Messages

166

Beyond MusicBee / Re: Digital Audio Player Recommendations

« on: June 23, 2022, 06:30:06 AM »

The LG V30 is still floating around. It was a great phone for audio.

It's not a user replaceable battery but I replaced one for a friend without any fire or death. It was a little fiddly though.

167

Plugins / Re: iPod & iPhone Driver Plugin 2.0

« on: June 23, 2022, 05:55:08 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".

Each file is sent to MusicBee to see if it meets any of the conversion criteria. If it doesn't match, MB just returns the same filename, if it does match, MB converts the file to the temp folder I got you to check earlier and returns the filename of the converted file.

That error means the filename MB is returning doesn't exist. There is nothing in the code that could be messing that part up and it's working for me so best guess is some kind of permission issue or settings problem that is preventing MB from creating the converted file.

Are you using the portable version of MB?

Maybe try running it in administrator mode, that might get past a permissions issue.

edit: Also its a good idea to exclude antivirus.
I'd recommend the following folders.
C:\Program Files(x86)\itunes  (might be C:\Program Files\iTunes for the 64 bit version)
C:\Program Files (x86)\MusicBee
C:\Users\<username>\Music\MusicBee
C:\Users\<username>\Music\iTunes
And the folder where your music is stored.

That will definitely speed up the sync on a large library.

168

Plugins / Re: iPod & iPhone Driver Plugin 2.0

« on: June 22, 2022, 08:08:06 AM »

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

Change the "convert to" field to "Mp3" and see if that works. Just to rule out a problem with ffmpeg.

169

Bug Reports / Re: "On-the-fly-conversion" settings ignored with Sync_FileStart()

« on: June 22, 2022, 04:15:05 AM »

I've got this all implemented now, thanks for all the help.

I did come across an error but it's a bit obscure and maybe working as intended as it would only show up in certain scenarios.

If "delete files that are not on the auto-sync list from device" is unticked but the "confirm deletion" is ticked. Like in the picture below.


And the deletes variable in PrepareSynchronisation is populated, the sync will error with the following message

Length cannot be less than zero.Parameter name: length

The solution is to just tick the deletes option, untick the confirm box and then untick the deletes option again.

Normally you wouldn't populate the deletes variable if the delete files setting was unchecked, I only came across the error because I hadn't put in code to check that setting yet and I'm doing a bit of a workaround to calculate deletes at the moment instead of doing it properly.

Like i said, maybe it's working as intended and I doubt it will matter if you just leave it as is but I figured I would mention it in case it might be causing other errors somewhere.

170

Plugins / Re: iPod & iPhone Driver Plugin 2.0

« on: June 22, 2022, 03:43:18 AM »

Just a note about some of the estimates I have listed previously for sync times, I may have been a bit optimistic due to file caching (I think).

No matter what I do, I can't stop the sync process from accessing the actual media files (track files). Disabling metadata refresh certainly makes it faster but the mechanical drive where my music is stored still gets thrashed during the sync but only the first time. I'm not sure why as technically the sync process is just sharing information between the MB database and the iTunes database (both stored on NVME C: drive). If the files have previously been synced the HDD shouldn't need to be accessed at all if metadata refresh is disabled.
So here is what happens when I do a sync and no sync changes need to happen, it's just going through the database to check if something needs to be synced.
I do a full sync, HDD gets thrashed and it takes about 22 minutes for 36,000 songs.
I do another full sync straight after, no HDD activity occurs and the sync takes less than 10 min. (I assume because whatever info it's accessing got cached by windows in the first sync.)
If I restart the PC and do a full sync it takes 22 minutes again and thrashes the HDD.

If I restart MusicBee and iTunes without restarting windows it still performs the sync quickly so it's windows caching that is speeding it up, not something with either program.

I'm just going to assume it's a quirk with iTunes.

Anyway, all this overly long post is trying to say is, ignore my previous post where I said 36,000 songs took 8 minutes. 22 minutes for that many songs is more realistic sync time if you store your tracks on a mechanical drive or network drive. If everything is on SSD's you will probably see a much better result.

171

Plugins / Re: iPod & iPhone Driver Plugin 2.0

« on: June 22, 2022, 03:18:24 AM »

I've updated the plugin again. Just another visual change when syncing.

The counts displayed will now be more accurate (not include playlists) and deletes are handled a little better but still not perfect.

The best I can do is make an assumption on the number of deletes based on the number of tracks to be synced and the number of tracks in iTunes.

The basic logic is No of Tracks in iTunes - Tracks to be synced  = Tracks to be deleted. If tracks to be deleted is less than zero it's assumed to be zero.

It's not perfect but it's the best I can do without a major rewrite (I'm sure this time). In certain situations this logic will fall over and the progress bar will go over 100%. Something like the following would trigger it -
Tracks in itunes - 200 made up of 2 playlists of 50 tracks and 150 tracks.
User unticks the playlist of 150 tracks and ticks another playlist of 100 completely different tracks.

The logic above will assume 50 tracks need to be deleted instead of the required 150. End of the day it's not a huge deal, the plugin still works fine, it's just a display issue.

This version will throw an error if you have "delete files that are not on the auto-sync list from the device" unticked but the "confirm deletion" box is ticked, like in the picture below.


Just tick the delete files option, untick the "confirm deletion" box then untick the deletes option again.

172

Plugins / Re: iPod & iPhone Driver Plugin 2.0

« on: June 22, 2022, 02:56:02 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.

173

Plugins / Re: iPod & iPhone Driver Plugin 2.0

« on: June 21, 2022, 11:16:52 AM »

I've just updated the plugin. No functional changes, it just co-operates a little better with MB.

When syncing files it will display the progress counts a little better.

The message bar at the bottom of the screen is now readable instead of the hot mess it used to be, so you can navigate to other tabs and still see the progress. Edit: If you have the "status bar" enabled.

It still has a few issues though -
1. If deletes have to be performed you will see the counter go over 100%. Short of a major rewrite of the plugin I can't see a way around this for now so it might be that way for a while.

2. The total includes playists but they don't actually get displayed when syncing occurs. So if you have 80 songs across 20 playlists. The counter will get to 80 of 100 and then complete. Again, I can't see a way around this without a major rewrite.

edit: Actually I have a fix for the playlists. I'll do a bit more testing before I push that out.

edit2: So I totally lied and found a way to do it all without a major rewrite. It will add a small amount of overhead at the start of the sync but I think it's worth. I just want to test it on my partners large library to see how it goes before I push it out in the next few days.

174

Bug Reports / Re: "On-the-fly-conversion" settings ignored with Sync_FileStart()

« on: June 21, 2022, 10:15:05 AM »

Got it working. Thanks

175

Bug Reports / Re: "On-the-fly-conversion" settings ignored with Sync_FileStart()

« on: June 21, 2022, 10:00:51 AM »

that means you are not adding any values to the: updates, deletes, playlists list parameters
you dont need to create new instances of those lists - just add to the appropriate parameter list

also i assume you accidentally left out:
PrepareSynchronise matched
from the error log right?

I thought you might say that after I looked at those zeroes in the log. Not surprised, forking this plugin is my first experience with C# and even beyond that I only have limited experience with javascript and php. I need to do a bit more reading to get my head around some of this stuff.

Yes I missed -
21/06/2022 6:27:19 PM - PrepareSynchronise matched

As I did 2 syncs and the last one only created 2 lines in the file, I just grabbed the last 4 lines thinking that's all the 2 syncs produced.... I should have paid more attention.

176

Bug Reports / Re: "On-the-fly-conversion" settings ignored with Sync_FileStart()

« on: June 21, 2022, 09:38:12 AM »

I did 2 syncs using 2 playlists. The first playlist has 50 songs and the second has 1 song. First sync had both of them ticked, the second sync had the first playlist unticked. Delete files that are not on the auto-sync list from the device is ticked.

21/06/2022 6:27:50 PM - method settings=SyncRemoveMissingFiles,files=52,preview=False,conf delete=False
21/06/2022 6:27:51 PM - returned total=0,del=0
21/06/2022 6:31:11 PM - method settings=SyncRemoveMissingFiles,files=2,preview=False,conf delete=False
21/06/2022 6:31:12 PM - returned total=0,del=0

Thanks.

177

Bug Reports / Re: "On-the-fly-conversion" settings ignored with Sync_FileStart()

« on: June 21, 2022, 05:44:17 AM »

Any chance you can confirm PrepareSynchronise is working properly? I can't get it to do anything. I'm assigning lists to the update, deletes and playlist variables and popping up a message box so I know PrepareSynchronise is getting triggered and those variables have values after the Synchronise button is pushed. But the total files just changes with each track eg)
1 of 1
2 of 2
3 of 3
Instead of -
1 of 3
2 of 3
3 of 3

I assume it's setup so if it doesn't have any other info, it defaults the total track number to the current track number? Currently it seems to be ignoring what I am assigning to the PrepareSynchronisation variables, either that or I'm screwing it up which is a high probability...

With the code the way it is currently I probably won't be able to implement it properly anyway without a major rewrite but I have an idea for a workaround if I can get the thing to actually display something other than what I'm getting above.

178

Bug Reports / Re: "On-the-fly-conversion" settings ignored with Sync_FileStart()

« on: June 20, 2022, 12:31:54 PM »

MB doesnt have the tag attributes of the file being deleted from the device. However if you pass the filename of the file on the computer then i guess MB could try to get the details if the file still exists on the computer

The file still exists in MB, the user has just removed it from the sync list. If you are just syncing playlists and untick one of them, it will delete all the songs in that playlist off the device (if they are not in any other playlists and you have the delete setting enabled).

That being said, another scenario could be the song being deleted out of MB so it needs to be removed from the device, in that instance it would only have the filename to go off. Anyway, it's not really a big deal. It just stood out to me because the library I'm testing on is not organised at all so the filenames look a bit naff sometimes.

179

Bug Reports / Re: "On-the-fly-conversion" settings ignored with Sync_FileStart()

« on: June 20, 2022, 04:59:42 AM »

I found a consistency issue. Sorry I don't know if you want these in different threads. It all seems related though.

What displays in the sync window is inconsistent between Sync_FileStart and Sync_FileDeleteStart
eg)
filename = "C:\Users\User\Music\iTunes\iTunes Media\Music\abba\Unknown Album\dancing queen.mp3"
Sync_FileStart(filename); //displays as <Artist> - <Track Title>
Sync_FileDeleteStart(filename) //displays as the filename without the extension - "dancing queen"

180

Plugins / Re: iPod & iPhone Driver Plugin 2.0

« on: June 19, 2022, 09:30:06 AM »

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.

This will be fixed in MusicBee 3.5
The following options both convert FLAC files to the specified format in the "Convert to" field.
"Only convert with a format not supported by the device"
"Only convert files with a lossless format"

Files that don't match that criteria get copied across as they are (unless art needs to be imbedded).

You might be able to get it earlier if you keep an eye on this thread for the next beta release.
https://getmusicbee.com/forum/index.php?topic=36464.0

You can get it here now - https://getmusicbee.com/forum/index.php?topic=36529.msg201338#msg201338

To get ALAC encoding in MusicBee you need to add your own encoder. I just used ffmpeg, links to compiled versions are here - https://ffmpeg.org/download.html#build-windows
You need to choose one of the windows options under Get packages & executable files. Extract those Exe files to a folder.

In MusicBee under Edit Preferences->File Converters, scroll down and tick "ALAC Enabled". Then add the location of "ffmpeg.exe" that you saved earlier. Click save. You might need to restart MusicBee before the ALAC option appears in the "Convert to" drop down.