MediaMonkey forum

Somone posted this on the other thread: http://www.mediamonkey.com/forum/viewto ... a&start=15

dbdog wrote:FYI here is a recent post from the Winamp forum:
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"1. Before starting, REMOVE all the songs from your iPod using iTunes. 2. Start foobar2000 and sync songs to your iPod with foo_dop as usual. 3. When you're done, start up iPhoneBrowser (or SSH/Mobile Terminal) and in the left hand pane, navigate to /User/Media/iTunes_Control/iTunes 4. In the right hand pane, delete the iTunesCDB file (NOT the iTunesDB file). 5. Start up iTunes and allow it to find your iPod. If you look in the music section, you should see all the files synced using foo_dop. 6. Close iTunes. 7. You must carry out steps 3-6 whenever adding/removing songs with foo_dop

(While reading just replace "foo_dop" by "ml_ipod" and "foobar2000" by "winamp"...
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So by the looks of it both Foobar and Winamp can sync using this awkward method. Maybe MediaMonkey can work this way too. I'll try it tomorrow.

dbdog

I have confirmed that this does the trick. Clear out all of your iTunes synced music, then follow these steps. All of my music/podcasts/playlists are synced up from MM. I am having some issues with cover art, but that's a small price to pay for this stop-gap.

Of course, this requires a jailbroken device to remove the file (unless anyone has another way) - but a jailbreak is a fairly simple process as well.

Now CopyTrans Manager can sync...

bekriebel wrote:
I have confirmed that this does the trick. Clear out all of your iTunes synced music, then follow these steps. All of my music/podcasts/playlists are synced up from MM. I am having some issues with cover art, but that's a small price to pay for this stop-gap.

Of course, this requires a jailbroken device to remove the file (unless anyone has another way) - but a jailbreak is a fairly simple process as well.

Damm my phone is not jailbroken and its my work phone so dont want to mess with doing that right now. Some one needs to come up with a way to do it to non-jailbroken phones

@markstuartwalker:

Thanks for doing the hard work with your script and for publishing it. I successfully copied and started it on my PC, and all my MM playlists appeared in iTunes afterwards. However, all of them are completely empty. What's going wrong?

Thanks, Ralf

Ok ..... following on from my previous posts I've prototyped a few routines to control iTunes remotely through it's COM interface and sync the iPhone.

My intention is to have an MM script that allows the right-click of a playlist to "Send to iPhone". Behind the scenes this will
* replicate the playlist and its tracks into itunes
* the playlist will be selectced to be one of the ones that should be sync'd to the iPhone
* the iPhone will be sync'd

After a single one-off initialisation step you need not interact with iTunes. This will be done at script installation time.The script will launch iTunes (and you can watch it working) but you can minimise it.

There are lots of positive things about this
* It will work with any iPod/iPhone (even iPhone 3.0) that iTunes supports.
* It will work alongside any videos and podcasts that you might have on the iPhone.
* It will work with playlists or autoplaylists in MM

I just need time to put together the working MM package. If anyone wants to take this on, I am happy to send the fragments of code that I have got already.

@ergo_sum

Try importing one of the playlists into iTunes manually via File->Library->Import Playlist to see if that works.

Check that the file paths in the m3u files are relative to the m3u file location (i.e. with ../music/mp3/06 Track.mp3) rather than via an absolute drive letter (i.e. c:/user/files/music/mp3/06 Track.mp3)

The script assumes relative paths. There is a good "Export M3Us/Create Playlists for Child Nodes" extension.

Hello guys I have been following this for sometime so far and i seems a solution has been found by another program at xilisoft. It is not close to mm but it gets the job done. Maybe MM developers would like to take a look at those peoples code and see what the new DB is like.

Yes, I'm also waiting for a fix for this, but understand it takes some time. I think that if Xilisoft made it this quickly then that's good news.

@markstuartwalker:
Your approach seems very convenient for some (like me, I don't really change playlists all that much!), as it would centralize iPod/iPhone syncing (in iTunes). Hope I could help, but don't think I could...maybe testing if you'd like me to.

markstuartwalker,

What you are doing sounds interesting...and ultimately essential given the fact that it looks as if this issue will continue into the future as long as Apple continues current strategy.

The thing is it I'm not sure it would provide any real functionality for me.

I will put forward how I use MM and the inherent problems I face with this issue and possibly you could keep these in mind as you develop.


1.) This problem is not going away...at each major software/firmware update for itunes or iphone OS from Apple there has been increasing MM "downtime". So a more permamnent solution is absolutely in order.

2.) I have a very large Library, ~122k tracks (and it is accessed on network drives). In Windows iTunes really is not capable of efficiently running with this library...it pretty much locks up. So, starting itunes with a complete library loaded and keeping it updated with current data is a very BIG problem. ( I of course tried variations of this during the previous db hash shutdowns....Even as a longtime MM user if I did not require MM in to maintain my large library I am beginning to question whether I would go through this crap- If I had 20k or less tracks, as most people have, I think I would just give up and use iTunes, life it too short.)

3.) What we currently do is create one master playlist for each of the several iphones and music players that access MM here....this is how we "backup", "auto sync" and manage the different music players. SO, your approach of focusing on playlists might prove to be very useful for us. (There are some MM improvements/wishes that would make this process much easier but that's another issue.)


SO...

...Would it be possible to startup and utilize itunes to write to the db file on the musicplayers WITHOUT itunes having the actual library itself loaded into itunes?

...Or would each track of each playlist sent need to be loaded and integrated into the default itunes DB?...possible I guess, but then the maintenance and utility when several users and multiple changes are involved become amplified...

...I don't care if itunes loads and runs...problem is- itunes will just not work if my library is actually loaded into it....not to mention maintaining it.

Aside- when I spoke at length with Apple techs about this issue of itunes being unable to practically handle large libraries...they acknowleded the issue and the limitations of the software and had no solution other than purchasing a high performance Apple machine and using the Apple OS version of itunes...the Apple developers in their inimitable fashion simply actively disregarded Windows users. That is ultimately the issue...the itunes software provided for windows is inherently flawed and Apple actually spends time and money actively forcing windows users to use their software and ultimately, they expect their hardware products too...Seriously, that is the corporate line at Apple...thing is I would use their hardware for everything...the engineering is clearly superior...but from an OS standpoint it is simply ridiculous...no matter what arguments there are, Windows is necessary for any practical business application and Apple is totally and absolutely a minor player as far as OS is concerned....I have even considered running windows on an Apple machine..yet the problems still exist...

Chaps, latest cut of prototype is at http://rapidshare.com/files/253848525/module1.txt.html

This is my VB prototype that drives iTunes and controls the sync to a connected iPhone. The DoIt() function at the bottom can trigger the copying of various playlists into a <MM> folder. You'll have to edit this and preload iTunes with some playlists and files to experiement yourself. I've run the file under VB but I think that it should run as a vbs.

iTunes behaves intelligently in that it only copies only a single instance of a file irrespective of how many playlists contains it. Further, playlists with no tracks are not sync'd to the iPhone. There is a manual step in that the <MM> folder ad its sub-playlists need to be checked in the iTunes "Selected playlists" dialog.

If you want to remove playlists from the iPhone, manually delete their tracks in iTunes and rename them to be 'zzz'.

The code is written to copy internal iTunes playlists. To copy a MM playlist the copyPlaylist() will need some form of modification like

Sub copyPlaylist(p1, p2) 'p1 As SBSPlaylist, p2 As IITPlaylist)

' rename to be the same
p2.Name = p1.Name

' delete what is there already
Dim t ' As IITTrack
While p2.Tracks.Count > 0
p2.Tracks.Item(1).Delete
Wend

For Each t In p1.Tracks

Dim os 'As IITOperationStatus
Set os = p2.AddFile(t.Path)
While os.InProgress
Wend
Next

End Sub

... of course the selection mechanism from MM needs to be worked out too. But that is pretty straight forward.

Mark

@cmx

The mechanism is such that only the tracks needed to fulfil the playlists would be downloaded to the iTunes DB. So I think that this fits your scenario, provided you have your iTunes DBs on various machines.

@cmx: (yes, the previous post was from me )

iTunes can use multiple libraries on a single machine. http://lifehacker.com/software/itunes/m ... 202302.php
Would this allow you to have one library for each of your iPods?

My expectation would be that the number of tracks limitation is simply a DB table efficiency consideration so splitting across multiple DBs would solve the problem.

Thanks for the replies mark.

All our tracks here are on one set of network drives that all computers access...there are not "multiple libraries"...multiple libraries create a whole new set of problems and issues.

One strategy I have used in the past is INDEED loading a subset of my main library into itunes...one that is "manageable" by itunes and simply loading the devices with itunes....(after about 20-30k tracks itunes starts slowing down)...this is what I hoped to avoid.

I was hoping you or someone could devise a way to utilize itunes to write to the devices yet not have to actually preload ALL tracks into itunes and maintain a complete and formal itunes db.

As it is I have to: use MM to find music I want in complete main library...note the physical files/folders...go to itunes....load these individual tracks/folders...sync device with itunes....

So the reality is I am required to use BOTH programs just to load music on portable devices. Hopefully hardware manufacturers will replicate the iPhone features we require soon...that seems to be the most practical wish.

We went with iphones for the Blackberry type connection features/outlook compatibility/palm replacement and were pleased that we could drop a device- old Zen's and ipods...incredible that Apple created this huge compatibility problem with music and that it did not present itself until AFTER the fact of the costly contracts and time consuming transition...AND that Apple continues actively creating and maintaining the incompatibility.

@cmx:

You misunderstand me. I think that you are still thinking of my previous vbs script which took the entire file structure and pushed it into iTunes.

The scenario I'm suggesting is ....

* Keep all your music on the network share
* Use MM to edit IDtags etc (it can handle the 120k tracks)
* Create one iTunes DB instance for each device (due to capacity reasons this will be < 20k per device)
* Decide which device you want to load
* Open iTunes with the appropriate DB instance (by holding the shift key as it loads)
* Use MM to select which playlists need to go to each device (a bit like the right-click "Synchonise to iPhone" when it worked for 2.2.1)
* My utility (from within MM) to
1. push the selected playlists + tracks into the selected iTunes instance
2. Synchronise that into the iPhone

Thus ...
* Each iTunes DB only has the tracks for a single device (ie < 20k tracks)
* You get to edit the entire collection in MM (ace!)
* You get to select the tracks to be downloaded from within MM
* The utility loads the tracks into iTunes for you
* You dont have to dirty your hands by manually using iTunes except for chosing the DB

I couldn't resist .... http://rapidshare.com/files/254159361/E ... .mmip.html

Install this and right-click a playlist in MM. Then select "Export to iTunes..."