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More => Old Versions => JRiver Media Center 20 for Linux => Topic started by: Robert Joe on August 06, 2014, 07:45:17 pm

Title: Will sync to iPod Classic work?
Post by: Robert Joe on August 06, 2014, 07:45:17 pm
I tested the sync to folder with conversion to Apple Lossless and it works great!

Will syncing to the unencrypted iPod Classic work?
That would be sweet I could eliminate Windows and iTunes for Music.
If so, I will go out and buy an iPod Classic.
Title: Re: Will sync to iPod Classic work?
Post by: bob on August 08, 2014, 11:42:07 am
I tested the sync to folder with conversion to Apple Lossless and it works great!

Will syncing to the unencrypted iPod Classic work?
That would be sweet I could eliminate Windows and iTunes for Music.
If so, I will go out and buy an iPod Classic.

I think it's possible that it might be made to work if it was mounted as a usb storage device.
We don't have any device detection for that on linux yet.
It's a work in progress on the Mac and much of the time that code can be re-used on Linux however scanning devices is one that will have to be re-written.
Title: Re: Will sync to iPod Classic work?
Post by: Robert Joe on August 14, 2014, 07:23:49 pm
iPod support does exist under Liinux and I have listed some links below if anyone is interested.

I was able to plug in my iPod 2nd Gen and Linux automatically mounted it. The filesystem is browsable but it is encrypted so your files are named something like AUNG.ma4. You cannot copy files directly to the mounted path.

I do not know how it would work with the latest generation iPods given that Apple changed the encryption. There is a URL below from 2009 where the latest iPod Classic did not work. But who knows maybe it is fixed today.

There are Music players that do sync to the iPod and I believe they all use the same underlying libraries. I tried Banshee. Music would sync but Playlists has a quirk where you it would only sync songs in the Playlist that belonged to the album of the first song. Syncing was also very slow. One Album took 5 mins. The same Album in iTunes took 50 seconds. It is too slow to be practical.

I did not test other players to see if they had the same limitations as Banshee because I want to use JRiver. So I have gone back to the bullet proof, future proof solution. That is JRiver sync to a Folder. Run iTunes in a VM . To make sure iTunes does not "trash" my Windows-7 VM, I simply copied the VM and that is now my iTunes VM.

As you all know iTunes is crap. iTunes 11 is worse than crap so my advice is to stick to iTunes 10 and never upgrade to iTunes 11. It's Apple trying to dumb down apps and remove features so they look and feel the same on PC, iPad, iPhone.

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/PortableDevices/iPod

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/IPod#iPod_management_apps

http://ramble.karrth.com/archives/70