>> Synchronization: Mainly for iPod but other HD players also

**puntloos** · October 05, 2003, 08:59 PM

Re: >> Synchronization: Mainly for iPod but other HD players also

OK I'll put a few comments here:

- Itunes of a friend's computer was so friendly as to delete my entire music collection. Blam. All gone. :vmad: Anyway, sveta started complaining my ipod DB was empty or corrupted (empty, obviously) but it kept reminding me over and over and over, and if I told sveta to not make a new DB (not necessary, it was empty not corrupted, right?) it wouldnt allow me to send files to it.

- Maybe Im missing something but I don't see the option (right click menu, convert to) to send files to my ipod anymore. I had some issues while installing dbpoweramp, I first had the release versions, then upgraded to all the betas, maybe thats the issue?

- About 'my baby'

- the directory names thing:
1/ Are you filtering filenames? Will it complain or fix things if filenames (or the tags that the filenames are made from) contain foreign characters?
2/ In ipod properties the tickable option is called: "Copy Audio to [Artist]\Original Filename" - currently it should be called "Copy Audio to [Artist] \ [Artist] - [Title]" since it seems to be using tags for naming and it definately stripped my tracknumbers.
3/ Are you still considering allowing people to specify the filenames on the ipod manually? Id love a little entry box that allows me to say "%Artist/%Album/%Track-%Title"? If not fully customizable, then at least I would really remove the redundancy of artist/artist-title.mp3 (why artist twice?) and instead include album titles (in dirname, or filename if you must)and tracknumbers.

- In the main ipod view it is kinda confusing that you alpha-sort the entries by artist - album. I have 4 albums of a same band on there, and now all tracks are in there alphabetically, plus not seperated per album. (I know, only in the ipod-view, the ipod has preserved the track order) but still, this is kinda confusing. Especially there is for example no intuitive way to delete (only) one of the 4 Tom Waits albums off my ipod... (obviously this effect is also the reason Id like albumnames and tracknumbers in my filenames.. seperating and manually handling files is just so much easier with proper names)

- This is a dbpoweramp problem but too lazy to post twice

) I've converted one album, 12 tracks, to a specified dir (K:\Pod) and then selected another album, 7 tracks (totally different filenames of course) to rightclick-convert and it brings up the "Overwrite These Files' box listing track 7 as the one in danger of being overwritten. The filename is totally different, track 7 to be converted is 07-Silence_is_never_nothing.mp3 and it asks me if I wanna overwrite K:\Pod\07-mediterranean_sea.mp4. Bizarre. If I say no it works and converts all files anyway.

**puntloos** · October 05, 2003, 10:16 PM

Re: >> Synchronization: Mainly for iPod but other HD players also

Update: my bad I see the option to convert straight to ipod now.

**puntloos** · October 05, 2003, 10:37 PM

Re: >> Synchronization: Mainly for iPod but other HD players also

More updates (hehe you can see Im actively testing things now)

- I couldnt find the option how to tell sveta what default ipod format (mp3 or mp4, and bitrate) should be. Fixed it by de-installing ipod and re-adding device.
- dbpoweramp doesn't remember those default settings, I try to send to ipod and it defaulted to mp3 instead of mp4 which is what i wanted..
- I would like you to specify the estimated bitrate in the pulldown menu, i.e. "streaming" isnt really telling me much, "streaming: ~128kbit" would be more informative.
- I tried sending 13 untagged (woops my bad) mp3s to the ipod, and sveta this time actually kept the filenames including tracknumbers.. good in a way) but stored them into "01, 02 ... 13" dirs. My filenames were "01-Track_name.mp3"). Perhaps make an 'Unknown" dir? for untagged dirs? Or at least drop them into the standard "F01 - F20" dirs? I suddenly have 13 new dirs in my ipodcontrol/music with one song in each.

**puntloos** · October 06, 2003, 02:04 AM

Re: >> Synchronization: Mainly for iPod but other HD players also

Another one:
- If in the sveta interface I send a file to my ipod twice, it ends up in my ipod twice. While this may be the logical result of sending files twice, perhaps you could include some simple checking to prevent such from happening?

i.e. if a file (same size, same tags) is sent twice it should only keep one copy IMHO. Very few people would really want two copies of the same file, especially if they would end up in exctly the same location on the pod, in the playlists etc.

**Spoon** · October 07, 2003, 10:19 PM

Re: >> Synchronization: Mainly for iPod but other HD players also

Wow big message!

>and if I told sveta to not make a new DB (not necessary, it was empty not corrupted, right?) it wouldnt allow me to send files to it.

You would need to click the Ok to make a new database.

>1/ Are you filtering filenames? Will it complain or fix things if filenames (or the tags that the filenames are made from) contain foreign characters?

I ran a few tests and got a list of Characters that were not allowed, only those are replaced.

>3/ Are you still considering allowing people to specify the filenames on the ipod manually?

Ok will add next release

>In the main ipod view it is kinda confusing that you alpha-sort the entries by artist - album.

ASAP I am going to add new Views to my Audio Player - see the master plan, these will then make their way into Sveta, which IMHO will be a huge improvement for large number of tracks.

>K:\Pod\07-mediterranean_sea.mp4

K is the iPod? or you hard disc?

>I couldnt find the option how to tell sveta what default ipod format (mp3 or mp4, and bitrate) should be.

In Sveta Explorer you have the Audio button to the top right, and Convert To >> iPod - you get the 'settings' button next to the audio format it will convert to.

> dbpoweramp doesn't remember those default settings, I try to send to ipod and it defaulted to mp3 instead of mp4 which is what i wanted..

Currently Sveta explorer and Convert To >> are seperate, I am thinking they sould be the same?

**puntloos** · October 09, 2003, 03:17 PM

Re: >> Synchronization: Mainly for iPod but other HD players also

Originally posted by Spoon

Wow big message!

>and if I told sveta to not make a new DB (not necessary, it was empty not corrupted, right?) it wouldnt allow me to send files to it.

You would need to click the Ok to make a new database.

I know, that worked, but my point was the DB was basically fine, just empty. (so Im trying to say - the messages are a bit confusing)

>1/ Are you filtering filenames? Will it complain or fix things if filenames (or the tags that the filenames are made from) contain foreign characters?

I ran a few tests and got a list of Characters that were not allowed, only those are replaced.

Cool!

>3/ Are you still considering allowing people to specify the filenames on the ipod manually?

Ok will add next release

You are my hero! :D If this is in sveta (and working

) I'll switch to it for my ipod management - and buy it of course. Beware though, as a paying customer I'll be even more irritating with bug reports and feature requests

>In the main ipod view it is kinda confusing that you alpha-sort the entries by artist - album.

ASAP I am going to add new Views to my Audio Player - see the master plan, these will then make their way into Sveta, which IMHO will be a huge improvement for large number of tracks.

Ah ok - missed that one.

>K:\Pod\07-mediterranean_sea.mp4

K is the iPod? or you hard disc?

Nope, just a temp drive. (yes I have a lot of drive letters) Sadly I can't seem to reproduce this error now. I assure you it happened, but well.. not that often I guess.. Will keep an eye out.

>I couldnt find the option how to tell sveta what default ipod format (mp3 or mp4, and bitrate) should be.

In Sveta Explorer you have the Audio button to the top right, and Convert To >> iPod - you get the 'settings' button next to the audio format it will convert to.

> dbpoweramp doesn't remember those default settings, I try to send to ipod and it defaulted to mp3 instead of mp4 which is what i wanted..

Currently Sveta explorer and Convert To >> are seperate, I am thinking they sould be the same?

Yeah that might just be the issue.. just make one general setting or something?

btw, keep up the good work!

**puntloos** · October 09, 2003, 06:50 PM

Two extra thoughts

- Does your 'search for lost files' system also use your filename filter? It should, if possible. That way someone who just drags files to his pod with explorer and one day thinks "hey, lets 'sync'" will not end up with 'missing tracks'.

- I've checked the DB format and I'm pretty sure that the ipod really doesn't care where the music files are. You can put em in /Music for example. The /Ipod_Control/Music thing is apple software's doing. Therefore, perhaps put an option somewhere that lets me specify the 'root directory' of where my files are and/or allow me to specify (in PuntCookie(tm) format:

/Music/%Artist/%Album/%Tracknumber - %Trackname.ext

would be quite ideal imho

- plus you can obviously keep the default

/Ipod_Control/Music/F%Random20/%Random2000.ext

or something similar.

**Spoon** · October 09, 2003, 11:04 PM

Re: Two extra thoughts

At the moment it just scans ipod_control/music

an option could make it scan all the ipod.

**puntloos** · October 20, 2003, 02:40 PM

Re: >> Synchronization: Mainly for iPod but other HD players also

As a small addendum I found out that Itunes (windows) fully supports my weird pathnames thing. At least in the sense that:

- If you let itunes put a file on the pod it will use apple's own silly scheme with renaming, F0 dirs etc..
- It will however just find and organise the files with itunes, edit tags, play directly from ipod etc.

Also, I noticed something:

If you add files (without copying) to your itunes library (so it just memorises where they are on your hdds) and then tell itunes to convert to AAC, the new files will appear here:

<ituneslibrarydir>/Artistname/Albumname/Tracknumber Full Trackname with Spaces.m4a

Ring familiar?

Even apple agrees with me! (ok, except for me putting a little '-' between tracknumber and name and not lowercasing everything).

Anyhow. Any ETA on this custom cookied pathname stuff we spoke about? I realise you prolly have a ton of things to do, but cant blame a bloke for being curious

**Spoon** · October 20, 2003, 10:30 PM

Re: >> Synchronization: Mainly for iPod but other HD players also

It will be a number of weeks, I am currently working on the Creative drivers and the MPMan F50-60 range (really bogged down in that - need to pull out USB sniffers and hijack their device driver by writing my own...)

**puntloos** · October 21, 2003, 02:24 PM

Re: >> Synchronization: Mainly for iPod but other HD players also

I understand 100% - good luck with the work

On another note, I had this thought.. what happens with the ipod DB when someone or something deletes files off the ipod, but doesnt update the DB? (for example during a scandisk)

Or to put it in feature-lingo:
Is there an option with sveta to check the integrity of the ipod database and/or let sveta build the ipod database from the actual files on the hdd (i.e. like the scan for tracks, but starting with deleting the DB)

**Spoon** · October 21, 2003, 11:07 PM

Re: >> Synchronization: Mainly for iPod but other HD players also

I will make a note of that, in the scan for new tracks - it should also scan existing tracks to make sure they are there.

**Spoon** · January 13, 2004, 12:49 AM

Re: >> Synchronization: Mainly for iPod but other HD players also

Now Released.

>> Synchronization: Mainly for iPod but other HD players also

>> Synchronization: Mainly for iPod but other HD players also

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