Topic: POST IPOD SUPPORT QUESTIONS HERE (Read 24218 times)

IDSmoker · « **Reply #50 on:** February 08, 2004, 06:33:00 pm »

The version of Media Center 9 that I was running was working great for me. My iPod syncs were working correctly, I could play all my music and books, I was even getting the "most recently played" date transferred from my 2nd generation iPod!

Then I let MC9 automatically upgrade itself to the latest version after more than 2 months of trouble-free operation. Now I am not only not getting the data from the iPod transferred into MC9, I'm no longer able to listen to my Audible books on my iPod.

Media Center Registered 9.1.316 -- E:\Tools\J River\Media Center\

Microsoft Windows XP Workstation 5.1 Service Pack 1 (Build 2600)
Intel Pentium 4 1993 MHz MMX / Memory: Total - 523 MB, Free - 198 MB

Internet Explorer: 6.0.2800.1106 / ComCtl32.dll: 5.82 (xpsp1.020828-1920) / Shlwapi.dll: 6.00.2800.1400 / Shell32.dll: 6.00.2800.1233 (xpsp2.030604-1804) / wnaspi32.dll: N/A
Ripping / Drive I: Copy mode:Normal CD Type:Auto Read speed:Max
Drive T: Copy mode:Normal CD Type:Auto Read speed:Max
Drive U: Copy mode:Normal CD Type:Auto Read speed:Max
Drive Y: Copy mode:Normal CD Type:Auto Read speed:Max
Digital playback: Yes / Use YADB: Yes / Get cover art: No / Calc replay gain: Yes / Copy volume: 32767
Eject after ripping: No / Play sound after ripping: No

Burning / Drive I: HP DVD Writer 200j Addr: 1:0:0 Speed:12 MaxSpeed:12 BurnProof:No
Test mode: No / Eject after writing: Yes / Direct decoding: No / Write CD-Text: No
Use playback settings: No / Normalization: None

MikeW · « **Reply #51 on:** February 08, 2004, 11:39:55 pm »

Quote from: lalittle on February 08, 2004, 03:56:08 pm

Quote from: MikeW on February 08, 2004, 03:17:07 pm
iPod now seems fine, has all my files (except for the couple of duplicates) and is a able to play my iTunes purchased files.

I'm trying to figure a patter as to why some people get all their files after a synch and other don't (I personally am only ending up with 1 or 2 songs per album after a synch.) How many files are in your sync? I know that in the past, MC synching behavior was effected by the number of files in a synch, so perhaps this is the distinction in this case.

Thanks,

Larry

Larry,

I currently 1,909 files in my library, and have only seen two duplicates which gave me error number 80. In both cases they were songs that were both in an original album, and then showed up in a "best of" compilation: example: "Black Dog" by Led Zeppelin appeared in both the "IV" albulm, and the boxed set disc 2, so apparently MC only copied one of them. The odd thing, however, is that even though I received the message when I synched the iPod, both songs appear on the iPod in ther respective albums. looking at the song list through media center, it looks like that the same file is referenced from both lists. My guess is that this is by design to reduce dupes, and improve available storage on the iPod -- the only catch would be if there were two versions of the same song by the same artist, on seperate albums with same name (for example, a studio version, and then a live, or extended version on another album)

-- Mike

lalittle · « **Reply #52 on:** February 09, 2004, 02:47:52 am »

Quote

My guess is that this is by design to reduce dupes

Doing this by design wouldn't make any sense since, as you already pointed out, mulitple songs using the same name is quite common.

That said, in my case the songs that gave me the error 80 code were NOT duplicates -- they were songs that definitely only exist ONCE in my MC library. On top of this, each time I try a sync I get a different song with the error code even though the library hasn't changed AT ALL.

In my experience with .62 and .64, only a small percentage of songs actually end up on the iPod after a sync -- I'd say I end up missing between 80 and 90 percent of the songs that "appeared" to be transferring during the sync. I can see no pattern as to why only 1 or 2 songs from each album ends up on the iPod, but it is interesting that I seem to end up with the SAME set of songs each time I try a sync -- i.e. the 1 or 2 songs that DO end up on the iPod are the same ones each time.

Larry

gpvillamil · « **Reply #53 on:** February 09, 2004, 07:17:13 am »

What was the last build of MC10 with the old iPod code? Was it 10.0.50? The new code isn't working for me (many songs with foreign characters in the name) and I really need to get some stuff on the iPod.

tlongacre · « **Reply #54 on:** February 09, 2004, 08:47:34 am »

The last version I was using that worked well (except for audible files) was 10.38.

I'm pretty sure all versions after that until .62 were marked as not working with iPods.

Madcow · « **Reply #55 on:** February 09, 2004, 10:06:23 am »

Build 60 works and has the old iPod code - it was the last one that did, and I'm using it OK with no problems.

Rien van Ham · « **Reply #56 on:** February 09, 2004, 11:54:24 am »

Quote from: lalittle on February 08, 2004, 03:24:08 pm

Quote from: Rien van Ham on February 08, 2004, 06:50:09 am
1. Can't MC reset the read-only flag?

I was just throwing out a guess -- I've never actually run into this. That said, what version of MC are you using? The newer versions of MC 10 are completely broken when it comes to iPod support.
I'm now using (again) version 9.1.316. Yesterday I "bought" version 10, but the only "good" thing is does is crashing.... Inializing the Ipod... crash! Sending a file to the Ipod... Crash!! Deleting a file on the Ipod... Crash.... I was getting mad of it.

Quote
2. Off course I checked the artist-field!

Again, what version of MC?
9.1.136

Quote
3. I-tunes shurely can!

Ephpod, another popular synching program, does not show the year field after a synch, but it does have an option to included the year in the title. Is this what you mean when you say that iTunes displays it?
ITunes displays a column "year". MC also does. But when clicking the Ipod-drive... the column year is empty.....

Larry

SteveG · « **Reply #57 on:** February 09, 2004, 04:13:06 pm »

Everyone,

Tonight's MC includes the following.....

1. Changed: iPod will store files numerically, not by filename to solve foreign character issue and any possible error code 80 problems.
2. Fixed: Inability to play Audible files on iPod.
3. New: Persistence of 'Year' for iPod.
4. Fixed: Permissions on iPod read only files are modified to allow file deletions.
5. Fixed: Possible crash during initialize on iPod.
6. Fixed: Problems related to files where no Artist,Album,Genre or Name are present.
7. Fixed: File error codes will return on separate lines in dialog for iPod.
8. Changed: No longer necessary to intialize when going from older 10 to new 10 for synching to work for iPod.

For anyone with any problems, an initialize is always a good baseline to test against so that I can help troubleshoot. If you are having problems with less than all of your files appearing on the iPod, keep in mind that the new system will not permit the transfer of two files that have the same Name, Artist, Album and Genre. As long as there is something unique about these fields, the files shoud sync without a problem.

Steve

lalittle · « **Reply #58 on:** February 09, 2004, 05:15:10 pm »

Quote from: SteveG on February 09, 2004, 04:13:06 pm

If you are having problems with less than all of your files appearing on the iPod, keep in mind that the new system will not permit the transfer of two files that have the same Name, Artist, Album and Genre. As long as there is something unique about these fields, the files shoud sync without a problem.

I'm looking forward to trying this build as soon as it's posted (latest is still .64 as of this writing.) It sounds like you addressed the bulk (perhaps even all) of the iPod problems.

As far as the issue of not transferring mulitple files with the same Name, Artist, Album and Genre, I wanted to clarify that you mean ALL these fields would have to be the same in order to cause problems, correct? In other words, 3 of these fields could be the same, but as long as any one of them had any differences, everything should be fine, right?

On the same topic, you're not saying that this is what was causing incomplete transfers before, are you? I hope not, because I can say for absolute certainty that this was not the cause of missing files on my iPod. With .62 and .64, I ended up missing a ton of songs that were all completely unique when it came to these fields. Hopefully the next build will solve this issue -- it just concerned me that it looked like you might be blaming this issue on duplicate fields, which I can assure you was not the problem in my case.

Thanks,

Larry

Madcow · « **Reply #59 on:** February 09, 2004, 05:27:08 pm »

The Name/Artist/Album/Genre limitation for duplicates is going to cause me BIG problems.

Sufficient to prevent me upgrading until it is fixed - and if it's not going to be fixed I'm going to have to look elsewhere for an iPod manager, which I really don't want to have to do.

Is there any chance of this being changed/expanded? As I mentioned in an earlier post, the addition of Track Number to this would sort out all the problems.

lalittle · « **Reply #60 on:** February 09, 2004, 05:45:49 pm »

Quote from: Madcow on February 09, 2004, 05:27:08 pm

The Name/Artist/Album/Genre limitation for duplicates is going to cause me BIG problems. Sufficient to prevent me upgrading until it is fixed - and if it's not going to be fixed I'm going to have to look elsewhere for an iPod manager, which I really don't want to have to do.

Is there any chance of this being changed/expanded? As I mentioned in an earlier post, the addition of Track Number to this would sort out all the problems.

After re-reading Madcow's previous post, it occurs to me that he's absolutely correct that this will cause problems. He's also correct that in general, these problems would be solved by including track number as a distinguishing field. I thought of a couple albums that do indeed have more than one track with exactly the same name, meaning that all 4 of the fields mentioned above will be identical for these songs. The only thing that distinguishes these songs in MC is the track number.

I then did an MC search for songs that duplicate all four of those fields, and my current MC library already has 8 albums that contain songs where all four of those fields are identical. I discovered that this is much more common than people might think.

Is there a specific reason that the track number field can't be incoporated into the iPod synching logic? MC has a reputation for being much more "robust" than other similar apps, so this limitation strikes me as a bit "out of character" for this program. This is the kind of issue that you'd expect OTHER programs to have -- i.e. you'd expect this to be yet another reason to switch TO MC, not away from it.

I'm with Madcow on this one -- if each song needs a unique set of those four fields, it will cause me some problems.

Larry

Snuffy2 · « **Reply #61 on:** February 09, 2004, 06:36:41 pm »

Quote from: Madcow on February 09, 2004, 05:27:08 pm

The Name/Artist/Album/Genre limitation for duplicates is going to cause me BIG problems.

I'm just curious, why do you have so many tracks that have the same Name/Artist/Album/Genre?? I know of very few albums that name all of their tracks the same. I understand that Track would decrease the chances of a match, but how many tracks right now do you have that match in all four fields? and why? ?

IDSmoker · « **Reply #62 on:** February 09, 2004, 06:46:09 pm »

Quote from: SteveG on February 09, 2004, 04:13:06 pm

Everyone,

Tonight's MC includes the following.....

<snip>

2. Fixed: Inability to play Audible files on iPod.

<snip>

Steve

Steve,

How do I update MC9 in order to get this fix?

I have no intention of upgrading to MC10 at this time.

Thanks.

Sam

RemyJ · « **Reply #63 on:** February 09, 2004, 07:16:34 pm »

I'm not sure 65 fixed anything for me, even with restoring the iPod to factory and re-initializing.

The iPod reports about 520 tracks while MC reports 791 although I just noticed that all 791 files are actually on the iPod. (did a dir /s in iPod_control/Music)

Checking then unchecking the "delete files" option sets the iPod counter to 0 but again the tracks seem to be there.

After unchecking some playlists (118 files), synchronizing, then rechecking the same playlists and synching again, the iPod shows only those playlists and 118 tracks just synched in it's directory even though again, all files are actually on the iPod filesystem.

It's back to 60 again I'm afraid.

serf · « **Reply #64 on:** February 09, 2004, 08:18:15 pm »

Tempted by the renewed assurance of fixes, I tried it, but .65 fixed nothing for me on a 30 GB.

Starting from a 38 install, I updated to .65. I tried twice to initialize from .65 and it caused a core error & crash of MC10.65 both times.

I restored using updater 2.1, initialized in MC10.65 & did a full synch of 5k+ files. In MC10.65, playlists show under the G: (ipod) device.

Exited MC, safely disconnected the ipod using the green arrow on task bar (setting for eject on close in MC has never worked for me).

No playlists and my only audible book does not play.

On trying to synch again without changing anything in MC or on the ipod (where it had shown 1.2GB free at end of synch & on the ipod) it now shows a synch would leave -25GB of space. In other words, the files are there, but not synch-able.

I wish I could figure out why it seems to work for MC, but not for me or, apparently, some others. Back to .38

lalittle · « **Reply #65 on:** February 09, 2004, 09:09:25 pm »

Quote from: Snuffy2 on February 09, 2004, 06:36:41 pm

I'm just curious, why do you have so many tracks that have the same Name/Artist/Album/Genre?? I know of very few albums that name all of their tracks the same. I understand that Track would decrease the chances of a match, but how many tracks right now do you have that match in all four fields? and why? ?

It's simply the way things are -- i.e. some albums simply contain more than one track with the same name. It's not exactly "common," but it does happen, and it's probably not as uncommon as you might think. It's of course possible to rename some of the tracks in order to avoid this, but this is a workaround, not a solution, and many people prefer to remain "true" to the naming on the CD. A few examples of this issue are Jesus Christ Superstar (NON soundtrack), and the soundtracks for Babe and Frida. As I said, when I checked my library with a search, I came up with 8 albums that had songs with all 4 of those fields duplicated.

I'm still unclear why it would be a problem to simply include another field such as the track number, but I don't know how this works at the programming level. All I know is that other programs don't seem to have an issue with this -- albums with two songs of the same name both end up on my iPod after doing a sync with Ephpod.

Larry

lalittle · « **Reply #66 on:** February 09, 2004, 09:20:09 pm »

As someone else already reported, initializing is once again causing MC to crash without first doing a full iPod restore. After a restore, the iPod could finish the initialization. The synch is currently taking place -- I'll report back when it's done.

Larry

RemyJ · « **Reply #67 on:** February 09, 2004, 09:47:03 pm »

Well I stuck to 65 for a bit longer and finally got my iPod and MC to agree.

Inititialized iPod.
Set the "Delete Files..." option to UNCHECKED.
Synched exactly ONCE.
Now they both say 791 files.

lalittle · « **Reply #68 on:** February 09, 2004, 10:04:26 pm »

RemyJ,

Are you saying that a second sync (i.e. an "update" sync) screws things up? I'm a little unclear about exactly when problems are occuring for you.

Thanks,

Larry

RemyJ · « **Reply #69 on:** February 09, 2004, 10:24:19 pm »

Quote from: lalittle on February 09, 2004, 10:04:26 pm

RemyJ,

Are you saying that a second sync (i.e. an "update" sync) screws things up? I'm a little unclear about exactly when problems are occuring for you.

Thanks,

Larry

I think that's what I'm saying is at least ONE of the problems.

With a cleanly synched iPod: 791 tracks reported by both iPod and MC with correct playlists, albums, artists, etc....

I added a playlist to the sync list. 9 tracks from the same artist/album not in any other playlist. After the sync, the iPod reported...

9 tracks in Settings/About instead of the 800 (791 + 9) it should have.
The entire Browse tree reported only those 9 tracks, 1 artist, 1 album, etc.
The Playlist tree showed ALL playlists and tracks. ?

Sounds like all the tracks are being transferred but the iPod's indexes aren't being built correctly.

lalittle · « **Reply #70 on:** February 09, 2004, 11:13:30 pm »

iPod support is still COMPLETELY broken for me on this release. I'll restate right up front that I did a full iPod restore, then an initialize, then a full sync. In a nutshell, the issues I'm still having are:

- Initializing without first doing a full restore causes MC to crash.

- Error 80 message on a single song after the sync. The specific song is a different one after each sync, but it's always only ONE song.

- No playlists/smartlists other than "on the go" on the iPod.

- Only a couple songs per album show up -- usually one or two, but I did come across an album that had 4 songs.

- Selecting another item in the tree after having selected the iPod causes MC to crash. In order to compare what "should" be on the iPod with what "is" on the iPod, I have to keep restarting MC.

- The smartlist I'm using for sync (I use smartlists, not playlists) shows the following stats in MC (this is what is supposed to be transferred):
5605 songs
660 artists
444 albums

The stats for the iPod shown through MC, however, are:
5503 songs
228 artists
444 albums

Notice that the numbers are exactly the same as the ones I got with the .62 and .64 versions of MC. Whatever is going wrong in this particular area is totally consistant. The specific couple of songs that show up for each album also seem to be consistant -- i.e. on the albums I checked, it's the SAME two songs that show up.

Note also that these are NOT songs that have duplicate tag information, so this is NOT the issue.

- The information on the actual iPod says it has only 426 songs even though it shows about 27 gigs of space used up.

- Only one Audible album (out of about 50) shows up on the iPod, and only one of the two "songs" on this album shows up.

- The single Audible file that shows up on the iPod does not play.

This does not seem to be an iPod issue since Ephpod can sync the SAME set of files just fine (and ALL the Audible files play.)

The same set of songs synched with an earlier verison of MC had a couple issues (like the fact that Audible files wouldn't play) but most of these issues are new to the .62/.64/.65 builds.

Larry

RemyJ · « **Reply #71 on:** February 09, 2004, 11:42:46 pm »

I wonder if Steve's fixes just didn't make it into the release.

lalittle · « **Reply #72 on:** February 09, 2004, 11:48:17 pm »

I tried to do another sync with a lot fewer songs to see if this would make a difference, but the synch kept giving me a "red X" error with a single garbage character where the explanation for the error should have been. I tried another initialize, and while it seemed to lock up, after a few minutes this initialize actually got all the way through (without another restore.)

A point of interest is that at this point, I was able to switch the highlighted selection between the iPod and other items without MC crashing -- i.e. with nothing on the iPod, the issue of MC crashing when changing the selection from the iPod to something else was gone. After my "small" sync, however, the problem came back -- i.e. once I selected the iPod, selecting another item crashed MC.

The small sync (222 songs) seems to have worked. No "error 80" code, ALL the songs for the albums in the list transferred, and Audible files play fine. This behavior is identical to the behavior I get with 9.1.316 -- i.e. when I do a small sync, the Audible files play. I think that this is somehow related to why some people report that this build works with the iPod, and why the JRiver testing indicates that it's working. When I do a small sync, it works fine -- but when I do a "full" sync of my entire library, all sorts of problems suddenely come up. I have no idea what the "limit" is, but it seems that larger syncs are causing problems with MC. Note once again, however, that even with the small sync, the "switching selections" bug is still occuring.

Larry

markp99 · « **Reply #73 on:** February 10, 2004, 09:11:38 am »

Quote from: lalittle on February 09, 2004, 11:48:17 pm

The small sync (222 songs) seems to have worked. No "error 80" code, ALL the songs for the albums in the list transferred, and Audible files play fine. This behavior is identical to the behavior I get with 9.1.316 -- i.e. when I do a small sync, the Audible files play. I think that this is somehow related to why some people report that this build works with the iPod, and why the JRiver testing indicates that it's working. When I do a small sync, it works fine -- but when I do a "full" sync of my entire library, all sorts of problems suddenely come up. I have no idea what the "limit" is, but it seems that larger syncs are causing problems with MC.

Larry,

I concur. In .60 I was able to get an audible file to play after a SMALL sync (~20 songs, 1 book), but lost that ability upon a full sync (~2K files, 6 audible files). I'll have to try a small sync in .65 tonite when I get home.

Rien van Ham · « **Reply #74 on:** February 10, 2004, 11:37:46 am »

Trying to send some files to my Ipod:
After a few seconds: Transfer complete
Result:
No files were sent to my Ipod!

markp99 · « **Reply #75 on:** February 10, 2004, 01:36:54 pm »

Quote from: Rien van Ham on February 10, 2004, 11:37:46 am

Trying to send some files to my Ipod:
After a few seconds: Transfer complete
Result:
No files were sent to my Ipod!

Rein,

I'd bet your files WERE transferred, you just cannot see them. Same problem for me.

Look at the remaining space on your iPod: (Settings > About). I show 9GB consumed, but see NO files on my iPod.

Something is not quite working here... I am sure SteveG will get it right shortly!

SteveG · « **Reply #76 on:** February 10, 2004, 05:15:16 pm »

Everyone,

Thanks for your patience with this. Here are today's changes which will be available in the new MC in about 15 minutes.

1. Fixed: iPod database would corrupt if multiple file transfers would fail.
2. Fixed: iPod rebuild database from iPod feature works again.
3. Changed: iPod sync matching includes Track Number.
4. Changed: iPod indexing issues which could have caused bad results.

I cannot duplicate the crash on 'initialization' but will try again tomorrow. Tomorrow I will add messages to show a list of duplicate files if they are found (based on the new cheking) to rule that out as a possibility. I tested this here today with 10 GB of files and all seemed well.

Thanks.

Steve

lalittle · « **Reply #77 on:** February 10, 2004, 06:15:23 pm »

Quote from: SteveG on February 10, 2004, 05:15:16 pm

I tested this here today with 10 GB of files and all seemed well.

Thanks.

Steve

Perhaps that isn't a large enough amount of data to cause the errors that some of use are seeing when trying to sync (I'm doing about 26 gigs.) I'm downloading .66 right now, so I'll test it as soon as I can and let you know the results.

Larry

Madcow · « **Reply #78 on:** February 10, 2004, 06:17:41 pm »

Build 66 is the first one I've tried with the new iPod code. As per instructions here, I haven't done an initialise.

First impressions: all new tracks etc appear to have transferred correctly. But all playlists have disappeared apart from On-The-Go.

I'll do an initialise tomorrow morning and see if this brings them back or not.

RemyJ · « **Reply #79 on:** February 10, 2004, 06:22:02 pm »

66 does appear to have fixed most of the sync issues for me. I've synched about 5 times now with correct results each time. Thanks Steve. A couple of issues still remain, but it's usable for me now.

When adding new playlists to be synched, you have to press Options and then dismiss the dialog to get the space counter to consider the new tracks and to get the new tracks to transfer. Either that, or sync twice in a row.

You may want to consider using the non-cached IO APIs. I have to wait 30-60 second after ejecting for the file system buffers to be flushed before I can remove the ipod during which time MC is unresponsive. This will also make the transfer rate display more real. There should be no real penalty using the non-cached APIs in this situation since you have to wait for the buffers to flush anyway.

While a large transfer is in progress, the rest of my system responds very slowly. This is a 2.4ghz 512mb machine. Even though the CPU usage is under 10% during the transfer, programs like Girder can take up to 15 second to register events. Even MC itself paints very slowly when something is dragged over it. Is something holding up the system message queue perhaps?

gpvillamil · « **Reply #80 on:** February 10, 2004, 06:26:28 pm »

Remy, I am not seeing any problems with slowdowns on large transfers. Is it only with MC or with the whole system?

Perhaps you have an IRQ conflict with your Firewire interface, or something like that?

RemyJ · « **Reply #81 on:** February 10, 2004, 06:45:54 pm »

Quote from: gpvillamil on February 10, 2004, 06:26:28 pm

Remy, I am not seeing any problems with slowdowns on large transfers. Is it only with MC or with the whole system?

Perhaps you have an IRQ conflict with your Firewire interface, or something like that?

It's definitely not I/O or CPU related. I can transfer large amounts of data to the iPod via xcopy and have excellent response time on the rest of the system during the transfer. When MC is transferring however, everything else slows down. Windows don't activate immediately or paint evenly, and Girder especially doesn't get or process messages evenly.

gpvillamil · « **Reply #82 on:** February 10, 2004, 06:46:09 pm »

Funky behavior with .66

I did one sync without initializing. All songs came over, playlists all in order.

On closer inspection, some of the playlists (based on smartlists) contained half as many songs as they should.

I decided to sync again. I got an error message about not being able to delete files. Clicked OK on both. Got a dialog about syncing playlist info, then transfer completed. However, there were only two songs on the iPod.

So I've initialized and am syncing again.

gpvillamil · « **Reply #83 on:** February 10, 2004, 07:51:39 pm »

Problems with .66

All the playlists are there, the iPod reports 2835 files on-board. However, the playlists seem rather short, all of them contain fewer than half the songs they should. (Most of them are generated by smartlists, the manual playlists are fine).

Adding up the total number of songs in each playlist gives a total of 1740 songs. This is strange, since the only way I transfer music is by synching playlists, and the iPod reports 2835 songs.

markp99 · « **Reply #84 on:** February 10, 2004, 08:24:31 pm »

.66 Issues (after 2.1 restore & fresh initialize):

1. No playlists made it over to iPod upon sync & eject
2. Audible books do not play from iPod (they do play from within MC and on iPod using MC10 player)

Note: I do see the popluated playlists on the iPod using MC interface, immediately after syncing. After ejecting, playlists do not appear on iPod. When I reconnect iPod and launch MC, I no longer see the popluated iPod playlists via MC interface.

JimH · « **Reply #85 on:** February 10, 2004, 10:04:36 pm »

If it isn't working, can you report about how many files you are synching?

We've tested with about 2000 to 2500 files, and the problems may be related to the number of files, so it would be nice if we can confirm that.

Thanks. And sorry for the hassles.

gbdesai · « **Reply #86 on:** February 10, 2004, 10:20:06 pm »

Another problem with .66?

I am doing on the fly conversions from APE to MP3 using my standard settings to convert to MP3 VBR. Now when I try to sync new songs not on the iPod already I get the dialog showing the conversions and about 7 files through it tries to update the iPod playlist and then a "File Error Information" dialog box pops up and says "The following is a list of files that failed to transfer with an error code." The list always has just one file.

I confirmed playable MP3 files are being created in the Temp directory. I even removed the song that showed an error from my sync playlists and the next song in the sync showed the error on next sync. I removed that song and the next song had the error on the third sync.

So then I added a bunch of new songs to one of my playlists and synced again. This time it converted and transfered a set of songs 10 to 12 to the iPod and then started converting the 2 remaining songs for transfer. These failed. It looks like the last group of songs in a sync fails. Any ideas?

Gautam

P.S. I did not reinitialize, my last initalize and sync was with version 10.38.

lalittle · « **Reply #87 on:** February 10, 2004, 10:31:46 pm »

My first report concerning .66 is that the initialize once again crashed MC. I let it go as long as it wanted, and after about 5 minutes I got the "error report" screen and MC disappeared. Instead of doing another iPod restore (simply because I'm getting tired of doing those) I re-started MC and noticed that it appeared the initialize had worked -- i.e. MC didn't tell me it needed one. I went ahead and did another one anyway, and it finished normally. So, as far as this goes, at least it appears the full restore might not be necessary between each test.

The sync is currently proceding on the other system.

JimH -- my full sync is around 5600 songs (about 26 gigs if memory servers.) As I mentioned earlier, I definitely believe that many if not all of the MC/iPod problems are somehow related to either the size of the sync, or the number of files in the sync. Even Audible files play normally when I sync just a few hundred songs with MC. I think that you'll eventually find that some of the seemingly unrelated issues with MC and iPods will end up being due to the same factor, and that this factor will have something to do with the size and/or number of files in the sync.

Larry

gbdesai · « **Reply #88 on:** February 10, 2004, 10:36:42 pm »

An update to my earlier post....

My playlists did not sync right afterall. The new songs I added don't show up on the iPod even though I did not seem to get a transfer error and my playlists are a little short.

I also noticed that the File Error Information box doesn't have a line break between failed files. It just adds them to the same line and you can't scroll right indefinately, with long file names the problem looks like a single file, it may in fact be all the files you just tried to sync.

Gautam

gbdesai · « **Reply #89 on:** February 11, 2004, 12:03:16 am »

More updates.

I reinitialized the iPod and tried to sync again. No dice even on a single playlist with two files that involved conversion. Then I tried syncing MP3 and that worked like a charm. So the problem is in the conversion and the following copy. The two MP3 files I synced were created from the earlier failed sync. So the problem seems to simply be on the copy to the iPod. Hope this can be resolved soon. I am dead in the water with a empty iPod until then. Thanks.

Gautam

lalittle · « **Reply #90 on:** February 11, 2004, 02:54:11 am »

After my first sync with .66, no error 80 codes, and I'm finally seeing ALL the songs on each album (instead of just a couple like I was with the last few builds. The number of files is correct now (i.e. it appears that the full smartlist transferred, and that I have access to all the songs.) The problems that I AM still having are:

- Playists (i.e. smartlists) still don't show up on iPod.

- Audible files still don't play (but at least they are showing up now.)

- I still get MC crashes when I look at the contents of the iPod, and then look at something else (a smartlist, the "audio" branch, etc.) Highlighting the iPod makes it so I can't highlight anything else without MC crashing and Windows giving me the "error report" pop-up. There was one time that for some reason this didn't happen, but I just tried it a few times and it consistantly crashed several times in a row when doing this.

- As someone else reported, my playlists were listed under the iPod directly after the sync, but after ejecting/re-mounting the iPod the same playlist branch is now blank.

Larry

lalittle · « **Reply #91 on:** February 11, 2004, 04:01:14 am »

I just did a second "update" iPod sync after adding a song and deleting another. Major issues just popped up for me.

First, moving around in the sync window is EXTREMELY sluggish. When clicking to uncheck or check a playlist/smartlist box, it takes about 10 seconds for the selection to happen -- i.e. I click on a box, and 10 seconds later the check disappears.

Second, I used the SAME smartlist that I did last time, which totalled 5605 files -- I had simply deleted 1 file and added 1 file. When the sync started, however, it said syncing "666" files, and it was re-transferring them, i.e. it wasn't flying through the ones that were already on the iPod like it usually does.

After the sync, I still had the full 5605 files on the iPod, so I don't know what the 666 "new transfers" were for, although when build ".66" starts giving me signs of the devil, I have to wonder. Please change the build number immediately so I can exorcise my iPod of the current evil build.

Larry

Madcow · « **Reply #92 on:** February 11, 2004, 04:26:59 am »

Having done a full reinitialise with build 66, I've not had much more luck. This is with my full library of 4600 tracks which pretty much fills my 30GB iPod.

Still no playlists transferred at all.

A number of tracks (around 10 or so) failed with return code 80. All these are off one album (The Very Best Of ELO, which demonstrates impeccable musical taste on the part of MC but wasn't really the intention!) A repeat sync causes these exact same tracks to fail, so it definitely doesn't like them.

However, all other tracks appear to be there, at least at first glance.

lalittle · « **Reply #93 on:** February 11, 2004, 04:37:11 am »

Quote

All these are off one album (The Very Best Of ELO, which demonstrates impeccable musical taste on the part of MC but wasn't really the intention!)

I like ELO.

That aside, did this exact group of files transfer okay before? Can you think of ANYTHING that is different about these files? It seems pretty obivous that there is something about this group that is different -- you just have to figure out what it is.

Larry

Madcow · « **Reply #94 on:** February 11, 2004, 08:02:03 am »

Ah, found the problem. These files are marked as "missing" in MC. Reimporting them solved the problem. I *think* these were files I'd moved around using the Files & Folders tree in MC - I don't know why these went AWOL as other albums I've shifted are still fine, but at least I know it's not an iPod issue.

So it's just the knackered playlists for me now. By the way, top marks on the speed improvement - it's fantastic.

markp99 · « **Reply #95 on:** February 11, 2004, 08:45:25 am »

Quote from: JimH on February 10, 2004, 10:04:36 pm

If it isn't working, can you report about how many files you are synching?

I have tried various combinations of file/playlist qty's with the same result:

1. 2,000 songs, 10 Smartlists, 5 audio books
2. 45 songs, 1 smartlist for all 45 songs, 1 static playlist with 3 songs, 1 audiobook

Same result: No playlists & no audiobook playback

Good luck!

gbdesai · « **Reply #96 on:** February 11, 2004, 10:01:09 am »

Anyone successfully syncing anything that has a convert from another format during the sync? Like APE to MP3. I want to confirm the error I keep getting with .66.

tlongacre · « **Reply #97 on:** February 11, 2004, 10:27:44 am »

Using .66 gives me the exact same results as .62 and .64. That is,

1. I can play AAC (iTunes) files, once I remembered I had to transfer one song after a Restore.

2. Initialization in MC without doing a complete Restore freezes at 30% every single time.

3. No Audible file playback. Just sits there at the title of the song, without even attempting to playback.

4. THE WORST -- No playlists.

40 gig iPod, over 6,000 songs. All do seem to come over fine. But I haven't done extensive research on that.

When are we gonna get playlists back? This is really killing me.

Thanks.

jeffh · « **Reply #98 on:** February 11, 2004, 10:57:01 am »

First time attempt with the new ipod support. After a sync or before a reinit of the ipod from this build MC crashes. No love here yet. Let me know what else I can tell you.

Media Center Registered 10.0.66 -- C:\Program Files\J River\Media Center\

Microsoft Windows XP 5.1 Service Pack 1 (Build 2600)
AMD Athlon 1135 MHz MMX / Memory: Total - 1015 MB, Free - 426 MB

Internet Explorer: 6.0.2800.1106 / ComCtl32.dll: 5.82 (xpsp1.020828-1920) / Shlwapi.dll: 6.00.2800.1400 / Shell32.dll: 6.00.2800.1233 (xpsp2.030604-1804) / wnaspi32.dll: 1.0.0.0 , , / Aspi32.sys: N/A

Ripping / Drive D: Copy mode:ModeSecure CD Type:Auto Read speed:Max
Digital playback: Yes / Use YADB: Yes / Get cover art: Yes / Calc replay gain: Yes / Copy volume: 32767
Eject after ripping: Yes / Play sound after ripping: No

Burning / No burners found.
Test mode: No / Eject after writing: Yes / Direct decoding: Yes / Write CD-Text: No
Use playback settings: No / Normalization: None

Rien van Ham · « **Reply #99 on:** February 11, 2004, 12:06:30 pm »

Today I tried the new .66:

When trying to change a tag on the IPOD:
a messagebox appears with only 1 red circle with a white cross, a letter "h" on the top-line and a button "ok".
What is MC trying to say me?

Changing tags isn't possible (for me) in this release!

Thank you!

Rien van Ham

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Author Topic: POST IPOD SUPPORT QUESTIONS HERE (Read 24218 times)