- Could the playlist created by "Load library" be sorted? Now it seems to be in dates order, that may be useful in some cases but I find myself always sorting it by general string so albums are grouped.

First:  There is no a way to retrieve back the artwork from the ipod to foobar.  I can't see any of mi artwork in foobar, so, I don't know if an album already has artwork or not without seeing directly in the ipod.  Actually, I see that floola can do that (that's the reason it is still in my ipod) So I wonder.... ¿Why foo_dop can't?  this wolud be a great feature.

The other one is the time that foobar takes to retrieve the ipod database.  I know this depends of the number of files you have, but I was thinking that it would be great that foo_dop give us the option to save a "pseudo-media library" (I mean, a playlist    ) that will load faster than the database, and I can recreate, or update any time I read the database from ipod.  Actually I do this by hand, but, well, I lose nothing asking for this 

musicmusic - great plugin, great updates  Thank You!

Here are couple of suggestions:
- Could the playlist created by "Load library" be sorted? Now it seems to be in dates order, that may be useful in some cases but I find myself always sorting it by general string so albums are grouped.
- I think there should be info about doing transcode from lossy source, perhaps it could be presented the same way as when gapless info cant be determined?
- As stated above by Adi Corrales finding missing covers isnt easy. Maybe give that information in similar way to new playcount plugin so it will be possible to use it in tagz for custom columns?
- I would really like to have an option to resize cover (instead of adding black bars) if the width to height ratio isnt huge. In most cases this is unnoticable on small iPod screen and would look better than bars.

And finally one thing that bothers me - I have a few movies send to ipod by itunes so they have names like EKKP.mp4 without any tags. When foo_dop will erase info about them from database and replace it with own data (ie filename)? It happened to me once and that was confusing  I tried "Refresh iPod library metadata" but the info its still on the iPod. Don't really want to experiment with rewrite database now

3. Without background loading of the iPod database it isn't exactly possible directly in the foobar2000 playlist

4. Basically, it is slightly complicated. Some iPod models / artwork image formats request cropped images, but foo_dop doesn't provide those which can result in black bars. In other cases, foo_dop provides info on how much of the image is padded out but some issues there may have resulted in some small black bars. Which iPod model do you have?

Quote from: JoyO on 2007-12-29 18:23:04

- Could the playlist created by "Load library" be sorted? Now it seems to be in dates order, that may be useful in some cases but I find myself always sorting it by general string so albums are grouped.

1. It's currently unsorted: it is just the order they are in the iPod database. In general that is the order they were added to the iPod. I use this so I may add an option to control the sorting.

Hmm I see, I have 3G Nano.

BTW - there is helpful tool from microsoft called contig. It allows defragmenting only certain files, for example .ithmb ones.

I cant find a volume normalization feature in foo_dop. Can it be added? TIA

Without it I frequently have to adjust the volume on my nano.

Strangely enough, on my iPod Classic tracks really seem to be in this order (in the iPodDB), but on a 3G Nano they are exactly in reversed order (in the iPodDB). Is there a reason why the files are written in a different way? Both iPods are managed by foo_dop 0.5.3.

Also, I have a bug to report, using 0.5.3 and an iPod Classic: I have two albums, with a different album artist but the same album title. In the "Cover Flow" and "Albums" views I see both albums separately in the list, but when I click on either one, all songs from both albums are listed under each one. In the "Artists" view they are properly separated. Do you maybe have an idea why this might be? Can this be corrected?

And one other thing, which might not even be a problem your plugin caused: I wanted to check out Floola for iPod management, and when I started it up, it complained that my iPod is not set up correctly (after using it managed by foo_dop for weeks), and if I want Floola to set it up for me. I did not allow this, of course, but my iPod's DB was reset nevertheless (now this is probably a Floola bug). Luckily, foo_dop managed to rewrite the DB, and all's well now. Do you have an idea why Floola, and sometimes iTunes complains about my iPod Classic not even being initialised for use?

And a third thing comes to my mind  Is there a way to detect if I want to send duplicates to my iPod? And to prevent it? (i.e. I have an album on my iPod, but I forget about it and send it again later. All tracks will then show up twice on the iPod  )

Nothing else for now!  Just to thank you for creating and maintaining foo_dop!

Quote from: kalmark on 2007-12-30 11:22:24

Strangely enough, on my iPod Classic tracks really seem to be in this order (in the iPodDB), but on a 3G Nano they are exactly in reversed order (in the iPodDB). Is there a reason why the files are written in a different way? Both iPods are managed by foo_dop 0.5.3.

It doesn't do anything different on those models. Bear in mind files may be re-added during a sync (that puts them at the end) also if you send multiple files at once they will all be at the end but in an undefined order. Again, I guess it's complicated

Quote from: kalmark on 2007-12-30 11:22:24

Also, I have a bug to report, using 0.5.3 and an iPod Classic: I have two albums, with a different album artist but the same album title. In the "Cover Flow" and "Albums" views I see both albums separately in the list, but when I click on either one, all songs from both albums are listed under each one. In the "Artists" view they are properly separated. Do you maybe have an idea why this might be? Can this be corrected?

I don't think this is my issue (but rather an issue with the iPod). If they are compilations setting them as so may help. Does the artist field vary between the tracks/albums? I have seen issues similar to this, I may check it out or alternatively you could try adding the same songs via iTunes. Also make sure you are using the latest Classic firmware.

Quote from: kalmark on 2007-12-30 11:22:24

And one other thing, which might not even be a problem your plugin caused: I wanted to check out Floola for iPod management, and when I started it up, it complained that my iPod is not set up correctly (after using it managed by foo_dop for weeks), and if I want Floola to set it up for me. I did not allow this, of course, but my iPod's DB was reset nevertheless (now this is probably a Floola bug). Luckily, foo_dop managed to rewrite the DB, and all's well now. Do you have an idea why Floola, and sometimes iTunes complains about my iPod Classic not even being initialised for use?

iTunes shouldn't complain if you've just been using foo_dop. But other 3rd party apps may cause issues. The rewrite command just reads (parses) the database and writes it out again. So if that fixed it floola must have written a bad db (iTunes/iPod perform some additional security checks when reading the DB which foo_dop doesn't care about).

BTW: I have had the Classic do odd things. Basically after disconnecting it from the computer, I have had it reconnect once the "OK to disconnect" progress was completed and then disconnecting and repeating.. This also resulted in the iPod service giving a message along the lines of "Your iPod needs to be reformatted for use with Windows". That message can be ignored in this case, just disconnect it in the small "OK to disconnect" window.

Quote from: kalmark on 2007-12-30 11:22:24

And a third thing comes to my mind  Is there a way to detect if I want to send duplicates to my iPod? And to prevent it? (i.e. I have an album on my iPod, but I forget about it and send it again later. All tracks will then show up twice on the iPod  )

Not really yet.. I'll make some changes there at some point though. Personally I just use sync.

If you upload a sample file (e.g. yousendit.com) I can check what the problem is (PM me the link).

It has two id3v2 tags. One seems to have been added by LAME, and one by EAC. I think you've probably set both of them to tag the file.

Quote from: musicmusic on 2007-12-31 16:59:15

It has two id3v2 tags. One seems to have been added by LAME, and one by EAC. I think you've probably set both of them to tag the file.

Wow, that's odd... EAC is set to tag the files when I rip them, if I decide to change something after ripping (i.e. genre) then I use foobar to edit the tags. I've no idea why foobar is adding another ID3V2 tag instead of editing the existing one. If it does need to create a new one for padding purposes, why leave the old one?

One other question... how can one easily add album art to albums that don't already have album art? How about those for which I have replaced the art with a better or corrected picture?

I think this has been covered in the posts above.

First:  There is no a way to retrieve back the artwork from the ipod to foobar.  I can't see any of mi artwork in foobar, so, I don't know if an album already has artwork or not without seeing directly in the ipod.  Actually, I see that floola can do that (that's the reason it is still in my ipod) So I wonder.... ¿Why foo_dop can't?  this wolud be a great feature.

What exactly are you trying to do? Anyway, there is a column in 'Browse iPod' that tells you if a track has artwork.

The other one is the time that foobar takes to retrieve the ipod database.  I know this depends of the number of files you have, but I was thinking that it would be great that foo_dop give us the option to save a "pseudo-media library" (I mean, a playlist    ) that will load faster than the database, and I can recreate, or update any time I read the database from ipod.  Actually I do this by hand, but, well, I lose nothing asking for this 

It builds a metadata cache which takes time the first time. It should be faster afterwards though. Which part of the process is slow?

Thanks for your help so far MusicMusic, as ever I've a few more questions :

1. Is there a quick and easy way to add radio shows using foo_dop? I often download mp3s of talks, discussion shows etc and would like to add them to my iPod such that they appear in the "Radio" area, and not amongst the main artist section. If I use iTunes, it seems to routinely remove album art which is painful to fix.

2. Have you considered opening up the source to foo_dop? There is huge potential for this plugin and as popularity grows there will probably be more feature requests / bug reports than you can easily handle. Not to mention that the half-life of foobar plugin develpments in general seems to be terribly short and one ipod plugin has already died off (foo_pod). Collaborative efforts have a much greater chance of success. I'm a software engineer by trade and whilst I have never participated in an open-source project, this is the first one I have felt I would like to contribute to.

Upsss!  Forget this....  It was mi Foobar instalation.  For some reason, it was deleting  ALL the playlist  when it closes, so I have to reload the iPod library every time I open it....  I reinstall foobar and now, it seems to keep the playlists the way I leave when it closes....  I guess that I just have to change the drive letter of my ipod to be sure the playlist is correct in every PC...

Hello,

sorry for being so annoying, but do you mean to publish a new release (with the fixed album art function) still in 2007?

Best regards,
qwerty85

1. Do you mean podcasts? No there isn't really much support for those.

2. I am against it. Anyway, if foo_pod didn't die off there wouldn't be any foo_dop

Put simply, I was wondering how easy it would be to trick the iPod into categorising an mp3 in the radio section of the music browser (which presumably refers to podcasts), akin to the "VARIOUS" flag and compilations. A bare minimum implementation which does the necessary to achieve that would be cool.

That is a great shame. If foo_pod hadn't died then we wouldn't need the retrograde step of a ground-up reimplementation.

Hi again everybody!
........ But what I want is to be able to use my ipod as my main music database and have my HD just as a backup.  It is not problem at all in use Foobar2000 directly from my ipod, but there are two small things that I think are gonna make this more like my HD experience......

Quote from: Adi Corrales on 2007-12-29 16:30:11

It is not problem at all in use Foobar2000 directly from my ipod, but there are two small things that I think are gonna make this more like my HD experience......

Don't. Your iPod will soon die. Ideally you should access the iPod harddrive as little as possible, ie. don't use a harddrive iPod as your USB drive. Of course, if you have a flash based iPod there's no problem, but I'd assume you have more than 16GB of music .

The only radio menu I am aware of refers to actual radio (via the radio remote).

ENC_DELAY    LAME proprietary MP3 enc_delay value (e.g. 576)
ENC_PADDING   LAME proprietary MP3 enc_padding value (e.g. 1536)
MP3_ACCURATE_LENGTH    mp3_accurate_length supported (LAME proprietary header)? (e.g. yes)