anything to try and fix this, explore the iPod in Windows Explorer and look int he [drive letter]:/iPod_Control/ folder and see what you see in there. I can't remember exactly but you should see some folders like "Device" (I think? Was it a folder or just a file???), iTunesDB, and another folder...I seem to remember there being 3 folders in the [Drive Letter]:/iPod_Control/ folder. My guess is that one or more of those folders is missing, or the contents of those folders have been corrupted. If this is the case, try and follow what I did and see if that fixes your problem.
Wobbley
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dallardice,
Regarding your problem, did you get the error when ripping one track from "one CD in 10", or from the entire CD? I found that every once in a while I would have the same problem for a random track on a random CD, but it would only occur about every 6 or 7 CDs. I was using digital secure rip, so I thought it might have something to with that (even though the CDs I was ripping were brand new) so I changed it to something else and then I had no problems ripping the track that MC wouldn't rip when set to rip digital secure. Maybe you have the same settings and are having the same problem I had???
Wobbley
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wobbley,
MC rejects one track (can be any track, not necessarily Track 1) and then refuses to record any others from the same CD. I'm using Digital Large Buffer recording - haven't tried any others.
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I too get the Media Core error message every time I try to access my 20GB Ipod from MC 9. It happens both with 9.18 and 9.194. Any attempt to acces the Ipod, through autosync or right or left-clicking on the menu has the same results. I have refromatted several times but always the same result.
I have been unable to download the Ipod plug in. Every time I click on it ( 9.0.22) I get an "Invalid Package file. Cannot continue" message. Then it says something about an hh_ipod[1]].mjp file.
I have an earlier version of MC in another PC which works perfectly with my Ipod though.
........
Media Center Registered 9.1.194 -- C:\Program Files\J River\Media Center\
Microsoft Windows XP Workstation 5.1 Service Pack 1 (Build 2600)
AMD Athlon 1466 MHz MMX / Memory: Total - 523 MB, Free - 329 MB
Internet Explorer: 6.0.2800.1106 / ComCtl32.dll: 5.82 (xpsp1.020828-1920) / Shlwapi.dll: 6.00.2800.1106 (xpsp1.020828-1920) / Shell32.dll: 6.00.2800.1145 (xpsp2.021108-1929) / wnaspi32.dll: N/A
Ripping / Drive D: Copy mode:ModeBurstBigBuffer CD Type:Auto Read speed:Max
Drive E: Copy mode:ModeBurstBigBuffer CD Type:Auto Read speed:Max
Digital playback: Yes / Use YADB: Yes / Get cover art: No / Calc replay gain: Yes / Copy volume: 32767
Eject after ripping: No / Play sound after ripping: No
Burning / Drive E: PLEXTOR CD-R PX-W2410A Addr: 1:1:0 Speed:24 MaxSpeed:24 Use MJ Engine:Yes
Test mode: No / Eject after writing: Yes / Direct decoding: Yes / Write CD-Text: No
Use playback settings: No / Normalization: None
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One thing that would be nice--I love the ipod icon on the toolbar--it would be very cool if, when you clicked on it, the synch screen would come up rather than the "select files to transfer" screen (I think Kurt may have already mentioned this).
I too think this would be a really cool idea. It would be great if you guys could look into doing this. :)
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So, where is this iPOD icon on the toolbar?
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So, where is this iPOD icon on the toolbar?
It's not on the 9.0 builds; it's only on the 9.1 (new) builds--and the tool bar is now on the bottom of the screen, rather than on the top. IMHO, 9.1 is the way to go--very nice looking, and there is now a "help" wizard which is sweet too....
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But if you want to avoid problems, you might wait a few builds of 9.1. It works now, but there are still many things broken. It should be cleaned up pretty quickly.
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gtorres,
After the reformat do you get the crash when you click on the iPod Drive? If not, upload some files and then when (and if) it crashes, please send me your iTunesDB file which is found on your Ipod in iPod_Control->iTunes.
Brian,
This plugin is working well for lots of people so there must be something different either about your setup or what you are doing. If you want to pursue it further, reformat your iPod with from Windows or with iPod updater, rename your MusicMatch directory so it does not interfere, format iPod from within MC and then transfer one playlist to the iPod. If this fails, send me your iTunesDB file which is found on your Ipod in iPod_Control->iTunes and we can go from there.
Steve
Steve (steve @ jriver.com)
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<snip!>
I love the ipod icon on the toolbar--it would be very cool if, when you clicked on it, the synch screen would come up rather than the "select files to transfer" screen
<snip!>
Please add my enthusiastic "aye aye!!" to this request. A toolbar button would just be a couple steps away from a command-line switch, wouldn't it? Eh? Eh??
;D ;D
Initial impressions of 9.1 are very good. I've been having some problems with my smartlists (I think some bad files have snuck in) so I don't have a working iPod now, nor do I have a bug report. Imma leave that to the folks with the internet at home, eh?
But well done thus far. I'm finding all sorts of stuff to fall in love with in 9.1!
PS: Welcome to INTERACT, Timmy! Loungers representin' in full effect! :D
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Everyone,
I hear the request for a toolbar button to synch. This is doable, but before I add it, I would like to check that you have explored the new AutoSynch. If you haven't can you check it out and see if it takes care of what you are after? After some discussion here, we want to keep the current button as it is (i.e. click and then select files) as a solution for novice users who just want an easy way to send some files to a player (not just iPod). The alternative is to add another button for synching to the toolbar, but if Auto-Synch is enabled, this seems like a task that is already covered.
Any feedback or suggestions on this would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
Steve
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First time in a while that I've posted, so I must pose the only question still on my mind: Any word on the Position in Media-Set support yet?
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Steve,
I love the autosync feature with a passion. It's DISGUSTINGLY convenient!! The times when I want to plug in, sync, and go -- well, it's just a tremendous timesaver.
There's the times, though, that I don't want to sync immediately. Say I've already plugged in, I fire up MC and want to adjust some smartlists before I sync. I just click NO on the autosync, fiddle with my playlists, and then sync. That's when the sync button would be a stone cold boon, especially since usually by that time, my tree is all expanded and browsed out.
I think that having both buttons, or at LEAST having a sync button that we can add if we want, would be a great solution. I do not reccomend removing the existing button, for the exact reason you mentioned... novice users just want to select something, click a button, and have it sent to their portable.
And... again... a button that invokes the sync dialogue suggests that there could be a command-line switch that does the same in the near future. Woot!
:) :)
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A lot of this is confusing to me. What do you mean by "worked to iPod, but failed in MC"?
It does not take 5 seconds per song for me. This leads me to believe we may be out of synch by version. Perhaps wait to install tonight's release to get us on the same page.
When you say all the files were deleted from the harddrive, what do you mean? The original files?? This should not be and I cannot duplicate this. I do delete the temporarily converted files, but this seems logical.
Hi Steve!
Sorry it took several days to get back to you, but it seems like I'm always on the road anymore. Now let's see if I can be more clear this time.
I meant it exactly exactly the way you took it. All the files I synced were deleted from the hard drive on my PC. That's also what I meant when I said Media Center failed. The Media Center library was left intact, but gave errors when I tried to play the files because there was nothing to play. The iPod was fine -- it had all the files at the transcoded bitrate (160).
I believe we are in sync or the version. I first reported this problem against v9.0.179 (can't remember if it was the iPod plug-in included or an updated download). You said the problems would be addressed in the next release. After waiting several days, v9.0.180 was posted and I ran into the same problem (iPod plug-in v9.0.23).
I couldn't agree more that this shouldn't be. But it is! Everything was fine after the first sync (the original PC files were still there), but after the second sync with NO changes, the files were gone. And I'm not talking about the temporary ones (remember, I was the one who requested that you upload and delete the temporary ones after every 10 were transcoded). The permanent, high quality (320) ones were deleted.
I can't fathom why you can't duplicate this. It's one thing to have many of the failures reported here and find that it's specific to an installation, but I can't comprehend that applying to files being deleted. Did you follow my methodology exactly?
During the second sync, it also took about 5 seconds per song to validate the iPod and determine that transcoding wasn't necessary. I can see this being installation specific, but have no idea how to rectify it. Any suggestions?
Tell if there's anything I can do to help track these buggers down and eradicate them.
Cheers,
Kevin
Media Center Registered 9.0.180 -- C:\Program Files\Media Center\
Microsoft Windows XP Workstation 5.1 Service Pack 1 (Build 2600)
AMD Athlon 699 MHz MMX / Memory: Total - 392 MB, Free - 58 MB
Internet Explorer: 6.0.2800.1106 / ComCtl32.dll: 5.82 (xpsp1.020828-1920) / Shlwapi.dll: 6.00.2800.1106 (xpsp1.020828-1920) / Shell32.dll: 6.00.2800.1145 (xpsp2.021108-1929) / wnaspi32.dll: 4.60 (1021) , ASPI for Win32 (95/NT) DLL, Copyright © 1989-1999 Adaptec, Inc. / Aspi32.sys: 4.60 (1021)
Ripping / Drive E: Copy mode:ModeBurstBigBuffer CD Type:Auto Read speed:Max
Drive I: Copy mode:ModeBurstBigBuffer CD Type:Auto Read speed:Max
Digital playback: Yes / Use YADB: Yes / Get cover art: No / Calc replay gain: Yes / Copy volume: 32767
Eject after ripping: Yes / Play sound after ripping: Yes Soundfile: chord.wav
Burning / Drive I: HP CD-Writer+ 9300 Addr: 3:0:0 Speed:10 MaxSpeed:10 Use MJ Engine:Yes
Test mode: No / Eject after writing: Yes / Direct decoding: No / Write CD-Text: Yes
Use playback settings: No / Normalization: None
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occasionally (one CD in 10) I get an error 'Read track failed. Failed to extract digital audio' and MC won't rip it... I wonder if the ipod sync fails because of these files? Deleting the files from the HD and MC doesn't help, but perhaps there's some corruption the first time I try to sync when those files are present.
Might be a red herring: sync failed tonight (Media Core failure, repeatedly) after ripping five CDs - all went successfully so no spurious files, and still the sync failed.
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nekura,
The position in media set request is not forgotten. Currently you can assign this information by creating a custom column, but as I recall you would like this informatioin to be retrieved from the tag. I raised the issue again, but we decided to not add it unless there is more interest. Perhaps you can start a thread with this as a subject and hopefully others will voice their opinions as well.
Kevin,
I can't fathom why you can't duplicate this.
I am as perplexed as to how you can see this. I just duplicated your test on two machines with no file deletions. I am using the mp3 encoder from our site and was converting 128 to 96. The bitrates are different than your test, but I do not see this as relevant. Can anyone else duplicate what Kevin is reporting?
Kurt,
Thanks for the comments. Anyone else?
Dalardice,
Do you have some CDs that rip and then synch OK? If yes, what is the name of one of the failing CDs? If no, what are your ripping settings so I can test those.
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nekura,
The position in media set request is not forgotten. Currently you can assign this information by creating a custom column, but as I recall you would like this informatioin to be retrieved from the tag. I raised the issue again, but we decided to not add it unless there is more interest. Perhaps you can start a thread with this as a subject and hopefully others will voice their opinions as well.
Steve,
Thanks for the reply. Whether or not it reads straight from the ID3 tag doesn't bother me; it's the issue about the order in which the files are written to the iPod which does. As far as my testing as shown, if I use a custom column, the files are still written in default order and thus the track listing with a four-disc album would appear this way on my iPod: 1, 1, 1, 1, 2, 2, 2, 2, 3, 3, 3, 3, etc., thus destroying the point of having the columns in the first place.
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Kevin,
I am as perplexed as to how you can see this. I just duplicated your test on two machines with no file deletions. I am using the mp3 encoder from our site and was converting 128 to 96. The bitrates are different than your test, but I do not see this as relevant. Can anyone else duplicate what Kevin is reporting?
Ok, following the rule of don't ask if you can't stand the answer, I "upgraded" to v9.1.194. First off, in the little time I spent playing with it, the interface kicks a--! Much less clutter and much more intuitive for first time users.
Now for the bad news, the problem is still here!
Here are some more specifics on my latest testing as I'm convinced there's a logic problem in the iPod plugin.
In the "My Documents/My Music" folder I created two subfolders - one called "Temp" and one called "Testing". In the "Testing" folder I copied all the songs from two full albums, Bangles - Different Light, and Bangles - Greatest Hits (26 tracks in all).
In Media Center I created a new library called "Testing" and pointed it two a new subfolder "My Documents/My Music/Testing/.Media Center". Then I imported all the 26 songs into the "Testing" library. Following that, I created a smartlist called "iPod Testing" with "Artist: Bangles".
In the "Tools - Options - File Naming & Location" dialog box, I set "Temporary File Location" to My Documents\My Music\Temp\".
I then right clicked on my iPod and selected "Synchronize files". In the dialog box I checked the "Testing" smartlist, as well as the "Delete Files Not In List" and "Update Tags" boxes. After pressing the options button, I checked the "Normalize Files" box and set the level to 90%. I also checked the "Force file conversion during uploads" box, but did not check the "Show queued files only" box.
I set the encoder to "MP3 Encoder" and the "Quality" to 160 (all of the original files were 320). After pressing the "Options" button in this dialog box, I set the "MP3 Encoding Option" to "High Quality". I then Okay'd my way back out to start the sync.
Then I waited and watched. Media Center transcoded the first 10 files and put them in the "Temp" directory as set up. Then it downloaded the transcoded files to the iPod. AND THEN IT DELETED THE ORIGINAL FILES -- NOT THE TRANSCODED ONES. It repeated this same action for the next 10 files, and the final 6 files.
When all was said and done, the iPod was loaded with transcoded files and worked fine. The original 320 bps files were deleted from the PC, but the original Media Center library pointers still referenced the files (meaning it couldn't play anything). The transcoded files were left sitting around in the "Temp" directory".
Steve, please tell me this helps and that you're able to reproduce the problem!
Cheers,
Kevin
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Nekura,
Whether or not it reads straight from the ID3 tag doesn't bother me
If that isn't an issue let me see what I can do. Also let me see if I understand the problem.
You have an Album that spans multiple CDs. Your concern is that you want to play the album on the iPod and have all the tracks play in the correct sequence (including the cross disc ordering).
If this is correct, refresh for me how the albums are named in MC.
Thanks,
Steve
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Steve, hopefully I can sum this up as detailed as possible for you, because it can be a bit difficult to fully understand.
Right now, my library consists of many multi-disc albums. The albums are named using this format:
Album Name [CD 1]
Album Name [CD 2]
Album Name [CD 3]
etc. etc.
While this naming system works, there are two inherent problems with it:
1) It's a viewing area hog. In one of the earlier iPod Support threads, I posted screenshots of a comparison between what my MC9 library looks like with the current titles, and what it would look like if I could have multi-disc albums named Album Name rather than Album Name [CD 1], etc. If necessary, I can post those screenshots again, if only to invoke a bit of sympathy for my plight. ;) As you might imagine, if my MC9 library looks icky because of all of the unnecessary album entries, just imagine what my iPod looks like.
2) In order to play a full multi-disc album, I must play by artist. Obviously this isn't always convenient because there could be other albums that I have by the same artist. Again, it's usable, but inconvenient.
"You have an Album that spans multiple CDs. Your concern is that you want to play the album on the iPod and have all the tracks play in the correct sequence (including the cross disc ordering)."
Summed up beautifully. Ideally, the solution to this problem would be either a) Introduce a "CD #" column so as to avoid the problem with solution b), which is to have the plug-in search for a similarly-functioning column with a certain name (user-adjustable?) and write to the iPod accordingly. As I'm not familiar with MC9's internals, I'm not sure just how feasible either solution really is.
Anyway, I hope this post clarified things for you, if you need any further information, just ask.
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Woah. All I want, on the other hand, is a pizza. :)
(actually, nekura, position in media set has always been a great idea to add and i'm very glad that you're championing this cause for us... cheers!)
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Kurt,
Thanks for the comments. Anyone else?
Steve,
I echo Kurt's sentiments exactly. I understand the rationale behind the current setup, but most of MC9 users will with time want the bells and whistles (after all, there are stripped down, easier programs to use with the ipod than MC9; I've sort of discovered over at the 'lounge that MC9 is more for those who are willing to put a little time into it for the BEST application for the ipod, and want full functionality--the effort is well rewarded in the end, but not everyone wants or needs the myriad of options that MC9 offers--those that are looking for an "easy" way to synch their ipod will probably choose a relatively more basic program than MC9. (I've already seen this happen several times on the lounge boards--and thats ok; different strokes for different folks....).
So, if you want to keep the functionality of the current icon the way it is, no problem....But if you can, I think it would be great to give us another icon that we can use to synch--it would really come in handy....I rarely use autosynch, because I invariable change something in a playlist or tag before I synch (not knocking autosynch, I think it's a great idea, it's just not how I use MC9). That way, we can each customize our toolbar to our heart's content....
Just my 2 cents, and thanks for taking a look at it!!
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Kevin and Nekura,
I will look at your issues today.
cct1,
those that are looking for an "easy" way to synch their ipod will probably choose a relatively more basic program than MC9.
Ideally we would like these users to join the MC fold as well. Can you give me your best example of a basic program so I can try to modify our solution to be a solution also for these people. I have used MusicMatch(blechh), Ephpod and XPlay.
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Kevin and Nekura,
I will look at your issues today.
Steve,
Thanks for your time. Hopefully a workable solution will be possible.
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Kevin and Nekura,
I will look at your issues today.
cct1,
Ideally we would like these users to join the MC fold as well. Can you give me your best example of a basic program so I can try to modify our solution to be a solution also for these people. I have used MusicMatch(blechh), Ephpod and XPlay.
Steve,
Here's my take (Kurt and Adam will probably want to chime in here too...). Xplay is probably the "easiest" to synch with, but in my mind, if you're going to pay for an application, why not just pay a little bit more and get MC9? I've posted this about a billion times over at the lounge; some people don't want or need what MC9 can do--they just want something to synch easily. Or, in this situation, if you just are looking for something easy, why not just get ephpod--it's free and works well. I have a hard time with Xplay; IMHO, if you're going to shell out cash, might as well get MC9; if you don't want to shell out cash, or just want to synch easily, might as well use ephpod.
Xplay is another matter--if you can come up with a "drag and drop" option like Xplay, and fine tune the autosynch like Kurt was talking about, then you could make Xplay obsolete--I think most people would be willing to pay an extra ten dollars for MC9 if they could synch the way they can in Xplay--that's a no brainer to me anyway (although having no brain to begin with, I'm not sure how valid my opinion is here). The way you've got synching set up is fantastic--once people learn how to synch the "MC9 way", they love it--it's really one of the outstanding points of the program, and my suspicion is that if you offered a drag and drop, it would get more people away from Xplay to MC9, but they'd probably synch the MC9 way once they got familar with it...
As an all in one application, MC9 has got mmjb beat hands down--these are people you can still potentially get to come over to MC9 (About the only feature that people that convert from mmjb to MC9 say they miss is "supertagging", and not having used mmjb in eons I'm not sure how that works. You already synch MUCH better than mmjb).
A major issue for MC9 is going to be itunes for windows--IMHO, that' s going to be you're major competition; I think mmjb will go by the wayside once Itunes for windows is released. And that is why it so important for MC9 to support AAC--because Itunes for windows will (although it looks like from a post I read yesterday there is a way for MC9 to support AAC). I prefer MC9 to Itunes (I've only played around with Itunes briefly though), but Itunes for windows will be a MAJOR improvement over mmjb when it's released, and will be your major competition for the ipod market. And personally I think you'd be better off keeping an eye on Itunes (by the looks of 9.1, it looks like you guys are doing a great job BTW), rather than worrying about MC9 synching as easy as ephpod--I don't think people using ephpod are going to shell out $40.00 for MC9--there are good free ripper/encoders (EAC/LAME for example) that can be paired with Ephpod--now you've got a great ripping/encoding/easy synching set up for free. You won't be able to compete with ephpod IMHO, and it's not even worth trying...Itunes for windows may very will be the death sentence for Xplay, ephpod, not to mention mmjb--but MC9 still does things that Itunes can't, and MC9 does other things that Itunes can do, but a little better...
We've seen over at the lounge people who give up on MC9 because it's got a learning curve--they want something basic. MC9 is a sophisticated program, and IMHO a basic synch set up like ephpod isn't going to pull people in to MC9--the remaining functions of MC9 and remaining options are still going to be too much for some....And there is a perception by some that they're paying for alot of video management stuff they'll never use (seen this brought up before several times--I don't necessarily agree with it; I don't use any of the video stuff either, but still think MC9 is well worth it).
In my experience, (and take it for what it's worth, I'm not nearly as knowledgable as Adam or Kurt), MC9 attracts ipodders who are looking for a bunch of things--high quality ripping/encoding, outstanding file management, fast synching (not to mention the media server)--we joke over at the lounge how obsessive/compulsive we are about our music management--these are the type of people (for better or for worse) you are attracting and I don't think people looking for an easy, cheap synch like ephpod will necessarily fit into this demographic, but if you add drag and drop and an autsosynch similar to what Xplay does, you can broaden your appeal a bit. Also, appears to be a relatively older crowd compared to the average ipodder...
Wake up, I hear you snoozing..Sorry for the long post..
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nekura,
Let me give you my take on your situation, and I have the same. This was my rational:
I buy a CD that is actually 3 CDs, and each CD is mixed by a particular DJ. For instance, "Renaissance Worldwide:Singapore" has 3 CDs, and each CD is mixed by a different DJ, David Morales (Disc 1), Dave Seaman (Disc 2), and BT (Disc 3). So, my first dilemma is "Do I fill in the 'Album Artist' tag with 'Various Artists' for all tracks on all CDs, and then put the individual song artists in the 'Artist' tag field, or, for each CD, do I put the DJ's name (i.e. David Morales) as the 'Album Artist', still using the individual track artist details in the 'Artist' field? I decided to use the DJ's name in the 'Album Artist' field instead of 'Various Artists'. Once that's solved, I then ask myself, "Do I rip the first CD and call the Album 'Renaissance Worldwide: Singapore (CD 1)', and the same for CDs 2 and 3 (only changing the CD #), or do I just rip all the tracks from all the CDs and name the album 'Renaissance Worldwide: Singapore'? After all, the album title is 'Renaissance Worldwide: Singapore', not 'Renaissance Worldwide: Singapore 3-Disc Set', so I don't include the CD# in the 'Album' tag field; I rely on the differences in 'Album Artist' to indicate to me the songs that are on different discs. The reason that I chose to not use the CD# in the 'Album' tag field is because I couldn't see it on the iPod when I scrolled through 'Albums' anyway. So, on the iPod, I just scroll to 'Renaissance Worldw...' and I know I've selected all the tracks on the CD, but they don't play in order unless I have renumbered the tracks in Media Center before porting the songs to my iPod. So, after I rip the CDs, I have to go back and renumber the tracks on Discs 2 and 3 (in this example) so that the track numbering for disc 2 picks up from where disc 1's track numbering left off, and disc 3's track numbering picks up from where disc 2's track numbering left off, so I end up with one album called 'Renaissance Worldwide: Singapore' with about 40 tracks on it, instead of 3 different albums (which are really the same album), each with 12+ tracks on them. But, I guess all this depends on the definition of 'Album'. Does 'Album' mean all the songs that are on a CD, or does it mean a collection of songs contained within one package (which would include the 2 or greater disc sets that you and I are having trouble with). Another problem, inherent in all of this is that, again in this example, I have chosen to let the 'Artist' tag field contain the track artist's name, and 'Album Artist' contains the name of the DJ or DJs that selected and mixed the tracks for the album (discs). When I copy the songs over to the iPod, the 'Album Artist' field does not get copied (of course), but instead the 'Artist' field does. And this is correct; MC should copy the 'Artist' name over as 'Artist' to the iPod as there are many more single-artist albums than there are multiple-artist or "mixed" CDs (in the average person's collection of MP3s). But, I usually have no idea who the track artists are on "mixed" CDs, much less can I remember them when I want to hear the songs from the album when listening to mu iPod, and even further, even if I could remember who the track artists are, I could never remember the ordering of the tracks such that I could play the tracks in their correct order. It would be nice if the iPod plugin would copy the 'Album Artist' field to the iPod instead of the 'Artist' field if MC detected the presence of a value (and the value was the same for each track) in the 'Album Artist' field for all tracks associated with an album. That way, I could scroll through 'Artists' on the iPod, and find, say, 'David Morales' and then pick the 'Renaissance Worldwide: Singapore' from the album listings under his name. Then, it woudln't matter that the iPod only shows a certain number of characters in the album title and I can never differentiate between 'Album Title (CD 1)' and 'Album Title (CD 2)' (for longer album titles). Here's another, slightly different, example that I have just thought of. I have an "album" called 'Renaissance Anthems', which is comprised, again, of 3 CDs. However, each CD has it's own name, "At The Bar" (CD 1), "At The Club" (CD 2), and "At Home" (CD 3). So, each CD has it's own name, but all the CDs are part of an Album called 'Renaissance Anthems', so what do I enter into the 'Album' field for each CD? For example, for the first CD, should I enter 'Renaissance Anthems: At The Bar' as the album title, and apply the same methodology to the other 2 albums' naming conventions, or should I use 'Renaissance Anthems' for the 'Album' value for all tracks on all CDs, and enter the CD title in the 'Comment' field or 'Notes' field for each track so I can still (through a search, etc.) identify each individual CD if I need/want to? In this case of this last example, each track has it's own artist, but there is no main DJ (or DJs) associated with the album, so I would use 'Various Artists' in the 'Album Artist' field.
I could go on and on, because I have many unresolved tagging dilemmas for which I am always actively seeking solutions, suggestions, ideas, etc.
Let's keep this thread going here or somewhere else and maybe we (and others) can come up with a definitive guide for tagging MP3s...
Cheers,
Wobbley
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Kevin,
I managed to reproduce your bug. Thanks for reporting it. It is fixed in Plugin 9.0.26 which is not included in today's MC build, but is available from the Plugins page.
Wobbley (and Nekura),
Thanks for your detailed suggestions. I did not have a chance to address this issue today, but will look at it soon.
cct1,
Thanks for your comments. I will use these to try improve what we already have.
Steve
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Well, whatever the cause of the crashes I described in post #125 they are gone with the latest build. Version 196 works fine with my Ipod now.
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I am now upgraded to MC 9.1.196 but I am having a similar probelm to what sarvis was experiencing - "when I click on the drive for the ipod I get a window titled "h." with a red "x" in it." I don't get the Media Core error that sarvis had, and I can still disconnect my iPod from my PC. Any official fix to this? Did I do something?
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I appologize if this has been addressed before, but couldn't find a similar posting...
I have recently configured MediaCenter 9 to work with my (3rd generation) iPOD. I'm finding the transferring of mp3s from my notebook to the iPOD very erratic.
If I select a group of files to transfer (using the "send to" function, or by dragging them and dropping them into the iPOD), a number of them will not transfer, with the error message "The following is a list of files that failed to transfer with an error code." (No error code is listed).
If I attempt to then individually download those same files, they will (abou 95% of the time) transfer without problem.
I've also tried transferring the same group of files, and each time different files will fail to transfer (with the same error message as above).
By going back and individually transferring the files one by one, I've managed to get about everything to transver over...but this certainly isn't the way things are supposed to work. Any ideas?
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Kevin,
I managed to reproduce your bug. Thanks for reporting it. It is fixed in Plugin 9.0.26 which is not included in today's MC build, but is available from the Plugins page.
Hi Steve!
I did some initial testing tonight, but nothing extensive as it's so late. The good news is that the bug that caused the plugin to delete the original library file on the first sync with transcoding seems to be fixed! Thanks a million for putting up with my daily complaints. ;D
The bad news is that the original files were deleted after a second sync with no changes. I also noticed a minor bug was introduced that causes the "Overall Progress" bar to start at zero after each interim upload during a sync with transcoding.
The plugin takes about 2 seconds to confirm that each file has previously been transcoded and downloaded to the iPod. Is there anyway to make this run faster -- say like on the order of a normal sync without transcoding?
Cheers,
Kevin
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I am now upgraded to MC 9.1.196 but I am having a similar probelm to what sarvis was experiencing - "when I click on the drive for the ipod I get a window titled "h." with a red "x" in it." I don't get the Media Core error that sarvis had, and I can still disconnect my iPod from my PC. Any official fix to this? Did I do something?
I'm getting the same problem but with 9.0.180. This would suggest it is the plug-in.
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Do you have some CDs that rip and then synch OK? If yes, what is the name of one of the failing CDs? If no, what are your ripping settings so I can test those.
Testing last night, the first three CDs ripped and synced fine, the last one 'With the Beatles' ripped without any problems but on attempting the sync I got the Media Core error. Incidentally, just to be clear, the crash happens before the dialogue box appears asking me what I want to Sync - it's immediately after I select Sync from the right-click menu.
At the moment I am still on Plugin v23 - do you think I should upgrade to the latest or would you rather get to the bottom of this on 23?
I have the Ipod and MC in currently un-syncable states (a bit like the Titanic) so let me know if I should hold it like that for investigation or if I should run through my usual reformat/resync cycle.
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packyb,
The crash you describe sounds like a corrupted database. The solution should be to format your iPod and then start clean. Alternately, you could delete your iTunesDB file from your iPod and then select "Rebuild database from iPod". This option will cause your Playlists to be removed, but will keep your files.
If you can, send me your iTunesDB file from your iPod (iPod Drive\ iPod_Control\iTunes\iTunesDB ) and I will fix the code so that it will not crash. Why your database got corrupted is a mystery.
RGHessel,
When you see the error message of the files that failed to transfer you do not see a filename followed by a "-" and a number?
What is your Operating System? Do you have similar problems using another application (to rule out a hardware issue)?
Kevin,
Thanks for the reports. All are fixed in the next build of MC.
Mindracing,
My advice to PackyB above is my advice to you as well.
Dallardice,
Please update to all the latest. In order to get back to a synchable state, follow advice to PackyB. If you can, try to isolate that the problem is with the "With the Beatles" CD. If you can replicate it multiple times, I am off to buy that CD to get to the bottom of this.
Steve
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Hi Steve,
I have discovered a new problem I am having with MC and my 3G 30 Gig iPod. I'm using the newest version of MC (9.1.195 ) and iPod plugin version 9.025. I conducted a sync and once it was complete, I noticed that songs I had not added to any of the playlists that I synced were on the iPod (the iPod was clean before the sync), and they were listed as other songs by other artists...well, let me explain.
One of the albums on one of the playlists I synced was "Stockholm Mix Sessions" by Adam Beyer. After the sync, I scrolled through my albums on the iPod and found "Stockholm Mix Sessions" and selected the first track to play. Everything appeared to be OK (the album name was correct, the song titles were corect, etc.). I selected the 1st song on the album, pressed play, and despite the display showing that I was playing the first track off of the "Stockholm Mix Sessions" album, the song that played was a song by Aimee Mann from the "Magnolia" soundtrack. This was especially odd as I did not add any songs from that album to any playlist in the group of playlists I synced. I tried several other songs (still labeled correctly), but they, too, were songs by Aimee Mann from the "Magnolia" soundtrack. I did find that there were about 3 out of a total of 18 songs that were the actual song from the "Stockholm Mix Sessions" album. How could MC have synced songs to the iPod that weren't on any of the playlists I had selected to sync? How could MC have sent the tag info of the songs from the "Stockholm Mix Sessions" album to the iPod, but associated that tag info with songs by Aimee Mann on the "Magnolia" soundtrack?
I'll download the 9.026 iPod plugin when I get home and test to see if it is still occurring.
Let me know if you have an ideas about why this would have happened, or if I haven't been clear enough.
Thanks,
Wobbley
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Steve,
packyb,
The crash you describe sounds like a corrupted database. The solution should be to format your iPod and then start clean. Alternately, you could delete your iTunesDB file from your iPod and then select "Rebuild database from iPod". This option will cause your Playlists to be removed, but will keep your files.
Interestingly, I have only been experiencing this siince we started playing around with the Audible files!
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Wobbley,
What you are describing is strange and I cannot immediately duplicate it. Can you run some small tests and see if you can give me some specific steps to reliably see your error? Also, try updating your library. The only way that immediately comes to mind for how you can see what you are seeing is if you had cleared your library and then retransferred files without deleting the files first on iPod.
Mindracing,
This does not surprise me because I was manually hacking on the iTunesDB files I was sending back to you. After a reformat you should be OK.
Everyone,
For anyone seeing a crash when right clicking on the iPod and selecting Synchronization, I found and fixed a nasty bug that should cause this to go away. Get plugin 9.0.26 from today or wait until the next build and all should be well.
Steve
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Kevin,
Thanks for the reports. All are fixed in the next build of MC.
Steve -- On the off chance that the fixes are actually in the iPod plugin as compared to the next release of Media Center, I downloaded the latest version of the plugin (v9.0.26) and ran similar tests.
The same errors I reported last time were still there and I noted one additional bug. This time I didn't initialize my iPod with Apple's updater and then format within Media Center. I just synced right away with "Delete Files Not In List" checked. None of the old files were deleted and they should have been since the only smartlist I had selected was "iPod Testing".
Just thought you might like to know. ;)
Cheers,
kc
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Kevin,
For sure you must get the next MC. Delete files not in list is currently disabled when conversion is in place. This will be enabled soon.
Everyone,
This thread has once again grown long I will close it and start a new one.