INTERACT FORUM

Everyone,

A new build of MC i(10.0.68) is now available with the following improvements for iPod....

1. Fixed: Errors during on the fly conversion of files to portables.
2. Fixed: Rename of tag info on portables.
3. Changed: Rename of tag info will not allow changes to Artist, Album, Genre, Name or Track Number on handhelds.
4. Changed: Handheld transfers require more squish space on large players. (for the database, etc.)
5. Fixed: Smartlists with random track listings did not synchronize with handhelds properly.
6. Fixed: Synchronizing information back from a handheld player could cause playcounts to get bumped twice.


Prior to this build, if you had "random" as a smartlist rule, synchronization would have been messed up. Hopefully this resolves most issues from yesterday with the exception of Audible files and the report of Replay Gain not working correctly. If all is going well, these will be the next items addressed.

Thanks.

Steve

This build (.68) is working for me. I notice that the playlist groups came back? (In parentheses after the playlist name.)

Thanks for the positive reports. The playlist group is in for a little while again until all is settled down. That was causing some of the problems.

Thanks,

Steve

What does this mean?  Does this mean that more "empty" space is needed when doing a sync?  If so, how much space is necessary -- i.e. how much space should we be keeping empty on the iPod?

Yes -- you'll need to leave whatever is larger between 4 MB and 0.5% of the total space.  MC will warn you if you exceed it.

We need to make sure there's enough room for the database and for if converted files end up to be a little larger than expected.

No change or improvement here using .69 on 30GB ipod.

Restored, initialized, transferred 5k+ files.  1.1 GB free.  Approx. 26 GB transferred

Files are there, but no playlists.  Attmept to resynch says it would leave -25GB+ space.

Could you try it again and leave more space open?  Say 10GB?  If that works, try 5GB.  We should be able to solve this in the next few builds, but for now this might get you going.

Reinitialized w/ v.69:

1. 849 songs, 1 audible book
2.  13.7GB  free space
3.  5 smartlists, 1 fixed playlist

Result:

1.  No playlists  
3.  Audible book PLAYS

I posted this in a separate thread.  I guess it belongs here too!!  

----

Hey!!  I found a pattern!!  I can get 100% reliable syncs, playlists and all...

1.  When I "Auto-Eject on Close" = NO PLAYLISTS

2.  When I manually "Eject iPod" = PLAYLISTS APPEAR

Best of all...audible book PLAYS!!  

Woohoo!!  100% repeateable for me...

----

Hope this helps others  

After full iPod restore and MC initialization, I still have no playlists and Audible files still do not play.  This build basically behaves just like last one as far as the iPod functions go.

The stats were:
5607 songs
25.6GB filled, 11.5GB free

Two smartlists used in sync -- neither one used "random" option -- they were simply lists of artists or albums to include or exclude.  Both of these smartlists referenced other smarlists and playlists.

Larry

Markp -- is the Audible issue also 100% repeatable for you in this manner?  In other words, does ejecting from within MC ALWAYS lead to Audible files playing, and conversely, do Audible books always NOT play when ejecting otherwise?

Thanks,

Larry

To "flush" them, did you just delete them from the library (without deleting them from the drive)?  Did you try other things like "update library from tags" first?

Thanks for details,

Larry

To "flush" them, did you just delete them from the library (without deleting them from the drive)?  Did you try other things like "update library from tags" first?

No, did not try update.  I simply "deleted from library" and re-imported.

I've been out of the loop on the iPod side of things for a month or so waiting for the latest build to become more stable.  I finally upgraded at build 65 and was quite dismayed.  I'm now up to build 69 (though I havent tested it yet).  

Currently I have a 15GB g3 iPod and fill it with about 12GB of mixed MP3, M4A, M4P, and AA files.  

I understand that I need to restore my ipod, copy over a purchased M4P file to the ipod, close itunes, Initialize the iPod in Media Center 10 and then begin the sync process in order to get purchased AAC files to play.  

Are there any similar tricks regardin AA (audible) files?  In a post above it was mentioned that maybe removing and re-iporting AA files to the library might help the problem.

are there any other steps I need to make?  Why doesn't Media Center find the file needed by M4P as part of the initialization process? (Is the file generated by iTunes during the first M4P file copy to the iPod or does it exist somewhere within the iTunes file structure?

Chris

Quote from: Rien van Ham on February 13, 2004, 11:48:34 am

Hi,

And found another "bug":
Changed tags (e.g. changing the artist-name due to a spelling-error) are not updated!

Kind Regard,
Rien

How are you noticing this?  In other words, after you change a tag, what do you do to determine that it isn't changed?  Do you first click somewhere else in MC?  I've noticed that changes to tags aren't applied until something else is highlighted, so I though that perhaps this had something to do with your problem (i.e. perhaps you close the program before it had a chance to apply the changes.)

Just theorizing,

Larry

I went to my Ipod (in my case: drive L:);
Expanded the artists (clicked on the +-sign);
I say two times the artist : Status Quo (1 time spelled as Status quo and 1 time spelled as Status Quo);
I clicked on the artist Status quo;
Highlited the songs;
Clicked File Properties;
Clicked Tag Info;
Changed the artist name to Status Quo;
Clicked outside the name-tag to update the tags;
Saw in the right window that the artist-name was changed;
Clicked on another dirve (e.g. c:\);
Clicked again on my IPod drive;
Expanded the artists again;
Saw that the name of the artist was still Status quo.....

Kind regards (and sorry again for my poor English... I am dutch...)

Rien

Number of plays are not updating for me.  The number of plays certainly disappears for me from my iPod when I eject, but the library's sum doesn't get updated.

Steve, with this new iPod code have any changes been made to cater for multiple iPods?

My wife and I both have our own devices.  Previously, syncing one iPod then the other without closing MC in between would completely corrupt the second iPod, meaning an initialise and a full reload was necessary.

Has this been changed or is this still "work in progress"?

Just out of curiosity, did you assign each iPod it's own unique drive letter?  I synched 2 iPods without closing MC in between and it didn't have the problems you describe.  I actually synched both (one at a time) while they were both connected to the computer, and while they were both in the MC tree at the same time.

Larry

Using 10.0.70 --

1.  Still getting the freezing at 30% of Initialize if I don't do a complete Restore first. Of course, I probably don't need to initialize at all anymore, but thought it might by some fluke give me Audible playback.

Are you positive it's actually locking up?  I've found that with the latest builds, initializing over a large group of files takes several minutes, during which time the Task Manager shows two "Not Responding" entries for Media Center.  If I let it go long enough, however, it eventually does finish and MC is once again "responding."

Larry

PS.  .70 brought back the smartlists on the iPod, but audible files still don't play.

I just did an "Update Library from Tags" and my audible file tags all reverted to their original state -- i.e. I lost all my tag editing changes.  I was able to restore my previous library (I had backed it up before the update) and get my tags back, but I though that this might be one more clue as to what's going on with Audible support in MC.  Why would the Audible file tags be completely different after doing the update?

Larry

Hi all,
The Ipod plugin seems more stable now. I was having problems with it crashing and crashing MC after the 1st synch each time I plugged it in but the .70 build it didnt do this.

However, I noticed that everytime I've been synching it has been sending one album across again and again. The said album had a "|" character in it. When I changed that character to a slash, it stopped transferring over each time.

Also, the space left on ipod after transfer in completely inaccurate. I have an almost full ipod (500mb left of 30gb) and it shows 27.8gb free.

And even with the "synch ipod info to MC" box ticked, no last played or ratings info gets transferred. I also tried the "synch ipod info to MC" option on the right click menu of the ipod but nothing happened and songs I had played one minute earlier on the ipod didnt show that info in MC after the synch.

Suggestions: Take away the "transfer complete - ok" window. It's unnecessary, since there is only one option.


Questions: What happened to "Auto album artist" as an option to send to ipod. This was really useful for me with movie soundtracks and scores. I set the album artist to the name of the movie so that the songs were all in one place and easily viewable when searching by artsit or from genre. And in MC I had the real artists listed in the artist field so that I could see who really did each song. It'd be useful to have this feature back or a yes/no answer so that I can think of another workaround.

Would it be possible to also make a "year - album" option, similar to the "album artist auto" option so that we could have the albums appear in year order on the ipod. That would be cool.

Thanks very much. Keep up the good work.
Bri

Quote from: tlongacre on February 13, 2004, 07:49:43 pm

Using 10.0.70 --

1.  Still getting the freezing at 30% of Initialize if I don't do a complete Restore first. Of course, I probably don't need to initialize at all anymore, but thought it might by some fluke give me Audible playback.

Are you positive it's actually locking up?  I've found that with the latest builds, initializing over a large group of files takes several minutes, during which time the Task Manager shows two "Not Responding" entries for Media Center.  If I let it go long enough, however, it eventually does finish and MC is once again "responding."

Well, you know, it doesn't really matter, because either way it is something broken in MC. This was never true before the .6x versions and the process does quite literally stop in its tracks and give every indication that it is frozen. Maybe if I waited for some time this would free up, but it's still a bug.

Using build 70 most everything is working for me (playlists, all my files are coming in, AAC, M4P).  The only problem I am having is with Audible files.  Since I have about 30 books on my ipod this is quite irritating but it's nice to see that everything else seems to be in order.

Using .70, I (after restoring) initialized & synched 5k+ songs via smartlists.

Playlists appeared, along with all songs.Disconnected with "eject".  Playlists still there.    Listened to & rated 1 song.  

Resynched - got "80" errors for what appeared to be all files.  Looking at playslists from within MC10.70, it appeared I had 5k+ (26GB) of 1 song (i.e., name repeated over & over in the list for all playlists).  Rating had not transfered to MC for the 1 song I had listened to (which was differnt from the one song that appeared on the lists on the ipod).

Reinstalled 9.316, and had to use a "restore" to go back to it.

I'm having trouble getting ratings to sync back to MC from the iPod with build 70.  Just doesn't seem to be happening.  

Anyone with Audible playback problems, please try the following.....

After a reinitialize, try transferring one Audible file. Verify that it plays. After this, synchronize or transfer whatever you want, but make sure you do not delete this first audible file. Check if playback works.

Under this test, Audible files seem to always play for me. Any feedback would be great.

Thanks,

Steve

Anyone with Audible playback problems, please try the following.....

After a reinitialize, try transferring one Audible file. Verify that it plays. After this, synchronize or transfer whatever you want, but make sure you do not delete this first audible file. Check if playback works.

Under this test, Audible files seem to always play for me. Any feedback would be great.

Thanks,

Steve

Steve,

You're on to something here.  I followed your instructions and it worked exactly like you said it would -- Audible files are now working on my iPods when synching with MC!  I was curious if it was necessary to actually unplug/replug the iPod in between the two syncs (i.e. in between the "single Audible file" sync and the "full sync.")  To check this, I synched my second iPod without removing it in between the syncs -- I just did the two syncs one right after the other (I started with an initialize.)  The Audible files work this way as well -- i.e. the unplug/replug is not necessary.  I also should mention that I ejected the iPod after closing MC, which confirms that the eject issue is in fact fixed.  Smartlists are still working as well.

Thanks for sticking with this, and thanks for reporting the workaround.  It sounds like you're zeroing in on this issue.

One thing I should mention is that if there are a lot of files on the iPod, the initialize takes a LONG time, during which the Task Manager reports MC as "not responding."  My last initialize probably took more than 5 minutes.

Thanks again,

Larry

Anyone with Audible playback problems, please try the following.....

After a reinitialize, try transferring one Audible file. Verify that it plays. After this, synchronize or transfer whatever you want, but make sure you do not delete this first audible file. Check if playback works.

Under this test, Audible files seem to always play for me. Any feedback would be great.

Thanks,

Steve

Following this methodology I was able to get my audible files to play! Thanks for the workaround Steve and I hope this leads to an overall fix for the bug.

Chris

Media Center Registered 10.0.70 -- C:\Program Files\J River\Media Center\

Microsoft Windows XP 5.1 Service Pack 1 (Build 2600)
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