INTERACT FORUM
More => Old Versions => Media Jukebox => Topic started by: SteveG on November 05, 2002, 10:40:47 am
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The new build includes a modified handling of duplicate files which I think will solve some problems. When duplicates are detected you can choose to either overwrite or skip the files. In either case, the files will end up in the correct playlists so that you don't have to move them separately.
There is also a way to sync files now in version 9. To sync a folder, in the left tree, drag the folder onto the root of the iPod. MJ will check for any files that are acceptable and transfer them.
The iPod plug-in is here:
http://www.musicex.com/cgi-bin/downloads/plugins.pl?type=8
I hope all works well.
Steve
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I have the new plugin. I created two playlists and the overwrite option behaved as predicted.
I have hit a snag that might be very difficult to pinpoint. I listed 576 songs and dragged them onto an empty playlist. Of the 576 songs, only 559 actually got copied onto the iPod.
I tested that the files actually exist by using the Move/Copy option with the list of 576 to create a new folder that should have had all 576. At the end of the copy operation all files were present. I verified every file's tags with Dr. Tag and none were out of whack.
So why did so many fail to make over to the iPod when they are all good files?
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Are all the file types mp3,wav or aiff?
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No, only 572 files survive the *.mp3 search. There is still a descrepency.
I should put the 576 on a DVD rom and send it to you. :o
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i also had that problem, i set 2,499 songs to upload and only 2,417 made it on. i know one song didnt upload because it thought it was a dupe. i had the song on a regular album and a live album and it didnt show up on the live album. maybe when it checks for dupes it could check the id3 info to see if it is on the same album.
i also think it would be really useful if when you dragged a playlist from mj it not only put the songs on the ipod but created a playlist on it with the same name. it gets annoying having to recreate 10 playlists each time i want to load them.
besides that though it loaded all the songs very smoothly and worked fine, great job!!
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JGourd and Will,
Thanks for the report. I just posted a new build that should fix the file problem. To check, reupload all your files and unselect the overwrite option. Only the files that didn't make it should transfer.
Will, I am working on the Playlist thing next.
Steve
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Steve:
I'd really like to get cracking on bug reports but I still can't access my iPod drive using Version 9. I get crashes every time still. Any news on when the next release of version 9 will be out? You said there was going to be a fix for this.
Just wondering,
Thanks,
Adam
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Adam,
Do you have version 9 preview XIV?
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I noticed that MJ9 is now listed as Beta in the MJ8 forum. Does that indicate that it's safe to use for the average user who doesn't mind occasional, non-catastrophic bugs? If so, I'd love to start using it and getting more functionality out of the iPod plugin...
thanks,
Paul
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Paul,
Version 9 should be relatively safe to use, but the cautions on backing up any data you don't want to lose should still be taken pretty seriously.
Everyone,
A new build is posted. Features include.... Version 9 features will require the next build of Version 9 which could happen today. If not, as soon as it is ready the Plug-in I have posted will enable these features.
1) Check for maximum allowable size transfers.
2) v 9 - Playlist drag and drop ( i.e. drop MJ Playlists directly onto the root level of the iPod and the Plug-in will automatically create the playlist for you).
3) v 9 - Correct File Size and Length display.
4) v 9 - Correct status bar display including toggle for queued files status.
5) v 9 - File transfer from iPod to PC enabled (right click on files)
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Yes Steve, that's the version I'm using. I downloaded and installed the most recent one again last night just to be sure.
Question though: I'm trying this from my iPod that's not "clean". It's loaded with songs from Ephpod, but I thought that the MJ plugin could handle that OK.
Maybe tonight I'll try restoring my iPod w/the Apple Updater, then try connecting. I'll report back what happens.
*Edit*
OK, I restored and everything (so far) works fine. I can access iPod and upload files to it. Now I'm trying for my full library...we'll see.
I don't see the synch options under the beta that's out today 9.073, I take it that means the updated version didn't make it out today (Wednesday).
Adam
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Using MediaJukebox 9.0.73 and plugin dated November 06, 2002, 2:37:18 PM.
I love the drag-and-drop of playlists. I love how it makes playlists on the iPod. Very smooth! Suggest, if possible, allowing drag-and-drop of playlist groups or even the whole playlists tree, rather than just one-at-a-time. But that comes later. As an aside, I'm still very hopeful for something like this (http://www.pimpin-seattle.d2g.com/images/mjipod/syncwish.jpg). ;)
I put it to a test. I made two playlists: Alpha had 39 songs, Bravo had 23 songs. One catch: every song on Bravo was also on Alpha. This made for 39 unique songs.
Upload time! The first round went great until the overwrite/don't overwrite prompt came up. I left both boxes checked (telling it to go ahead and overwrite files) and pressed on. Bad results, however. Alpha showed all songs just fine, but there were only two songs on Bravo. The second time, Bravo only had one song on it. What's worse, when I ejected the iPod, the about screen showed only 31 songs (?) and there was only one, empty, unnamed playlist. Doh!
I formatted the iPod and tried again. This time, when the prompt came up, I unchecked the top box and left the bottom box checked (telling it not to overwrite files). Success! Two playlists on the iPod, each reporting every song that it should.
I ejected mine iPod, and the about screen showed 39 songs, as it should. Both playlists are populated correctly, and when browsing by album, there are no duplicate songs listed in each album. Sweet, sweet nectar.
My suggestion: Don't even give an option. Don't let it overwrite files, dude... bad mojo. Unchecking that top box makes the whole world seem warmer and more fun, ;D.
Oh yeah, and it still doesn't work with an XPlay-initialized and populated iPod. :'( Cheers, folks!
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I got the new plugin and now I get all 572 of the files I wanted in the playlist.
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There is a problem with case sensitivity.
I have an album called "Live In Paris And Toronto". One of the tracks has "And" in all lower case: "and". In MJ, the album all shows up under a single album in the artist/album view.
When this album is transfered to the iPod, it shows up as two albums, one with "And" in the title and the other with "and" in the title.
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Using MediaJukebox 9.0.73 and plugin dated November 06, 2002, 2:37:18 PM.
My suggestion: Don't even give an option. Don't let it overwrite files, dude... bad mojo. Unchecking that top box makes the whole world seem warmer and more fun, ;D.
Last time I posted on duplicate files I succeeded in confusing things. So this time I'll just say...I LOVE Kurt's idea!!!!!
-=Tim=-
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Using MediaJukebox 9.0.73 and plugin dated November 06, 2002, 2:37:18 PM.
Steve:
I restored my iPod using Apple's updater and was finally able to access my 'pod in MJ. Did some simple tests and was able to upload fine. I tried uploading my entire library (about 8 gigs) and it worked fine.
Then I went to upload some more songs, connected the iPod, clicked on the iPod letter, MJ crashed. I can't upload anymore. I'm assuming that if I tried and restored again I'd be able to access it, but there seems to be a problem with accessing iPods that have a large number of songs on them. At least in my case.
On transferring, one other note. It seems that as you're uploading a large number of songs (1700 in my case) as you get to the end the transfer speed really decreases. It appears this is due to MJ refreshing the Upload list and changing the file status from "Pending Upload" to "Completed" (or whatever the text is).
Suggestion, since you're displaying a progress dialog box, it might not be necessary to update the status on each file. With large uploads you can't see them all anyway, it's really not much use.
Just a suggestion that might speed up the process.
I'll try again with the next build of version 9.
Adam
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Adam,
Thanks for the suggestions. If you still have the iTunesDB file that crashed, can you email it to me? (steve @ jriver.com). I will have a new build today with some new features and if you can report back to me on transfer speeds, that would be great.
Thanks,
Steve
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Everyone,
New build just now. Includes...
1) Fixed Kurt's bug regarding overwrite. Chose ( for now) not to remove Overwrite option, but instead
made the default action to NOT overwrite. Now that overwriting works, I figured it is best to leave it as an option.
2) Added Rebuild iTunesDB from iPod option. This will recreate an iTunesDB file from files on iPod. Currently, it will not preserve Playlist info.
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Paul,
2) v 9 - Playlist drag and drop ( i.e. drop MJ Playlists directly onto the root level of the iPod and the Plug-in will automatically create the playlist for you).
OK, I installed V9 and the build dated "November 06, 2002, 2:37:18 PM".
The V9 playlist drag and drop doesn't create playlists no matter where in the iPod I drop them.
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I was able to make static playlists work just fine. Smartlists did not work, though. Moving a smartlist onto the iPod root copied the songs over but not the playlist...
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I updated the Plug-in again with a minor change that will remove the "Rebuild iTunesDB" option from version 8. This feature would have caused it to crash so I disabled it. It will work withe version 9.
JGourd and Udeups,
Be sure you have the latest (9.0.74) version of Media Jukebox 9 and the Plug-in that is from around 5:00 today.
Thanks.
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ok, i finally upgraded to 9.0.74 and tried the plugin. i directly dragged playlists onto the ipod and the first time it only uploaded about 5 songs, i formatted it and tried again and this time it transfered most of the songs but only created 1 of the 2 playlists as ipod playlists. it took me queing the playlists about 3 times each to get all of the songs on the ipod. and one of the playlists was created fine. oh and i had to go to ephpod and wipe my ipod clean just to get mj9 not to crash everytime i clicked on the ipod drive. thanks
-w
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Ok, my problem went away. I reinstalled the latest MJ (see system info below) and iPod plugin. All seems well now. I've done various multiple file testing and it seems to work as expected. Now, it seems all that we need for the basics is playlist synching!
Media Jukebox PLUS 9.0.74
Install Path: C:\Program Files\J River\Media Jukebox\
CPU: Intel Celeron 333 MHz MMX
Memory: Total - 163 MB, Free - 19 MB
OS: Microsoft Windows 2000 Workstation 5.0 Service Pack 3 (Build 2195)
Internet Explorer: 6.0.2800.1106
ComCtl32.dll: 5.50.4916.400
Shlwapi.dll: 6.00.2800.1106
Shell32.dll: 5.00.3502.5436
wnaspi32.dll: Internal ASPI Layer
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udeups,
If you have a playlist and want to synch it with iPod, drop it on the root letter of iPod and hit upload. This will produce a synch by default (with the overwrite disabled). I can try to dress up the interface, but functionally isn't this what you are after?
PS I am adding a one click "synchronize" feature that will synch all the files in the MJ database with the iPod.
Will,
Can you help me duplicate these problems. Can you isolate one issue and describe the steps you take to produce the problem. For example, drag one Playlist onto the root iPod, click upload and see what happens. I am not disputing what you are seeing, but it is working here and I think for others. The simpler the test you can do to create the problem, the better. Can you be sure that you have downloaded the latest Plug-in.
Thanks.
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ok, i will do further testing tonight. and will that complete sync button upload all of your playlists as well? oooh i'm so excited! :D
oh and btw i am really enjoying some of the cool new features in mj9 nice work
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Hello Everyone,
A new build just now. If you get MJ v 9.0.75 and get the new Plug-in, you will see a "Synchronization" option if you right click on the iPod drive letter. This will move all your files from MJ to the iPod without Playlists. I have not tried this with a large number of files, so only people who are willing to lose their data should try this.
In regards to Playlist/Smartlist moving. For now try just dragging and dropping the files. There are some bugs with "Send-To" and the drop target which I will look at on Monday.
Have a good weekend.
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This will move all your files from MJ to the iPod without Playlists.
All my files? I take it this only works for people who have their collection stored on a 20gig Hard Drive.
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No, my library is over 33,000 tracks stored on a very large file server.
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All my files? I take it this only works for people who have their collection stored on a 20gig Hard Drive.
Hehe, I was thinking the same thing.
It's a great step in the right direction, though. Next step -- synch with just your playlists instead of your whole library. After that -- designate which playlists to synch with intstead of synching with all of them. After that -- Kurt gets REAL happy!
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You could also add an organization catagory "On iPod" and a check box here queues it for copying or deletion.
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ok let me start out by saying that its great to start seeing a sync option. this one is perfect for me (except it not doing playlists yet) because out of my 60gb of mp3s i only keep 10gb to fill my ipod stored inside the mj library, i find it easier organizing what exactly i want on it that way.
but the bad news is i couldn't get it to work. my library is about 9.1gb and i would hit sync and it would bring up a warning window and i hit ok, then a blank window came up with the title syncronization progress, and froze there, i tried it about 3 or 4 times.
but anyway with the problems i was having yesterday with not lal files making it on the pod. i found that if i dragged the playlist to the root instead of right clicking and send to device, it worked perfectly. we're coming along nicely here.
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Tested with MJ v9.0.75 and iPod plugin dated November 08, 2002, 5:43:12 PM
A few words about playlist synchronization in the current build...
Playlist upload works great. You drag a playlist onto the iPod, hit upload, and it copies the songs and makes a playlist on the iPod to match. This absolutely rules. However, it doesn't "synchronize" the playlists, it just uploads them. Bear with me here...
I made an MJ-playlist and put two Bjork songs on it. I dragged it onto the iPod and hit upload. The result was a playlist on my iPod with the two Bjork songs.
Then, I edited the MJ-playlist: I deleted the two Bjork songs and added one Wyclef Jean song ("Bubblegoose" from the "Chef Aid" album. South Park fans should hear this song). Dragged it onto the iPod and hit upload. The result was a playlist on my iPod with the Wyclef Jean song and the two Bjork songs; three songs total.
Since I was using the same MJ-playlist (with the same playlistID), the two Bjork songs should have been removed from the iPod playlist -- and quite possibly deleted from the iPod altogether. This is an important piece of the puzzle that becomes even more vital when you think about dragging in MJ-smartlists, which change a lot more often than standard MJ-playlists.
This seems to open up a big can of worms when it comes to dragging in playlists. I honestly don't have a clue what the best thing to do with a changed MJ-playlist in a drag-and-drop environment. Delete from iPod-playlist? Yes, definately. Delete from iPod altogether? I don't know... what if it's on other playlists? Maybe yes, maybe no. Ack, my head hurts.
PLEASE NOTE: This in no way makes the uploading of playlists less valuable or important. It's a great feature, and I'm happy to have it. Dragging and dropping of playlists is something that I've been sorely missing in my iPod experience. This is something that only Ephpod has allowed me to do, and since I normally use XPlay, I have zero experience with it. Dragging in a playlist is a fantastic alternative to doing a complete synch, and I am glad that it's in.
As far as playlist synchronization goes... well, here's my brain dump for that (http://pimpin-seattle.d2g.com/images/mjipod/syncwish.htm). It's long, so get a beer before ya click it. I had some before I wrote it. ;)
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A new build just now. If you get MJ v 9.0.75 and get the new Plug-in, you will see a "Synchronization" option if you right click on the iPod drive letter.
Hi Guys,
I'd like to try this new plugin - long time EphPod user. I've installed 9.0.75 and downloaded the plugin version 3.0.17 from http://www.musicex.com/cgi-bin/downloads/plugins.pl?type=8 but I don't see any "Synchronization" option when I right click on my iPod drive letter under the 'CD, DVD and Handhelds' tree in MJ. What gives?
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Gentlemen & Gentlewomen,
I just purchased v8 and have tried downloading the ipod driver. I do get a success installation dialog. However, when in MJ I'm unable to see the ipod plug-in or any others.
Could someone suggest a debuging strategy?
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Kurt, Jgourd, and Will,
All your points are well taken. For now don't use the synchronize thing, it is a feature that obviously needs some more work and I will attack it again on Monday.
I will also get the Send-to stuff going Monday because that seems sometimes easier than drag and drop.
Mcconnel,
I don't know. Can you wait to try the synchronization until Monday? Do you see other options with the right click? If so, what are some of them?
Buddy,
When you expand 'CD, DVD and Handhelds' you should see a drive letter that corresponds to your iPod. If you click on this you should see info from iPod.
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I used the rebuild DB from Files feature. When it was done all the song names were the same as the file name.
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I also would really appreciate that, because I moved from Musicmatch to Jukebox because of the ipod plugin, which is not seen until the installation.
Cu marco
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Mcconnel,
I don't know. Can you wait to try the synchronization until Monday? Do you see other options with the right click? If so, what are some of them?
Steve,
I see the following on right click of the iPod drive (H:\):
- Add SubFolder
- Show queued files only
- Play
- Add to Plugin Now
- Explore
I can't see any of the songs on my iPod which were added with EphPod.
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Thanks, for the recommendation, but nothing seems to work. I have installed uninstalled four times now. Also, I have downloaded v9 beta thinking it would work. I still can't convert to mp3 (err 80040154) and I still can't get the ipod plugin to show under the handhelds folder (it only shows compact disk (d). Additionally, I had two other music programs to do the same thing you are doing, so I uninstalled everything (the ipod driver for windows). I then reinstalled the ipod driver and reinstalled MJ8 then MJ9. It is becoming very frustrating. None of this worked for the trial period so I purchased thinking that those features only came with purchase.
I really!!!!! need help. Would someone please provide a debugging strategy so I can get this resolved?
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Relax. Breathe deeply. Tomorrow is another day.
We broke mp3 encoding. Check the other topics here. It will be fixed tomorrow.
The iPod plug-in is still in progress. Please be patient.
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i tested the playlist transferrring some more and found a few problems. one, and i think this has been mentioned before, is when you transfer over a playlist it completely loses its track order on the ipod. and two, on mine it seems to lose a few songs from each playlist. these songs seem to be pretty random and the number it doesn't put on depends on the playlist size. example, when i transfered a playlist with 22 songs only 20 made it on, when i transfered a list with 300 about 280 made it on. i can't find any order in its leaving the songs off. if you need more detailed info on this i can get it tonight. thanks
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I did some testing with the latest iPod Plug-in and MJ9 v.75 (Beta 2)
Everything looks good so far with the exception of the rebuild database function. The track names end up being the file name rather than the name field in the tags.
I copied a smart list to the iPod. After the upload was successful, I detached the iPod and fired MJ back up. At this point, I cannot access any smart lists without MJ9 crashing. :P
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JGourd,
The song name/ filename bug will be fixed in the next build of Version 9. The smartlist crash should also go away.
mafoe,
Could you specify what problem you are having?
Mcconell and Buddy,
Be sure the volume label for your iPod is "IPOD" and that you are looking in the tree under "CD,DVD,and Handhelds" not under "My Computer"
Willrmc,
For track ordering to be remembered, right click and do "Showed Queued files only" . This will retain Playlist number ordering when transfering a Playlist. In regards to the files not transferring, can you test and be more specific as to a cause and effect?
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Everyone,
The Playlist Synch thing is really close. The way it is going to look is that you will have a tree display of all your Playlists and Smartlists, and you will be able to select the ones you want and hit "Synch".
More tomorrow.
Steve
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Everyone,
The Playlist Synch thing is really close. The way it is going to look is that you will have a tree display of all your Playlists and Smartlists, and you will be able to select the ones you want and hit "Synch".
More tomorrow.
Steve
SWEEEEEEEEET!! Dude, I can't wait! Much respek!
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MJ v9 Beta 3.
Smartlists no longer crash as promised. The iPod rebuild databse now uses name tag instead of file name. The specific sort in a transfered smartlist was retained on the iPod.
What I have been noticing recently is that sometimes the song you select to play gets skipped and the next song plays instead. You can hit the previous track button and it might play, but usually it skips the track again. Ocassionally I have to reset the iPod (hold play and menu for 5 seconds) if it hangs trying to play the track. When such a track does play, it plays through smoothly. Reformatting appears to make the problem go away. The db that was having these playback problems was created with the rebuild from files utility.
Reformatting the iPod in MJ9 causes MMJB to launch when the iPod is re-connected. Once in MMJB you can uncheck the "Launch when iPod is connected" preference.
The "Status" column shows the "Artist" info and "Handheld Path" shows the album name info while uploading.
It is getting better all the time.
How will you handle syncing smartlists when files are removed? Will you delete the removed file from the iPod and what rules will you follow to delete the files?
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steve,
ok i got version 9 beta 3 and went to test it. i transfered small playlists at first and it all went over without a hitch. and your "show queued songs" trick worked for the playlist order. then i kept putting bigger and bigger until i was transferring my complete library playlist with +2500 files on it. one annoying thing is it told me about 4 times that i didnt have enough space to put the playlist on, even though i did because all the files already on the ipod were also on this new playlist. so i said ok over and over and it finally transferred and it seemed to go great putting just about all of the songs on. i did notice that out of the +2500 songs it didnt transfer 5. (not bad though)
the one file that i managed to find that didn't make it was a live song on the album "Ben Folds Live": "One Angry Dwarf and 200 Solemn Faces".
the name of the file is 01 - One Angry Dwarf and 200 Solemn Faces.mp3
"One Angry Dwarf and 200 Solemn Faces" is also on a studio album "Whatever and Ever Amen" and it is also the first song on the album. hence the same filename, 01 - One Angry Dwarf and 200 Solemn Faces.mp3
so when mj came to this song it assumed it was the same song, even though they had different album tags.
maybe you could write in that if it finds the same name like that, it will then check the album tag to see if they are in fact different songs.
other than that minor glitch it seems to be working great, i got 2500 songs transfered over and for the first time i will not wipe out the ipod and reload the songs with ephpod. i can't wait to try out that playlist sync!!! :D :D :D
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ugh after all of that i unplugged the ipod and it only read 201 songs, so i guess mj didn't enter all it transfered into the itunes db. i ran the rebuild database function, but that just wiped out all of my playlists, d'oh.
oh and anyone that can't get the ipod to appear correctly in mj, try deleting the portables plugin in the plugin folder and redownloading it. i had to do this today and after that it worked fine.
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okay so having read through this whole topic i'm afraid i have the same problem as *Buddy*. i have downloaded the iPod plug-in from http://www.musicex.com/cgi-bin/downloads/plugins.pl?type=8 there, is this the correct and latest plugin available for those on the trial version?
the little download box does indeed tell me that everything has been successful, but yet when I expand 'CD, DVD and Handhelds' i do not see a drive letter that corresponds to my iPod. Have i done something wrong? is there a seperate thing i need to do?
On looking at "Plug-in manager" under settings, on expanding "Handheld" it tells me that i have a plug-in called "Portable Drives" which is version 3.0.16. Is this what i have installed instead of the iPod plug-in? Or is this something completely different altogether??
My final question is that in answering *Buddy*'s question you told us to make sure that 'the volume label for your iPod is "IPOD".' How do i do this? (i.e. check and then if necessary change my volume label)
thank you so much for your help, it is really appreciated! hope you can answer all those questions!
James
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if you go to windows explorer, what is the name of your ipod drive? it should be< X:IPOD > if you renamed it to something else, then change it back. and go check the date of your portables plugin in the jukebox plugin folder on your harddrive if it is not a recent date manually delete it and reinstall the one from the website.
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Hello all,
Let me start with the good news. Playlist synching is ready to go and seems to work well here. The bad news is that we must wait for the next release of MJ 9 so you can see it work. Maybe tomorrow(?).
JGourd,
In regards to the skipping, I can't duplicate it with the latest build (one that is not available yet) When I post it, perhaps you could test it again. Our advice on MusicMatch, is get rid of it :D, Seriously, let me get this next build going and if it is stable then we will begin to make a more friendly way to get around the intrusiveness of MMJB.
The column sizing and ordering are cosmetic fixes that I will take care of soon.
In regards to synching, the playlists will appear on iPod exactly as they do in MJ at the time of the synch. If you have files on iPod that are not in any of the synched playlists I leave the files on iPod to be removed manually.
Will,
I currently do not allow for duplicate filenames on iPod. Checking the tag info introduces a lot of overhead.
From your second note, is everything working now?
Brownie,
Will's advice is on the money.
Thanks.
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Steve,
First off, thanks for the hard work! I'm looking forward to seeing this new build tomorrow (?).
Now, I hate to pick nits, but I was wondering, could the deletion of files not in playlists on the iPod be left as an option. My goal would be to have a smartlist of length=time@work that would change each morning when I synched the playlists. I would rather not like to manually delete those songs not in the new "work" playlist and not normally kept on my iPod. I currently do this in ephpod by having a "standard" playlist which contains all the songs that I normally want to have on the iPod and another playlist (exported from a smartlist) that changes fairly often. Whenever I sync, any song not in either the standard or the dynamic playlists gets deleted.
Hope my ramblings made sense. Thanks again
Paul
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My two cents on the deletion thing is that it would be nice to implement but there are issues. What if the file exists in two playlists? What if a file exists in playlists and as a result of copying whole albums? You can see that simply deleting a file that has been removed from a playlist is not the behavior of first choice.
A possilbe solution is to auto delete a file only if it no longer exists on any playlist and there are no more than 1 (or 2) files on the iPod that are from the same album.
Enjoy!
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A possilbe solution is to auto delete a file only if it no longer exists on any playlist and there are no more than 1 (or 2) files on the iPod that are from the same album.
(emphasis mine :) )
I think that this was more the idea that I was going for, but didn't articulate it well enough.
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I deleted my mp3 plug-ins and reinstalled, but I'm still unable to convert.
Steve, have you had a chance to fix the encoder yet? Should I wait a little longer?
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i agree with jgourd, i think the option of deleting songs not on the playlists is important, otherwise i would have to wipe the ipod clean everytime before i did a sync.
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JGourd, Will,Udeups,
Message received. In today's release there willl be an added column for a list of what Playlists a file is a member of. To remove all files not associated with a playlist, sort on this column and remove the files not in a playlist. This provides a little broader functionality than what you requested, but I think it will take care of some future requests as well.
Thanks for the idea.
Steve
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While it clearly makes the manual deletion of "orphaned" files much easier, please do not abandon the concept of having the sync command do it for us. :D
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While it clearly makes the manual deletion of "orphaned" files much easier, please do not abandon the concept of having the sync command do it for us. :D
True dat, friends. I never even considered doing it manually, but that sounds like sweet functionality to add. That in mind, and even though I'm a little late on this trolly, I'm very much behind the "if it's not on a synched playlist, it gets deleted from the iPod" movement.
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JGourd and Kurt,
Thanks for the thoughts. I think we are coming at this from different angles. You both seem to be of the school that your music collections are playlist based. On the other side is a vocal contingent that doesn't use Playlists but rather selects music by Artist and Album etc. From this perspective there are no "orphaned files" because Playlists are irrelevant. The proposed solution trys to handle both. Later, you will see that in the"Synch" I included a way to synch all the files without regard to Playlist to cover both sides. I presume you both will find this useless, and I respect that.
Anyway, can you wait until later when you can get it and then take a look and we can tweak it as we go.
Thanks again.
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Yes and no, dude. My music collection isn't playlist-based, but the way that I fill my iPod is.
I'm heavy into using iPod playlists to play music on the go, and I love using MJ smartlists to create iPod playlists with dynamic content... I have some smartlists that I use to fill my iPod that provide me with a very nice rotation of music; they're different every time I synch. The main benefit of this is that I don't have to know what I'm in the mood to play... I just fire up one of my smartlist-created playlists and get suprised.
Remember, that the things that you've been saying about what is coming out today sound exactly what I've been hoping for. No way that I'd find it useless, bro!
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My collections are not playlist based, however, I do have a few smart lists I use to make "Best Of" collections. I just need to contribute in a way that helps MJ's plugin be the "best of the best" :-)
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On the other side is a vocal contingent that doesn't use Playlists but rather selects music by Artist and Album etc. From this perspective there are no "orphaned files" because Playlists are irrelevant.
Steve, great to see you thinking that way. Maybe it's because I'm an old fart (37), but to me Playlists are what I made on Cassette party tapes when I was in college from my LP's. Since then, I've moved into the Artist/Album world. Now, since I dig the idea of Smartlists I'm starting to get hip again, but I still think of my music by Artist/Album and then playlists as pointers to my selection.
It'd be great to be able to keep my entire library in MJ and select only certain Artists and/or Albums to be synched each time.
Hope that makes sense.
Adam
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You guys are ever vigilant.
Let me let the synchronization cat out of the bag tonight and we can revisit this once you have some time to check it out.
Thanks.
Steve
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Hi!
Today my Ipod for windows arrived and I'm about to install it. Having read too much about the problem with Musicmatch, I'm wondering how and where should I begin. I'm new to MJ and ipod. I have not yet purchased MJ but will very soon. I have Mj8 trial version installed a week ago. Reading through the threads, I gathered some partial information, but I'm afraid I have it right.
Can you give us, me and beginners like me, a summary of instructions what should be the recommended steps and settings to use ipod with MJ? I believe growing number of ipod for windows users will benefit and MJ will too.
For now, I would like to list of things to do as follows:
1. Install MJ9 beta version latest build 3.
2. Don't even think about installing Musicmatch 7.1 bundled with ipod. And if already installed, delete MM. ( I hear same echoes in many place)
3. Delete all the plugins if you already had, and download ipod plug-in.
4. And you are ready to go.
Is there anything else I should do? Your kind reply will be appreciated. :)
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Running version 9.0077, plug-in dated 10/13/02
Steve:
Stellar progress, really. Here's what I've go to report.
1. Was still getting crashes when trying to access my iPod as formatted by ephpod. I was eventually able to get to the format for MJ, and could not repeat the problem. Don't know how much time you're going to spend on this one, I don't think too many folks would have a problem with wiping their iPod the first time they use MJ.
2. The synching works really great, but as you pointed out, it's totally playlist-centric. I don't think you need to change the interface, just add checkboxes for Artist>Album, I don't recommend going down to individual tracks, that would take too much. It was interesting that you have the Auto-smartlist checkboxes defaulted. From a UI perspective, that didn't make too much sense. You can't uncheck them, but you aren't required to check any of their children, so why force it to be checked? Minor UI issue.
3. While synching I noticed some, well, idiosyncrasies (sorry ;D ). First off, at different times during synch, the MJ would lose focus and the status dialog would stop updating. It would eventually complete, but that's a little bug that should be addressed. I also found a couple of instances where I selected multiple playlists to synch and it didn't copy all of them over, I wasn't able to replicate that consistently though. The synching doesn't seem too stable. I'm doing it now, and I pulled up a browser to type this, if I go back to MJ (which is apparently synching, I have a white screen in the middle of MJ where my browser was. The synching dialog is there, but it's just white.
4. I did notice a bug (you've probably got this on your list) when you delete songs. If you delete them from your iPod and then go expand the Album/Artist or Genre items, you will still see the Artists or Albums or Genres present, even though you deleted them. To replicate, select all the songs on your iPod (from the root of the drive), then delete them, then expand the Artist item. You should still see Artists there even though you've just deleted everything. A quick "Rebuild Database from iPod" fixes this, but I still see it as a bug.
4. I noticed that "Year" shows up in the grid when viewing ipod songs, but it's always "0". Does the ipod db even store that? If it doesn't why even show it. If it does, it's not getting populated correctly, or MJ isn't displaying it correctly.
6. With repect to the synch UI, when you get to adding Artists/Albums, I would envision it to work such that If you select an Artist, it automatically selects all the albums; however, if you expand the Artist and select one or more of their Albums then Artist checkbox becomes defaulted to checked.
7. Another issue with Synching, seems to me that when I do a synch there should be an option to check (either in Plugin Options or better yet, right in the Synch Dialog) that allows me to specify whether songs on the iPod but NOT present in the items I've chosen to synch should be deleted from the iPod or left on it.
OK, this last one is a biggy to me:
8. One thing that is going to HUGELY important w/respect to synching is that selections I make when I synch should be remembered so the next time I synch I don't have to re-click all the Playlists/Artists/Albums I want on my iPod. I only have to check new items to synch or uncheck items I don't want synched. optionThis gets to be really important when you synch w/Artists or Albums.
That's probably a bit much...but I've been hanging back for a while. Great progress.
Adam
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I'd like to echo Adam here: great, great progress. The synching was nice and intuitive (with the exception of the minor UI issue he pointed out about checkmarks on the auto-smartlist checkboxes defaulted). I'm very impressed, and I like the direction this is headed.
Running version 9.0077, plug-in dated 10/13/02
OK, this last one is a biggy to me:
8. One thing that is going to HUGELY important w/respect to synching is that selections I make when I synch should be remembered so the next time I synch I don't have to re-click all the Playlists/Artists/Albums I want on my iPod. I only have to check new items to synch or uncheck items I don't want synched. optionThis gets to be really important when you synch w/Artists or Albums.
While my testing wasn't as extensive as Adam's this last issue he pointed out was the one problem (maybe problem is too harsh a word, but I thought "issue" would sound repetitive) I had. My ideal is that there would be a way I could set the playlists that I would like to synch and never have to do that again if I don't want to. Of course, I could always go in and modify those choices. But, as long as I didn't, there would be a one or two click way to synch my ipod up to those playlists. If I'm not mistaken, iTunes does something along these lines; I'm not sure what MusicMatch does, though.
that's all for now...
goodnight
paul
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I was right about how iTunes does playlist syncing... From the right side of the page at: http://www.apple.com/itunes/sync.html:
Playlist Sync: Similar to autosyncing, Playlist Sync lets you select one or more playlists that will remain in sync with your iPod instead of synchronizing your entire music library. This feature comes in handy if you want the benefits of synchronization, but have amassed a collection of MP3s that exceeds the capacity of your iPod. To activate this option simply connect the iPod to your Mac with the FireWire cable, click the iPod Options button at the lower left of the screen and select "Automatically Update Selected Playlists" only. Pick the playlists you want to sync with iPod, click OK and you're done.
(http://a1344.g.akamai.net/7/1344/51/245ae6c5538f8d/www.apple.com/itunes/images/sync_prefs071102.gif)
Not that you have to implement this exactly as Apple does it, but I think that this succinctly states what a lot of us have been talking about with regard to sync issues...
paul
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ok i tested the plugin and let me first say, very nice. this is definately going in a good direction here. ok with that said first off,
i'm having the same problem as ashawley in most of the time when i click on the ipod drive letter, especially when there are a lot of songs on the ipod, it crashes mj. sometimes i have to go in and out of mj like 3 or 4 times before it doesn't crash.
next, the playlist sync seemed to work great on smaller playlists, although i didn't go through and see if every song made it on it seemed to work great. i had the problem with the updating bar disappearing and it looked like it was frozen but i left it for a bit and it completed fine. i suggest putting in a kb/sec indicator as well as an estimated time remaining with the progress bar.
whenever i tried to sync the entire library, or a very big playlist it froze up on me. although now i think it might have just stopped displaying the transfer progress, but i'm not sure.
each build seems to just get better and better, you guys are doing a great service to all win ipod users with this plugin, thanks.
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Sei,
Welcome. The steps you outlined are exactly what you should do. If you have any problems, please post them here.
Everyone,
Thanks for the feedback. Let me work on this today and see what I can do.
Thanks.
Steve
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Steve:
I'd just like to add (after my novel of a post last night) that I was sucessfully able to add my entire collection onto the iPod via synching. It really didn't take that long either. But there was the problem of MJ losing focus and appearing to be frozen when it wasn't.
Just a couple of nits:
1. I like the idea of tranfer speed and time remaining being displayed
2. It might be better, when showing what file is being transferred to not include the full path, but only the song name (from the id3 tag). This is how Xplay handles it, and it "looks" a little better. Displaying the entire path for some users won't let them see what song is being copied (due to long paths).
3. When formatting the iPod for MJ, it would be nice to display a progress bar. Right now, there is no indication as to whether it's working or not.
4. When rebuilding the iPod database from the iPod it would also be nice to display a progress bar.
5. You might want to pass this along to the ver 9 team, but I noticed last night that when creating smart playlists based on Dates, the dates where showing up incorrectly (they just looked like random numbers, althoug I'm sure there was some pattern to them).
That's it for now. Looking forward to the next build!! (and those Album/Artist synch options ;D )
Adam
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Everyone,
Thanks again for all the detailed comments. There is a new build of the Plug-in available. To test it, please download the build of version 9 which is coming tonight (I am leaving now).
The new features include..
1) Selections of Playlists for synchronization will be remembered.
2) Improved status reporting for synch, format, and rebuild.
3) Refreshing of the left tree after delete is fixed.
4) Bug fix for synching large amounts of data.
For those of you who want to synch things such as Artist/Album, try creating a smartlist that encompasses the files that you want and then synch the smartlist.
Thanks for all your help.
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I think I'm missing something... and I was wondering if anyone would be able to help me.
I can't seem to figure out how to bring up the dialog to sync playlists, nor can I find the option to preclude adding duplicates.
Is there a settings menu or something?
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to sync just right click on the ipod drive and select syncronize files. the overwrite option comes up if/when a duplicate is found.
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ok, i've been testing the new build and its working well. i transfered my whole library over and it worked fine. however when i was transferring it lost the progress bar again and looked like it had froze, but it hadn't. that and i'm still missing a time remaining and transfer speed indicator. ;)
then i came to a tough spot. after i had synced the ipod and it worked fine, i went back and i was deleting a bunch of tracks from the library and adding a bunch of others. i went to sync again and since it does not delete what is not in the library (or playlist) it filled up and stopped. i couldn't remember exactly what i had deleted, so i had to wipe the ipod and re-sync. if the auto delete was in it could find which songs i no longer had in my library and make the room for the new ones. although i know we have already discussed this, that was my finding using it.
and also, i would like to be able to select certain playlists to transfer AND select transfer all songs so i can put my whole library on as well as certain playlists i want to appear on the ipod. right now i can do a complete sync and then go back and transfer the playlists i want and it works, this would just eliminate 1 step for me.
but again, its working great and keeps getting better every day great work!! ;D
oh and i forgot to mention, i am still having mj crash most of the time when i click on the ipod drive letter. last time it took me about 6 or 7 attempts to show the contents and not crash the app.
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Tested with MJ 9.0.78 and iPod plugin dated November 14, 2002, 4:58:54 PM
Wooooo-hoooo!!! Brilliant work! The synch features are just what I'd hoped for! It's got a few bugs still, but it's coming along so very very nicely. Excellent work, mate, it gets better and better every build!
Process:
Made and populated two MJ playlists, Alpha and Bravo. Right-clicked, selected synchronize files. Put a checkmark on Alpha and hit OK. Sweet sweet success. iPod playlist was created and populated perfectly.
Plugged back in, right-clicked, selected synchronize files. Unchecked Alpha, checked Bravo, and hit OK. Bravo was created on the iPod and the songs were uploaded, but Alpha and its songs were still there -- I had expected them to be deleted.
Formatted iPod for MJ. Right-clicked, selected synchronize. Unchecked Bravo, checked Alpha, hit OK. Got an error message: "Cannot find plug-in 'Playlists'." After hitting OK, I noticed that the Playlists tree was selected under the iPod now.
At this point, no matter what I checked in the synch dialogue would produce the same error. I collapsed the CD, DVD, & Handhelds tree and re-expanded it. Selected Alpha, and it synched successfully. Without collapsing/expanding, I brought up synch again, unchecked Alpha and checked Bravo. Up it went, no problem.
I collapsed, unplugged, and plugged back in (all was well on the iPod when unplugged, btw). Then, I modified the contents of Bravo, removing all the songs on it and adding 11 entirely new songs. Synched Bravo only. All the new songs were uploaded, and the Bravo playlist was populated correctly with the new songs, but the old bravo songs were still on the iPod -- just not on a playlist now. Again, I had expected all the old songs to be deleted from the iPod.
So now it was time to stress test this thang! I formatted, collapsed, and expanded. Brought up the synch dialouge and selected ALL my playlists and smartlists (none of the "auto" smartlists, though); about 12GB of music total. Crossed my fingers and hit OK. Things started going up no problemo, but then I started moving stuff around (like notepad and an explorer window) and MJ got hit with a big ole GUI lock (screenshot (http://pimpin-seattle.d2g.com/images/mjipod/synclock.jpg)). The computer kept clicking, so I figured it was going on in the background, and let it go. Synch started 7:42 PM, and ended at about 8:23 PM. Everything got uploaded perfectly. Sweeeeeet.
By the way, all of this was done with never checking the "Transfer all files" box in the synch dialogue... I'm not really sure what this does.
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One more thing, I like the way that when you click on a playlist, and a song that's on it appears on more than one playlist, every playlist that it's on is listed in the row. Very nice touch! (Did that make any sense at all? My good friend Captain Morgan assures me that it did. Cheers!)
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Man, more great progress.
Here are my thoughts for the night:
1. I really like that the progress bar includes just the song name when synching. Looks much cleaner, thanks for implementing that.
2. Also like the progress bar when formatting the iPod for MJ.
3. ALSO, like that fact that the tree refreshes after deleteing songs from the iPod.
4. And finally, I REALLY, REALLY like the saved selections on the Synch window. Nice getting that added so quickly.
Now, here are my issues:
1. I think there must be an overall problem with the core of MJ that is causing the progress dialogs to freeze. It happens on Synch and on the Reformating status bars. Interestingly enough, it happens at about the same point (a little less than 1/3 of the progress bar). The reformat one is a little better, it at least progresses, but it's "jerky", meaning it stops at 1/3, then sticks, goes to about 1/2, sticks again, then got to 2/3 sticks, then completes (obviously those are estimates. The progress bar on synch sticks at about 1/3, then we get a GUI screenlock until it's complete (windows task manager show "not responding" btw. Seems like the whole app has a problem w/losing focus and freezing.
2. Still getting crashes when accessing the iPod drive. Usually works after 2-3 crashes.
3. When deleting all songs off of the iPod (by selecting the songs, then hitting delete), the tree refreshes nicely, but the Playlist section still shows the playlists that were on there. That shouldn't be since I've deleted all the songs.
4. Something else I noticed that probably isn't needed: if I select the "All Songs" playlist and synch, it adds a playlist to the ipod called "All Songs". Since the iPod has this capability through the Browse function, I think this is redundant and should not be included as a playlist on the iPod. Also, you have an "all Songs" playlist, but you also have a "Transfer All Songs" checkbox on the Synch dialog box. That seems redundant to me. I, myself, would recommend getting rid of the All Songs playlist from the list of playlists in the synch window and just include the "Transfer All Songs" checkbox. Others may disagree though.'
This is great Steve, awesome work. Soon we'll have the fully functioning all-in-one tool that we've been drooling over. I can't tell you how cool it was today having a full iPod that was loaded last night by MJ!! ;D
Adam
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one more thing. i think that if you modify tag info on the songs once they sync up again it should reupload those songs. it could just look at the date modified or something and if it is newer on the computer it should reupload the song. thats getting picky though, just an idea for the future. :)
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Really nice work ...
My roomate is starting to get jealous. You see, we both have ipods; he syncs with his iBook and he sees where this plugin and MJ in general are going and he's envious. Glad i didn't buy that mac over the summer...
Anyhow, MJ seems to hang when i try to sync over 100 or so songs. Eventually, it pulls itself out, and I get an error message saying something to the effect that there was an error uploading the files. The songs show up on the ipod, but just get skipped over when they would come up in the playlist.
Not sure if it's a hardware or software issue though. I'm using the Firewire port on an SB Audigy ... and i heard those might have some problems. Anyone else using one or run into an error like this?
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The File progress bar is back and transfers appear to be slow again. Am I running the correct build? The plugin has a creation date of 11/9 (176,128 bytes).
I deleted it and downloaded a new one dated 11/15 (274,432 bytes) with a version resource that says: 1.0.0.0. Which is the latest build?
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If you queue up files to be uploaded to the iPod and then use the rename file from properties tool before uploading them, they disappear from the iPod's queue.
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MJ still crashes all the time when clicking on the root icon of the iPod. I believe I have a way to make it stop. If I launch MJ and go right for the iPod it will crash every time. If I launch MJ and view something from the Media Library and then go to the iPod, MJ doesn't crash.
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I sync'ed two playlists. I then brought up the sync dialog again and unchecked one of the playlists and checked another one. Instead of syncing, I got an error dialog that says "Cannot Find Plugin: Four Blind Mice". Four Blind Mice was the playlist I had unchecked.
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Thanks everyone for the feedback.
For those of you seeing the "Cannot find Plug-in" message, be sure to select the root iPod letter with a left click before doing the right click. It is a long story, but when you see that message the Plug-in is still remembering the last item you selected in the tree.
For those of you with crashing problems, first, be sure that the hh_Portable.dll in your Plug-ins directory is dated 11/14 at 4:58PM. If not, delete it and redownload. Also, be sure you are running version 9 from yesterday. If you are still having crashes, please send me your iTunesDB file and I can try to debug from here. (steve @ jriver.com).
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I am not certain why, but mt iPod has MP3s stored at the root of its file system. I have the iTunesDB here:
http://beepcom.tzo.com/itunes.zip
With the current plugin from 4:58PM MJ still crashes.
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JGourd,
I can open that db fine on Windows 2000 but it fails on XP. I will need to set up a machine to test this and will do so soon and let you know.
Everyone,
I implemented a change to handle deletes when synching, but it is not available because there is no new build of version 9. It will have to wait until Monday.
Have a good weekend all.
Steve
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I got the crash too, most current stuff. If I restore, I can use MJ to load it up again (Which is what I'd do anyways, since I gotta wait till monday, now (http://pimpin-seattle.d2g.com/images/smileys/crying.gif)
Seeya monday, bro... Enjoy your weekend. Go Chiefs!
Kurt
www.pimpin-seattle.d2g.com/images/mjipod/bugreport.zip
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steve, it seems to crsh everytime i try to access the ipod now, unless it is completely empty. i will send you my itunesdb file for you to look at. here is my system info as well thanks again.
no cheifs, go broncos!
Media Jukebox PLUS 9.0.78
Install Path: C:\Program Files\J River\Media Jukebox\
CPU: Intel Pentium 4 1792 MHz MMX
Memory: Total - 260 MB, Free - 83 MB
OS: Microsoft Windows XP Workstation 5.1 (Build 2600)
Internet Explorer: 6.0.2600.0000
ComCtl32.dll: 6.00.2600.0000
Shlwapi.dll: 6.00.2600.0000
Shell32.dll: 6.00.2600.0000
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: Yes / Calc replay gain: No / Copy volume: 32767
Eject after ripping: No / Play sound after ripping: No
Burning / Drive E: MITSUMI CR-48XATE Addr: 1:0:0 Speed:32 MaxSpeed:32 Lib:2 GHS:1 Use MJ Engine:No
Drive F: TOSHIBA DVD-ROM SD-M1612 Addr: 1:1:0 Speed:0 MaxSpeed:0 Lib:2 GHS:1 Use MJ Engine:No
Test mode: No / Eject after writing: Yes / Direct decoding: Yes / Two second gap: No / Write CD-Text: No
Use playback settings: No / Normalization: None
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finally made the switch from ephpod, to just make my life a little easier.
looks good, haven't used it much, but have two suggestions from things i noticed right away.
1.) don't think i've read about this. ephpod had a nice ability to arrange to order of playlists through a simple drag up/drag down interface, i'd love to have that ability back.
2.) is a dynamic "all songs" playlist from all the files on the ipod possible?
3.) this one is huge. the ability to sync by album/artist is something that is of utmost importance to me, as i don't want to make a playlist for each album i have.
4.) in the synchronization menu, a way to collapse each tree would be great, as well as a way to select all of a parent's children automatically.
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ditto on the crashing. just as just as i made a couple smartlists to try out...
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Hang in there with us, bmp... the plugin's a few builds from being done. It's already a hell of a tool, and I'm using it exclusively to fill my iPod :)
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I'm new to Media Jukebox (have been using XPlay with my Window 20GB iPod).
I also used Music Match.
I get MJ to see my iPod on drive J:...but with no name after it. If I look in Windows Explorer it's labeled as Rick's iPod.
However every time I try to see what's on J: it gives me the message Cannot find plug-in 'Portable Drives'. When I click OK it immediately crashes MJ.
I'm running Windows XP. I removed XPlay from the computer...but not Music Match (it's not running anyway).
What am I doing wrong and how can I get MJ to allow me to access the iPod it sees on drive J:?
Thanks.
Rick
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Everyone,
Thanks for reporting the crashes, also thanks Will and JGourd for the iTuensDB files. I have found and squashed a bug that I think will help a lot. The fix is now posted.
Rick,
Try changing the volume label to "IPOD".
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Thanks for the advice.
I changed the label to iPod and it shows up that way in Windows Explorer...but not in MJ. Just shows the drive letter and nothing after it.
Same thing happens when I try to select it with the same error message... Cannot find plug-in 'Portable Drives'... and then it crashes MJ when I click OK.
Funny that it doesn't recognize it, as I can see the MP3 files in the directory on the iPod and copy to it if I wish using Window Explorer.
Do I need to download MJ Ver. 9 beta for this to work?
I've tried re-installing the plug-in several times and it always installs successfully.
H-E-L-P...
Rick
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Rick,
You do not need v 9 for this to work, although there is a lot of functionality that you will want that is unavailable with 8. Whichever version you use, in Explorer, go to the Media Jukebox Plugins directory and delete the file hh_portable.dll. Redownload the iPod Plugin and try again.
If you are still stuck, let me know.
Steve
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Everyone,
There is a new Plug-in posted that includes a checkbox in the Synchronization Dialogue that allows for files not in the synch to be deleted. This option requires the latest build of version 9 from today. This is not extensively tested, so proceed with caution.
More tomorrow.
Steve
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Well Steve,
I did everything I can think of including what you suggested by removing the DLL completely and reinstalling it from MJ after I rebooted my computer. And, although my drive letter still shows up in MJ under CD, DVD & Handhelds with the correct icon as J:, there's no label after it and I can't access it.
I've totally removed XPlay. Windows XP automatically finds the iPod as Drive J: but, after that I'm stumped. It's terrible to be very computer literate (I beta tested XPlay and many other programs) and be at a total loss as to why MJ doesn't want to handle the iPod.
I'm not running Music Match, although it is installed on my system. When checking the J: (iPod) drive I see that there are remnants on the iPod from XPlay...but XPlay says they won't interefere with anything.
I'll try removing them next although that shouldn't affect anything.
H-E-L-P again. Anything that looked like this before for anybody.
Thanks,
Rick
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Rick11: If you do not object to erasing your iPod, read on.
In MJ, if you right-click on the iPod's icon in MJ and choose "Format for MJ" or "Rebuild DB from Files", I am sure that the iPod will show up properly in MJ.
The iPod's icon is never named anything other than its drive letter.
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I reinstalled MJ and the iPod...and now it is showing up under the drive letter, and you are correct, there is no label for the drive except the letter.
However, I'm lost at how to get rid of the XPlay files which obviously aren't formatted the same way as MJ would format. And for that matter...just how do copy files over and where do you put them.
Xplay made it easy with a folder for Playlists, Artists and Albums and loaded everything into the correct folders when you just dragged the albums onto the Xplay folder icon.
I tried to reformat the iPod as suggested, but when I right click on the drive letter for the iPod I don't get the option to "Format for MJ" or "Rebuild DB from Files", just "Add SubFolder", "Show Queued files only", "Play", "Add to playing" and "Explore".
Any ideas or suggestions?
Thanks,
Rick
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installed new mj and new plugin. the crash thing was fixed, for about 2 instances. now whenever i left click on the ipod icon it crashes mj... again.
I had the "delete files not in list" or whatever option checked, maybe that was part of the problem...
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reformatted with ephpod and now the mj plugin works and has been for a while. yeehaw.
still hoping for: artist/album check boxes for synchronization; playlist creation from said artist/album additions; drag and drop playlist order
keep it up/.
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I reinstalled MJ and the iPod...and now it is showing up under the drive letter, and you are correct, there is no label for the drive except the letter.
However, I'm lost at how to get rid of the XPlay files which obviously aren't formatted the same way as MJ would format. And for that matter...just how do copy files over and where do you put them.
Xplay made it easy with a folder for Playlists, Artists and Albums and loaded everything into the correct folders when you just dragged the albums onto the Xplay folder icon.
I tried to reformat the iPod as suggested, but when I right click on the drive letter for the iPod I don't get the option to "Format for MJ" or "Rebuild DB from Files", just "Add SubFolder", "Show Queued files only", "Play", "Add to playing" and "Explore".
Any ideas or suggestions?
Thanks,
Rick
Oy Rick,
Something that XPlay does makes the MJ plugin not "see" the iPod as an iPod. I'll bet you can see the contacts and calendars folder in the tree and the "ipod created example" vcf file on the right. It's not an oversight, it's just that the plugin isn't compatible with an XPlay-initialized iPod yet. Two options: restore the iPod or delete/recreate the iPod_Control folder. Now, if you do either, the XPlay setup wizard will pop up every time you connect... just cancel it. Until the plugin is compatible, running that wizard will make MJ think you just plugged any old hard drive in.
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New MJ, new plugin...
Plugged in my iPod that I loaded up via MJ last night. Everything looks great so far, it would have crashed MJ last night. Good on the fix, sir. New one for ya now:
Brought up synchronization, nice UI change. Playlist groups work great, suggest being able to select them as a "root" and have all playlists they contain be also selected.
Anyhow, I hit "select none", put a tick in the "delete files not in list" box and hit OK. Expected it to basically do a wipe - no playlists, no songs. MJ blew up. :P
Tried a tamer experiment: made a smartlist with 1 random song and synched it with "delete files not in list" ticked. Success, 1 song. Synched again, with the box ticked again. MJ blew up. 8)
Tried same thing but without the tick. Worked great, but now there's two songs on the iPod. Incidentially, the first song is no longer a member of any playlist, and the new one is a member of the "onesong" playlist.
Keep 'em comin'!! ;D
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ok, new build.
first off, the plugin seems to be fixed on the crashes thats very nice. now to the new delete function.
i loaded up one playlist onto the ipod. then i deleted one album from the list and added another. i went to sync with that playlist again and checked the delete files box. i hit ok and it just crashed mj. i tried again and it did the same. but we are definately going to the right direction.
second, when i try to load all of my songs by clicking the all music auto smartlist, it doesn't upload any of the songs that aren't on other playlists being synced. and whenever i do a complete library sync, it gets to the end and with like 25 or so files left to transfer an error window comes up and says "failed upload error" or something to that effect. i can't seem to figure what songs aren't going on, but when i sync to the same playlists with ephpod they all load, so its not the files themselves. and i also had this same problem with this error on the last build but forgot to post it.
third, whenever i load large amounts of files, mj still appears to crash, although it doesn't but the progress bar goes away and the program loses its skin and reverts to standard windows looking title bars. also when the progress bar does work, its not very accurate. it usually gets to the end rather quickly and then loads songs with the bar full for another 10 min.
hope this helps, thanks again.
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Kurt,
Thanks for the info. I deleted XPlay from my computer, but did not reformat the iPod before I did it.
You are correct. I can see all the files you mention, and I can even copy files to the root directory of the iPod.
My question is...Should I reinstall XPlay on my computer and use it to restore the iPod. Or should I delete the iPod_Control folder from Windows Explorer. Then recreate an empty iPod_Control folder, and with Windows Explorer?
From what you say, it would appear that I should have XPlay on my computer, and just cancel the XPlay setup wizard each time I start MJ...that is, until it's compatible with XPlay. And, is the compatibility issue being addressed? When should there be an expected 'fix'.
I really appreciate your help, as I beta tested XPlay and it works fine for moving stuff onto and off of the iPod. The I beta tested the plug-in for Music Match, which really sucks! It takes forever to load anything which totally eliminates the speed of the firewire connection, and it's quite difficult to use (not intuitive) with Music Match. So after years of Music Match I finally found MJ and love the way it works. But, it defeats the purpose of switching if I can't use it with my iPod.
Thanks again,
Rick
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Rick,
I'm right there with you. I really like XPlay and don't want to lose it. I hope that compatibility is on the list, but I dunno for sure. As for musicmatch, I used to use them too, but it's better on the MJ side. Smartlists, baby.
Don't use XPlay to restore your iPod, though. XPlay (as far as I know) will restore it into a Mac-formatted iPod. Which gets me to thinking... make sure that your iPod's "About" screen shows "Format: Windows" -- if it doesn't, you have a Mac-formatted iPod, and that could be your whole problem. (There's no "Format: Mac", the line is omitted on Mac-formatted pods.)
My advice is to download the Windows restore software from Apple (http://a1408.g.akamai.net/7/1408/1388/20021018/akamai.info.apple.com/iPod/ww/win/061-0282.20021018.6Tsgb/setup.exe) and restore it that way. I'm not sure what files MJ doesn't like, but deleting the iPod_control folder might work, but I'd go with a restore just to be save. Nothing like a clean slate.
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Steve:
Results from last nights tests (latest MJ Ver9, latest plugin):
1. The synching option to delete songs on iPod not part of the sync didn't work as expected. Acutally, it plain didn't work. When I started a sync w/that option checked MJ just closed (not a crash, just a close of the app). But you warned us that hadn't been tested yet, so that's cool.
2. Still noticing that the Status bar freezing/losing focus problem isn't fixed. Also noticed that we have 2 different types of status bars. One for Synching and one for when you just Upload songs. From a UI perspective, I'd recommend just having one status bar format. Myself, I prefer the one you have for synching, but with and added transfer speed indicator.
3. I was NOT able to crash MJ when clicking on the Ipod root like I was able to in the past. For the time being at least it seems you've squashed this bug.
4. Still waiting for the Artist/Album synch stuff, but I know you're on that ;D
5. Still waiting for integration the iPod's playcount field w/MJs so that Recently played smartlists can be updated etc. ;D
Adam
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Thanks Kurt,
My iPod is definitely formatted for Windows, as I'm using the Window 20GB version.
I'll download the restore file from the link you gave me and let you know what happens.
I just didn't want to have to re-install all the MP3 files and create the playlists I had created in XPlay again...but if it will make MJ work with my iPod then so be it.
Thanks,
Rick
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True true, Rick.
I haven't used XPlay since the last build... I've got my MJ playlists now. Before MJ playlist synch, I would use MJ to export all and then use XPlay to synch with them. So now I'm skipping the middleman, although at this point, it's easier to restore and then re-upload. I know that MJ'll replace XPlay, but I don't want to lose XPlay (I paid for it, after all).
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if you go to windows explorer, what is the name of your ipod drive? it should be< X:IPOD > if you renamed it to something else, then change it back. and go check the date of your portables plugin in the jukebox plugin folder on your harddrive if it is not a recent date manually delete it and reinstall the one from the website.
hey sorry it took me so long to reply to that.. but there is no drive letter associated with my iPod. does this mean i need to map a network drive? but then what should i map it to? i recently had to install a IEEE 1394 bus host controller (or something or other, it had the port i could put my iPod firewire cable in) and slotted it into a spare PCI slot in the back of my PC. the iPod works okayish with Musicmatch, but id really like to be able to use mediajukebox. any ideas?
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Everyone,
There is a new Plug-in posted with some bug fixes for the deletion when synching stuff. Can you check it out and let me know if you have problems. It would be a big help if you could list steps to duplicate the problem you are seeing.
Thanks for the help.
Steve
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Brownie:
Your iPod isn't showing up as a mapped drive because of a nifty little feature our friends at Apple had MMJB put in <note reeking sarcasm>.
Basically, you need to "Enable Firewire Disk Mode" in the Devices>Options section of MMJB. Don't know where this is exactly, but by default this is turned off, so windows doesn't map a drive letter to the iPod. As such, MJ can't access it.
My recommendation is to get rid of MMJB, MMJB iPod Plugin and the iPod software. None of it's needed for MJ.
Adam
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MJ 9.0.79 and plugin 3.0.20:
When viewing a playlist, the playlist name is listed in the 1st column along side each track in the main window of MJ. The first 3 chars of the plyalist name are being dropped i.e. my playlist is 'U2 - Fire and Tree' but shows as '- Fire and Tree' in the main window for each track.
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MJ 9.0.80, plugin 3.0.20:
1. Made a playlist with one album each of the following:
-Bright Eyes
-David Bowie
-Elton John
-Run DMC
-Wilco
2. Synced above playlist, did not check delete files. all files transfered fine.
3. deleted -Run DMC from playlist, added -Ben Folds to the playlist
4. synced with playlist again, this time checked the delete files box.
5. results from sync, this is the new contents of the ipod
-Ben Folds
-Bright Eyes
-David Bowie x2
-Elton John x2
-Wilco x2
contests of playlist
-Ben Folds
-Bright Eyes
-David Bowie
-Elton John
-Wilco
contents not in any playlist
-David Bowie
-Elton John
-Wilco
so, it deleted Run DMC from the ipod and added Ben Folds, but then it duplicated every song from the Bowie, Elton, and Wilco so it appears twice on the ipod but only once each in the playlist and for some reason it did not duplicate any Bright Eyes.
i hope i am explaining this right. the progress bar did seem more stable though, but i didn't transfer any large amounts of files. hope this helps.
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noticed something, umm, fun with the new sync.
i have two trees in the synchronization menu i use: full albums (for playlists of full albums) and mixes (for general purpose playlists).
it seems that whenever i go to sync, one of those trees doesn't retain the selections from before.
for example.
sync1: i check all the mixes in both trees
sync2: full albums is checked, mixes is not, so i check those
sync3: full albums is now unchecked while mixes retains from last synch.
furthermore, and i don't know why this is happening to "mixes" but not "full albums," but for every song in a playlist within "mixes," there are now three copies (one for each time i've run the process.)
Also, i can't seem to replicate it with any certainty, but i still get the "crash MJ when left clicking on the ipod drive letter occasionally. I just load up ephpod and then close and save and then mj works again.
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ok now i wiped out my ipod and did a complete library sync. it again lost it on the progress bar and looked like it froze, but didnt again. but when it was done again, all the songs weren't there. i checked and there are no duplicate filenames so that can't be it. but my library has 2475 files and after several complete syncs the ipod has 2459 files it is missing 16 files. to test this i added 17 additional songs to my library and did another sync: in my library i had 2492 files and on the ipod 2476, missing 16 again. i'm not sure how to figure out which 16 songs are not making it on the album but whenever i put the files on with ephpod, all of them appear so i doubt it is the files themselves. oh and the last 2 times i ran a complete sync i got the file upload error, but not the first 3 times i ran the sync
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Everyone,
Thanks for the bug reports. Will, the detail on yours was incredibly helpful.
There is now a new Plug-in posted.
Fixed: Bug with deleting empty playlists on synch which caused crashing.
Fixed: Progress bar during synch should display better.
Fixed: Bug with deleting files during synch.
Fixed: When you get the next build of Version 9 (later today?), status dialogues for synching should improve.
Mconnell,
I can not duplicate this. Can anyone else verify this?
bmp,
I think this will be resolved with the next build of MJ v9
Thanks,
Steve
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ok, here it goes. new build. i did the same test i did yesterday and this time it came through with flying colors. it made all of the appropriate changes and did not duplicate any files. the progress bar seemed to work much better and i like the way it counts down the songs now. but whenever i clicked on an open browser window and went back to mj, it couldn't refresh itself and didn't display anything in mj until the sync was complete. then i still got that file upload error and was missing 16 songs, i'm not sure what that is all about i must have some songs mj doesnt like or something. but great build, its getting really close so i guess i will leave you with a list of final touches I would enjoy seeing.
1. fix the progress bar completely so it can display properly even if it goes to the background. and i would still like to see time remaining and transfer speed indicators which would round everything out nicely.
2. i'm not sure if this is possible or practical but if certain songs don't make it on from the transfer (like my mysterious 16) mj could give you a report of what didnt make it after the syncs completion.
3. i also don't know if this is possible but it would be my ultimate dream. if on sync, mj could update the songs playcounts and adjust the smart playlists respectively. someone told me that the windows ipod firmware didn't write playcounts to the file like the macs does, so if that is true then this would be impossible, but if it did work, very cool.
thats all i can think of for now. hope this helps and things are really looking great! nice work! ;D
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Just a quick note before bed, new build of mj and plugin... when I synch a smartlist that has the ~sort=random modifier, it will always end up sorted by album, then by track; this is how I have MJ set up to sort.
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I tried the new version this morning. When I checked the box to delete files I was dumbfounded that everything on my iPod that wasn't on a synchronized playlist was deleted.
This basically means that I have to decide if I am going to use sync all the time or not use it at all. There has to be some form of compromise to allow the sync function to delete files but also keep those files that were dragged to the iPod manually.
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Awesome build Steve! You're so close it's great.
Couple of additions/comments:
1. I thought I had the most recent ver9 build (.80) but I guess there was a newer one after I tried last night because I was still getting the stuck status bar. Will try again tonight.
2. I also saw Kurt's problem about playlist order when set to random, but for me it only appeared that way when I viewed my Playlist from the Playlist item in MJ. When I actually viewed it on the iPod it was in a random order.
Suggestion: Add a sequence column to the iPod>Playlist page so that we can see/verify the playlist sequence.
3. Question: are you still working on a solution for the folks out there that manage their music on their ipod not by Playlists but by Artist>Album? I hope this can be added to the sync dialog.
4. Said it before, but I'll echo the vote for updating play counts to MJ from the iPod (if it's possible).
5. Not sure I agree w/Jgourd's statement regarding deleting during sync. To me it worked as expected. And worked well.
6. Minor issue, there are still 2 different types of uploading status dialogs (one for synch on for manual uploads) from a UI perspective you might just want one. And I prefer the sync window because it seems faster. The Upload window is slower on my 500mhz clunker because of the need to repaint the screen when each file is uploaded (changing the status). This is particularly true on large uploads (1700 songs). Nitpicky I know, but I run a QA dept so I have to be. ;D
Adam
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Steve or indeed anyone!
I have just received notification that my iPOD 20GB Windows version has been dispatched to me. I should get it Tuesday. As i am in the fortunate position of having had you guys do a lot of testing I am after some advice.
After I have thrown away the software and instructions that come in the box!!!!! What should I do to acheive the best "virgin" install possible so as not to encounter some of the issues you may have had.
Thanks in advance
Graham
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Steve:
I've got a doosy (sp) of a bug to report. I loaded my full library last night doing a sync and checking the "upload all files" checkbox.
Things went fine, but upon listening to some tunes today I ran into a bug. Certain albums don't play correctly. For example, I select Browse>Artist>Album, then I select the first song on the album. My little iPod sits there for a second, jumps to the second song, jumps to the 3rd, 4th, 5th, etc. It does it REALLY fast, like half a second between songs. No music plays, it just goes through the songs then pops back to the "home" screen of the iPod.
I know this is of no use to you without my itunes db. I'll send it to you tonight.
Anyone else see this problem?
I've also been able to recreate the mysterious skipping of first song problem that is common w/ephpod. That to me might be more of a firmware issue so I'm not too worried about that but I thought you should know.
Oh, I've done a reset a number of times, it's not that. I really think something got messed up in the itunes db.
Adam
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2. I also saw Kurt's problem about playlist order when set to random, but for me it only appeared that way when I viewed my Playlist from the Playlist item in MJ. When I actually viewed it on the iPod it was in a random order.
Upon closer inspection, Adam's right on target here. My ~sort=random smartlists are random on my iPod, they just didn't look random in MJ. No worries.
One more echo for play count updates while I'm here, :D
Another echo for Adam's comment about "it worked as I expected" -- synchronization is now working exactly as expected, exactly as I had hoped for, and I love it. Couple bugs to still hammer out, true, but the feel and the function are dead-on perfect.
Synching with other MJ items (artists, albums, genres, etc) would be extra gravy for sure, but you can make a smartlist with your criteria and synch with it.
Still getting GUI lock from MJ while synching, either within 15 seconds of start of synch, or if MJ loses focus. Both cause the GUI lock.
Since I've been using MJ exclusively to fill my iPod, I've noticed a LOT more "skipping" incidents. That is, the first (and sometimes second and third) songs on a list within the iPod (be it a playlist, an album, or whatever) will be skipped. The iPod will just skip the first song, and start playing the second song. This happened very infrequently before I used MJ for iPod transfer, but now happens on a daily basis.
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hello all--i'm a newbie that could use a hand...
brought home a brand new ipod for windows 10 days ago and have YET to get it to sync correctly...
with the default install, MMJB would load a few songs at a time, slowly, and then disconnect...
upgraded the ipod firmware, and the MMJB software, same issue...
uninstalled MMJB and the MMJB ipod plugin, restored the ipod, installed MJ and MJ ipod plugin...
tried to synch 115 songs, 25 uploaded...tried again, this time 42 uploaded...all the time all 115 were showing up in the right windows when i clicked on the ipod drive 9as being on the drive, not in the queue)...
third time all 115 uploaded but after the third or fourth song i got the following windows error message, over and over:
"Windows was unable to save all the data for the file \Device\Harddisks\DP(1)0-0+3\iPOD_Control\Music\F19\<songname>. The data has lost. This error may be caused by a failure of your computer hardware or network connection. Please try to save this file elsewhere"
ouch, that last bit hurts after shelling out $500 for the ipod...
so i get one of these messages for each of the subsequent songs but the upload continues, slowly (approx 1 min/sog) and the ipod thinks they're all there but i haven't tested them all...
either way, somethings not right, and any advice/suggestions would be hugely appreciated....thanx, beth
computer specs:
PIII/512MB/40GB HD
win2k
actiontec PCI firewire card
(tried it with both the generic windows drivers and the actiontec drivers, no diff)
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beth, i would go to ephpod.com and download ephpod for free. try to upload songs with that, and if it still gives you an error then i would think it is your firewire card, just a guess though. ephpod right now is probably the most stable program to use though (give mj another week and it will pass it) although it is pathetic that apple wont give us a decent option out of the box.
and i have been experiencing a lot of first track skipping myself, but no more than the first song. the same thing used to happen when i used ephpod, but when i told ephpod to use all 20 music folders it seemed to fix it. mj already uses 20 music folders so maybe it is the non trunicated filenames causing the problems???
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Aw Kurt, you're belittling my most desired feature--synching w/other MJ items (albums, artists etc.).
Man, I really don't want to have to make playlists for all the Artists or Albums I want to keep on my iPod........
Shoot, and I thought I was gonna get what I wanted :'(.
Steve, I implore you: don't listen to him. He's probably been tippin' a few back again (you've *heard* about his little problem haven't you?) ;)
Adam
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I'm not a daily iPod loader so this is my first time in 7-10 days using it.
Only one really petty UI kinda thing.
After the word uploading in the uploading progress box, it would look nicer with a colon after the word "Uploading". So it'd say...
Uploading: Can't Get It Out Of My Head
...for example. I know its petty but it'd make it look tighter IMHO.
I'd like to be able to sync the Single Artist (Complete) folder with my iPod. Can I do that with Playlist sync.? If not then I'm with Adam, otherwise I'm with Kurt. :)
Right now I'm highlighting the track listing of Single Artist (Complete) and right clicking it into the iPod queue.
-=Tim=-
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thanx will--ephpod synced it right up....
only NOW, the ipod won't play...
when i hit play, instead of starting the song it starts cycling thru all the songs in the folder (albums. artists, whichever i started in) and then kicks back to the browse menu...
pehaps a better post for the apple support board, but any thoughts appreciated...
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Hello Everyone,
Thanks for the comments. No new build today. Let me tighten things up with some of the little requests for tomorrow. In regards to the Artist / Album Playlist, this is a pretty major undertaking. I hear you, but lets wait a little just to make sure other issues are at rest before we rock the boat.
graham131,
You should be able to plug your "Virgin" iPod in and run MJ. Please let me know if this does not work. I would recommend not loading MusicMatch.
JGourd,
Try not selecting the delete and then just synch whatever you want. If you want to remove files that are not in playlists, click on the Playlist column and remove unassigned files.
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Aw Kurt, you're belittling my most desired feature--synching w/other MJ items (albums, artists etc.).
Man, I really don't want to have to make playlists for all the Artists or Albums I want to keep on my iPod........
Shoot, and I thought I was gonna get what I wanted :'(.
Steve, I implore you: don't listen to him. He's probably been tippin' a few back again (you've *heard* about his little problem haven't you?) ;)
Adam
Bah!! I re-:hic: er, I resen-:hic: er... uhmm.. :hic: What was I talking about?
Serioiusly, I think that selecting objects in the media library would definately rule, please don't get me wrong on that. I'm just saying that smartlists are freakishly versatile tools to pick content for your iPod... so much so that you can select ANY subset of your music, based on the smartlist criteria, and synch your iPod with it.
Example #1: Under iPod synchronization options, select "Pearl Jam" and "Soundgarden" for synch.
Example #2: Make a smartlist (using MJ 9's new smartlist wizard, of course) that says "Artist=[Pearl Jam],[Soundgarden]" and select that for synch.
It's the same thing, baby. Well, same effect, at least. Only difference is that #2 is already implemented, ;D. Of course, if it can be done, I'd very much dig it, and would definately use it.
Don't forget, though... Steve still has to work in play count downloads, .aa audible support, XPlay compatibility, the composer tag, automatic synchronization when you plug the iPod in, changing the "force convert" to "safety convert" and, most importantly, putting pretty icons in the tree! I want pretty! MUST HAVE PRETTY!!!
(http://pimpin-seattle.d2g.com/images/mjipod/ipod.gif)
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Kurt,
You are a tireless crusader. Tell me where I can send beer. If you are liquored up enough you won't notice the icons :D
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Steve:
I've got a doosy (sp) of a bug to report. I loaded my full library last night doing a sync and checking the "upload all files" checkbox.
Things went fine, but upon listening to some tunes today I ran into a bug. Certain albums don't play correctly. For example, I select Browse>Artist>Album, then I select the first song on the album. My little iPod sits there for a second, jumps to the second song, jumps to the 3rd, 4th, 5th, etc. It does it REALLY fast, like half a second between songs. No music plays, it just goes through the songs then pops back to the "home" screen of the iPod.
I know this is of no use to you without my itunes db. I'll send it to you tonight.
Anyone else see this problem?
I've also been able to recreate the mysterious skipping of first song problem that is common w/ephpod. That to me might be more of a firmware issue so I'm not too worried about that but I thought you should know.
Oh, I've done a reset a number of times, it's not that. I really think something got messed up in the itunes db.
Adam
Yes, I have seen this problem as well.
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Kurt,
Well, I've tried everything...and I can't get MJ to work with the iPod, except to be able to copy MP3's over to the main directory on the iPod. Am I missing something here. Does the iPod require that you set up specific directories (XPlay does that by itself) so the you can use the files copied over to the iPod from MJ?
I just wish that MJ would have an XPlay compatible plugin.
In any case...I thought you said that you can create playlists in MJ and export them so that they can be copied into the XPlay 'Playlist' subdirectory.
How do you do that in MJ, as when I tried it, all I could create was an M3U and XPlay doesn't accept them.
I'll look forward to hearing your thoughts as I'm stumped about using MJ with my iPod and don't want to go back to MusicMatch with their lousy plugin...so I guess I'll just have to keep using XPlay as it works and works well.
Later,
Rick
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phango13:
I think we all found a little bug today that's causing that problem. Try the "Wipe iPod Clean" feature in Ephpod (under "iPod Tools"). If that doesn't work I suggest you do a restore with the Apple Updater/Restore software, then sync w/Ephpod.
And now for the rest of you drunken fools:
Yeah, yeah, yeah I know, shut up Adam and make your darn Smartlists. I just wanted to avoid the Artist/Album ones and as for more complex stuff, I just haven't figured out the slick command-line commands yet. I know, read the Help dummy (sorry, Steve, I really prefer WMP Series 9 implementation of Smarlists, they're dummy-proof maybe the next release of MJ :D).
And as for Kurt's little "workorder" for Steve ( ;)), well, I'm fine with everything but audible....swap that out for MY feature. *It's mine, ALL Mine.....*. If books were meant to be listened to, we never would have invented writing. So there. ::)
OK, well, since there's no build tonight, I'm takin' the wife out for mexican and loads of nummy BEER!! ;D
Adios all!
Adam
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Here's what I used to do before I got the MJ plugin working:
- Made lots of playlists and smartlists in MJ -- included everything that I want to hear in these smartlists and playlists.
- Prior to doing the step after this one, I delete the "Auto-Smartlists" that MJ9 provides. Don't want to synch with those, hehe.
- Used MJ9's "Export all playlists" function to export them to .m3u files in C:\Program Files\J River\Media Jukebox\Data\Playlists.
- Set XPlay to synchronize with this directory.
Here's my step-by-step on how to get your Windows formatted iPod to work with MJ:- Download the 1.2.1 firmware updater from Apple, and use it to Restore your iPod to factory settings.
- When the XPlay wizard pops up, hit cancel. If you fail to hit cancel, XPlay will copy files that render it useless to MJ (at this time)
- Uninstall MJ8 if you are running it.
- Download and install the newest build of MJ9
- Download and install the newest build of the plugin
- Plug in, expand the CD, DVD, & Portables tree, and there's yer iPod (with soon-to-be-pretty icons, that's for sure!)
What can I say, it's beta, ;D
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Thanks Kurt,
Gotta get ready for a meeting tomorrow...but after that, I'll try both suggestions.
Question...
Does MJ set up a 'Playlist', 'Artist', 'Album', and 'Songs' sub-directory on the iPod like XPlay does?
If not...where do the MP3's get copies to on the iPod?
Thanks for the quick responses!
Rick
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Here's my step-by-step on how to get your Windows formatted iPod to work with MJ:- Download the 1.2.1 firmware updater from Apple, and use it to Restore your iPod to factory settings.
- When the XPlay wizard pops up, hit cancel. If you fail to hit cancel, XPlay will copy files that render it useless to MJ (at this time)
- Uninstall MJ8 if you are running it.
- Download and install the newest build of MJ9
- Download and install the newest build of the plugin
- Plug in, expand the CD, DVD, & Portables tree, and there's yer iPod (with soon-to-be-pretty icons, that's for sure!)
What can I say, it's beta, ;D
The all important step of formatting it for MJ was left out. After resetting it to factory condition, and canceling the X-Play or MMJB launch, you have to right-click on the iPod in MJ and select "Format for MediaJukebox".
After you do this, the iPod will work with MJ.
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Hey Rick, I'll jump in here and help you out (since Kurt's probably 3 sheets to the wind right now ::) ).
The Playlist, Artist, Album, & Songs directories that you see in Xplay are actually the way the iPod is organized by the firmware. So, basically, Xplay just mimics the iPod. In actuality, the iPod stores all files in directories in the ipod_control folder, these directories are F00 through F19. Its internal database tells it which songs are in which folders and what Playlist, Artist, Album, Song they are. It gets this info from the idd3 tags.
MJ does the same thing as Xplay, it reads the database and presents you with the same categories that the iPod does, so you can "browse" your songs in MJ that are on your iPod by Playlist, Artist, Album or all Songs.
OK, I was just kidding about Kurt, I've been giving him a bad time recently. Kurt I'm here to apologize. (Shoot, that's probably just the Negra Modelo talking, but what the hey) ;D
Adam
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Aye, what Adam said... you're not actually browsing through folders, you're browsing through a "virtual" folder -- a representation of your iPod's database.
Pretty cool theory, if ya ask me.
Woot! Page 5! I think Steve should merge ALL of the threads that we've done into one super long thread. ;D
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I'd like to be able to sync the Single Artist (Complete) folder with my iPod. Can I do that with Playlist sync.? If not then I'm with Adam, otherwise I'm with Kurt. :)
Right now I'm highlighting the track listing of Single Artist (Complete) and right clicking it into the iPod queue.
-=Tim=-
Hey folks, any ideas on this one or am I not explaining it well. :)
-=Tim=-
Hey guys
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Hey folks, any ideas on this one or am I not explaining it well. :)
-=Tim=-
Hey guys
Tim,
If I understand you correctly then all you need to do is make a smartlist that displays songs from a single artist. Use that playlist to sync with the iPod.
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I'll try to explain it better. :)
Under Media Library there's an option called "Single Artist (Complete)" that allows you to list all the albums that MJ considers complete, ie no missing track numbers, same album-level info and directory.
I'd like to grab that as a Playlist so I can sync it with my iPod. (a) Is this possible? (b) How do I enter the query?
-=Tim=-
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Tim,
There are a couple of options. If you want synching, right click on Single-Artist(Complete) and select "Send-To" Playlist. Create the Playlist and it will be available for synching.
Alternately you could drag the tree item to the root of iPod and the files will transfer to iPod. If you do this and want them to remain in a playlist, create a new playlist on iPod and drag the tree icon for "Single-Artist(Complete) " to the Playlist you created.
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Yeah man, make a smartlist with this code:
mediatype=[audio] completealbum==1
The smartlist will be populated with all of your songs that belong to a "complete" album. Use it to synch your iPod with and you've got every complete album on your iPod.
Added benefit: When you update your library, the smartlist updates itself too. I use about 20 different smartlists and playlists to populate my iPod... haven't modified any of them in months, and I'm still getting a great rotation of music on my pod, in addition to the songs that I know I want to be there. MJ+iPod is rockin my world.
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JGourd and Adam,
In regards to the track skipping bug, can you duplicate this in any reliable way?
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Steve:
I think I'm able to duplicate it. I wiped my iPod clean last night and selected all songs for a transfer. The same tunes are doing it today that were doing it before reformatting the ipod. So, I'll send you the files that are affected tonight. Must be a tag thing, but all my songs are tagged using id3-tagit w/id3v2 tags only. Not sure what MJ does to my tags when I import songs.
New "bug" I found last night. I was syncing all my songs (got GUI lock when I switched to a different app), and when it was done I received a "File Transfer Error". Now I highly doubt it's a firewire card issue, because I've *never* experienced a firewire card problem--ever.
When I looked at my iPod I noticed that some of the songs didn't make it over. Strange thing, even manually uploading would not get the songs on the iPod--oh, they were *there* (as files) but the ipod database wasn't seeing them.
Loaded up ephod to have it check the db. I found like 10 songs that had "invalid file length", so I deleted those. Then did a synch, it found 14 "songs that didn't exist" so it removed them from the iPod.
Now here's the interesting part: trying to upload 3 albums that didn't make it in MJ would ALSO not make it over in Ephpod. Again, they got copied, but the iPod database doesn't register them, so I can't play 'em.
Me guess is that the ol' database is corrupted, so I'll delete it tonight and try again. But something weird is going on w/MJ.
I'll send you tonight the itunes db and the offending skipping files.
Tim:
I am your biggest proponent. I really don't want to have to make playlist for each of my Artists/Albums. I don't want to have to do this for a couple of reasons:
1. Waste of time, since things are already organized that way in MJ for me
2. I don't want a bunch of Playlists on my iPod that are the same as if I went through Browse>Artist>Album
I'm nitpicky yes, but there are a lot of folks out there that aren't Playlist mongers ( ;) ) and I think it'd be a shame to not have that capability in MJ. It would TOTALLY put it a step above anything out there (even iTunes).
Adam
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JGourd and Adam,
In regards to the track skipping bug, can you duplicate this in any reliable way?
It only did the rapid fire track skipping one time about two weeks ago.
The skipping mode where it simply skips the selected track in favor of the next one happens quite frequently but there isn't anything specific I do to cause it to happen. I'll disconnect the iPod, select an album or audio book and select the first track. Sometimes it skips that track and sometimes it doesn't.
I did find that it was happening very frequently with one particular audio book that was encoded (by someone else) using low bit rate VBR. Email me and I'll grant you FTP access to the book.
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from what i've read elsewhee, the skipping tracks problem happens when the ipod times out before it can find the track and then automatically goes to the next one. which is why supposedly making ephpod put music into all 20 folders and turn the files names into the standard number system helps this problem so the ipod can find it faster?? if that is the case then the time out is much too short an dshould be changed by apple. i find it happens to me very sporadically, sometimes it does it on a certain album, sometime it doesn't. sometimes it does it on a playlist as well. i've never had it skip more than 1 track at a time though.
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willrmc:
You might be onto something with the file naming thing.
Steve: how is MJ naming the files on the iPod? I haven't looked. Seems to me that sequential naming would be something to try if you're not doing that.
I know for sure that it's certain tracks that are doing it, because I cleared my ipod last night and the same ones are doing it today, and they're doing it every time I play them. I'll send you some files and my itunes db tonight.
Adam
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Adam and Will,
Thanks for the tips. I name the files on iPod with a random path and the filename as it appears on your PC if that gives you any more clues.(i.e. PC = C\Music\MyFile.mp3 -> iPod_Control\Music\F01\MyFile.mp3)
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Everyone,
I am going to close this thread and start a new one with a new build. Before I turn the page on another long thread I want to thank everyone again for all the suggestions and help in making this happen. It astounds me how committed everyone has been to constructively helping this to improve. When MJ becomes the de facto player for all PCs I will buy the first round of drinks for you all.
Steve