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I figured it out!.  It appears that MC will not play AAC/m4p/m4a songs that have filenames over a certain number of characters.  I had one file:

M:\MP3\My Morning Jacket\My Morning Jacket - Steam Engine (Sessions@AOL) - Single - 01 - Steam Engine (Acoustic).m4p

which didnt play, so I shortened the filename and replayed it ... voila, it played!  I shortened it to:

M:\MP3\My Morning Jacket\My Morning Jacket - Steam Engine - 01 - Steam Engine.m4p

I've tried this technique w/ several files and every one that I had problems w/ now plays w/o incident.

This also explains why I couldnt play the songs on the ipod, since MC uploaded them to the ipod w/ a 0:00 song length.   My only question then is why they played w/in iTunes?!?!?!

I forgot to mention that the songs needed to be deteted from the library and reimported(so MC could recalc the song duration)for them to play on the iPod.

steve-
Is there a chance, when importing and playing AAC files,  MC could send the filename in shortened (8.3 esque) notation?

I figured it out!.  It appears that MC will not play AAC/m4p/m4a songs that have filenames over a certain number of characters.

Sorry, I could've told you that.  Haven't been reading the topic lately .

I thought it was a known issue, though, as MC uses Quicktime to play AAC files and the like and I'm sure there's an issue with QT not being happy with files with a name longer than 30 characters.  Can anyone back me up on this or have I been hallucinating? .

I'm on my third attemp to auto sync my music library of about 3700 songs to my new 40GB iPod.  I select all in the sync options and let it go.

With so many files, I have to sync some files, recharge, and go back to syncing again.  When I go back, MC just copies the names of the files to the iPod, not the file itself.  So I'm left with a random music library on the iPod -- some that have files and some that have only names.  When I try and delete the entries without a file location on the iPod (so only a name) I get a file delete error -5.  It has happend to me 3 times so far and each time I've reinitialized the iPod and started over because I can't delete the bogus entries.

Can anyone help.  I'm getting ready to manually drag files over.

I have a lot of tunes on my 40GB iPod, pu there via MC9.1 which now have (Multiple Artists) for their Artist entry in the DB, looking at the tags shows that the actual artis data is intact.

What's happened and how do I get the real artist data back?

Hi,

Kind of a weird situation and set of problems here, but hopefully someone can help!

We gave my son a 10GB iPOD for Christmas.  He's been accumulating mp3s from various places (both legal and of-questionable-heritage) for about a year.  His PC runs WinME, so iTunes and the iPOD updater software doesn't even install on his system.  However, Media Center v 9.1 runs fine, and I chose that to be his iPOD music manager.

Since we left town the day after Christmas, I transferred all of his mp3s (about 400) to my wife's laptop, which runs WinXP and has a Firewire connector.  While on vacation, I installed the iPOD software and iTUnes on the laptop, got the iPOD initialized and working with iTunes.  He 'cleaned up' his music library (the downloaded mp3s had HORRIBLE tag information) and ripped an additional roughly 35 CDs to add about 500 more songs to his library, which now totals about 900 songs.

We got back home, and I connected the iPOD to his WinME machine via Firewire, got it initialized through Media Center (had to choose the right bloody "D:" drive to right click on to get the initialize menu.  You should clean up the documentation to note the "correct" drive letter to click on in the tree...) which worked and erased his music from the iPOD.

I then transferred the roughly 900 mp3 files from the laptop to his computer, imported them into Media Center, did a right-click 'synchronize' to the iPOD, chose the "All Music" playlist...and all 900 songs went to the iPOD.

Now here's the problems and questions:

1.  Many of the artist and album titles on the iPOD and in MC now have garbage in the first two or three characters.  In other words, instead of "emimem" it displays as "~xxmem", where the ~xx appear to be some weird special characters from the upper reaches of the ASCII code set.  Since all the tags were modified and/or created by iTunes, and the mp3s imported straight into MC, is this an artifact of iTunes not correctly writing the tags?  Anybody know if iTunes has mp3 tag problems?  

EDIT:  This problem is fixed.  I reinitialized the iPOD, resynced and all titles, etc were OK.  

2.  My son created some 'special' genre descriptions, like 'hella good' and 'old rock'.   After doing the transfer into MC, those genres disappeared.  Again....does iTunes somehow not write the genre properly, or if MC sees a 'non-standard' genre on import, does it ignore it?

EDIT:  My mistake.  These were PLAYLISTS that he created.  I can see how to export the playlists from iTunes in XML format, but how can I get that into MC??

3.  I selected the option on the iPOD menu in MC to "Eject iPOD on close" (or something like that).  I assumed that meant that the iPOD would be 'ejected' and made safe for removal from it's dock when MC closed.  It doesn't work; the iPOD stays connected with the display reading "Do Not Disconnect" after MC closes.  I have to select the 'eject hardware' icon in the system tray to close the iPOD and take it out of the dock.

4.  I also chose the option in the options setup menus to "autosync" the handheld on connection, assuming that when the iPOD was docked, MC would start a synchronization process.  It didn't work.  Did I misunderstand the purpose of 'autosync handheld when connecting"?

EDIT:  This now seems to work.  I started MC, docked the iPOD, and got a nice message asking me if I wanted to sync.

5. I must admit that I think iTunes has a very elegant and simple interface.  Is there any way to configure MC to eliminate a lot of the 'clutter' in the left hand navigation tree?  We don't need video, pictures and a lot of the other stuff there, and I think the UI could be a lot friendlier if some of that stuff were optional.

Thanks in advance!

Artist display: Right click on your ipod in MC, you can choose from a menu what field to use for artist tags (Album - Artist(auto)/Artist etc)

Why are people needing to stop the sync process to charge out of interest? If you are using the usb/firewire cable and syncing over usb you can also have the firewire part of the cable plugged into your mains adapter to charge whilst syncing. If you are using firewire to transfer then i'd look at getting a new firewire card that can supply a charge to your iPod, I just bought one with USB2 and firewire ports from dabs.com in the uk for 20 quid.

Everyone,

Thanks for helping each other out.

Pepper,

Did things work out with the new card?

rhaehnel,

We use Quicktime to play AAC, and the filelength is a limitation of Quicktime. I tried passing files to quicktime with the 8.3 conversion, and they still refused to play.

MartinH,

Yes this is a Quicktime limitation.  I can't speak to whether or not you are hallucinating  

kdm,

Can you confirm the versions of MC and plugin you have? If you can, test with MC 10 (latest build) I reworked this code recently.

asrjcb,

I did not design MC to allow for the possibility of an unplug and reconnect of iPod during an extended sync. What do you think of the other suggestions here?

fysmd,

What field have you selected for the Artist field when you right click on your iPod drive letter?

packyb,

Not sure. Were you able to repeat it?

rjcrum,

item 3 - I will have to double check this on ME next week.

item 5 - Right click on the item in the tree and select 'Delete View Scheme' to remove items you don't want.

Doug,

Try sending one file to iPod with iTunes. Then reinitialize and send files with MC. There is a copy protection file which must be written to your iPod from iTunes to allow playback. Do this one time and you will not have to do it again.

After installing 10.0.31, a sync attempt causes MC to disappear.  Went back to 10.0.30 and it works again.

I double checked my iPod, and it was more than a few minutes off.  I changed that and made sure that it was no more than a minute behind my computer.  (I think that's what ashawley suggested.)  I made sure my iPod wasn't set to DST.  Using MC 9.1.316, and iPod plugin 9.0.89.  Now, the playing time is over an hour off when I just played the song 2 minutes ago.

Steve?  

Steve, all:

Well, I am reporting back.  Basically, I have had no discernable problems with syncing to date.  Only once have I been able to cause the disappearing playlists problem, as follows:

* Init pod
* Sync pod
* Every change you can imagine, on both sides, including:
  Import files
  Delete files
  Modify library information (same file on both sides)
  Modify smartlist criteria
  Create smartlists
  Delete smartlists
  Rename smartlists
* Sync pod

In all other cases, syncing has been perfect (I have not specifically checked the time issues).

Thanks Steve!!! :)

n

So the key to AA files for now seems to be download through Audible Manager first, then reformat iPod, reinitialize iPod in MC & transfer via MC?

See this thread for plug-in wish list.

http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?board=3;action=display;threadid=18359

MC Build 31 crashes when attempting to synch Ipod.

Confirming contributor to main Build 31 thread - but thought it ought to be posted here as well to let Ipod owners beware.

The latest plug-in is now always bundled with the latest MC10 beta and is often posted in the plug-ins page too, once it is known to be stable.

To check, go to tools/plug-in manager/handheld/portable drives. This will show the iPOD plug-in details.

Mine shows 9.089 running MC10.0.30.

So the key to AA files for now seems to be download through Audible Manager first, then reformat iPod, reinitialize iPod in MC & transfer via MC?

Everything was working fine until .30 or .31 when I lost the ability to transfer Audible files. I don't plan on doing the above procedure every time I want to transfer so I fixed it by going back to MC9.

Bill McNair

jhelmus,

Are the filenames for these files greater than 50 characters? Try playing them from within Quicktime. My guess is they won't play. We use Quicktime for importing and playback of files and quicktime has a filename length limitation.

Steve

the thing is that these files played before...now they don't.  i will check the filename.  one thing to note is that when i am clicking on the E: drive (ipod) and find the songs that are the culprits, i can listen to them by double clicking on the song name there--it plays in media center....  but media center skips by the song when trying to play it from the music library, not the E: drive.

jhelmus,

Did you by chance delete and reimport these songs into MC? That could explain what you are seeing.

Steve

Did you by chance delete and reimport these songs into MC?

Steve, you've mentioned this several times over the last few months as a possible source of synch problems.  Could you elaborate a little about what it is we need to avoid doing?  I assume you're at least talking about the simple case of (1) user deletes file from MC, but not from the disk, then (2) changes mind and imports that file back into MC, all without having done a synch between (1) and (2).

Does the issue only come up if it's the exact same file?  Exact same file name on disk?  Some important tags being exactly the same?  You've talked about each track on iPod being assigned some unique ID internally, but no indication of where that ID comes from.  I doubt I'll ever be doing what I described in the previous paragraph, but I can certainly imagine re-ripping a CD, in which case I might delete the old files, re-rip, and adjust the tags in such a way that they somehow look like the same file to you.

Steve,

Yes my crashes appear to have stopped since using the new fire wire card, but have to admit to not running the full syncs from empty I was doing before. If I'm feeling brave I may do one this weekend...

Quote from: SteveG on January 12, 2004, 01:32:37 pm

Did you by chance delete and reimport these songs into MC?

Steve, you've mentioned this several times over the last few months as a possible source of synch problems.  Could you elaborate a little about what it is we need to avoid doing?  I assume you're at least talking about the simple case of (1) user deletes file from MC, but not from the disk, then (2) changes mind and imports that file back into MC, all without having done a synch between (1) and (2).

Does the issue only come up if it's the exact same file?  Exact same file name on disk?  Some important tags being exactly the same?  You've talked about each track on iPod being assigned some unique ID internally, but no indication of where that ID comes from.  I doubt I'll ever be doing what I described in the previous paragraph, but I can certainly imagine re-ripping a CD, in which case I might delete the old files, re-rip, and adjust the tags in such a way that they somehow look like the same file to you.

Well i finally got the files to play by going in and renaming them to get below the 30 character limit...the weird thing is that there is another file that had more than 30 characters that was working alright.

Basically i needed to go back in and change my rename files from properties settings for MC.

Thanks Steve and bvm for your help.

Certainly it will fill an iPOD without crashing.

The iPOD is sensitive (I have found - and others) to the firewire connection. It was only after upgrading my firewire firmware that I could synch with confidence.

I would reformat if you had a crash and go from there.

WRT transcoding I know it can be slow. Synching is not particularly slow however. I would try a couple of format conversions with MC and THEN sync them to the iPOD. See if it is any quicker.

Whatever program you use will take time to transcode AND synch.

The first time is always the worst as it involves thousands of songs. After that it's just synching a few.

Dave T,

You could make a second library but it's not really necessary as the files will be of a different type so can be easily found and deleted later, if necessary, or filtered out in views.

Select the file you wish to convert and Right Click choosing Library Tools/Convert format.

Click options and ensure that Send Original to recycle bin is unchecked. This will preserve your original.

Click OK and then choose your format and away you go.

Once you have your library on your iPOD you can then revert to 'on the fly' transcoding without converting first.

Once you're in the convert options dialogue you can click Encoding and choose you file type and bit rate.

Once the files are on the iPOD just deete the converted ones and then use on the fly conversion thereafter.

This won't actually speed things up but is likely to be more reliable if your firwire is playing up.

You can easily filter them in any view by filtering on bit rate and or date created as the down rated ones will be newer.

Steve,

Any word on MC being able to 'eject' the iPOD on Windows ME?

Bob

Maybe it's just me but I am having a lot of trouble getting anything onto my iPod in the first place.  I send the files to the iPod.  Go to the manager and hit transfer.  MC says it's doing it, and claims success... but when the process finishes there are no files on the ipod.  I have tried formatting, but I don't know what else to try.  I though maybe synching would work better but I can't figure out how to do that either.  Any help appreciated. (MC 9.1)