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[SteveG]

Hello All,  
 
For anyone who is new to MC, please be sure to get the latest version from our downloads page or from the first thread on this board.
 
An excellent help file (thanks Adam) on using MC and iPod can be found here:
 
http://www.home.earthlink.net/~ashawley01/      
 
For additional information, please check the previous help thread at:
 
http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?board=3;action=display;threadid=19017;start=0

For any issues not covered, please post below and someone will respond ASAP.  Please copy and paste your system info from MC Help and include the version of the Portable Drive Plugin you use.    
 
Thanks,  
 
Steve

[SteveG]

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

[Madcow]

Hate to break it to you, but just done a sync and... still no playlists.

I'm about to try an initialise and a resync.  (The new and improved whizzy speed makes this a lot less painful than it used to be).  I'll let you know the results.

[gpvillamil]

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

[Madcow]

Just did an initialise from within MC and a resync (30GB in 45 minutes - not bad!) and my playlists are back!

Hurrah!

[SteveG]

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

[lalittle]

4. Changed: Handheld transfers require more squish space on large players. (for the database, etc.)

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?

Thanks for clarifying this,

Larry

PS.  In response to a question from the previous iPod thread, my Audible files are ".aa" files.

[Matt]

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.

[serf]

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.

[JimH]

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.

[gpvillamil]

BTW Replay Gain is working for me as well with build .69, I have about 200MB free on the iPod.

[markp99]

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

[serf]

Due to work load, I can't retry until this weekend.  Good luck & thaks for trying.

[markp99]

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  

[gbdesai]

10.0.69 is working flawlessly for me doing on-the-fly conversions from APE to MP3.  Thanks!

[lalittle]

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

[SteveG]

markp,

Excellent catch.

Everyone with the no playlist issue, be sure to eject ipod from within MC until tonight's build when this will go away.

Steve

[lalittle]

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

[markp99]

Sorry, I did not mean to imply that Audible playback was affected / toggled by eject method.   Audible files play for me with both methods...

Somehow, I got audible files to play yesterday even before I noticed the eject thing...  Audible files DID start to play AFTER I flushed and re-imported all my files to MC10 library...

[lalittle]

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

[Rien van Ham]

Hi,

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

Kind Regard,
Rien

[markp99]

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.

[lalittle]

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

[CautionESPN]

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

[tlongacre]

Just synced w/.69

I did NOT Initialize. I just synced. And I got my Playlists!!! Happy, happy, joy, joy  

iTunes files play fine.

No Audible, though.

I did do the Eject iPod from within MC, for the first time ever, actually. I've never used that before (always used the safely Remove Hardware icon in my icon tray).

Also, I got one message about a duplicate file and guess what, it really was a duplicate! However, the file NAME was different, so obviously it is not checking on filename.

[Rien van Ham]

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

[SteveG]

Everyone,

MC 10.0.70 is now available. It includes...

Fixed: iPod playlists would not save if player disconnected from outside of MC.

I will look more into Audible this weekend.

Rien,

Artist, Album, Genre, and Track # editing on Portables has been disabled, but the change was not made to the Properties AW. This will be disabled shortly.

[gbdesai]

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.

[Madcow]

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"?

[lalittle]

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

[tlongacre]

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.

2.  Still no Audible

3.  Playcounts don't seem to be transferring one way or the other. Playcounts on the iPod (viewed in MC) are always 0. Playcounts in MC are more realistic, but don't seem to include any plays on the iPod.

[lalittle]

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.

[serf]

Same as lalittle  

[lalittle]

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

[lalittle]

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

Just to add to this, when you guys do get this worked out, PLEASE make it so our own custom tags show up on the iPod for Audible files -- this is a NECESSITY.  I've seen other programs that use some sort of "default" tags -- which don't seem to be editable -- that are often not conducive to using them on an iPod.  For example, we get some "weekly" audible content that we rename to reflect the date of the file in the title.  The "default" tag for these files, however, is the same for every one, which means that when these are placed on the iPod, they all show the exact same name.  Other audible files do contain the date in the title, but it doesn't fit on iPod screen, so you don't see it.  One thing I REALLY liked about MC (back when my Audible files were working) was the fact that Audible files transferred to the iPod used the MC tag info.

Please maintain this capability,

Larry

[park]

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

[lalittle]

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

I like the confirmation just so I can walk away and still verify that the sync finished normally.  It's a fairly small thing to hit "okay," and since it's likely that you won't be right there when it finishes, it's a nice reminder that you did a sync (when you do them all the time, it's actually not hard to forget if you recently did one.)

Larry

[tlongacre]

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.

[lalittle]

Well, you know, it doesn't really matter, because either way it is something broken in MC.

I won't argue with that -- I was just trying to make sure that the error report was as accurate as possible.

Larry

[CautionESPN]

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.

[SteveG]

Everyone,

Thanks for the reports. I have fixed the Playcount and Rating bug and that will be available Monday. Brian, your bug with the '|' is also fixed.  Audible fix is still in progress. Madcow, I do not have 2 iPods here to test, but with the new system, synching with 2 iPods should be OK. I can test next week.

I cannot duplicate tlongacre's lock during Initialization. Can anyone else?

I also cannot duplicate Brian's incorrect space left, anyone else? If this one is isolated to Brian, I have some possible theories on how this could be screwed up for him.

Steve

PS The Album Artist (auto) went away to facilitate track matching in the new system which gets complicated if one of the key fields (i.e. artist) is changeable. Modifications may be possible, but not immediately.

[serf]

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.

[TimB]

I'm away from home base right now but the comforting thing for all of us is knowing that Steve will fix the bugs.

-=Tim=-

[Madcow]

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

[tlongacre]

madcow -- nah, it won't happen in .70. Steve is talking about the *next* version which won't be available until Monday.

[SteveG]

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

[JustinChase]

This totally reminds me of the last time I had a wierd problem with Microsoft software.  I inquired about my problem, and the lead programmer for that part of Microsoft kept me informed of his progress, and was obviously working on my irritating problems on sunday night, and asking if the troubleshooting he had done was reproducable for others with the problem, so he could get it fixed and in my hands by Monday.  Yeah, that's almost exactly how my last Microsoft problems was handled.  Everything except the easy method of contact, the prompt responses, the abliity to get the message to person actually doing the work (on Sunday), and the feedback, and the obvious desire to fix the nagging problem.  Other than those things, they were kindof sortof similar, but still totally different in every way.

I don't even have an iPod yet, but am considering one, and I keep up on this thread (and the previous one) because it is totally refreshing to see a company so determined to make their software work right.

Thanks Steve

[lalittle]

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

[SouthsideIrish]

Well, Audible sort of works for me. The files play correctly, but for some reason the smartlist doesn't show up on the iPod, although I can see on the iPod within MC9.

Bill McNair

[CautionESPN]

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)
Intel Pentium 4 1971 MHz MMX / Memory: Total - 1047 MB, Free - 544 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: 4.71 (0001) , ASPI for Win32 (95/NT) DLL, Copyright © 1989-2002 Adaptec, Inc. / Aspi32.sys: 4.71 (0001)

Ripping /   Drive E:   Copy mode:Normal   CD Type:Auto   Read speed:Max
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