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More => Old Versions => Media Jukebox => Topic started by: SteveG on October 21, 2002, 02:39:06 pm

Title: iPod plug-in for Media Jukebox
Post by: SteveG on October 21, 2002, 02:39:06 pm

I have posted a new iPod Plug-in for testing on this page:

http://www.musicex.com/cgi-bin/downloads/plugins.pl?type=8

The following changes have been implemented (thanks to all for the reports)

1) File transfer speed improvement implemented. (no progress bar for now. Let me know how it works for you and if it is better, I will make this change permanent.)

2) Duplicate file issue corrected.

3) Format should work better now. All folders F00-F19 created (like MusicMatch and Ephpod). All files deleted.

4) "Explore" option removed from levels other than root.

5) Playlist creation after format fixed.

6) Playlist functionality implemented. You can drop MJ playlists on the root level. If you do this the files will Download, but the playlist name will be lost (for now)
Try creating a Playlist (right-click on Playlists) and then drop MJ playlist on new playlist. This should work and I can improve later.

7) Support for wav and aiff files added.

I am aware of a bug with adding existing iPod files to a new playlist and will work on this tomorrow. Also deleting files from Playlists does not work. Tomorrow will also bring some kind of folder synchronization.

Thanks for all your help.

Steve

Title: Re: IPOD Bug thread.
Post by: Kurt Young on October 21, 2002, 08:54:56 pm

Rock on! Darn nice build, dude... many many good things.

File transfer speed totally rules now! Most all of the disastrous bugs are gone. The twenty \F* folders are a great improvement! Playlists still don't work; nothing I could do produced a populated playlist on the iPod (though I didn't create a playlist and drag mj items onto it as you suggested -- i only tried to add items that existed on the iPod to playlists).

Can you re-enable right-clicking on subfolders? This will facilitate deleting entire albums/genres/etc or adding them to playlists. Just remove the "explore" option from them, :D

Biggest concerns are MJ-playlist/smartlist to iPod-playlist translation and synchronization, the null field in the "Add To Playlist" dropdown, and including iPod system files like iTunesDB in the "Format iPod for MJ" function.

One note about the progress bars. I don't think it's necessary to have one for the individual songs; they upload real fast anyhow. Just the "uploading xxxx" and a progress bar for the entire upload is all that I believe is necessary.

Yeesh, I can't think of anything else. Helluva sweet build, bro. Here's the "he wrote it as he tested it" (http://pimpin-seattle.d2g.com/images/mjipod/10-21-02.txt) file.

And here's Kurt's list (http://pimpin-seattle.d2g.com/images/mjipod/kurtslist.htm).

PS: I'm going to miss the other thread. *sniff* :'(

Title: Re: IPOD Bug thread.
Post by: SteveG on October 22, 2002, 06:03:21 am

Kurt,

Thanks for the report.

In regards to right-click on subfolders, this should already work, but only when you first select a playlist. If you highlight a playlist and right-click, the delete option should be available.

In regards to "Add to Playlist", the box you see is a combo box. If you click on the arrows to the right of the box, you should see a drop down for existing playlists. If you prefer to start a new playlist, type the new name in the box and it will be added automatically.

I am going to clean up the Playlist stuff today, and I will take your advice regarding progress bar.

Thanks,

Steve

Title: Re: iPod plug-in for Media Jukebox
Post by: udeups on October 22, 2002, 07:29:33 am

I am using a mac formatted iPod with Xplay and Ephpod, but now am trying to make it play with MJ. I'm sure that, since you're testing with a win iPod, making the plugin work with a mac version is not your top priority. Anyway, I thought I'd briefly share my experiences.

I have started with a freshly reformatted and wiped iPod courtesy of Ephpod. Media Jukebox sees the iPod, but I'm not sure that it recognizes it as such. It lists any files that are in the iPod root directory. Then, I add a song. Navigating to the iPod from My Computer shows that the song has been copied to the root and not into the F00 or any other of the F* directories.

Now, it seems that regardless of the format, the directory structure is the same. So I thought that this might work since the PC can see the HFS formatted iPod. Given that this is accomplished by Xplay, I would hope that directory structure and database would then be accessible to MJ. If it's not that simple, no problem. If, however, there is a way for me to either format my iPod as a PC disk, or for MJ to play with a mac version, that would be most desirable!

Hope someone can help.

Title: Re: iPod plug-in for Media Jukebox
Post by: Phil Lee on October 22, 2002, 07:42:25 am

Udeups, you may find the best thing to do to get your iPod to work with MJ is to convert your Mac iPod to a Win iPod.

At the end of last week Apple uploaded version 1.2.1 of the iPod updater for Windows. It is a 12.7 Mb download from http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=120119. There is a thread on the iPod Lounge forum at http://www.xsorbit1.com/users/dennx/index.cgi?board=windowsgeneral&action=display&num=1035093498 explaining how this can be achieved using the updater.

Title: Re: iPod plug-in for Media Jukebox
Post by: udeups on October 22, 2002, 07:48:19 am

Phil, thanks a lot! Last I heard, Apple was frowning on any talk regarding switching from one format to another! Thanks for the info...

paul

Title: Re: iPod plug-in for Media Jukebox
Post by: jgourd on October 22, 2002, 08:02:34 am

This has been a problem for a few builds.

When the iPod has over a gig of files one it, browsing to the root of the iPod within MJ will cause MJ to crash. I have sent a crash report to Steve.

Title: Re: iPod plug-in for Media Jukebox
Post by: SteveG on October 22, 2002, 08:17:31 am

udeups,

At the moment I am focused on getting this to work well with Windows, I can look at Mac later. Phil_Lee thanks for the suggestions.

JGourd, others have not seen this, but I will check it out today. Thanks.

Title: Re: iPod plug-in for Media Jukebox
Post by: jgourd on October 22, 2002, 08:44:50 am

Cosmetic bug:

when you create a playlist, the iPod collapses down to the root. You have to click the plus at the root and the playlist folder to see your playlist after you have created it.

Speed is now good. You can loose the file progress and just implement a job progress. It took less than 5 minutes to transfer 1.5 gig. :)

How about mapping the "Album Artist" to the "Composer" field. This way I can look up the whole album if it is a "Various Artists" album.

A calculated upload speed on the status bar would be nice.

Should a Queued file not actually exist on the file system, offer to remove it from the queue in addition to complaining about it not being there. Include a check box to resolve similar problems the same way without asking again.

Title: Re: iPod plug-in for Media Jukebox
Post by: LeoH on October 22, 2002, 09:09:04 am

Mapping Artist / Album to composer is a good idea. Mapping any arbitrary field to composer is better yet. My MJ database actually uses the composer field as much of the content is classical music where that information is a relavent.

And, BTW, on the iPod, how does one scroll right on the sub-category fields when there are long names?

Title: Re: iPod plug-in for Media Jukebox
Post by: jgourd on October 22, 2002, 12:09:04 pm

It would be nice to be able to eject the iPod directly from MJ.

Title: Re: iPod plug-in for Media Jukebox
Post by: Phil Lee on October 22, 2002, 12:26:29 pm

OK, I've just tested the new build and have some comments.

I used the format iPod option in the plugin to wipe my iPod from Sunday. I then ran through several upload tests.

I had some trouble with the Cancel option when uploading. As a first test I uploaded several playlists which featured common tracks. The plug-in was uploading one copy of each track for each playlist it was in which led to the occassional clash of files. This was handled fine by MJ but I wanted to cancel the upload. Unfortunately the Cancel button didn't seem to work.

Speed is much better. I uploaded 8.263Gb of songs in a little under 25 minutes, working out at about 6Mb/s, the same as I get with Ephpod.

This time round there were no phantom playlists created which is good.

I agree with jgourd, it would be nice to be able to eject the iPod from MJ. At the moment, you have to exit MJ before it will unmount properly.

Apart from these minor niggles, it is a big improvement in the Friday build.

Title: Re: iPod plug-in for Media Jukebox
Post by: SteveG on October 22, 2002, 02:40:00 pm

Hello again,

There is a new build with the following improvements...

1) Playlist addition and deletion now works. Try dropping files directly onto an existing playlist, or moving files on iPod to a Playlist with a right click.

2) Rename of Artist, Album, Genre and Name Fields implemented.

3) Track upload status progress reflects total progress, not per file.

3) MJ will now format / initialize a blank iPod. (i.e after format from windows)

4) Cancel during upload now works.

5) Right click eject device added to root level of tree.

Note.. In regards to the eject and JGourd's cosmetic suggestion about the left tree refresh, I am aware
of this problem but we may not be able to correct until version 9. It is an MJ bug, not the Plug-in.

Tomorrow I want to get to syncing. Please offer your opinions on the following possible ways to do this.

Option 1 (easier)- Leave everything similar to how it is but change when you upload files to check if the file exists on iPod. If it does, give the user an option to overwrite the file or to leave it. This would only need to be selected once. To achieve a sync, you could drag all your files to the iPod and it will take care of checking for duplicates without your interaction. Downside = this will slow uploads down some while it checks for duplicates.

Option 2 - Provide an option where you can point the Plugin to a PC directory and it will add to iPod any files that do not exist.

Option 3 - Sync so that the Plug-in and a given PC directory will sync and provide options to handle tag differences.

These range from easy to hard and I can't promise what we will do. However, your feedback would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Steve

Title: Re: iPod plug-in for Media Jukebox
Post by: SteveG on October 22, 2002, 02:41:05 pm

Title: Re: iPod plug-in for Media Jukebox
Post by: willrmc on October 22, 2002, 02:52:18 pm

i think option 1 sounds the best. syncing to a directory would be useless to me because i have 60gb of music of which i can only put 10 on my ipod. i would like to click a button and it syncs my whole mj library, playlists and all on the ipod (i only keep 10gbs in my mj library because of this) at that time it could also update the playcount and update the smart playlists (whenever that beautiful feature is ready) THANKS!

Title: Re: iPod plug-in for Media Jukebox
Post by: Phil Lee on October 22, 2002, 02:56:25 pm

I agree, I have more music than will fit on my iPod so synching with a folder isn't a priority.

What would be nice though would be a feature like on iTunes where you can get a random playlist of 25 tracks by a single artist uploaded automatically.

Title: Re: iPod plug-in for Media Jukebox
Post by: willrmc on October 22, 2002, 03:35:26 pm

i deleted all the old stuff and reinstalled the new plugin but only the handheld file is downloading not the ipod file. anyone else having this problem?

Title: Re: iPod plug-in for Media Jukebox
Post by: JimH on October 22, 2002, 03:42:59 pm

Try using IE to download.

Title: .dll files and sRe: iPod plug-in for Media Jukebox
Post by: willrmc on October 22, 2002, 03:51:00 pm

thats what i am using. ie on the plugin download page. it still shows contacts/calendar and uploads to the root. i wiped the ipod clean, deleted the old ipod.dll and the portable.dll file and installed the new one but nothing. the portable.dll file is from 10/22 5:30pm
am i doing something wrong?

Title: Re: iPod plug-in for Media Jukebox
Post by: Kurt Young on October 22, 2002, 03:55:43 pm

I have to agree with Phil, synching with files and folders on the computer isn't the best solution.

What I would like is, unfortunately, not one of your options. I think that synchronization the way that MMJB or iTunes handles it is best -- I designate MJ playlists/smartlists to synchronize with. This:

1. transfers files to the iPod on the playlists/smartlists.
2. deletes files on the iPod that aren't on the playlists/smartlists.
3. creates iPod-playlists that mirror the MJ playlists/smartlists.

I imagine a dialoge that would be like this (poorly edited) shot:

(http://pimpin-seattle.d2g.com/images/mjipod/syncwish.jpg)

This way, I can use one of MJ's strongest features, the smartlist, to populate my iPod. And when I'm out on the go, I'd automatically get playlists to match the ones at home, instead of having to manually create them in the MJ iPod plugin.

Please please please consider this as an option.

Title: Re: iPod plug-in for Media Jukebox
Post by: udeups on October 22, 2002, 06:42:19 pm

I would second KurtYoung's suggestion for a method of syncing. I think the automatic smartlist syncing would be a very nice feature, and is one that iTunes currently supports. I think that the more that everything can be handled within MJ, the better (ie, I don't want to have to worry about syncing to a directory and moving songs to that directory to ensure that they are synced). If the smartlist/playlist sync was implemented, all one would have to do to sync to a certain PC directory would be to setup a smartlist that only showed songs from that directory.

I'm not sure if this bug has been mentioned. I'm using a freshly formatted PC iPod (formerly a mac iPod - thanks for the link, Phil) with no songs currently on it. I copy one song over. That works great. I then attempt to delete said song, and get "file deletion error." I close MJ, open EphPod and delete the file. This happens with any number of songs that I transfer over. I also notice that while I can right-click and add a song to a playlist on the ipod, I cannot simply drag songs onto the playlist. Maybe this has not been implemented yet, but wanted to let you know.

That's all I've got for now. I'm excited to see this stuff working so well together. Thanks for your work, Steve.

Paul

Title: Re: iPod plug-in for Media Jukebox
Post by: TimB on October 22, 2002, 06:46:12 pm

Quote

I have to agree with Phil, synching with files and folders on the computer isn't the best solution.

This is where we get to a topic I raised before. We need to think about new ways to store music on these large storage devices, for example looking at products from an album rather than song perspective. A periodically select and when I do an update grab everything I've marked. A burn and select option. We've got iPod and now Zen and there'll be others. (My apology if MJ already has some of these features but I'm just trying to spark thought and I'm still a fairly novice user. :) )

You have to believe the market is going to move this way and we need 'outside the box' kinda tools (some of which MJ already has) to load data in.

-=Tim=-

Title: Re: iPod plug-in for Media Jukebox
Post by: Kurt Young on October 22, 2002, 09:54:27 pm

Aye, udeups put it better than I could: Keeping it as internal to MJ as possible is best.

I, too, don't want to worry about keeping a directory full of the files that I want to synch with (although that's kind of what I'm already doing... exporting my MJ playlists to a directory and having XPlay synch with it).

Ephpod and XPlay can already synch with files and folders on my hard drive. The one thing that they can't do, though, is interact with my MJ data. To me, the whole point of an MJ plugin is to do something with MJ that you can't do with anything else: make the iPod interact directly with my MJ data. More specifically, my MJ smartlists. If I wanted to set up synching with files on my hard drive, I'd just use Ephpod.

MMJB, iTunes, and XPlay are all geared to synching with their internal playlists (well, XPlay synchs with Windows Media Player's internal playlists) -- but there's one thing that's different: MJ doesn't suck. :D The one thing that's missing from my iPod experience is having MJ do what the other iPod solutions do -- synch with my internal MJ playlists. MJ smartlists are truly innovative, and are the center of how I listen to music.

Gosh, I can grovel with the best of 'em, can't I? I apologize for my tone, Steve. I know that I'm sounding like a jerk, and you gotta know that I'm not trying to be preachy or anything. You know that I'm grateful for the hard work and long hours you're putting in on this thing. I sure as heck couldn't code anything like it in a million years, and I haven't the first clue on how easy or how hard it would be to do what I've suggested. I just want to very strongly voice my thoughts on this matter.

I hope that you've taken my suggestion on playlist/smartlist synchronization to heart -- I think it'd be a mistake not to do it.

Title: Re: iPod plug-in for Media Jukebox
Post by: SeanC on October 23, 2002, 04:38:57 am

Quote

What I would like is, unfortunately, not one of your options. I think that synchronization the way that MMJB or iTunes handles it is best -- I designate MJ playlists/smartlists to synchronize with. This:

1. transfers files to the iPod on the playlists/smartlists.
2. deletes files on the iPod that aren't on the playlists/smartlists.
3. creates iPod-playlists that mirror the MJ playlists/smartlists.

I third this - definately the best way in my opinion.

Title: Re: iPod plug-in for Media Jukebox
Post by: jgourd on October 23, 2002, 05:01:13 am

Quote

I third this - definately the best way in my opinion.

Yup, this is the way to do it. What makes the iPod so special is that Apple really really researched the interface and delivered something that causes the users to evangelize. MJ users tend evangelize as well. If you do some right, there is no argument.

Title: Re: iPod plug-in for Media Jukebox
Post by: Phil Lee on October 23, 2002, 05:30:01 am

I agree with Kurt's suggestion too. It would be best if MJ could synch the iPod using playlists. In fact Kurt's dialog looks ideal too.

Ideally this synch method should also check for songs featuring in multiple playlists and only upload the song once to save space and minimise potential for file duplication. I appreciate that this will slow the upload down a bit but that doesn't matter.

It would be useful to have an option to upload the entire music library if you want to as well.

It would also be really good if MJ could display a dialog allowing songs/albums/playlists to be removed from a synch if there isn't enough space on the iPod to hold them.

Title: Re: iPod plug-in for Media Jukebox
Post by: SteveG on October 23, 2002, 07:11:33 am

Hello and thanks for all the feedback.

First let me take care of the people having problems...

Udeups,

I introduced a deletion bug yesterday when I added all the Playlist stuff. It is fixed, and will be posted when I leave for the day. Thanks for the report.

WillRMC,

My best guess is that the correct Plug-in is not registered on your system. If you have an ipod.dll, delete it. Search your drive for hh_portable.dll and remove all copies of it. Redownload the plug-in and you should now have a hh_portable.dll in your Media Jukebox\Plugins directory (from yesterday at 5:30). Run MJ and if you still see Calendars and Contacts. If you do, go to Start->Run and type the following and hit return (you may have to adjust the drive letter)....

regsvr32 "C:\Program Files\J River\Media Jukebox\Plugins\hh_portable.dll"

You should see a message that the file registered correctly. If so, then you should be all set.

In regards to the synch issue.....

Thanks for all the strong opinions. Please do not feel that is bad to express wishes/desires strongly. This is very helpful and not offensive at all. I only ask that when you do, keep in mind that if we decide to pursue a path other than what you want, it is not a statement that your opinion is stupid or ill informed. There are many reasons for choosing the paths that we do (i.e. looking at the MJ project as a whole and doing what is best for it), so try to respect that. In hindsight, I think that is why I snapped when we had the whole go round on formatting the folders like MusicMatch.

Anyway, your posts are pretty clear as to what might be best. Let me work with it and see what we can do.

As always thanks for the input.

Steve

Title: Re: iPod plug-in for Media Jukebox
Post by: JimH on October 23, 2002, 09:05:02 am

We made a small announcement about the iPod plug-in on the Apple board:

http://discussions.info.apple.com/WebX?14@105.kWXKayKtgww.2@.3bbb5ef6

Title: Re: iPod plug-in for Media Jukebox
Post by: jgourd on October 23, 2002, 09:22:11 am

Suggestion:

Currently, if I use the iPod Updater to reset the iPod back to factory condition, when I first re-connect it, MMJB launches and formats it. It will do this even if MMJB had the "auto launch when connect" feature disabled.

It would wonderful if MJ could register itself as the agent to auto launch and format the iPod.

Title: Re: iPod plug-in for Media Jukebox
Post by: SteveG on October 23, 2002, 09:23:32 am

The fix for the file deletion is posted.

I have a plan for synching, but it requires some changes that I do not think we will be willing to make in v 8. I am going to try to tackle integrating what we have so far in v9 where there is the ability to make more major changes such as the ones that must be made to accomodate this task.

Title: Re: iPod plug-in for Media Jukebox
Post by: Marc on October 23, 2002, 09:36:50 am

Quote

I third this - definately the best way in my opinion.

Steve,

Add me to the list of requesters with one addition:

I store almost all my audio files in lossless .ape format. I'm pretty sure there are others doing the same with FLAC. My playlists traverse .ape and .mp3 files seamlessly within MJ. When I want to load songs onto my iPod, I must first convert the files and download them to the iPod. It would be fantastic if your plugin could perform the following:

Check for .ape or FLAC files
Alert me. Pop up: Convert or skip download of incompatable files (conversion could take some time)?
Either run conversion engine and download, or skip

The cool part of this is the elimination of about 15 GB duplicate .mp3 files I keep around that have been downloaded to my iPod.

Just my $0.02. Thanks for all your hard work!

Marc

Title: Re: iPod plug-in for Media Jukebox
Post by: jgourd on October 23, 2002, 09:57:24 am

Bug:

I dowloaded last night's build a just got around to hooking up the iPod today. Prior to this I had used MJ to load 2063 files.

Today, I go to look at the iPod in MJ and there are no files listed. The status bar indicates 2063 files, all my playlists are there, but in the right pane of MJ, there are no actual songs listed.

I ran the "rebuild Database from Ipod" and that didn't help. It did however duplicate all my playlists so now I have two of each.

I ran the "Format for iPod". This took a long time during which time I was tempted to terminate MJ because I thought it had hung. I copied a single album to the iPod and once it was uploaded all the song disappeared. I finally figured out that I had previously set it to show only queued files. Setting it to display all file brought the files back. Although this was clearly my stupid human error, perhaps something on the status bar indicating how many are hidden would be apropriate.

I can't delete any files without formatting but I think someone already documented this.

Title: Re: iPod plug-in for Media Jukebox
Post by: SteveG on October 23, 2002, 10:31:31 am

Marc,

Have you explored the "Option" button under the "Upload" button. With this button you can set MJ to convert your files on the fly during copy to iPod. It deletes the converted files after the transfer so there is no wasted storage space. I think this is what you are after.

JGourd,

Can you get today's Plug-in to verify the deletion problem is fixed. Also, thanks for the bug report on the "rebuild database..". This is fixed and I just posted a new Plug-in that has that change.

In regards to the status bar notification, this will be implemented in v 9.

Title: Re: iPod plug-in for Media Jukebox
Post by: Kurt Young on October 23, 2002, 12:12:52 pm

Marc,

Aye, the "force convert" option works very well. However, it will convert everything you send, even if they're already mp3. In the future when all functionality is in place and there's time to just add polish, I wonder how hard would it be to change the "force convert" to "safety convert", converting files only if they're not already mp3, wav, or aiff.

Phil Lee,

I'm behind you on the multiple file thoughts. If playlist synching is implemented, and the same file is "called out" on, say, three different synching playlists, only one copy of the file itself should be sent to the iPod. However, the three playlists that the plugin would create on the iPod should all be populated.

Jgourd,

Try killing the ipodwatcher program or disabling the ipodsrv service (if you need help doing these just ask) and see if you experience the same problems with MMJB auto-launching when you attach. I agree it'd be cool if MJ could be made to auto-launch when you attach your iPod... even cooler if it could start synchronizing automatically when attached. I don't know much about Media Scheduler, but could it be somehow called upon to perform these functions?

Does anyone know how long it's expected to be until v9 can use handhelds again? I know that v9 is still preview and not the most stable testing environment, but I'd sure love not having to uninstall/reinstall all the time, :D Cheers guys!

Title: Re: iPod plug-in for Media Jukebox
Post by: jgourd on October 23, 2002, 12:37:46 pm

I got the new build. It appears that the deletion problem is fixed. I selected several files and deleted them. The problem I have is that the sort order reverted back to Name after the files were deleted.

In fact, there are a few things cause it to revert back to Name sort order: Deleting, Right-Click>Add To Playlist>Create new playlist, Rename anything.

Whenever the sort order changes, the length of the Name column reverts back to some outragous length which matches the longest Name ("Toccata (An Adaptation of Ginastera's 1st Piano Concerto, 4th Movement)"). Is there a rule I can change so that this doesn't happen? My screen is wider than most people's and after the Name column changes size, there is no room for any other columns until I resize the Name.

The Eject iPod doesn't actually eject it. It just allows the iPod to be ejected without quitting MJ.

If you drag a playlist onto a playlist, the song order is not preserved.

Title: Re: iPod plug-in for Media Jukebox
Post by: SteveG on October 23, 2002, 12:45:46 pm

I have to take off for the day.

JGourd, I will look at these issues tomorrow.

Kurt, I started working on getting basic functionality going in v 9 today. This is a high priority now because this is where we will do the work on getting sync to work.

Steve

Title: Re: iPod plug-in for Media Jukebox
Post by: jgourd on October 23, 2002, 12:51:43 pm

Duplicate Files resolution idea.

You can resolve the duplicate files issue quickly without taking a penalty in speed quite easily.

Before uploading, filter the list of files in the queue by executing a SQL query where you select from the "queue list" NOT IN the "already on the iPod list". (I suppose I could have actually written the SQ out for you but this is not the forum for that.) This will return a list of only those files that have to be trasfered. In the case where a play list will be affected simply add a pointer to the existing file to the affected playlist.

Title: Re: iPod plug-in for Media Jukebox
Post by: udeups on October 23, 2002, 01:59:01 pm

jgourd, would your proposed solution also include some method of detecting a change in a given file's properties? In essence, if I correct some tag info on a song in my library and want to update the iPod containing that song with the change, I want the duplicate filter to know that it shouldn't skip the updated file...

does that make sense?

Title: Re: iPod plug-in for Media Jukebox
Post by: jgourd on October 23, 2002, 02:08:42 pm

Yeah, just add a harddrive.date > ipod.date to the WHERE clause.

Title: Re: iPod plug-in for Media Jukebox
Post by: SteveG on October 24, 2002, 09:04:37 am

JGourd,

After file deletions, etc. MJ 8 will revert the file order to whatever your default is. Understandably, this is not ideal. I will improve this in v. 9.

Title: Re: iPod plug-in for Media Jukebox
Post by: SteveG on October 25, 2002, 12:34:03 pm

There is a new iPod Plug-in posted which should work for anyone who is running MJ version 9. There are still bugs to be worked on that I am aware of, so maybe hold off on posting cosmetic changes until I have some new features loaded in. Many of the features that you have requested cannot be included in MJ 8 because it would require reworking code that is already modified in v9. I will be concetrating on adding features to this version next.

So far, I have fixed the tree snapping shut when Playlists are added and deleted. I am still working on synchronization and that will be the next big item to be added.

Steve

Title: Re: iPod plug-in for Media Jukebox
Post by: DB7 on October 25, 2002, 05:54:10 pm

Help Please, I'm a new windows IPOD user:

I have the 20g version and running windows 2000 sp3. Didn't like the MMJB that came with IPOD, so I'm trying MJB trial version 8 with the IPOD plug in downloaded from this site. I'm having the following problems:

1. when I plug in the ipod, my system reboots. I don't think this is a MJB issue, but perhaps someone can enlighten me. This seemed to happen with MMJB also.

2. I was able to transfer some MP3's to the IPod with MMJB. However, now I can't seem to get MJB to recognize the IPOD on the file tree. I removed MMJB, installed MJB and then downloaded the IPOD plugin.

Suggestions will be appreciated. :)

Title: Re: iPod plug-in for Media Jukebox
Post by: Kurt Young on October 25, 2002, 07:37:30 pm

Every build gets better, man.

It works with MJ9! Sweet!

It also (mostly) works with XPlay - could use some polish. Playlist creation/population works, but also could use some polish.

One big concern is that the plugin allows multiple instances of the same song in the database. This causes crashes.

Here's Kurt's List (http://pimpin-seattle.d2g.com/images/mjipod/kurtslist.htm).

Cheers, dude, and I look forward to playlist synching!

Title: Re: iPod plug-in for Media Jukebox
Post by: SteveG on October 27, 2002, 11:07:49 am

DB7,

MusicMatch causes all kinds of havoc on my system as well. When MusicMatch installs, it tries to take control of the iPod at the driver level. For example, if you install MusicMatch and then try to get to the iPod from Windows (i.e. from "My Computer") the player will disconnect. If you click on the iPod in MusicMatch, you should be able to select an option for it to not take control of your iPod when you connect. Definitely select this if you are going to try us out. Another option is to rename the iPod folder in Windows which gets created by MusicMatch, this seems to keep MusicMatch out of interfering too much.

Our plug-in is still a work in progress. You should be able to format your iPod and get files to and from your iPod well with what we have. Playlist synching is on its way. Try checking back midweek for added features.

Steve

Title: Re: iPod plug-in for Media Jukebox
Post by: ashawley on October 28, 2002, 12:51:01 pm

Hey Steve, great work so far. Just got back from a week in Hawaii and missed all the fun here, but I'm glad to see the progress.

Just wanted to add my 2 cents regarding the synching options. I totally agree with Kurt's suggestion about how to handle synching. I would just want to make sure that not only playlists could be selected to be synched, but Artists/Albums as well.

I myself don't use Playlists that much but I do have more music than will fit on my iPod, so I'd like to be able to navigate my MJ library and select which Artists/Albums should be synched

Hope that makes sense. So like Kurt's tree that he proposed, you'd have a tree of your Artists, which you could put a checkmark next to to synch all albums for that artist. If you chose NOT to select all albums for that artist, you could expand the artist icon, and select from their Albums that you would like synched. Further more, you could even go so far as to allow the Albums to be expanded to select individual songs to be synched.

I'll create a mock up of what I'm talking about, but I think you get the idea.

Aloha!

Adam

Title: Re: iPod plug-in for Media Jukebox
Post by: SteveG on October 28, 2002, 01:30:19 pm

Kurt,

Thanks for the list, I am working on it.

Adam,

Aloha indeed (it snowed here last week >:()

I follow your suggestion, thanks. I am working out other bugs first and then will start on this.

Steve

Title: Re: iPod plug-in for Media Jukebox
Post by: ashawley on October 28, 2002, 06:32:24 pm

Steve:

Don't know rightly what this is, but I'm getting it on some songs when I try to upload. It's a warning message that states the file I'm trying to copy has some information that might be lost but that the contents of the file won't be changed. Then it lists the information that will be lost:

"Macintosh Application Info"
"Macintosh Multimedia Resources"

What is this? I can't see anything wierd in the tags. Also, since it happens on a number of songs, it makes uploading a large number of tunes a real problem. If I don't care about it a "yes to all" checkbox would be nice.

Oh, I'm using the newest version of the plugin w/MJ 9

Adam (S)

Title: Re: iPod plug-in for Media Jukebox
Post by: jgourd on October 29, 2002, 12:41:58 am

I am using the build dated the 25th. I uploaded about 12 gig to the iPod and took on vacation.

When I returned from vacation, I connected iPod and MJ crashed the same way it has since the beginning of the iPod Plug-in development.

Title: Re: iPod plug-in for Media Jukebox
Post by: SteveG on October 29, 2002, 06:58:57 am

Adam,

I don't know what that is. Could you email me one of the files that reports this and I will test it here. (steve @ jriver.com)

JGourd,

Not sure. It sounds like the Database file got corrupted. Did it crash immediately when you connected it? Can you give any more details about how it crashed?

Title: Re: iPod plug-in for Media Jukebox
Post by: jgourd on October 29, 2002, 09:23:18 am

MJ crashed as soon as I clicked on the root icon of the iPod. I have sent you diagnostic info and traces previously.

This seems to happen very regularly when the iPod is almost full.

20Gig unit.

Title: Re: iPod plug-in for Media Jukebox
Post by: udeups on October 29, 2002, 09:31:15 am

I have noticed the exact same symptoms as jgourd on my 20GB iPod. It doesn't matter whether the iPod has been loaded by MJ or Ephpod, if it's almost full (17 gigs in my case), MJ crashes every time I click on the iPod root directory to expand it.

Title: Re: iPod plug-in for Media Jukebox
Post by: jgourd on October 29, 2002, 09:37:40 am

Thank god it is not just me ;D

Title: Re: iPod plug-in for Media Jukebox
Post by: SteveG on October 29, 2002, 09:46:51 am

udeups,

When doing your testing, does Ephod not have any problem displaying/playling more than 17 gigs?

Title: Re: iPod plug-in for Media Jukebox
Post by: jgourd on October 29, 2002, 09:57:12 am

Not using Ephpod. MMJB has no problem though.

Title: Re: iPod plug-in for Media Jukebox
Post by: udeups on October 29, 2002, 10:05:45 am

Quote

udeups,

When doing your testing, does Ephod not have any problem displaying/playling more than 17 gigs?

Correct; Ephpod doesn't have a problem displaying all 17 gigs. I will rerun some of these tests with a little more documentation when I get home today. Here's what I did over the weekend with the latest build of the plugin: Loaded about 17 gigs with MJ. Close MJ. Open Ephpod. Displays fine. Do a sync with Ephpod to get some news feed downloads, etc... nothing major. Close Ephpod, reopen MJ. Click on iPod root/E: drive icon in MJ. Get error (sorry, can't remember the exact wording, but I think it's a standard Windows one). MJ (v. 8, latest build) crashes.

I know this isn't as stringent a test as would be useful for true debugging, so, as I said, I'll work with it a little more and document my process better.

Thanks again for all your work. I will try to play around with v. 9 to see if this process happens there too.

Paul

Title: Re: iPod plug-in for Media Jukebox
Post by: jgourd on October 29, 2002, 11:32:35 am

I have Vidual Studio and can run stuff in the debugger if you want me to.

Title: Re: iPod plug-in for Media Jukebox
Post by: SteveG on October 29, 2002, 01:50:27 pm

Hello Everyone,

I have just posted a new Plug-in for testing. It includes..

1) Improved "Eject". Ipod should now be removed from MJ, unmount still is not implemented.

2) Improved formatting. Whenever MJ connects to iPod, it will create any folders that do not exist and create a Database file if it is not present.

3) Improved handling of duplicate files. In the new Plug-in, files are sent to random folders. If a duplicate exists, the user is given the option of modifying the filename or selecting a different folder.

I have not tested these extensively, so if you aren't in the mood for potential bugs, don't download. But,as always feedback is a great thing.

JGourd and udeps, let me attack this tomorrow, thanks for your offers to help debug.

Have a good night.

Steve

Title: Re: iPod plug-in for Media Jukebox
Post by: TimB on October 29, 2002, 02:49:18 pm

Quote

\

3) Improved handling of duplicate files. In the new Plug-in, files are sent to random folders. If a duplicate exists, the user is given the option of modifying the filename or selecting a different folder.\

Cool to see all the progress on the iPod plugin.

Steve just a thought.

To keep user intervention to a minimum would it make sense to only prompt if there's no folder to put the file in that wouldn't result in a duplicate? ie check all the folders and then send the question. I don't think most users are even aware of the foldering in iPods so a message might confuse them.

:)

-=Tim=-

Title: Re: iPod plug-in for Media Jukebox
Post by: jgourd on October 29, 2002, 02:56:13 pm

The real trick is to avoid dupes all together and simply update playlists when apropriate.

Title: Re: iPod plug-in for Media Jukebox
Post by: willrmc on October 29, 2002, 04:10:21 pm

ok, i finally got to testing the plugin again and here are my results.

i made 2 test playlists with several albums that were in both playlists. then i sent them to the ipod to see what happened.

it ended up duplicating the songs instead of putting it on once and pointing to it twice like ephpod does. so if i went to the artist/album on the ipod it listed every song twice. im not sure what ephpod does but even if you try manually adding an album that is already on the ipod, it checks and finds it and does not duplicate it.

also when you add a playlist, it puts the songs on but does not add it to the ipods playlists unless you specifically create a playlist on the ipod and then drag the playlist on to it.

and i was having the same problem as other people in mj crashing when i click on the root, but it happened with a full and empty ipod alike, i went and added more songs from ephpod then relaunched mj8 and finally it worked.

hope this helps, thanks again
-willie

Title: Re: iPod plug-in for Media Jukebox
Post by: ashawley on October 29, 2002, 05:45:07 pm

Steve:

I'll send you a sample file that was causing the wierd "Macintosh" errors I mentioned previously. Also, I'm going to send you a log file that Windows is generating each time I try to access the route of my iPod. I'm getting a crash everytime. I'm running version 9 on an ipod formatted with ephpod. Hopefully the log file will help.

Adam

Title: Re: iPod plug-in for Media Jukebox
Post by: jgourd on October 30, 2002, 01:10:34 am

Bad News and Worse News:

First the Bad News: If I fill the iPod with just 10gig worth of files, MJ crashes when I click on the root icon.

Now the Worse News: Using the new and improved eject function causes one of the most devastating system crashes I have ever seen. Each and every running proccess in the task list crashes and pops up a warning dialog. Eventually after clicking "OK" or "Don't Submit Error Report", XP Blue Screens on me. At this point I can't even reboot until I power the machine off for a few seconds. It will happen when there is only one or one hundred albums on the iPod. :'(

Title: Re: iPod plug-in for Media Jukebox
Post by: jgourd on October 30, 2002, 02:44:21 am

New Wrinkle :P

I reformatted the iPod with MJ. I transfered about 8 gigs of music to it. I exited MJ and restarted it. I clicked the root of the iPod and nothing happened. I looked at he Media Library and then clicked on the iPod root again. This time the iPod was't recognised as an iPod and all I could see was the calander and contact stuff.

At no time did I dismount the iPod. All I did was exit and restart MJ.

I then dismounted the iPod and remounted it. This time MJ crashed when I clicked on the root icon.

I then deleted the "iTunesDB" file. MJ no longer crashes.

I used the "Rebuild database from iPod" menu item but it did nothing.

Title: Re: iPod plug-in for Media Jukebox
Post by: SteveG on October 30, 2002, 01:30:00 pm

Hello Everyone,

A new build with the following features..

1) Modifications to duplicate file handling. I have had conflicting suggestions regarding how to handle
duplicate files. What I have implemented is a compromise. With each upload, MJ will check to see if the file already exists anywhere on iPod. If a duplicate is discovered, the user will be prompted to either
allow the transfer or not. This selection can be applied for all subsequent transfers so it will not need
to be selected over and over. If the user selects to enable duplicate transfers, I also verify that the
random folder does not already have the duplicate file. If so, the user has the option of either renaming the
file at the point of the transfer, or to let the file go as is. This can be tweaked more, but I think this
will get most requests accomplished.

2) Fixed tree collapse for playlists in version 9. A new build of 9 must be made before this is available.

TimB ... I hope this incorporates what you requested.

In regards to Adam's problem.... Adam sent me this file and I could not duplicate the problem. If anyone else sees this error, please chime in.

JGourd sent his Database file and I could not duplicate his problem on 2000 or XP. My best guess is that it is a conflict with MusicMatch which I have disabled and he has installed. I duplicated the eject problem on XP ( not on 2000) although it was not as catastrophic as JGourd saw, I just needed to reboot. I have removed this option until I fgure out what is going on.

For future problems, JGourd's idea of emailing the iTunesDB file is an excellent one. With this file I can attempt to duplicate most issues which should speed debugging. Please feel free to email me this file with a bug report.

WillRMC.. The latest version should hopefully improve the handling of duplicate files.

FOR EVERYONE..... Playlist ordering works, but is arguably a little akward. To transfer an ordered playlist, create a playlist on iPod from MJ, drop your MJ playlist on this playlist and then before upload, right click on the root and select "Show queued files only" Now the files are ordered and the order will be rememberd on upload. The trick is to remember that after the upload finishes to go back to the root and reselect "Show all files". Sorry it is complicated, I will improve tomorrow.

Thanks,
Steve

Title: Re: iPod plug-in for Media Jukebox
Post by: Kurt Young on October 30, 2002, 02:50:43 pm

Hey all, I wanted to take a second and draw a distinction between duplicate files and duplicate songs. I know that y'all know this already, but it makes me feel comfortable, at this stage in the game, to draw attention to these equally important but functionally different issues.

Duplicate files == two actual files with the same filename. This, in my opinion, is okay. Some folks have files with the same names, and that shouldn't be a problem. Like, maybe some guy has all his music in subfolders, and wants to transfer two files named "Pearl Jam - 01.mp3" -- they're different songs, but they've got the same filename.

The issue with duplicate files is, of course, overwriting one another. Overwriting a file when a duplicate is found isn't a good idea at all... you'd end up with multiple songs in the iPod's database pointing at the same file, which may or may not be correct. Ephpod solves this by dynamically renaming every file as it copies it to the iPod (2001.mp3, 2002.mp3, etc), but I rather think that leaving the filenames as unchanged as possible is a worthwhile goal.

Bottom line on duplicate files: It should be okay for me to have multiple "pearl jam - 01.mp3" files on my iPod's hard drive. The trick is making sure that there's only one per \F* directory.

Solutions: If a file is being copied into a directory where a file already exists with the same filename, you could...
- automatically try a different folder,
- generate an empty folder, like \F24, and copy it there,
- modify the new file's filename, like add a .00001 or .00002 before the .mp3 ("Pearl Jam - 01.00001.mp3", "Pearl Jam - 01.00002.mp3" hehe)

Keep these solutions as invisible to the user as possible. Not everyone's a power user, they just want their tunes on their iPod.

Duplicate songs == two identical entries in the iPod's database. I'm talking about two entries in the database that have every tag in common... same artist, same album, same track#, same genre, same composer, and same title. This also causes the iPod's display screen to show two instances of the song, and could cause general yuckiness in the MJ plugin. It doesn't matter what file the songs are pointing at, this shouldn't be allowed to happen.

This would most likely be caused by uploading two playlists that both call out the same song; an instance gets created in the database for every time it's found on a playlist. Naturally, I want the song to show up in both playlists, but if I surf to the album that the song is on, I don't want to see it twice.

Bottom line on dupliate songs: Somehow implement a safety net that checks for and prevents duplicate songs.

Solutions:
- If a record (song) is being created in the database that is identical to a record that already exists, prevent it from being created and prevent file transfer of the file that it's linked to.
- If the same song is called out on multiple playlists, make sure that each playlist is pointing to the same record (song) in the database... don't let each playlist try to create its own record. (Did that make sense at all?)

Cheers guys, thanks for letting me talk.

Title: Re: iPod plug-in for Media Jukebox
Post by: TimB on October 30, 2002, 03:29:05 pm

I had ceased to beta test early in the test as my iPod became very disturbed.

I've since discovered that there might be something wrong with my iPod as it sticks on the Firewire icon on the iPod screen so it looks as if it was an iPod issue rather than a beta one.

I know this wasn't keeping anyone up at nights (except maybe me) but wanted to let folks know.

:)

-=Tim=-

Title: Re: iPod plug-in for Media Jukebox
Post by: JimH on October 30, 2002, 03:35:11 pm

Hi Tim,
I don't know whether you're running XP or not, but I saw this thread on Apple's board today and thought it was really interesting:

http://discussions.info.apple.com/WebX?50@21.b3VYavdddOu.0@.3bbb9b23

Something is clearly a problem with iPod and firewire and it would not be surprising if it's Windows related.

Jim

Title: Re: iPod plug-in for Media Jukebox
Post by: TimB on October 30, 2002, 04:54:48 pm

Quote

Hi Tim,
I don't know whether you're running XP or not, but I saw this thread on Apple's board today and thought it was really interesting:

http://discussions.info.apple.com/WebX?50@21.b3VYavdddOu.0@.3bbb9b23

Something is clearly a problem with iPod and firewire and it would not be surprising if it's Windows related.

Jim

I am using XP, I'll try this tomorrow am and report in.

Thanks Jim!

-=Tim=-

Title: Re: iPod plug-in for Media Jukebox
Post by: jgourd on October 30, 2002, 05:25:06 pm

I tried the new build. Since my iPod has 15 gig on it, just trying to look at the iPod in MJ caused MJ to crash and burn. I emailed Steve my iTunes DB so hopefully he can sort this out.

Although MMJB is installed, I have renamed its folder so that it can't be found.

As far as the new dupe control is concerned, the development is going in the wrong direction. Here is how I would do it:

1.) Always append some form of timestamp to every file's name so that there is never a duplicated filename.

2.) If the song being uploaded is a dupe (all tags the same and / or the full pathname to the source file is the same) then don't upload it. All you need to do is add a pointer to the playlist to the existing file on the iPod. You can check for dupes by building a simple in-memory database and weeding out the dupes before ever copying a single file.

Title: Re: iPod plug-in for Media Jukebox
Post by: willrmc on October 30, 2002, 06:53:09 pm

ok, i installed the new plugin and tested it with my same test as yesterday. which is put 2 separate playlists on, with several albums appearing in both playlists. this time i manually added the playlists on the ipod and dragged the mj playlists to each one. then i went to upload and it and went through and uploaded all of the songs, then when it came to the second playlist it asked me whether i wanted to put duplicate files on the ipod (which i didn't of course) but then when it was over i went to the playlists and found the second one had none of the dupe songs. so what we need to happen is have it not upload the song a second time, but then point the playlist to the file already on the ipod. i think jgourd and kurt are right on track with their last posts. but the plugin keeps getting closer and closer, and i can't wait to have it fully functional and updating the playcounts for smart playlists (i'm getting a little ahead of myself, i know). thanks again!
--

Title: Re: iPod plug-in for Media Jukebox
Post by: jgourd on October 31, 2002, 12:44:55 am

I found a registry key that seems to point to the MMJB launcher app when the iPod is connected. Could those who use Ephpod and those who use MMJB plaease look at this registry key and tell me which file it points to?

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00 [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Apple Computer, Inc.\iPod\iPodMusicManager] "MusicManagerPath"=hex:44,00,3a,00,5c,00,50,00,72,00,6f,00,67,00,72,00,61,00,\ 6d,00,20,00,46,00,69,00,6c,00,65,00,73,00,5c,00,4d,00,55,00,53,00,49,00,43,\ 00,4d,00,41,00,54,00,43,00,48,00,5c,00,4d,00,55,00,53,00,49,00,43,00,4d,00,\ 41,00,54,00,43,00,48,00,20,00,4a,00,75,00,6b,00,65,00,62,00,6f,00,78,00,5c,\ 00,4d,00,4d,00,4a,00,42,00,4c,00,61,00,75,00,6e,00,63,00,68,00,2e,00,65,00,\ 78,00,65,00,20,00,41,00,75,00,74,00,6f,00,53,00,79,00,6e,00,63,00,00,00

This is a hex representation of "D:\Program Files\MUSICMATCH\MusicMatch Jukebox\MMJBLaunch.exe AutoSync"

Thanks,
Jonathan

Title: Re: iPod plug-in for Media Jukebox
Post by: mclaugh on October 31, 2002, 04:34:39 am

IIRC from the EphPod boards, the way that they check for duplicates is by file size. Thus, you could potentially have the same song encoded at 128 and 192, given different ephpod numbers (2013 and 3123, or something), and both stored on the Ipod.

In general, is there a specific reason why Joe Freshman isn't involved with programming this plugin? His work on EphPod has been amazing, and I've seen him recommend MJB to more than one person on the ephpod list looking to organize their music collection. He might be able to offer some insight on the multiple file sync issue.

Title: Re: iPod plug-in for Media Jukebox
Post by: TimB on October 31, 2002, 10:50:04 am

Quote

Hi Tim,
I don't know whether you're running XP or not, but I saw this thread on Apple's board today and thought it was really interesting:

http://discussions.info.apple.com/WebX?50@21.b3VYavdddOu.0@.3bbb9b23

Something is clearly a problem with iPod and firewire and it would not be surprising if it's Windows related.

Jim

Tried this and alas it didn't work but thanks for the help (and also for the posting on Apple's iPod Forum, what a guy!)

:)

-=Tim=-

Title: Re: iPod plug-in for Media Jukebox
Post by: SteveG on October 31, 2002, 02:35:39 pm

Hello Again,

New build today.

Updated file duplication handling and added an overwrite option. Fixed some bugs.

I appreciate all the feedback on file duplication. Here is the deal. I follow the different suggestions (which sometimes are at odds with each other) but have implemented a solution which I think solves most requests AND is compatible with the way MJ is designed to interact with Plug-ins. This last sentence is the main reason why not everything is possible without major overhauling. My goal is to implement as much as possible with as little major gut wrenching of MJ.

With this in mind, please use the options for "Overwrite and Don't Send Duplicates" and offer hypothetical situations of how these do not get you where you need to go. A simple "I would like to do this but can't.." would be amazingly helpful. Some of it may be accomplished with a better understanding of how this works and some may need to be worked on.

Let me make the following suggestion. Either drag your files to the root of iPod and then add to playlists from within iPod, or Drag playlists directly onto playlists.

mcLaugh, I have talked with Joe Freshman. He knows iPod but does not have access to or knowledge of the guts of MJ. By his suggestion we are not naming the files 2001,2002 etc and storing in one folder as is the case in Ephpod. This general info is a help.

More tomorrow....

Title: Re: iPod plug-in for Media Jukebox
Post by: jgourd on October 31, 2002, 04:13:15 pm

I just tried an experiment. Steve was commenting that he can't get MJ to crash when the iPod is over 10gigs full. He suggested to me that the mere presence of MMJB could be a source of my crashes.

In my experiment, I took a new Windows XP installation that only had MJ installed. I took a fresh Factory Reset iPod and it mounted as an external hard disc. I then uploaded about 13gig of music. I exited MJ and restarted it. When clicking on the root icon of the iPod in MJ, MJ crashed.

My conclusion is that neither MMJB or IpodSrvc.exe have anything to do with the crashing.

I can tell you that there are two symptoms that go hand in hand. When the iPod has a lot of songs, clicking on the root of the iPod will either crash MJ or it will just show "Calendars", "Contacts", or "mjdb" sub folders.

Since I have been able to reproduce the crashing on two machines now (both XP), I think it is safe to say that the problem doesn't have anything to do with my particluar software environment.

Title: Re: iPod plug-in for Media Jukebox
Post by: jgourd on October 31, 2002, 04:40:47 pm

Halloween Build:

I was copying a whole bunch of files and got the dupes dialog. I accepted the defaults and hit OK. The upload aborted after that and of the 576 songs selected to upload, only 384 made it.

I do not know is this is intentional or not but if I copy files to a playlist and subsequntly use the "Send To > Device H:" context menu item on an albm icon, it sends it the previously selected playlist.

Title: Re: iPod plug-in for Media Jukebox
Post by: mclaugh on October 31, 2002, 05:23:10 pm

Thank you for your reply.
Now, to answer your question, let me explain what my typical usage is, and how the duplicate file thing can be annoying (I apologize in advance if this gets long).

I own over a thousand CDs, I have about 80 gigs of music on my hard drive. I generally fill up my ipod by dragging over entire albums, or an entire artist's folder. Additionally, I have mix cd's I've burned (pre ipod) that I've ripped, and put them on. Those CDs contain songs that are usually already on the Ipod- for me, I want the playlist to go on there, and grab those same songs.
If you go by the Apple marketing stuff, you can store anywhere from 1000 to 4000 mp3s on your Ipod, depending on its capacity. Anyone that has enough music to fill an Ipod probably is serious enough about music not to want to have a song appearing twice, and taking up valuable room.
Does that help?

Title: Re: iPod plug-in for Media Jukebox
Post by: willrmc on October 31, 2002, 06:57:36 pm

with the new build i copied some songs on then tried putting mj playlists that had some of the same songs and anything that was on the ipod already did not show up on the playlist. but there were no duplicates anymore so that is good.
anyway this is how i plan to use my ipod. i typically will have all of a favorite artists complete albums on the ipod so i can listen to them in the original order. but then i make long playlists that are a mix of all of my favorite songs mixed together. so lets say i download all of the beatles albums to my ipod. then i also have strawberry fields, help, yesterday, hey jude, etc. among my "favorite songs" playlist. right now with the beatles albums already on my ipod, when i try to drag my favorite songs playlist into an ipod playlist, any song that is already on the ipod (i.e. strawberry fields, help, yesterday, hey jude) will be excluded from the playlist i create.
right now i just export all of my playlists as m3u from mj to a folder and have ephpod sync with that folder, when it sees that the song is already on the ipod elsewhere, it just adds the song to the playlist w/o recopying the song. hope this is the kind of info you're looking for. thanks
-willie

Title: Re: iPod plug-in for Media Jukebox
Post by: ashawley on October 31, 2002, 07:29:51 pm

OK Steve, I've got lots of info for you tonight (too much Halloween Wine I guess) :)

I've been able to duplicate and prevent the crashes when accessing the root of the iPod. Here's what I did:

If I click the "+" sign next to the "CD/DVD & Handhelds" item and then click the iPod, I get a crash every time.

If I DON'T click the "+" sign, but click the "CD/DVD & Handhelds" item itself, and THEN click the iPod, I have no problem. The "Analyzing Devices" and "Gathering Information & Updating View" dialogs come up and then the iPod has a nice "+" sign next to it when I click on it.

Bottom line, it has something to do with the "Analyzing Devices and Updating View" function. I don't think that is kicked off unless you first select the "CD/DVD & Handhelds" item (man I'm getting tired of typing that) :)

OK, now that I don't have the crashes, or at least can prevent them, I've run into another problem. If I upload songs to my iPod, I don't see them in the view window. No matter what I upload. The Artist/Album/Genre show up correctly in the left-frame, but when I select an album, no songs show up in the right-pane. Strange...I didn't see this under MJ 8

Also, I've been e-mailing you regarding that strange "Macintosh" error I've been getting. Well, I restored my iPod tonight (using Apple's 1.2.1 updater) and now I don't have the problem. I even connected to ephpod (it built the "mac" file btw) and then reconnected to MJ and uploaded files again and still no problem. That's strange because I've been using the 1.2.1 firmware since Apple released it for windows (actually before that, but when they came out w/it I restored again). So, while I don't think that's the root of the problem, restoring somehow fixed my problem.

Guess we'll have to chalk that one up to...well, "ghosts in the machine"

If I can duplicate it, I'll let you know, but for now, forget about it.

Let me know if you need more info.

Adam

Title: Re: iPod plug-in for Media Jukebox
Post by: jgourd on November 01, 2002, 01:33:22 am

Quote

I've been able to duplicate and prevent the crashes when accessing the root of the iPod. Here's what I did:

If I click the "+" sign next to the "CD/DVD & Handhelds" item and then click the iPod, I get a crash every time.

If I DON'T click the "+" sign, but click the "CD/DVD & Handhelds" item itself, and THEN click the iPod, I have no problem. The "Analyzing Devices" and "Gathering Information & Updating View" dialogs come up and then the iPod has a nice "+" sign next to it when I click on it.

I have verified this to be the case on my machine as well.

Title: Re: iPod plug-in for Media Jukebox
Post by: jgourd on November 01, 2002, 02:54:49 am

Here is a fun bug: If you choose to overwirght dupes, your playlists disappear and no new files appear on the iPod.

This is a DB issue I am sure. Here are the details to re-create:
1.) Create two playlists on the iPod
2.) Fill one playlist with a few songs and upload.
3.) Fill the other playlist with a few songs but make sure some of them are the same songs as the first playlist. Upload.
4.) When the dupe file dialog pops up set it up to over-write the dupes.
5.) Click OK and take note of the files that are uploaded from this point on.
5.) Disconnect iPod
6.) Verify that the playlists as displayed on the iPod itself are missing.
7.) Verify that the files copied after you OK'ed the dupe resolution are not on the iPod.
8.) Connect the iPod and verify that everything still looks OK in MJ.

I have been able to reproduce this using these steps every time.

Here is sonething else I just observed:

You cannot drag files already on the iPod to a playlist on the iPod.

If you choose not to over-write existing files, the playlist you were copying into never receives the songs.

Title: Re: iPod plug-in for Media Jukebox
Post by: jgourd on November 01, 2002, 04:24:46 am

This may or may not have anything to do with the MJ plug-in.

If you go to the "About" page on the iPod, if always shows 15 gig free no matter how much is on it.

Title: Re: iPod plug-in for Media Jukebox
Post by: DB7 on November 01, 2002, 06:47:57 am

Stupid question:

I've loaded the Ipod Plug in and I get the hand held drive letter that I think designates the Ipod.

I drag MP3 files I'm interested in copying to to IPOD drive. The IPOD window shows files in Que......(in MMJB it usally starts the copying process at this Point), but nothing happens. Is there another step I'm missing?

I also noticed I don't have the ipod eject selection when I right click on the ipod drive. I remember it being there before......

I still have MMJB loaded, should I uninstall it?

Suggestions please, thanks

Title: Re: iPod plug-in for Media Jukebox
Post by: ashawley on November 01, 2002, 07:48:03 am

DB7:

Once you're files are in Queue, you need to click the "upload files" button to get them on the iPod.

Regarding the Eject feature. I believe Steve took that off in the most recent build because it was causing problems and he wanted to get it fixed before he put it back.

Adam

Title: Re: iPod plug-in for Media Jukebox
Post by: TimB on November 01, 2002, 10:19:48 am

Quote

I've been able to duplicate and prevent the crashes when accessing the root of the iPod. Here's what I did:

If I click the "+" sign next to the "CD/DVD & Handhelds" item and then click the iPod, I get a crash every time.

If I DON'T click the "+" sign, but click the "CD/DVD & Handhelds" item itself, and THEN click the iPod, I have no problem. The "Analyzing Devices" and "Gathering Information & Updating View" dialogs come up and then the iPod has a nice "+" sign next to it when I click on it.

Bottom line, it has something to do with the "Analyzing Devices and Updating View" function. I don't think that is kicked off unless you first select the "CD/DVD & Handhelds" item (man I'm getting tired of typing that) :)

I'm up and running again. :)

I'm getting a similar problem with instant MJ9 crashes but for me its when I try to open the E: directory (where my iPod lives.) This literally just started it was fine before.

-=Tim=-

Title: Re: iPod plug-in for Media Jukebox
Post by: TimB on November 01, 2002, 10:43:49 am

Quote

I'm getting a similar problem with instant MJ9 crashes but for me its when I try to open the E: directory (where my iPod lives.) This literally just started it was fine before.

-=Tim=-

OK...

quit and started MJ9 - same problem
rebooted PC - same problem
reinstalled MJ9 and plugin - same problem
Ran ephpod and added some files went back in MJ9 - problem goes away

weird eh?

-=Tim=-

Title: Re: iPod plug-in for Media Jukebox
Post by: SteveG on November 01, 2002, 01:35:40 pm

Hello Everyone,

A new build...

1) Modified "Overwrite Files" duplicate selection to preserve Playlist data. For example, if you have file
a.mp3 in playlist "One". You Upload file a.mp3 again to Playlist "Two". If you select "Overwrite" you
will have one copy a.mp3 on your iPod and it will be in Playlist One and Two.

Also, some people sent DB files that would crash. These would crash because they were defective. I have added a safeguard that prevents MJ from crashing in this instance. The bad news is, you will need to reformat. I will work next week on providing a way to rebuild a database file from a corrupted iPod. It is not hard from the Plug-ins perspective, but implementing it with MJ is tricky.

For everyone running v9, there is a problem in MJ that is causing the crash when expanding the tree. I am unable to get the fix to it out to you until the next build of 9. Sorry.

In regards to these issues from JGourd

1)You cannot drag files already on the iPod to a playlist on the iPod.

---- This is by current v 8 design. Hopefully improved in v9

If you choose not to over-write existing files, the playlist you were copying into never receives the songs.

--This is modified in today's build

Everyone - If you want to always have no duplicate files on your iPod, but multiple instances of the file in different playlists, simply check the box to overwrite duplicates and MJ will take care of the rest.

Have a good weekend.

Steve

Title: Re: iPod plug-in for Media Jukebox
Post by: jgourd on November 02, 2002, 08:30:41 am

New bug:

You can cause a crash in MJ by clicking on a playlist other than the first one created when you delete the files from the root. To demostrate:

1) Format iPod with MJ.
2) Create two playlists: "One" & "Two".
3) Copy Songs "A" & "B" to playlist "One".
4) Copy Songs "C" & "D" to playlist "Two".
5) Upload.
6) Verify the iPod's playlists are OK and what you expect them to be.
7) Go to the root of the iPod and delete all three files.
8) Click on Playlist "Two", verify that MJ Crashes.

If you make more than two playlists then the only one you can click on is the first one created.

The Overwrite dupe handling fix works fine when I only have a few files in my test. When I have several gigs in the test I usually end up with no playlists on the iPod when disconnect from the computer.

Title: Re: iPod plug-in for Media Jukebox
Post by: Phil Lee on November 04, 2002, 02:26:56 am

Unfortunately MJ started crashing on me for the first time today.

I had to do a reinstall of XP over the weekend so reinstalled MJ and downloaded the latest plugin. On Saturday I was able to see the contents of my iPod in MJ.

This morning I wanted to upload a new album to my iPod. When I clicked on the + to expand the Handhelds folder I could see H:, my iPod, but there was no + next to it. When I clicked on H:, MJ crashed. I didn't have time to do any further investigation.

Title: Re: iPod plug-in for Media Jukebox
Post by: jgourd on November 04, 2002, 03:36:55 am

Steve indicated that we would have to reformat in order to prevent future crashes. You can stop the crash in order to reformat by using the Windows Explorer to browse the iPod and delete the iTunes Database files.

When the DB has been deleted, MJ will stop crashing so you can use the MJ option to format it.

Mine has been behaving well over the weekend. I have been conservative with my testing so far. I have not created any playlists yet after confirming the the overwrite bug is fixed.

Title: Re: iPod plug-in for Media Jukebox
Post by: jgourd on November 04, 2002, 03:46:52 am

I found a new way to make MJ crash with the iPod. This is similar to the clicking on the root. To reproduce:

1 ) Start MJ. Verify that the playing now or home page is showing. If the iPod is showing, go to the playing now page, quit and restart MJ.
2 ) At the top of the folder tree in MJ select the iPod as the target device.
3 ) Click the little red and white traget to select the iPod.
4 ) Verify that MJ crashes.

Note, if I use the method where I click on the "CD, DVD, & Handhelds" icon and use the keyboard to get to the root of the iPod, there is no crash.

Title: Re: iPod plug-in for Media Jukebox
Post by: SteveG on November 04, 2002, 06:12:34 am

For everyone running MJ v9 who is having crashing problems when expanding the "CD DVD and Handhelds" icon, there was a bug introduced in the cdwriter.ocx that was distributed last week. This is now fixed and will be resolved with the next build of v9.

Thanks,

Steve

Title: Re: iPod plug-in for Media Jukebox
Post by: SteveG on November 05, 2002, 10:36:59 am

Hello Everyone,

I have just posted a new build. I am going to close this thread and start a new one.

Steve