Messages

1

Plugins / Re: iPod & iPhone Driver Plugin 2.0

« on: June 26, 2022, 01:51:10 AM »

As I right-clicked on the device, I noticed a new menu option had popped up, "Open as a Portable Device". I clicked it, and opened Musicbee. I noticed the iPod 5th gen was now being read as an iPod! In pure disbelief, I ejected the device and plugged it back in. Still an iPod!

Was this "Open as a Portable Device" an option when you right clicked it in Windows? That's unreal if that's all it was.

To my knowledge, he biggest downfall of using iPods on windows is the fact that the libraries will be identical when syncing with Musicbee.

This is technically true with how the plugin is setup. But you could just click the work offline button and this will sync iTunes with whatever settings you have in Musicbee, then you can close MusicBee, open iTunes and sync the devices manually in iTunes. Just remember anything you change in iTunes will not get synced back to MB.
eg)
In MusicBee just setup 2 playlists. On for the 5th Gen and one for the 7th Gen
Run the plugin and click work offline. Tick the 2 playlists and sync them to iTunes.
Close MusicBee, this will auto close iTunes as well, just re-open iTunes.
Plugin your 5th gen and change the settings in iTunes so only the 5th gen playlist syncs to it. Let it sync.
Plugin your 7th gen and change the settings in iTunes so only the 7th gen playlist syncs to it. Let it sync.

The big question is, does the auto conversion work yet?

It was, but to my knowledge it wasn't there before.  As far as the plugin is concerned, I haven't messed with it since the iPods started recognizing in Musicbee. As of now my 7th gen has the majority of my library, in a compressed format. My 5th Gen iPod has my library in an uncompressed format, with a different combination of playlists on each one.

I'll be honest, I'm a little worried to mess with anything else at this point; if Musicbee can convert on the fly and sync my library unhindered, to multiple devices, maybe I should just let things be how they are.

2

Plugins / Re: iPod & iPhone Driver Plugin 2.0

« on: June 25, 2022, 07:12:52 PM »

I'll break things up then; my apologies.

3

Plugins / Re: iPod & iPhone Driver Plugin 2.0

« on: June 25, 2022, 07:03:24 PM »

Too long? if so, I'm sorry

4

Plugins / Re: iPod & iPhone Driver Plugin 2.0

« on: June 25, 2022, 06:45:24 PM »

Okay, you're not going to believe this, but after a few more hours of fiddling around with these iPods I've happened across what could only be described as a miracle. I had basically given up and decided to install rockbox on both devices, and just sync music that way. after I installed the bootloader on the 7th gen, I plugged in the 5th gen and decided to mess with the properties a bit. As I right-clicked on the device, I noticed a new menu option had popped up, "Open as a Portable Device". I clicked it, and opened Musicbee. I noticed the iPod 5th gen was now being read as an iPod! In pure disbelief, I ejected the device and plugged it back in. Still an iPod!
I 'm going to be honest, at this point I really don't know if that made a difference, if the universe decided to give me a win, or what. The 7th gen was still not being recognized as an iPod(up to this point) so I unplugged that one and started loading some playlists onto the 5th gen. I've mentioned before, but the 5th gen has a better dac, and more storage, so I loaded a large majority of my lossless playlists onto the device, and used the playlist converter that someone here on the forums had made to get the playlists to be recognized in rockbox. Something I think is important to mention, The iPod was booted into the normal apple os. When I unplugged it, all my music, playlists, etc. were there, and when I booted into rockbox, the same thing. all my music, playlists, etc. were there as well. I use Rockscrobbler, which imports the logs that rockbox makes when playing music, so all my playcounts and such get transferred.

Now, moving onto the more exciting part. To my knowledge, he biggest downfall of using iPods on windows is the fact that the libraries will be identical when syncing with Musicbee. another "miracle" happened with the 7th gen ipod, when I plugged up the device into my PC again, i went back to Musicbee, and noticed it was being read as an iPod as well! with both devices connected, they show up in iTunes as separate iPods with the correct names, and are case-sensitive as well. Last thing I decided to take a look at was iTunes. I opened it up to change the name of the iPod 7th gen, and noticed that for some reason, the "enable disk use" option was still off this time. Going back to Musicbee, I Decided to try the on the fly conversion for the 7th gen, since it has less storage.

it worked perfectly! I don't know if any of this information will help you; what this all has shown be is that these devices are so particular it makes it difficult to pinpoint what the exact solutions are to certain problems. But you already knew that. Thank you again(so much) for helping me over the last few weeks. I couldn't have gotten this working without you. If you have any questions, or want me to be more specific about this mountain of text, lemme know.

https://imgur.com/a/iyblRKR Here are some pictures to show i'm not crazy.

5

Plugins / Re: iPod & iPhone Driver Plugin 2.0

« on: June 25, 2022, 01:36:27 AM »

So still no dice on the ipod, but i've noticed something strange this time around when I was pluggin it in. everytime I plug it in, it re-enables the "enable disk use" button.

6

Plugins / Re: iPod & iPhone Driver Plugin 2.0

« on: June 25, 2022, 01:21:28 AM »

Ah sorry; I've tried disabling that, but it hasn't netted any different results. Right now i've just removed all of the apple services and feature I could from my main PC, and i'll try installing 12.5.3.16 and testing my luck there.

PS, should I replace my MB installation with a portable one? How easy is it to transfer settings?

7

Plugins / Re: iPod & iPhone Driver Plugin 2.0

« on: June 25, 2022, 12:48:49 AM »

Ah, I see. I was going off of what most of the guides said for restoring the ipod for musicbee. what version of itunes are you using on your main pc specifically?

8

Plugins / Re: iPod & iPhone Driver Plugin 2.0

« on: June 24, 2022, 03:41:38 PM »

As far as the plugin, I've tried running iTunes and Musicbee in compatibility mode, admin mode, and uninstalling iTunes. The thing that confuses me the most about this is that for my iPod Video 5.5, I was able to convert on-the-fly with no issue, and that was without the plugin. This might be unrelated, however.

Yeah, that's a bit strange really. The only difference as far as MB is concerned is what folder to put the re-encoded files into (specifed in the storage field). Might be worth doing a search for *.m4a and see if they are getting created in a different folder on the system. Don't just search for the song name because when it gets re-encoded it's given a different filename to the song.

In regards to the iPod, I assume you have unchecked the "enable disk use" settings?

Does it show up in MusicBee at all?

edit: Maybe try the version of ipod firmware this person used 2.04-35
https://getmusicbee.com/forum/index.php?topic=35605.0

edit: occasionally my partners iPod will just show up a drive letter in MB but usually when that happens iTunes will not detect it either so I have to eject it from windows, unplug it and plug it back in again. Probably not related to your issue though....

Maybe I can try setting up MB(portable) and iTunes on a separate computer with the plugin, and seeif this issue happens there too. the only problem is if it does work, I'm not sure how I'll fix it on my primary PC(other than reinstalling windows).

As far as that post, the iPod shows up in musicbee and iTunes, but in MB it will only show up as a hard drive, and in windows explorer it will only show up as a hard drive. When it was working before, it would show up as an iPod, in explorer, and this is an issue that persists across every computer I've tried this on. I had to install iTunes 9.2.1 on my Mac using a VM for windows 7, because for some reason on my PC, my laptop, and on a win10 sandbox VM iTunes won't install, as it gets to the last step of installing the iPod device service and says "I don't have permission to run this service". This happens regardless of the drive I try to install iTunes on. On windows 7, I can install iTunes 9.2.1, but if the iPod is not in DFU mode and I don't have a copy of its firmware(this is for both the classic and the video) I can't restore the iPod because the version of iTunes is too old to contact apple servers(and sometimes even this doesn't work because it will return an error saying "this iPod cannot be restored: error code 1413). As you can probably tell, I'm at my wit's end with this stuff, but I know there has to be something I can do to fix this, because other people don't have this problem. The next(and potentially last) thing I can think of doing is taking all of the micro SD cards out of my flash adapter, removing and rebuilding their MBPs individually, and reformatting the cards and starting from scratch, on the win7 virtual machine, restoring them of their respective firmwares, and hoping that musicbee will recognize them as iPods again.

9

Plugins / Re: iPod & iPhone Driver Plugin 2.0

« on: June 24, 2022, 07:21:48 AM »

I appreciate all the suggestions so far. I have a few updates(and mostly bad news) surrounding this problem now.

As far as the plugin, I've tried running iTunes and Musicbee in compatibility mode, admin mode, and uninstalling iTunes. The thing that confuses me the most about this is that for my iPod Video 5.5, I was able to convert on-the-fly with no issue, and that was without the plugin. This might be unrelated, however.

On a second, more depressing note, I recently had to replace the logic board on my iPod video 5.5 due to a battery issue, and I replaced it with an identical board. As I mentioned before, I was able to sync that iPod with no issues to Musicbee, without using any driver plugin(the serial number and name would show up in MB, and the iPod would show up in file explorer as an iPod, not a hard drive. As of replacing the board, I haven't been able to get Musicbee to recognize the iPod as an iPod, and no matter how many times I've tried restoring through iTunes 9.2.1 using a downloaded firmware I haven't had any luck. I'm pretty bummed about this because it was working fine before the board was replaced, and I followed the same steps I used the first time, and now it's acting just like my 7th gen iPod classic which only reads as a hard drive. I'm pretty sure at this point I've exhausted all my options. I'm telling you this second part in hopes that you may have some insight about this bizarre bug.

10

Plugins / Re: iPod & iPhone Driver Plugin 2.0

« on: June 23, 2022, 01:04:40 AM »

I made a single-track playlist with one FLAC file, and tried the conver-to-mp3 method, and no dice. I still got the "Track source file not found".

11

Plugins / Re: iPod & iPhone Driver Plugin 2.0

« on: June 22, 2022, 06:01:38 AM »

I tried using both ALAC and FLAC on iTunes 12.5.3.16, but I received a different error this time for the FLAC files, "The specified file could not be located". This is after updating MusicBee to the latest version you had linked.

It's still working ok for me so there must be something specific about your setup it doesn't like.

If you open the following folder, are there any files in there?
C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\MusicBee\iPod & iPhone Driver

Change <username> to your username on that PC.

From the 3 lines menu top right of MusicBee -
Edit Preferences->Devices
Select "iPod & iPhone Driver" and click "configure"
Select settings and make sure under "Media Storage" that the "Storage Path" field has "iPod & iPhone Driver\" in it. Without the quotes.

I don't have any files in that folder; might that be the issue? The file path is correct in the device path section.

12

Plugins / Re: iPod & iPhone Driver Plugin 2.0

« on: June 21, 2022, 06:19:48 PM »

I tried using both ALAC and FLAC on iTunes 12.5.3.16, but I received a different error this time for the FLAC files, "The specified file could not be located". This is after updating MusicBee to the latest version you had linked.

13

Plugins / Re: iPod & iPhone Driver Plugin 2.0

« on: June 19, 2022, 07:32:59 PM »

That's awesome! Thanks for keeping me updated about this. I'll have to give it a go sometime tommorow.

14

Plugins / Re: iPod & iPhone Driver Plugin 2.0

« on: June 16, 2022, 04:56:33 PM »

I can't stand the newest version of itunes.

For the few hours I have been playing with it today, I want to stick a fork in my eye. Just horrible.

So the intermittent problem I had just disappeared. I added some code to debug and it was fixed, removed the code I added and it still worked. I guess just closing everything down to copy over the new plugin files fixed whatever problems I was having. Bit strange but I couldn't get it to repeat the problem....

With your problem, iTunes does not support FLAC files and I think the "conversion on the fly" is broken in MusicBee.

No matter what options I selected, it would not even attempt to convert the files. Whether I changed them in the sync screen or Edit Preferences->Devices->iPod & iPhone Driver->Configure.

However, I was able to force a convert by making sure the FLAC files didn't have an embedded image and then saved an album cover just as a file in the folder.

But this just created a new FLAC file in the temp folder which also fails.

Strangely when I trigger this convert, it obeys the "Convert to" setting in the  "on the fly" section. But it doesn't actually convert to the that format. The file in the temp folder just becomes a FLAC file with it's extension changed to whatever I have selected,  .mp3 or .m4a etc...

I've added ALAC support via ffpmeg into MusicBee but it makes no difference.

From what I can tell, the plugin is reporting to MB what formats are supported so that isn't the issue, in any case, when "convert all files" is selected it should do a conversion and it doesn't.

Sorry but there is nothing I can do about this, it's something Steven (MB creator) will have to fix. I'll post it in the bug forum thread.

Your only solution is converting those files into a supported format. ALAC is apples version of FLAC, it's easy to convert with ffpmeg
ffmpeg -i track.flac -acodec alac track.m4a

In other news, I've found if you have delete missing tracks selected it prompts you approve every single track... clicking ok 800 times isn't fun. I'm going to add an "Ok All" to that form.

I also found a bug when syncing small playlists which I will try and fix up. It will say the playlist is deleted. I assume because I need to give it a second to recreate the playlist I just deleted before I start throwing files at it.

Thanks for looking into this; I think what I'll end up doing is making a copy of the files I want on the iPod and transferring them to ALAC, then syncing them from my laptop as opposed to my computer, so the library is separate from my primary library.

15

Plugins / Re: iPod & iPhone Driver Plugin 2.0

« on: June 16, 2022, 01:59:30 AM »

I got that notification too, haha. Anyways Thanks for looking into it. I use my 5.5 gen classic primarily (better dac) so don't feel rushed by any means. I can't stand the newest version of itunes, but running older versions of itunes causes all sorts of problems (for me at least), especially when I was trying to restore this ipod in the first place.